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THE 



PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


No. 32.— October, 1887. 


I. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER* 


CHWABEN or Swabia is the heart of Germany, and Wiirtem- 


berg is the heart of Schwaben. What the best Germans uncon- 
sciously or consciously mean when they speak or think of specifically 
German nature and character, is found there at its fullest and truest. 
Not in the North or East or West ; scarcely in the South as a whole 
— for in Bavaria, on the Rhine, and in Baden, the folk-character in- 
cludes different and in part discrepant elements ; not even in Sach- 
sen — Sachsen as it used to be understood — though there are points 
of affinity between it and Swabia ; but in Schwaben are to be found 
the Germans of the Germans. No part of Germany has contributed 
anything like the proportion that it has contributed to the highest 
life of the nation, as reflected in its mysticism, theology, philosophy, 
poetry, not to mention other departments. 

The typical Schwabe combines in marked degree caution in 
action, sobriety of judgment, sympathy with mysticism, and bold- 


* For most of the biographical and other details embodied in this paper, I am in- 
debted to the following German sources : Dem Andetiken von Dr. I. A. Dorner, von 
Dr. Dorner. Professor in Wittenberg, Gotha, 1885, Article on “ Dorner,” by his son, 
in Herzog’s Realencyclopadie : Erinnerungen an Isaak August Dorner, von Professor 
Heinrici (Marburg), in D‘utsch-evangelische Blatter, September, 1884 : I. A. Dorner, 
von H. Jeep: Dr. Isaak August Dorner, von Dr. H. Weiss: Dem Gedachtniss Isaak 
August Dorner s. Rede von Dr. P. Kleinert, Berlin, 1884 : I. A. Dorner und E. Herr- 
mann, Eine Gedachtnissrede, von Hermann Frh. v. d. Goltz, Gotha, 1885 : Beilage zur 
Allgemcinen Zeilung, October 11th, 1885, Article by Professor B. Piinjer : “Zur Erin- 
nerung an Dr. I. A. Dorner” (Funeral Discourses, etc.), Tuttlingen, 1884. 

I am very sensible of the inadequacy of this endeavor to give an account of the life 
and work of one whom I so greatly revered as teacher, writer, and friend. 



37 


570 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


ness of thought. He is rather inward-minded than outward- 
minded. Though in the main of a conservative tendency he is 
opposed to hard and fast lines, especially in matters of faith ; very 
tenacious of his own individuality, he is no less tolerant of that of 
others ; nay, he rather rejoices in living freedom and variety of 
movement. A certain democratic jealousy of clerical claims and 
supremacy seems to have characterized him from the very first — 
even in prae-Reformation times. It is said of Graf Eberhard im 
Bart * that, when Pope Sixtus IV. reproached the Wurtemberger 
with putting on the roofs of the churches priests that came with a 
papal warrant, and, when they fell off from hunger and weakness, 
either giving them the papal bull to eat or throwing them into the 
water, he replied, “ Under my rule these things have not been 
done ; but if I were to tolerate such intruders, my subjects would 
count me a bastard.” So, too, the Catholic duke, Karl Eugen, in 
1 75 3, when the hint was given him that he should kiss his Holiness’s 
slipper, answered, “ If that is a mere fashion, I see no reason for 
falling in with it ; if it is a form of devotion, it is a bad custom.” 

Nowhere in Germany is more sincere respect paid to earnest and 
godly ministers than in Wurtemberg, yet nowhere do the laity act 
with such independence and is the universal priesthood of believers 
such a reality. The religious life is accordingly less clerical and 
formal, more lay and natural than elsewhere. Witness the great 
number of Bible conferences, meetings for edification, prayer-meet- 
ings, societies for theological inquiry, and the like, that exist in the 
country ; and nearly all within the borders of the State Church. 
Nor is, perhaps, any section of German Protestants better prepared 
for full Church freedom than those of Wurtemberg, though, as a 
rule, they are far from wishing to snap the links binding the Church 
with the State authorities. 

The type of Lutheranism that prevails in Schwaben is scarcely 
deemed thoroughly correct by the hot Confessionalists of Hanover 
and Mecklenburg. In fact, its tendency from the first was Union- 
ists ; and the gulf dividing it from the Reformed Church never was 
so broad as in the North. It has loved rather to dwell on the points 
of agreement than on the points of difference between the two great 
divisions of Protestantism. 

Now, Dorner was a genuine son of his stem. It would have been 
difficult to find a more typical Schwabe. The characteristics just 
sketched were found to an unusual degree in him : and he gloried in 
being a Schwabe. 


See Herzog’s Realencyclopadie , Vol. 1 8, pp. 278, 284. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


571 


His father was the pastor of Neuhausen-ob-Eck, a village not 
many miles from Tuttlingen, situated high enough up on the Swabian 
Alps to afford views even of the distant Swiss mountains. The 
church and manse are primitively simple ; the latter looking exactly 
like one of the high-roofed, timber-framed farm-houses common 
in the district. But father and mother alike would seem to have 
been singularly devout, intelligent, faithful ; and their distinguished 
son never mentioned them without showing how he cherished and 
revered their memory. Isaac August was born June 20th, 1809 — 
the sixth of twelve children. For many years a private tutor was 
kept in the parsonage for the instruction of the children. So far as 
I know he is the only son who has entered the ministry ; but he 
would seem to have been intended for the Church, or, as people say 
in Germany, for the study of theology, or to become a theologne — 
whether practical or otherwise, time was to show — from earliest 
childhood — probably because of the quiet, earnest, meditative ten- 
dency, which early showed itself in him. 

When the tutor had done with him, he was sent to the so-called 
Praeceptor-School at Tuttlingen ; whence he proceeded in his four- 
teenth year to Maulbronn, one of the four lower theological semi- 
naries, through which youths intended for the Church pass to the 
University. There he remained till he was eighteen — i.e . , till the 
year 1827, when he was entered a student at Tubingen, and became 
an inmate of its celebrated Protestant or Evangelical Seminary or 
Stift. The only one of his teachers at Maulbronn who exerted any 
special influence on him was Professor Osiander, author of a well- 
known commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians. 

It may interest some of my readers if I here give a brief account 
of the celebrated institution — the Stift — into which Dorner entered. 
Approached from the railway, the town of Tubingen is seen rising 
very strikingly from the banks of the Neckar, and if one looks some 
distance to the left of the bridge over the river one can see a long, 
many-windowed building, several stories high, of exceedingly plain 
architectural character— in fact, more like a factory than anything 
else. It is reached by one or other of two narrow streets just after 
crossing the bridge, one called Bursa, the other Neckarhalde ; and 
is entered by large gates opening into a courtyard. The interior is 
as plain as the exterior — everywhere yellow-washed walls, certainly 
not artistic and liable also to look not remarkably clean ; the sim- 
plest of woodwork and the homeliest of fittings. A story devoted 
to what Germans call the “ Economy,” is reached from the court- 
yard, down steps. Here the Housemaster, as he is named, lives, with 
the various servants ; here, too, the cooking for the Stift is done. 


572 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


Between the building and the river is a not very broad strip of land, 
cultivated as a fruit and vegetable garden. The edifice is a sort of 
irregular quadrangle, of which the north wing — which is the oldest 
part, having once been an Augustinian monastery — owing to the 
conformation of the site, stands higher than the south, which is next 
the river. The three upper stories of the lower block, from the win- 
dows of which are beautiful views toward the Rauhe Alp, are appro- 
priated to dining-hall, studies, and sleeping-rooms — between them a 
corridor — the latter lying to the north, the former to the south. 
The north wing, which can also be entered by a bridge from the 
Neckarhalde, contains studies, bedrooms, library, and three lecture- 
rooms, which latter are also used for the University theological lec- 
tures. This circumstance, in fact, rendered the bridge necessary. 
There are in all twenty-two students’ studies and bedrooms, each in- 
tended to accommodate from five to seven men, according to the 
season — fewer in summer ; and between each pair of such rooms is 
one for a Repetent, who has the supervision of the men on each side 
of him. It must not be supposed, however, that his relation to them 
is like that of a master in a school ; or that windows open into the 
studies and dormitories. Nothing of this kind would be or is toler- 
ated or intended. His duties are to direct and assist the studies of 
his students by means of lectures, discussions, examinations, conver- 
sations ; to watch in a friendly way over their conduct ; and to pro- 
mote as far as may be their moral and religious welfare — the latter 
duties, however, being discharged without any approach to the in- 
quisitorial procedure of the Romish seminaries. The whole Stift is 
governed by Inspectors and an Ephorus. 

Normally the Stift contains from one hundred and twenty to one 
hundred and thirty-five Seminarists and ten Repetenten. 

A curious combination of bookcase and writing-desk, so con- 
structed that the user is half concealed from his neighbor, and gen- 
erally so placed that he shall have his back to the window, with a 
wooden chair, is all the furniture provided in the studies ; though 
the students are at liberty, and, as I observed in some cases, use it, 
to introduce something easier to sit on. Each student brings, also, 
his own bedding, though an iron bedstead is supplied him. Disci- 
pline, intellectual and otherwise, is strict. No one is allowed to be 
out without permission after io P.M., and the restrictions in other 
respects — at all events on paper — are pretty severe. Every one has 
to be out of bed by half-past six o’clock in winter, by six in summer, 
and in bed at 10 P.M. Two meals per day are provided by the Haus- 
meister, and taken in the Refectory. I was not a little amused by 
the names given to the various studies, but could get no clew to their 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


573 


origin — perhaps they arose like other nicknames. One is styled 
Elysium; another Luginsland (Look Out, perhaps), a third Zion, a 
fourth Quadrat , a fifth Mulatto-room , a sixth Schwarzloch (Black, 
or Blacking, or Ink-Hole), and so on. I tried to find out where 
Dorner and one or two others had lived, but my guide, and a stu- 
dent whom I asked, were uninformed. 

The inmates of the Stift receive stipendia or bursaries, which I 
believe with care pretty well cover the expenses of their residence at 
the University ; but into these details I need not further enter. 
Such are the main external features of the institution of which 
Dorner became a member, and where he passed his five student 
years. Judging by his allusions to the Stift, and by the efforts he 
made both in Gottingen and Berlin to establish similar Convicte or 
Residential Halls for Theological Students, with Repetenten or In- 
spectors, he entertained a high opinion of the value of the intellec- 
tual and moral discipline it furnished. As is natural, different men 
form different opinions on the subject ; and this much must be 
allowed, that comparatively few students are constitutionally so 
fitted to profit by such surroundings as Dorner. To him discipline 
from without answered so completely to inclination within, that it 
was felt to be not a limit or restraint, but a sort of line of least re- 
sistance along which his energies could work ; and so pure and right 
was his mind, that influences which might be detrimental for others 
did but invigorate him. 

The course of study pursued in his day was probably in its main 
features, certainly in its method, substantially what it is still. 

Its most characteristic feature was the thorough attention given 
at the very outset to the Latin, Greek and Hebrew languages, on 
the one hand, and, on the other, to Philosophy, including Logic, 
Metaphysics, Psychology, Ethics, History of Philosophy, Philos- 
ophy of Religion, and History of Religion. In other respects, it 
followed the lines usually prescribed for theological students in. Ger- 
many, means, however, being taken, especially by regular exami- 
nations, such as are ordinarily out of the question, to secure all pos- 
sible thoroughness. 

The time at which Dorner entered Tubingen was emphatically 
one of great ferment and transition — transition from the Germany of 
the eighteenth to the Germany of the nineteenth century. The Uni- 
versity had rather lagged behind the rest of Germany, especially as 
to the study of philosophy.* As late as 1826, even Fichte and 
Schelling were studied only by the more enterprising and able, and 


* See Kliipfel, Geschichle der Universiliit Tubingen. 


574 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


Hegel was scarcely known by name ; the teachers either ignored or 
barely mentioned him. Between 1828 and 1832, however, a change 
came over the spirit of the scene, specially promoted from the latter 
year onward by D. F. Strauss, who had been to Berlin for the pur- 
pose of studying Hegel and Schleiermacher,* and then returned as 
Repetent to the Stift, full of the new wisdom — drunk, one might 
say, with the new wine. Professors, therefore, began to notice, criti- 
cise, and warn against Hegel's system ; but the keener students 
plunged headlong into its depths, and that all the more eagerly 
because it was regarded as an esoteric doctrine, which only the aris- 
tocratic and gnostic few could appreciate. 

At first Dorner seems to have been greatly drawn to Eschenmayer, 
who in a sense represented the philosophy of Schelling. But stimu- 
lating as was his teaching, and beneficent his personal influence, his 
own philosophy lacked the force and stringency necessary to keep- 
ing firm grip of young men of Dorner’s calibre. He rendered him, 
however, the great service of introducing him to Schelling and 
Jacobi, both of whom exerted a determining influence on his phil- 
osophical development. How much he owed to the former it is, of 
course, impossible to say ; but even a superficial comparison of 
Dorner’s Glaubenslelire with Schelling’s writings brings to light 
numerous points of affinity. Schelling’s words — “ the first idea of 
Christianity is therefore necessarily the incarnate God, Christ as the 
crown and goal of the gods of the Old World,” might almost be the 
germ out of which grew his own central idea of the cosmic position 
of the Incarnate Logos ; and one of the chief features of his doctrine 
of God — to which I shall afterward refer — might have been suggested 
by Schelling’s description of the negative philosophy as ‘‘the 
apriorism of the empirical, while the positive philosophy is the 
empiricism of the apriori.”f 

To Jacobi, again, he may fairly be assumed to have been indebted 
for the notion of faith as the specific organ for the divine and of the 
affinity between the activity by which we attain to certainty regard- 
ing the external world, and that which brings us certainty as to the 
spiritual world ; though his own use and application of the notion is 
marked by special characteristics.^; 

Sigwart, the second Professor of Philosophy, brought him under 


* Hegel he never heard personally. 

f Dorner interested himself in Schelling’s system to the last witness his article 
“ Die Poten2enlehre Schellings” in the Jahrbiicher fur dcutsche Theologie, Vol. V. ; 
and the very careful and sympathetic estimate of his influence on the development of 
Protestant Theology in his Geschichte der prat. Theologie (see pp. 777 ff.). 

\ See Glaubenslchre , I., 3, 60 ; Jacobi’s Von dtn gottl. Dingen, etc., p. 153. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


575 


the influence of Kant, of whom he himself was a sort of eclectic fol- 
lower. The ethical earnestness, the stringency of method, and the 
conscientiousness of thought which characterized Kant’s system 
stirred him profoundly.* And cold as was Kant’s relation to Evan- 
gelical truth —a thing not to be wondered at when one considers the 
form under which he made its acquaintance— Dorner discerned, at 
first vaguely, later on distinctly, in his manly yearning after certi- 
tude as to the highest concerns of human life and in the ethical bent 
of his system, an inner affinity with the central principle of the Ref- 
ormation, such as neither he himself nor his followers, whether philo- 
sophical or theological, had discerned. Is there not, asks Dorner, f a 
profound rapport between the emphasis laid by him on conscience and 
on the personal certainty of the essential goodness of the good and 
the stress with which a true Protestant urges the personal appropria- 
tion of salvation ? With the most prominent of Kant’s properly 
philosophical doctrines Dorner had no sympathy ; though the study 
of them helped, at all events negatively, to determine his own final 
position. To some of the problems, however, which Kant left un- 
solved or pronounced insoluble, as, for example, that of the possi- 
bility of knowledge of the objective world and of the absolute ; that 
of the validity of the ontological argument for the existence of God ; 
and that as to whether the supreme good is merely an imperative or 
has objective real existence, he devoted prolonged and earnest at- 
tention. 

Hegel must also have laid profound hold on him, though whether 
during his student days, or after he became Repetent in the Stift, 
does not appear. In Hegel’s principle of the objectivity of thought 
— though carried by him to a point which Dorner regarded as ex- 
treme — a much-needed corrective and supplement was supplied to 
the subjectivism of Kant and the scepticism of Jacobi ; and the 
speculative and dialectic method of the same philosopher not only 
evoked a sympathetic response in his Swabian nature, J; but seemed 
to him, rightly used — used, that is, with due recognition of experi- 
ence — to be in fuller accord with the constitution and actual proced- 
ure of the human intellect than the one-sided, reflective method of 
Kant and his followers. But to taunt Dorner with being an Hegelian 
is a mistake ; for he refuses to identify thought and being, alto- 
gether repudiates pure apriori speculation ; and is as far as possible 
from constructing history according to any scheme of abstract prin- 

* Geschichte der prot. Theologie, p. 763. 

•(• See Gesch. der prot. Theol., p. 742. Compare also the Vortrag fiber die Rechtfer- 
tigungslehre , p. 22. 

t Both Hegel and Schelling were Schwaben, and both studied theology at Tubingen. 


576 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


ciples. A comparison of his Christology with that of F. Ch. Baur 
or of Biedermann’s Dogmatik with his Glaubenslehre will make the 
difference between his procedure and that of professed Hegelians 
clear enough. 

Theologically, Tubingen was just beginning to move when Dorner 
entered the University. Till the reorganization of the Faculty in 
1826, and the appointment of Professors Schmid and Baur, both 
men of massive mind, things had been in a very unsatisfactory 
state.* The Supernaturalism of the close of the eighteenth century, 
with its external antagonism to, but real affinity with, Rationalism, 
still held almost undisputed sway. Steudel, the principal theologi- 
cal teacher — a man of sincere piety, moral uprightness, eminent in- 
dustry, and wide reading — was thoroughly under its influence, and 
regarded it as his great business to stem the tide of speculation and 
criticism which threatened, as he thought, to sweep away all that 
was precious in Christianity. Hegel and Schleiermacher were the 
special objects of his attacks, though he did not hesitate to recog- 
nize them as “ elect spirits. ” One can well imagine what a ferment 
must have been set up under such circumstances by the study of the 
latter’s Glatibenslehre , to which Baur took pains to draw the atten- 
tion of students. Nowhere in Germany could a soil have been 
found better prepared for its peculiar seed than in the Stift ; and 
no member of the Stift was in a condition to be influenced by it 
alike philosophically and theologically like Dorner. Judging by the 
loving manner in which he always refers to Schleiermacher ; by the 
painful care which he devotes to the elucidation of his system ; by 
the anxiety he shows to establish the Evangelical character of his 
fundamental principles ; f by the high place he assigns him in the 
development of Christian theology ; by the numerous and broad 
traces of his influence in his own thought ; and by the ungrudging 
recognition of his indebtedness to him, the study of the Glaubens- 
lehre must have stirred him to his deepest depths. It is, of course, 
impossible to determine the exact nature of the change evoked or 
produced in his views, but there is good reason for tracing to this 
source, at all events, the germs or beginnings of his conception of 
the independence of religion, of the distinction between faith and 
theology, of the necessity for the theologian’s starting with experi- 
ence, and of the central significance of the person of Christ. From 
the subjectivism or agnosticism of Schleiermacher with regard to the 


* Compare KUlpfel, Geschichte der Universitat Tubingen. The chapter on this 
subject, having been written by Baur, must be taken cum grano satis. 

f See especially the Geschichte d. prot.Theol. , pp. 795 ff. ; compare 756 f. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


577 


objects of Christian faith or the causes of Christian experience, how- 
ever, Hegel and his own healthy religious nature preserved him. 

To Baur he scarcely seems to have owed much save an awaken- 
ment to the importance of the history and philosophy of religion ; 
but Ch. F. Schmid’s* influence was altogether healthy and invigo- 
rating. To him he owed his first impulse to that thorough study of 
the New Testament, both exegetically and theologically, on which 
he ever afterward laid such stress ; he strengthened the ethical 
element in him and widened his ethical outlook ; and he did much 
to enkindle that interest in the manifold practical tasks of the 
Church by which Dorner was so distinguished. All his allusions in 
after life to this teacher betray a deep sense of obligation and the 
highest appreciation of his work. 

Remarkably, though also naturally, enough, one of the problems 
with which he specially occupied himself as a student was that of 
the freedom of the will — a point as to which he early took up a very 
decided position, under the conviction that it supplied the key to 
the true appreciation of the biblical view of God and the world. 
He also wrote two prize essays, one philosophical, the other theo- 
logical. The latter on the theme — “ What are the causes why the- 
ology is now turning its face again toward the standpoint of the 
Reformation,” became the basis of the first independent course of 
lectures which he gave as Repetent ; out of which again eventually 
grew his great work on the ” History of Protestant Theology.” 

Though by no means what the Germans call fertig — finished, 
made up — when he completed his University course, there seems to 
be little doubt that he was unusually ripe, and that the main lines 
of his future development, the leading principles of his future system, 
and the chief problems to whose consideration he was to devote 
himself, were already more or less distinctly defined. 

It may occasion surprise to learn that as a student, Dorner should 
have held himself aloof from the meetings for prayer and spiritual 
edification that students of a pietistic turn were in the habit of 
holding. Whether it was that they were associated with intellectual 
feebleness and a certain sentimental goody-goodiness, as is too often 
the case ; or whether he scarcely felt the need of such special modes 
for the culture of piety ; or whether, as may easily be the case, such 
means of grace rather evoked the spirit of criticism than of devo- 
tion, it is impossible to say. One thing, however, is certain ; 
neither then nor later did he despise or neglect the public ordi- 


* Schmid’s New Testament Theology and Christian Ethics have been translated, and 
are remarkably rich in living thought. 


578 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


nances of religion ; and about his godliness as an all-pervading, all- 
controlling power there could be no doubt. He himself was a 
“ living epistle of Christ,” even though the name of Christ were not, 
in pietistic fashion, constantly on his lips ; and though possibly 
some means of edification were rather a hindrance than a help. 

Having completed his University course and passed the Stift ex- 
aminations with distinction, he became assistant ( Vikar ) to his father 
at Neuhausen, where he remained two years. Even then he began 
to evince the desire to translate theory into practice, which so emi- 
nently characterized him all through life ; and took a very active 
part, first, in promoting a petition to the Consistory in favor of 
the introduction of the Prussian Liturgy into Wiirtemberg, as a 
preparation for one common to the entire Evangelical Church of 
Germany ; and then in one to the House of Representatives that 
a constitution might be granted to the Church — steps to which he 
was impelled by the hold which the idea of the Church had already 
taken of him. It was in pursuance of this practical bent, which, as 
I remarked before, had been almost awakened, and certainly fostered 
by Professor Schmid, that he gladly, somewhat later, availed himself 
of the opportunity which a travelling bursary given by the Consis- 
torium of the Church afforded him of spending some time in Holland 
and England, where, besides making many friends, he acquired in- 
formation and formed impressions with regard especially to eccle- 
siastical matters, that were of material service to him in dealing with 
similar questions when he became a “ man in authority.” 

In 1834 he was appointed Repetent at the Stift, in Tubingen, and 
found himself associated with a number of men who afterward made 
for themselves honorable positions either in science or practical life. 
Among them was D. F. Strauss, then engaged in writing his cele- 
brated Life of Jesus. As might have been expected, controversy 
not a little, and not always mild, raged between the members of the 
Repetenten-Collegium ; but it was loyally kept within the circle. One 
can scarcely help fancying that the two chief figures would be 
Strauss and Dorner, who differed probably as much in outward ap- 
pearance and mental constitution as in the views they advocated. 
Of Strauss, Dorner himself says, “ Like an Apollo with shining 
countenance, confident of victory, the young Repetent appeared to 
me, when first I met him, myself a shy new-comer, in the Tubingen 
Botanical Gardens.” * If the later outward appearance of the two 
men was prefigured at this time, one may imagine the one to have 
been of spare, erect, well-knit, well-formed, even elegant figure, 


* Professor Heinrici, in Deutsch-Evangelische Blatter , 1884, p. 636. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


579 


with sharply-cut features ; while the other was loosely built, of fuller 
habit, inclined to stoop, of rather shambling gait and round fea- 
tures and altogether more homely-looking ; but of a winning, mod- 
est gentleness of expression that was in marked contrast to the 
colder, somewhat sarcastic and repellent look of Strauss. Dorner 
himself, indeed, used to speak of Strauss as amiable and refined ; 
but one who was acquainted with both men told me that the latter 
was not very agreeable nor much liked, though respected for his 
acuteness, learning, and literary skill ; while Dorner won his way to 
all hearts and wielded a greater intellectual and moral influence 
than he himself dreamed of or understood. 

The attitude he took up toward Strauss after the publication of 
the “ Life of Jesus” was alike characteristic and prophetic. Neither 
he nor Strauss’s other colleagues felt the alarm that was excited in 
the minds of so many others. He says himself : “ Though we were 
consciously opposed to him, we did not allow our kindly relations as 
men and colleagues to be disturbed, and were as far as possible from 
desiring that he should suffer any inconvenience on account of his 
views ; as, for example, by removal from the Stift. On the con- 
trary, scientific freedom seemed to us to demand that he should be 
let alone ; and the blow which removed him from his post [in July, 
1835] filled us with genuine regret — a regret which I personally ex- 
pressed to him. Without unfaithfulness to my Christian convictions 
I believed this course to be right ; because I saw the possibility of a 
scientific defence of Christian truth over against even the mythical 
theory.” * 

These circumstances had, however, the effect of concentrating 
Dorner’s thought and study on a subject which had already begun 
to engage his attention while assisting his father — namely, the history 
of the doctrine of the person of Christ, the firstfruits of which took 
the form of two articles in the Tiibinger Zcitschrift . f They were 
afterward expanded, first into one volume (1839), and then into the 
great work known as his Christology. His aim in undertaking 
this treatise was to do something toward the confutation of Strauss’s 
position. Starting with the fact of the experience of Christ’s redeem- 
ing activity and of the existence of the Church as the fellowship of 
believers whom Christ has redeemed, he saw that Christ could not be 
the mythical product of that of which he is the sole explanation. 
He then went on to show that the image which the Church formed 
of Christ throughout all the centuries of its existence, was of such a 


* See notice by his son in Herzog’s Realencyclop., p. 756. 
f Heft 4, 1835 ; Heft 1, 1836. 


580 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


nature that it could not have been the product of those who con- 
fessed him as their Redeemer, and must, therefore, be of real histori- 
cal value. Not that Christian truth is to be guaranteed by the 
Church as a substitute for the Scriptures ; but that its history as a 
whole, and especially that of its doctrine of the person of Christ in- 
terposes a scientific problem in the way of the mythical theory, which 
this is quite unable to solve. 

One cannot help asking one’s self how it came to pass that the same 
surroundings should develop such differences of character, tendency, 
and views as we find between Strauss and Dorner, not to mention 
others. Both were Schwaben ; both received much the same early 
education, though Strauss’s father was a tradesman and Dorner’s a 
clergyman ; both attended the same lectures at the University ; and 
yet how divergent the results ! Why did Strauss become one of the 
most deadly assailants of historical Christianity, one of the bitterest 
foes of the Church ; while in Dorner both found one of their ablest 
advocates, expositors and upbuilders ? Dorner’s inner life had its 
struggles ; doubts and difficulties beset him : why may we say of 
him, 

“ He fought his doubts and gathered strength, 

He would not make his judgment blind. 

He fared the spectres of the mind, 

And laid them : thus he came at length . 

To find a stronger faith his own ” ? 

Was it due, or was it not, to the utter moral loyalty with which he 
approached every problem and all the professed contributions to 
their solution? I cannot help thinking that his very candor, his very 
open-eyedness, was his safeguard. It is true, none lay claim to 
candor — Voraussetzungslosigkeit, to use Strauss’s word — with such 
emphasis and assurance as the men who negative the traditional be- 
liefs of the Christian Church ; but whether the candor is as genuine 
as it professes to be may fairly be doubted. To Dorner the finding 
of truth, the using of all means to that end, and the treating of all 
who claim to have discovered it with sincere respect, seemed a sacred 
duty. Too many of the so-called advanced and enlightened lack the 
modesty, the self-distrust, the kindly sympathy and considerateness 
toward what may be summarily termed “ orthodoxy,” that are the 
indispensable conditions of its due appreciation.* 

He remained Repetent till 1838, when he was appointed Professor 

* Perhaps some of the difference was due to the early influence which Baur and Kern 
had on Strauss at Blaubeuren. Strauss’s own account of the men at Tubingen in his 
controversial pamphlets must be taken cum grano salis. He could be very cynical, 
savage, and one-sided. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


581 


Extraordinarius at the University for Old Testament Theology and 
Dogmatics. In 1839 he received a call to a Professorship in Ordinary 
both from Kiel and Rostock. The Senate wished to retain him at 
Tubingen ; but as the Ministry at Stuttgart declined to fall in with 
their recommendation, Dorner left, never to return. Good perhaps 
for himself, certainly good for his influence as a man and theologian ; 
but a blow for Tubingen ; though a teacher was secured for the 
vacant post who became in his way as great a power as Dorner him- 
self and, in some respects, on similar lines — namely, J. T. Beck. 

In 1838 he married the lady who survived him, and whose genial 
hospitality hundreds of visitors from all countries gratefully remem- 
ber. They had only three children — all sons ; one died young, an- 
other, August, has been for some years Professor of Theology at the 
Theological Seminary, Wittenberg, and were he not handicapped 
by bearing so eminent a name, would find fuller recognition of his 
ability and learning than has hitherto officially been the case ; the 
• third, a most promising and interesting youth, was early laid aside 
by a hopeless affliction, to the great grief of his loving, expectant, 
yet wonderfully patient parents. 

Dorner accepted the invitation to Kiel, where his life would seem 
to have been, in both a scientific and a social respect, one of unusual 
richness. Friendships were there formed with men of like tastes, 
kindred pursuits and eminent ability, that lasted through life. 
Among these may be specially mentioned the jurist Herrmann, with 
whom he was afterward associated at Gottingen, and who even- 
tually rejoined him in Berlin as President of the Oberkirchenrath — 
probably at Dorner’s own suggestion ; Chalybaeus the Philosopher ; 
Waitz and Droysen the Historians ; and Claus Harms the celebrated 
popular High Lutheran preacher. In a letter written after his 
friend’s death by the first-named, he says, “ Dorner’s lectures and 
personal intercourse soon made him the most popular and influential 
professor in the theological faculty, and he was a constant source of 
stimulus to his colleagues, whom he so inspired by his own selfless- 
ness that they cheerfully seconded his efforts for the welfare of the 
University.” * During the residence at Kiel, Claus Harms cele- 
brated the twenty-five years’ jubilee of his pastorate ; and to show 
his appreciation of the spiritual benefit he had derived from his 
ministrations Dorner dedicated to him a dissertation entitled, ” The 
Principle of our Church according to the inner relation of its two 
sides” — in which are the germs of important chapters of the His- 


* For Herrmann’s letter see “ Zum Andenken von I. A. Dorner,” in Studien u. Kri- 
tiken, 1S85. 


582 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


tory of Protestant Theology and of the Pisteological Section of the 
Systematic Theology. He then also formed a close friendship with 
Martensen, which continued unbroken, notwithstanding differences 
of opinion as to political and other questions, till terminated by- 
death.* 

Attached as Dorner became to Kiel — an attachment which was 
never materially weakened and which inspired the manly words 
spoken by him on behalf of the Schleswig-Holsteiners at the Stutt- 
gart Church Congress in 1850, and the active help he rendered to 
the ministers and Professors who were then driven from their posts 
by the Danes — he yet felt it to be his duty to accept a call to Ko- 
nigsberg in 1843. What, however, specially influenced him was, first , 
the conviction that if his favorite idea of a great national German 
Evangelical Church was ever to be realized, it must be through the 
medium of Prussia ; secondly , that special steps were about to be 
taken to give the Prussian Church an organization, which would open 
the way for that participation of the laity in its government and activi-, 
ties, which he then, as ever afterward, deemed supremely necessary 
to its healthy life and development ; and, thirdly , that the Prussian 
Cultus-Minister Eichhorn told him of his plans and specially desired 
his co-operation in carrying them out. Dorner accordingly became 
a member of the Consistory in Konigsberg, and in 1846 represented 
the Theological Faculty of the University at the General Synod 
summoned for the purpose of grafting Presbyteries and a Synod on 
the existing Consistorial organization of the Church. 

Whether any special reason, beyond the natural desire to return 
from the bleak north to the sunnier south, determined the removal 
to Bonn in 1847, does not appear ; though it may be that he was 
influenced by the prospect of becoming practically acquainted with 
the working of ecclesiastical institutions similar to those for whose 
general introduction he wrote and labored. If so, opportunity was 
afforded him in the Rhine Province, where he became member both 
of the Presbytery and of the Departmental and Provincial Synods, 
as well as of the Consistory'. 

Though the plan of giving the Church a constitution had been set 
aside by the disturbances of 1848, Dorner did not cease to interest 
himself on its behalf, and accordingly addressed to Karl Immanuel 
Nitzsch in Berlin, and Julius Muller in Halle two Letters on Re- 
form of the Evangelical State Churches in collection with the 
Establishment of a National German Evangelical Church. He 


* It is to be hoped that the highly interesting correspondence between the two so 
gifted men, which is in the possession of Dorner’s son, may in due time be published. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


583 


there expounded the views to which he remained substantially true 
to the last — namely, that the State by giving the Jews equal political 
rights had in principle dissolved the alliance with the Christian re- 
ligion ; that the Church cannot allow itself to be governed by a State 
which is on principle indifferent to religion ; and that the changed 
circumstances therefore impose on the Church the duty of organiz- 
ing itself. In consequence of the events that had happened it 
seemed to him to be further necessary to aim at a union of the 
divided Churches into one great National Church. As to the Con- 
fessions of the various Churches, he was of opinion, that while each 
might retain its own historical creed, the united Church ought to 
frame for itself a new creed embracing merely what is fundamental ; 
and that though at Ordination ministers should be pledged solely to 
the Consensus, at Vocation they might be pledged to the Confession 
of the particular Church with which they connected themselves. As 
may be imagined, cherishing these plans, he gladly hailed the estab- 
lishment of the “ Evangelical Church Congress,” of whose constitu- 
tive assembly, held at Wittenberg in 1848, he was a member. 
Though it failed to realize the hopes which he and others set on it, 
he kept up his connection with it to the last and ever showed the 
liveliest interest in the “ Society for Inner Missions,” which grew 
out of the eloquent appeal then made by Wichern. Indeed, he be- 
came one of the most valued members of its Central Committee. 
During his residence in Bonn he also took a personal share in Chris- 
tian work among prisoners and in other directions. 

As is well known, the events of 1848 were followed in Germany, 
and especially in Prussia, by a period of reaction alike in Church and 
State. Confessionalism in the former gained the upper hand and a 
decided blow was struck at the moderate measure of Union between 
the Lutheran and Reformed Churches that already existed. Under 
the conviction that the hopes he had cherished with regard to Prus- 
sia were for the present futile, and influenced also by the desire to 
escape impending serious struggles, he accepted, in 1853, a previously 
declined invitation to the University of Gottingen. 

There, as in a refuge from the storms which had arisen, he spent 
nine vigorous, useful, and, on the whole, happy years. Conflict, 
however, was not spared him ; nor was it to be expected, consider- 
ing, on the one hand, the all-embracing charity which he was ever 
ready to display alike in his private and official relations ; and on 
the other hand, the bigoted Lutheranism of the Hanoverian leaders. 
A paper which he wrote on behalf of the Theological Faculty, under 
the title of The Present Church Crisis , specially the Relation of 
the Evangelical Theological Faculties to Science and the Church, 


584 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


became the occasion of a sharp controversy. But, indeed, peace- 
loving and gentle as he ordinarily was,* the position he took up his 
life through exposed him to constant attacks both from the right 
and the left ; for while, on the one hand, he refused, as in the case 
of the Free Light Rupp at Konigsberg, to sanction direct attacks 
on the Church confessions from the pulpit ; on the other hand, hold- 
ing it to be the duty of the Church to maintain its rapport with the 
intellectual movements of the age, and to see that its clergy share 
the best culture of their time, he therefore insisted that they should 
be treated with the broad considerateness which such a training in- 
evitably renders necessary. Besides, with the profound respect he 
ever cherished for the personal, he hated hard and fast lines, red- 
tapism and officialism, wished every case to be judged on its own 
merits, individual character and circumstances to be taken into full 
account ; and set his face dead against the evil custom of stamping 
men with party names. Accordingly, so far as his influence went, 
mere divergencies of tendency of thought were never allowed to 
stand in the way of appointments either in the Church or at the 
Universities. In some cases, he seemed to lay himself open to fair 
criticism from the positive side ; the course he pursued, however, 
was dictated not by indifference or ignorance, but by a profound 
conviction that truth in the long run must prevail, and that a free 
field and no favor are the conditions of speediest victory. 

The issue of the controversy referred to was that his colleague 
Ehrenfeuchter and he became members of the Consistory, which 
they did their utmost, though with small result, to inspire with the 
spirit of union. His relations to his colleagues in all the faculties 
were friendly, to some intimate ; and here as elsewhere his readi- 
ness and ability to serve, soon and naturally gained for him the 
position of leader. 

While at Gottingen he was the means, as was already remarked, 
of establishing a Stift or residential hall for students, resembling 
that of Tubingen, though on a freer basis ; and of enlarging an 
already existing body of Repetenten. He also anonymously presented 
the institution with a library, and out of regard to its interests, de- 
clined an invitation to the University of Halle. 

A new and brighter ecclesiastical era having dawned in Prussia 
under the leadership of von Bethman-Hollweg as Cultus-Minister, 
an old friend of Dorner’s, he decided in 1862 to yield to the pres- 
sure put upon him to go to Berlin, where he was to occupy Schleier- 


* He could, indeed, fiie up ; tmt rarely, if ever, did he do so save at bigotry, in- 
tolerance, injustice, and what seemed wilful misrepresentation. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


585 


macher’s chair at the University, and to become a member of 
the Supreme Ecclesiastical Council ( Oberkirchenrath ). The twenty 
years spent here were years of almost uninterrupted activity. He 
discharged the duties of his offices with all the zeal and faithfulness 
that might have been expected. To his labors as a writer I shall 
refer further on. The exact nature and extent of the part he took 
in the work of the Oberkirchenrath it is, of course, impossible at pres- 
ent properly to estimate. In all probability, however, the influence 
he wielded was greater than that of any other member, with the 
sole exception, perhaps, of his friend, President Herrmann. With so 
little of the bureaucrat in his composition, one may be quite sure 
that his great concern was to foster life and evoke activity, without 
being jealously anxious that it should take just the directions he 
might personally prefer. 

In one practical service rendered by him, all English-speaking 
Christians will feel a special interest. Sunday-schools, as is well 
known, were introduced into Berlin by an American, Mr. Wood- 
ruff. After they had gone on growing for some three years or there- 
abouts in face of the passive and active resistance of the clergy, it 
occurred to me* that if I could get Dorner actively interested in the 
movement, he might induce the Supreme Council in some way to 
give it their official sanction. Accordingly I secured his consent to 
go with me one Sunday afternoon to the school held in the Vereins- 
haus, Oranienstrasse, and we had long conversations on the subject. 
There were no prejudices against lay activity in him to be over- 
come ; on the contrary, he had always been eager to open up spheres 
in which laymen could labor ; but still he needed to see this particu- 
lar mode of work for himself. The result of the visit was a definite 
indorsement and recommendation of Sunday-schools by the Supreme 
Council, which I have little doubt Dorner himself drew up ; and to 
this the subsequent rapid growth of the institution has been, I be- 
lieve, mainly due.f 

But after all the true Dorner was the professor. He was a born 
teacher. Berlin has been the ruin of many a theologian ; their true 
academical and literary activity have alike been terminated by its 
officialisms and distractions. Dorner escaped that peril. # The very 
unselfishness which led him to be so ready to help and serve wher- 


* I was then living in Berlin, and pledged by Mr. W. to do what I could to promote 
the cause he had so much at heart. 

f He also did all in his power, especially through a Pastoral Letter (as one might 
term it), written by himself, but issued in the name of the Oberkirchenrath, to stem the 
tide of Sabbath desecration in Prussia. Indeed, he was first and foremost in every good 
word and work. 

38 


586 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


ever and whenever he could was his safeguard. He was not one of 
those who read and re-read old lectures till their matter is as stale as 
the paper on which they are written is yellow and worn. A many- 
sided and eager student himself, he delighted to communicate his 
best and newest. 

But by way of giving an idea of what he was as a professor alike 
in the lecture-room and in private, I cannot do better than quote 
from the reminiscences of one of his German pupils — reminiscences 
whose perfect accuracy hundreds, both Germans and foreigners, 
svould, I doubt not, cheerfully confirm.* He writes : 

“ Dorner’s name had drawn me to Berlin. I hoped that the great speculative the- 
ologian would help me over the perplexities into which I had fallen while endeavoring, 
earnestly enough, but apart from faith, to arrive at a glad conviction with regard to 
Evangelical truth. In an excited mood I went to his house, taking with me a letter of 
introduction from an old friend. Conducted into a large room, whose walls were cov- 
ered with books, I found myself in the presence of the man from whom I was expect- 
ing so much. But how different had I represented him to myself : — his was no tall, 
stately figure, no high and vaulted forehead. Simply and friendlily he gave me his 
hand, saying, Griiss Gotl ! and while he read the letter a gentle smile lit up his face. 
Then bending his head, in the way peculiar to him, a little to the left, he looked at me 
with his eyes so clear and kindly, dispelled my embarrassment by sympathetic ques- 
tions, and soon had me telling him all about myself — my difficulties, my efforts, my 
plans, my hopes — as though he were an old friend, and as though his time were of no 
consequence. He dismissed me overjoyed, full of the best resolves, and with ' Spinoza’s 
doctrine of God and Man' as a theme for an essay. 

“ In the summer of 1863, when he was lecturing on Ethics — a course which * drew 
deep furrows through our souls ’ — a great crowd of students from all parts of Germany, 
from America, England, Fiance, Switzerland, filled his auditorium. It was a source of 
great satisfaction to us theologues, that our revered teacher should need Number x, 
then the largest hall in the University ; and when he ascended the chair for the first 
time we received him with the usual marks of applause. Never shall I forget, how- 
ever, the peculiar movement of the head with which he acknowledged the ovation — a 
blending of joyous surprise and modest refusal. Then he began with the sonorous 
tones which rose and fell with a certain regularity like the waves of the ocean when 
unruffled by the wind. He sat ; his manuscript lay before him. But with such warmth 
of conviction did he read that it had all the effect of extemporaneous production. 
And when he tarried in the higher heights, as, for example, when describing Schleier- 
macher as ‘ the Copernicus of Ethics,' in virtue of his discovery of individuality as a 
fundamental ethical principle ; or when tracing moral principles to their roots in the 
love of God ; or when depicting the glory of a character begotten of love to God and 
manifesting itself in unselfish love to man — then our youthful souls were filled with 
devotion and holy resolve. Involuntarily our pens halted while we surrendered our- 
selves to the flow of thought, and we felt that the occupant of the professor’s chair was 
a man who ungrudgingly communicated to us all that was most precious in his investi- 
gations, reading, and thought.” 

In the estimation of many, however, he was seen at his best in 


* Professor Heinrici, of Marburg, in the Deutsch-Evangeliscke Blatter for Sep- 
tember, 1884. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


587 


the Seminar or Socictdt : and there can be no doubt that there he 
developed his highest qualities as a teacher of youth. The follow- 
ing further extract from Professor Heinrici’s Reminiscences will best 
show the man and his manner : 

“ It was esteemed a great honor to be a member of Dorner’s Societal. No one was 
admitted who would not pledge himself to regular attendance, and to show his scien- 
tific zeal by bringing an essay once in the course of the Semester. Notwithstanding 
these restrictions, there were always more candidates than vacancies, and his large 
study was almost overcrowded. The master sat at a small table in the middle ; round 
about him the students in small groups — friends with friends. A cup of tea lent a social 
color to the meetings. The mode of treatment varied with the subject ; but his aim 
always was to secure as general a discussion as possible. Sometimes the subject was 
Schleiermacher’s Glaubens/ehre or Christliche Sille, and then each one had to come 
with the section assigned to him thoroughly digested and mastered. The chief points 
were then elicited and tested, and the arguments weighed in the form of question and 
answer. At another time Augustine’s City of God would betaken up. In this case, 
select chapters were read together, and the grandiose outline of a Christian system of 
the world which the great Church Father had sketched on the basis of a criticism and 
utilization of the ancient culture was made clear. On other occasions comparative 
essays on the Augsburg Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism were read, and in 
connection therewith the ecumenical character of the Protestant faith pointed out. 
Dorner, also, after first examining the essays presented gave his judgment on them, and 
indicated the direction which further inquiry should take. For any sound elements in 
them he gave the writers full credit ; and even when the essays were very scanty and 
second-rate, he had not the heart to say what he felt, though we divined his opinion 
from what he failed to say. 

“ In the choice of themes for these essays, we were left pretty much to ourselves. 
Each one was expected to let his particular interests and inclinations have free play. 
At the first sitting, it was Dorner’s custom to propose a number of subjects, by prefer- 
ence from the domains of New Testament and Systematic Theology, as also from that 
of philosophy — the study of which he always pressed upon us. Among the problems 
which were discussed, I recall the following : The Essence of Religion ; the Doctrine 
of God ; Christian Freedom ; the Principles of Protestantism ; the Idea of the Church ; 
Social Questions ; the Doctrine of the Resurrection ; the Investigations into the Life of 
Jesus Suggested by the Works of Renan and Keim. Their purpose was rather to in- 
form the writers as to the state of the question, than to promote detailed and special 
inquiries. We were, however, always encouraged to propose a subject of our own ; 
and the least evidence of independent scientific effort was greeted with satisfaction and 
fostered. 

“ A more patient moderator and admirable fructifier of discussions could scarcely be 
imagined. How frequently did men of glib tongues betray lack of insight into the con- 
siderations which were advanced by him, and keep repeating the same thing in other 
forms ; yet never did he lose the thread of argument, and always did he do his utmost 
to untie the knot, till sometimes the rest of us impatiently stopped the pertinacious dis- 
puter. Delicate cases were settled in the gentlest manner — such, for example, as the 
demand once put forward by one of our number that, before treating of the subject 
under consideration, the existence of God, which he had reason to doubt, should be 
proved.” * 


* If space permitted, I should like to quote Professor Heinrici’s most warm and in 
teresting paper almost in extenso. 


588 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


Though never myself one of Dorner’s students, I gladly sat as a 
learner at his feet ; and am certain from my own experience of his 
readiness to communicate, of his delight in fostering independent 
thought and studies, of his anxiety to learn even from the humblest, 
and of his patience with minds of less grasp and knowledge than his 
own, that the description I have quoted must be true to the letter. 

My first introduction was characteristic. Having sent in my card 
I was requested to enter the study. There I found Dorner in the 
hands of the barber who came regularly to shave him. How undig- 
nified ! exclaims some one. What a slight ! says another. Neither, 
felt I then and say I now. True courtesy, rather, not to keep me 
waiting ; true dignity, rather, to let sweet simplicity have its way ; 
nay, true flattery to credit me with the capability of rising above 
small externals. And I must say that the profound respect I had 
had for the theologian* was at that moment transfigured into a per- 
sonal regard which all my subsequent intercourse only intensified. 
It was my pride and joy and profit to see him pretty frequently dur- 
ing my six years’ residence in Berlin, and I shall perhaps never know 
the greatness of the debt I owe him for spiritual and intellectual 
stimulus and aid. He was always accessible ; however busy he 
might be I was never made to feel that I was an intruder. None of 
that stiffness, stony staring, and freezing silence that one is apt to 
encounter in small great men, especially among my own country- 
men. If he could help in any way he showed that he regarded it as 
a kindness done to himself, a privilege conferred on himself. And 
that modesty, unassumingness — well, it was incomparable. When 
he was occasionally my guest this characteristic was especially mani- 
fest ; and it almost pained me and mine to be prevented by it from 
showing outwardly the respect and regard which we inwardly felt. 
Though after my removal to England my opportunities of intercourse 
with him, whether personal or by letter, were naturally restricted, his 
death created a blank in my life which will never be filled up. 

“ He was a man, take him for all in all 
I shall not look upon his like again. ” f 

His affection for his relatives and native place remained undimin- 
ished to the last, and none of his nephews and nieces, still less their 
parents, were ever made to feel that his visits were the visits of the 
man of world-wide reputation. He was as gentle and considerate 
with the least of them as with the greatest of his peers. During one 


* As the translator of nearly the whole of his Christology I had good reason for it. 
f Dorner’s relation to the Evangelical Alliance, his visit as a Delegate to New York, 
and various other matters, space compels me to pass over. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


589 


of his last visits to Neuhausen, he conducted the afternoon service 
— a sort of catechization of the young — and the spectacle of the cele- 
brated theologian moving to and fro among the stolid village chil- 
dren, asking them simple questions and endeavoring to make Chris- 
tian truth plain to their untrained minds, must have been one of 
unusual impressiveness and loveliness, though perfectly characteristic 
of the man. 

The end came somewhat unexpectedly. In 1 88 1 ill-health com- 
pelled him to ask to be relieved from all official responsibilities — 
which he did with a sad heart.* But as long as he could work he 
worked ; and while sorely suffering in body put the finishing strokes 
to his Glaubenslehre, edited a volume of essays and proceeded with 
the preparation of his Ethics for publication. After spending a few 
weeks with his son in Wittenberg, he left to travel about for his 
health and came to the neighborhood of Wiesbaden. There he re- 
solved to see for himself the noble Niederwald national monument. 
It was the last thing he did, and the effort would seem to have been 
too great, for on the way he broke a blood-vessel. The relatives who 
accompanied him hastened with him to Wiesbaden, but the end had 
come. On the 8th of July he departed in peace to be with the 
Christ who had been the centre of his practical and scientific life. 
At his own express wish he was buried without pomp and ceremony 
in the village graveyard, where lay the bodies of his beloved parents. 

“ High nature amorous of the good 
But touched with no ascetic gloom : — 

“ A manhood fused with female grace, 

In such a sort the child would twine 
A trustful hand unasked in thine. 

And find his comfort in thy face. 

“ I would the great world grew like thee, 

Who grewest not alone in power 
And knowledge, but by year and hour 
In reverence and in charity.” 

— Tennyson, In Aftmoriam. ' I 

Dorner’s chief works are the History of the Doctrine of the 
Person of Christ , The History of Protestant Theology , Systematic 
Theology, and Christian Ethics ; but he also wrote a great num- 
ber of dissertations, more or less elaborate, on historical, theo- 
logical, and philosophical questions, which were issued either in- 
dependently or in various journals, especially in the Jahrbticher 


* On his retirement both the Emperor of Germany and the King of Wiirtemberg con- 
ferred on him distinguished marks of their high appreciation of his worth and services. 


590 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


fiir deutsche Thcologie , of which he was one of the founders and 
editors. One of the last things he did was to edit a volume of these 
dissertations — among them the very' valuable one on the “ Immuta- 
bility of God.” Though each of these minor writings contains a 
good deal that is at once characteristic and valuable, the careful 
student of the larger treatises will find in them little that is really 
new.* * 

As the Glaubenslehre or Systematic Theology, besides being the 
last work prepared by the author himself for the press, is that in 
which the ripest fruit of his lifelong reading and thought has been 
deposited, I shall devote the rest of my limited space to an account 
of some of its most characteristic features.! This work, with the 
posthumous treatise on Christian ethics, constitutes together what 
their writer terms — following earlier examples — “ thetic theology,” 
thcologia thetica, for which might be substituted “ speculative 
theology,” in the sense which Dorner gives to the word “ specula- 
tive.”! With regard to thetic theology in general he says, it is 
that branch of theology which undertakes to establish in scientific 
form the truth of the Christianity which is at first received by faith. 
The relation between the two great sections Glaubenslehre and Sit - 
tenlehre, which, in opposition to Nitzsch and others, he maintains 
demand separate treatment, is defined as consisting, not in their 
method but in their matter, the former dealing with God and His 
deeds, the latter with the sphere of human morality, which owes its 
existence to acts of human self-determination. § 

* A pretty complete list of all Dorner' s productions, or, at all events, references to 
where they are to be found, is given by his son in a biographical article in the new 
edition of Herzog’s RealencyclopaJie. 

+ I need scarcely say that this account cannot be other than of the most fragmentary 
character. Properly to review a work of upward of seventeen hundred closely-printed 
pages in the space to which I am restricted is impossible ; well-nigh as impossible to 
estimate how Dorner has advanced the solution of the various problems with which 
systematic theology is concerned, or criticise all that in my humble view is open to 
criticism. I have thought it better, therefore, to limit myself to two or three of the 
features which are most marked by novelty or of chief importance — as to which it is, of 
course, very possible that others may form a different opinion. 

* See Vol. I., pp. 6 ff. He rightly criticises the restriction of the term “ systematic 
theology” to the one branch of theological science ; seeing that all the branches, how- 
ever designated, claim systematic character. It would be interesting, were this the place, 
to pass in review the various names given to this theological discipline, beginning with 
Melanchthon’s Loci communes rerum theologicarum sen hypotyposes theologies, Wilte- 
bergae, 1521. The first to use the word system was Calov, in his Systema locorum 
thcologicorum, etc., 1655-77. Hollaz introduced the term thetic in his Examen theologi- 
cum acroamaticum universam theologiam thctico-polemicam complectens, 1707 but in a 
different sense from Dorner’s. See Bretschneider's Systemat. Entwicielung, etc., 
p. 123 ff. 

§ Vol. I., p. 12. 


ISAAC AUGUST CORNER. 


591 


It is impossible to do justice to Dorner’s system without a careful 
consideration of his general theory of knowledge. Indeed, this may 
be said to be mostly the fact ; it is, however, specially true in his 
case, for as might have been expected from the philosophical train- 
ing and development through which he passed he not only gave the 
subject independent and thorough attention, but has also, as it were, 
thrust it under the notice of students of his work by the important 
and remarkable introductory section entitled “ Pisteology. ” In- 
deed, the influence of his theory permeates the entire treatment of 
theology and ethics. 

It is not quite easy, indeed I must confess to have found it im- 
practicable, to reduce all his allusions and uses of terms to consis- 
tency. This is especially the case with the two, Verstand and Ver- 
nunft (Understanding and Reason), as to which there seems to be 
a certain vacillation between the points of view of Kant, Jacobi, and, 
perhaps, Hegel. Nor have I been able quite clearly to make out 
how far he holds, or goes in holding, that the intellect generally, or 
the reason specially, is an independent source of ideas ; that is, 
whether or no, as the microcosm, it enfolds within itself in latent 
form, waiting to be evoked by the action of the fitting environments, 
all the ideas of the macrocosm.* Leaving, however, this matter on 
one side, I will endeavor to set forth the characteristic features of his 
theory, which in the main are clear enough. 

As the definition quoted above declares, thetic theology aims at 
certitude — certitude of the highest kind possible to man — scientific 
certitude with regard to Christianity — i. e., God, Christ, and what God 
has done and is doing for the redemption of the world. Claiming 
the character of a science, it must clearly be ready to submit to the 
norms and laws which condition scientific certitude in other domains. 
The general mode of arriving at certitude is everywhere the same, 
though the subject-matter may differ. -f- Now, there are two stages 
of certitude, due respectively to experience and reasoning , which may 
be termed immediate and reflective or discursive. The latter, how- 
ever, be it remembered, is conditional on our going back to axioms, 
self-evident truths ; in other words, it cannot be arrived at unless 


* As was taught by Cusanus, Leibnitz, and others. See Glanbenslehre, Vol. I., 
4 $, 53 . 55 . 1 5 J • cf. Sittenlehre, p. 4, 115 ff. His words about ideas slumbering 
in the reason suggest Schleiermacher’s position that “ Conceptions lie timelessly in our 
reason just as the whole of a plant lies spacelessly in the seed. Not that they are pres- 
ent in a developed conscious form, but that reason is a living energy capable of pro- 
ducing all true conceptions.” See Sigwart on Schleiermacher in Jahrbiicher fiir 
deutscke Tkeologie, II., 279, cf. 294 ff. Cf. also Weissenborn’s Schleiermacher. 
f Glaubenslehre, I., 45. 


592 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


experience be linked on to eternal truths.* * * § All experience presup- 
poses real objects ; these objects may be material or spiritual. The 
external world, as such, affects our bodies, because our bodies are akin 
thereto ; its laws and the ideas it embodies are knowable, because 
we have a corresponding spiritual nature ; the invisible, divine world 
becomes known to us through a side of our nature which is turned 
toward, homogeneous with, it. "f* The organs by which we apprehend 
the sensuous world are our senses ; the eye or medium or organ:}: 
for the spiritual is faith. Faith is not the witness for God, as is too 
commonly said, but the medium through which God witnesses to 
Himself. Our faith apprehends the divine self-attestation. In faith, 
therefore, we have to do, not with self-knowledge, but with the 
knowledge of God.§ At this point Dorner touches Jacobi, who 
used “ Glaube” (faith) to denote the side or capability of our nature 
by which we apprehend the divine, though he afterward adopted 
“ Vernunft” and “ Gefiihl ” for the same purpose ; in which respect 
Dorner seems sometimes to follow his example.! Contact of the 
homogeneous with the corresponding side of our nature is the con- 
dition of experience, and experience is attended by immediate certi- 
tude. But certitude even of this kind does not pass away with the 
cessation of contact, for the intellect makes for itself a thought- 
image or reflex of the object, which may be treasured up in the 
memory and be recalled for examination, and which shares in the 
original immediate certitude. T Elsewhere he speaks of the object 
“ eliciting or drawing out the image of itself by contact” or of its 
“ radiating impressions into us,” which are known as “ signs con- 
taining the truth of the object as the product of its power.”** He 
even goes so far as to represent the living truth as dwelling in us, 
and the object of faith as working its will in us. ft So much for im- 
mediate or experimental certitude. 

The contents of the intellect, thus evoked or introduced through 
contact with sense or through faith, it is the function of the under - 
standing to analyze and combine as conceptions and judgments, ac- 
cording to its own innate laws ; the result of which activity, how- 
ever, is empty schemata or forms beyond which it is unable to 
advance. But we have also reason , of whose function the following 


* Glatibenslehre, I., 58. f Ibid., 60. 

| “ "Opyavov hr/TsTiKov fur den Erloser,” as he terms it in his paper, Das Princip 

unserer Kirche, etc., 1841. Compare an interesting article on the “ Ontological 
Argument,” by Professor Shedd, in The Presbyterian Review, No. XVIII., especially 
p. 224. 

§ Glatibenslehre, I., 162. | See Ethik, 122 f. 

** Ibid., 60. ft Ibid. , 150 f., 152. 


Tf Glatibenslehre, I., 56. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


593 


account is given : “ While sense is limited to particulars, and the 
understanding to general concepts more or less abstract and empty, 
reason, with its capacity of effecting combinations, beholds or intuites 
the universal and the particular in one, the individual in living con- 
nection with the whole by which it is conditioned and in which it 
is rooted — sees in the individual the realization of the universal.* * * § 
This may be termed “ intellectual intuition f with it a beginning 
is made of true rational knowledge, without it advance beyond 
sensuous empiricism or empty concepts is impossible. Starting at 
this point, thought moves downward under the guidance of its in- 
born laws to conclusions which, if they are validly drawn from the 
premises, advance the domain of knowledge and of certitude far be- 
yond that covered by contact.:}: Unlike Rothe, however, who, 

while taking much the same view of the matter, insists that the 
theologian, having got his starting-point, God, must speculate on 
without regard to or squinting at experience, as long as he is conduct- 
ing the speculative process, § Dorner insists most strongly on the 
necessity of maintaining a constant living contact with the objects 
of spiritual intuition, because without it our conclusions are very 
apt to be false — none the less so because logically reached. Fulfil- 
ling this condition and duly caring for accuracy, alike in reasoning 
and observation of details, our thinking will be a reflection and 
after-formation of the real thoughts of God — in a word, real truth. || 
From this very imperfect sketch it will be seen that Dorner com- 
bines the a posteriori and a priori methods of reaching certitude about 
what is given in experience ; he does not believe in what is often 
confounded herewith — namely, reaching the concrete from the ab- 
stract. As a matter of fact, however, there is no true scientific cer- 
titude anywhere that is not arrived at in the same way.^f Applying 
these general principles to the present subject, Dorner says, Through 
faith in Christ, God in Christ is veritably appropriated ; He enters 
into the man— in this case, specially into the intellect ; owing to our 
natural inherence in God,** an abiding closeness of contact between 
our reason or spiritual sensitivity and Him is possible, such as no 
experimentation or observation of the sensuous world can secure ; 
experience of and certitude regarding Him are more complete than 


* Cf. Hegel’s words — “ Der Verstand bestimmt und halt die Bestimmungen fest ; die 

Vernunft ist positiv weil sie das Allgemeine erzeugt und das Besondere darin begreift.” 
Logik. Vorrede zur ersten Ausgabe, p. 7. 

-f- Cf. Glaubenslehre, I., 152. f Ibid., 56 f. 

§ Rothe, Theol. Ethik, Vol. I., p. 19. | Glaubenslehre, I., 152. 

1 | Cf. George, Die Logik als Wissenschaftslehre, p. 632. 

** “ In Him we live, and move, and have our being.” 


594 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


any other experience or certitude ; scientific certainty depends alike 
as to compass and intensity on the place occupied in the hierarchy 
of being by the principle at which the process of deductive inference 
starts ; God, as the supreme cause of all being, may therefore be- 
come the source of a scientific certitude regarding the world, far 
transcending that which can be secured in any other way ; what is 
known in and through Him is really and truly known. To put the 
case in a nutshell : — The speculative method is the most suited to 
thetic theology ; for its task is to rise from the momenta given in 
experience of God in Christ to their principle in God, and starting 
there, to deduce them step by step, with rational necessity, thus 
establishing their scientific truth, and producing a connected, organ- 
ized system of knowledge.”* 

One other point still needs to be noticed, specially because of its 
bearing on the question of what is called the “ Christian conscious- 
ness.” Recognizing with other thinkers that intellect begins its 
existence as a potentiality, and is always undergoing modification by 
what it assimilates ; and with every sound biblical thinker confess- 
ing that the intellect of man is no “ dry light,” no unharmed and 
perfect eye or ear, but shares in the corruption and perversion of the 
whole man, he nevertheless holds that it is created for divine truth 
and divine truth intended for it ; that when God in Christ enters 
into the intellect, a transforming, fructifying, enlightening process 
sets in, out of which is begotten a new self-consciousness ;f that as 
the source of action is renovated and invigorated in such wise, that 
a life like that of Christ is more and more spontaneously lived, so 
the thinking power is renovated and invigorated in stick wise as to 
produce from within thoughts after the mind of God ; nay more, 
that the intellect may more and more come to see things in God and 
in His light. If this be so, the intellect of the regenerate man 
should stand in a very different position from that of the intellect of 
the unregenerate man. How far this makes him an independent 
authority with regard to concrete matters, such as statements or 
facts of the Scriptures, is another question, on which the next sub- 
ject to which I shall call attention may possibly throw some light. 
Meanwhile, I must again remind the reader that Dorner lends no 
countenance to a priori efforts to construct the actual past, present, 
or to come ; and that his speculation is really that deduction of what 
is given in and through experience, from the supreme principle given 


* Compare an article by his son, Professor A. Dorner, in the Stud. u. Kritiken, 
1885, p. 425 ; and one in Herzog's Encyclopddie. Ed. II., p. 758. 
t Glaubenslehre, I., 140, 142, 148. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


595 


in experience, which every scientific reasoner at the present day, so 
far as he deserves the name, is constantly engaged in making. 

The point touched last naturally suggests the consideration of the 
relation between faith and certitude on the one side, and the Church 
and Scripture on the other. An important part of the section on 
Pisteology is devoted to this subject. The view taken by Dorner, 
which has been and is shared, in substance, by some of the most 
eminent believing German theologians of the present century, is 
not, in his own case, of recent date. He first expounded it in the 
dissertation entitled Das Princip unserer Kirche nach dem inneren 
Verhdltniss seiner zzvei Seiten , published at Kiel in 1841,* and set 
it forth in elaborate form in his History of Protestant Theology ; 
so that it may be said to have been before the theological world for 
nearly half a century. 

He first passes in critical review the various forms and stages of 
faith for the purpose of ascertaining which of them is fit to be the 
source of immediate certitude and the starting-point for mediate or 
scientific certitude. According to Romanism, indeed High Church- 
ism generally, the Church is the true source of certitude. The motto 
of Protestantism again has been more or less completely the cele- 
brated saying of Chillingworth, “ The Bible and the Bible alone is 
the religion of Protestantism." Passing over the trenchant criticism 
of the Romish position, we will consider his treatment of the rela- 
tion of faith, certitude and the Bible. With regard to the Bible as 
with regard to any domain of phenomena, a thinker may, of course, 
arrive at a certitude of its own kind — historical, moral, religious. 
But that is not the question : No, what we here want to know is 
whether the Bible can give rise first to the immediate and then to 
the scientific certitude, which the soul of man needs and demands, 
and of which an enlightened Christian makes his boast ? — certitude, 
namely, with regard to God, and all that is for us therein included. 

To the first part of this question it was and still is the custom to 
reply, Yes, the Scriptures have the power of self-illumination ; they 
are like light, and that not merely because they interpret themselves 
to the human mind, but because they certify themselves as a divine 
revelation.f This was the view of Gerhard, who uses regarding 
them the term avTocpcotf But those who held by this reply were 


* See review of it in Stud. u. Krit., 1843, pp. 439 ff. 

•(• Coleridge's position as set forth in the Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit is 
typical. See pp. 15, 16, 52, 70, 78 in Cassell’s Edition. “ Whatever finds me bears 
witness for itself that it has proceeded from a Holy Spirit,” etc. As shown in the text, 
it is not so modern as some imagine. 

J Glaubenslehre, I., 80. 


596 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


gradually driven either to the position of the enthusiasts who exalted 
“ the inner light,’' and thence to that of the Rationalists who made 
natural, i.e., empirical human reason the supreme arbiter of what 
could be true and real ; or to the position of those who maintained 
the absolute inspiration of the letter of Scripture. One or the other 
alternative was then and still is a logical necessity. 

In dealing with the second part of the question it became and is 
still apt to be the rule to endeavor to prove the divinity of Chris- 
tianity by advancing proofs — proofs held to be appreciable by and 
stringent for natural reason — that the Bible is of divine origin and 
authority. These proofs were, as they still are, rational or philo- 
sophical, and historical. Passing over Dorner’s argument from his- 
tory and the necessity of the case, against making the rise of Chris- 
tian faith and certitude dependent on the proof that the Bible is of 
divine origin,* I will go on to set forth very briefly his own view. 
He goes back to the Apostle Paul, whose procedure is instructive and 
regulative for all time. “ The heathen to whom he went did not 
and could not bring with them a recognition, much less a certain 
conviction of the inspiration and truth of the evangelical narratives. 
Nor was faith in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, or in histori- 
cal narratives having no relation to redemption, the first thing he de- 
manded. What he did was to preach repentance, and to offer to the 
penitent forgiveness of sin for the sake of Christ. Those who be- 
lieved, experienced the power of Christianity and became certain alike 
of the story of Christ and of the credibility and authority of the 
apostle. ” f 

Now what the apostle was to his contemporaries, that the Scrip- 
tures, specially those of the New Testament, have been to succeeding 
generations — namely, the vehicle or medium or channel through which 
they have been brought to God. The apostles would have deprecated 
with all possible earnestness and energy being regarded in a different 
light. What did Paul write to the Corinthians? “My word and 
my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in 
demonstration of spirit and power, that your faith might be not in 
wisdom of men but in power of God.’’ % God in Christ testified to 
Himself through them, and even so God in Christ draws nigh to us 
through the Scriptures. They are not themselves the ground and 
source of our certitude about Him, but He Himself in and through 
them as the witness, channel, and vehicle. Whosoever has been 
brought face to face with God through the Scripture, naturally and 
justly, however, ascribes to them the authority of divine messengers. 


* Glaubettslehrt, I., 76-95. 


f Ibid . , 134. 


\ i Cor. ii., 4, 5. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


597 


But, says Dorner, this character of the Scriptures is inferred from 
the truth they bring, not the truth of what they bring from this char- 
acter. And, accordingly, the doctrine of their inspiration is discussed 
by him, not as usual in the prolegomena, but as an integral part of 
the system.* There he maintains that the men who came into di- 
rect contact with the incarnate Word and first believed, necessarily 
stand in a unique relation to Him ; that, as His first witnesses and 
ambassadors, they are organs of universal significance ; that either 
they must needs have received Him and His Word in all purity into 
themselves or He would have had to appear again and again in the 
course of the ages ; that, in a word, while the God-Man is the cor- 
ner-stone, they are also part oi the foundation. f Both by natural 
endowment and by the influence of the Holy Spirit they were 
specially qualified for the position assigned to them in the building 
up, or in the development of the Church ; and, as he adds, what- 
ever held good of them as speakers, holds still more true of them as 
writers. The Holy Ghost not only warded off error, but also gave 
them, each in his measure, knowledge of divine things, and filled 
them with concern that mankind generally should share the pre- 
cious treasure. Through their new pneumatic man He worked in 
them to record even what they knew by natural means, in such a 
manner that the divine substance should suffer no prejudice.:}; 

It is natural and proper, therefore, for the Church — that is, the body 
of believers — to affirm the divine inspiration and authority of the 
Scriptures ; if it cannot do so it must have neglected the duty of 
attaining to mediate or rational certitude regarding its own spiritual 
experience ; but it is equally unnatural and improper to insist on the 
recognition thereof as a condition of experiencing the saving grace 
of Christ. For Christ is His own witness, and He has no need of 
infallible witnesses to testify to Himself, even were such witnesses 
in the nature of the case possible. As in general, so here, the only 
infallible witness to any real object is the object itself. God alone can 
give absolute certitude regarding Himself. Even if all the phe- 
nomena of nature and history testified to God without a single 
discordant word or sound the inference to Him thus warranted 
would not give full certainty — not the certainty man needs, un- 
questionably not the certainty that is at once enkindled by direct 
contact. 

In Dorner’s judgment this view of faith and its function as re- 
lated to the Scriptures is the genuine doctrine of the Reformers and 
of Protestantism. He allows, indeed, that the former did not see 


* Glaubenslehre, I., 163 ; cf. p. 664 ff. 


f Ibid., 665. 


t Ibid. 


598 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


it just as he puts it — that Luther, in particular, was in this as in 
most other things far from careful about the formal or even some- 
times substantial consistency of his utterances ; but maintains that 
their doctrine of the testimonium spiritus sancti, which had not at 
first the purely practical bearing which in later times was given to 
it, and the stress constantly laid bj r the Protestant theologians of 
Germany, France, and Britain on the distinction between the fides 
divina and the fides historica, the latter being most emphatically 
subordinated to and treated as of a different nature from the former, 
alike warrant the assertion that this is its true kernel, however un- 
like its husk may seem. 

I can only make very brief reference to Dorner’s method of deal- 
ing with two further very important questions connected with this 
part of theology. The first is, If the act of faith which assimilates 
Christ is not to be arbitrary — a sort of leap in the dark — must not a 
sort of prevenient assurance be possible ? And whence is this as- 
surance to come if not from the very inspiration which has been set 
aside as an impossible or needless condition of faith?* He dis- 
tinguishes here between the faith that lays hold and that which 
possesses and experiences. For the exercise of the former sufficient 
ground is furnished by such facts as, that the whole Church is agreed 
in regarding Christ as its founder ; that, according to the documents 
from which our knowledge of Christianity is derived, Christ is ob- 
viously its centre, f that He is confessedly the source of redemption 
and perfection, that a changed world dates from His appearance, 
that His image is depicted with sufficient distinctness and trust- 
worthiness in the New Testament, and that that image has the 
power of quickening all that is most ideal in man’s nature and evok- 
ing his devotion and trust . % In a word, any man with a conscious- 
ness of ignorance, weakness and sin, yearning for righteousness and 
truth, and humbly ready to be saved, will be so found by Christ as 
presented in the New Testament, that he will feel it to be more 
than a duty, yea, a privilege, to surrender himself, and in surrender- 
ing himself he will find himself and God. 

The other question affects the relation of the Bible to the living, 
progressive thought of the Church — that is, of such as have accepted, 
are assimilating, and are being intellectually fructified, quickened, and 
transformed by God in Christ. Here I can scarcely do better than 
give a very brief abstract of Dorner’s own statement : “ The author- 
ity of the first Christian witnesses and of those whom they directly 
or indirectly commissioned, acquires normative character for the 


* Glaubenslehre , I., 139. 


t Ibid., X33 f. 


t Ibid., 721. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


599 


Church as a whole and for its individual members in all time, as soon 
as they are taken, not merely as individuals, but as members of the 
canon. Even if one of them needed correcting and supplementing — 
as James is frequently held to do relatively to Paul — it must come, not 
from the outside, but from within their own body, and it will certainly 
be found there. The canon is thus its ozvn interpreter and judge * 
it needs no foreign standard. Even so the Holy Spirit provides for 
Himself in believers, judgment, criticism, which is not subjective, 
but alike free and faithful. When faith criticises and interprets, it 
does not look at the object from without, either as a stranger or in 
a traditional, slavish manner, but from within. At the same time 
it must not be forgotten that although this collective canonical 
testimony must be amply sufficient to supply the place of the his- 
torical objectivity of the God-Man for later generations, yet none of 
His disciples must be put on a level with the God-Man Himself ; for 
He alone had the Spirit without measure. A different view of the 
case would conflict alike with the original documents and with the 
conception which their authors must have entertained of them- 
selves ; nay, more, a false position would then be assigned to Holy 
Scripture relatively to faith. In other words, it would be consti- 
tuted the mediator ;f the God-Man and His Spirit as the source of 
certitude would be thrust into the background. If, then, defects 
should be discovered in writings that are worthy to belong to the 
canon, which do not affect its religious substance, and in such a 
writing cannot be essential, they should not indeed be irreverently- 
sought out and magnified, but yet candidly recognized. This is 
the right course, partly because no detriment can thus ensue to the 
trustworthiness of the tradition as a whole ; for otherwise God, in 
wise regard for the great ends to be served, would have prevented 
it ; and, on the other hand, because defects which affect merely the 
letter and not the religious substance, and of which truth prevents 
the denial, supply a motive and stimulus not to rest in anything 
external and not to worship the letter. We must be on our guard 
against raising a new wall of separation between believers and the 
God-Man, as we unquestionably do if we ascribe to an impersonal 
object or a mere man an authority, still more a power of self-eviden- 
cing as true, which belongs alone to Him and His Spirit. True faith 
sees in the letter of the documents of revelation the objective and 
imperishable embodiment of a religious content, which has the power 
of commending itself as true through the Spirit of God, who can so 


* Italics Dorner’s own. 

t As in the case of the so-called Biblical Supernaturalism. 


600 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


quicken the letter that it shall present the living God-Man to the 
eyes of faith. ”* 

The importance to Protestantism of the problems treated in this sec- 
tion of Dorner’s work must be my excuse for the space I have de- 
voted to his views. Whether his treatment of them be adequate or 
tenable, it is not my present business to determine. 

It is time, however, to leave the porch and describe the edifice 
itself, which, by the way, reminds one rather of a Gothic cathedral, 
with its endless ins and outs, than of one of classic design. First, 
a few words on the ground-plan. It is divided into two great parts, 
termed respectively Fundamentals or Apologetic and Special 
theology. Formally considered this division is not new, but the dis- 
tribution of the subject-matter is certainly novel. So far as I am 
aware no other theologian has included among so-called funda- 
mentals or prolegomena, the doctrines of God, of the Trinity, of the 
divine attributes, of creation and of the incarnation, as well as of 
religion, revelation, inspiration, the Scriptures, miracles, and the 
history of non-Christian religions. The second part embraces the 
doctrines of sin, of the person of Christ, of His offices and work, of 
His exaltation, of the Church in its rise through faith and regenera- 
tion, of its subsistence and continuation, of the prophetic, priestly 
and kingly activities of Christ and of the last things.:}: What, now, 

is the rationale of this division ? In point of fact, the system is in 
principle complete with the first part, and the second is but a kind 
of carrying out, development, unfolding, application of the first ; 
the one presents as a concrete actuality with special reference to 
sin what the other presents in abstract, theoretical, germ form.§ A 
good many things may seem on the surface to be opposed to this 
assertion ; specially, for example, the sections in the second part on 
the Incarnation and Eschatology, but even they admit of ex- 
planation. 

The key to Dorner’s procedure is to be found in the cosmic sig- 
nificance of the Incarnation. In his view, the idea of Christ, of the 
God-Man — in other words, the decree of divine love to effect an in- 
carnation, reaches back into the very foundations of the world, for 
the world was created not merely by, but unto the Logos, who was 
to become man.|| The real ground of its possibility lay eternally in 
God Himself — nay more, there was in God an eternal self-disposition, 
or, as it were, arrangement of Himself unto, toward, for incarnation. 


* Glaubenslehre, I., 667 f., freely rendered as to form, but without change of substance, 
t See Glaubenslehre, I., 168. J See what he says himself. Glaubenslehre, I., 167. 

§ Glaubenslehre, II., 2 ; I., 165 ; cf. I., 654. | Ibid.. II., 245. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


601 


Incarnation was the real goal of His activity ad extra; and the 
activity ad extra was grounded in, and determined by, His activity 
ad bitra — not, indeed, as by natural necessity, but yet by the free, 
ethical necessitation of love.* The work of objectifying the eternal 
thought of God reached its climax when He found in Christ the 
organ of His full mundane actuality, of His central revelation ;f that 
organ being one that He provided for Himself, not one for which 
He was dependent on the mere will of the creature.:}; In the Son 
of Man who was capable of becoming Son of God, actual mundane 
image of God, the actuality of the world, in its distinction from, 
and contraposition to God, reached culmination. Creation was then 
for the first time completed ; the world as an objective reality, ca- 
pable of becoming absolutely valuable through its absolute suscepti- 
bility to God, was posited ; and that, too, because the incarnation was 
the beginning of the personal union of the world with God, of the 
restoration of humanity back to God, in the full accomplishment 
of which work the Holy Spirit co-operates.§ When God began to 
create, He intended to complete the world ; the world could not be 
completed without humanity ; humanity could not be completed 
without fellowship with God ; fellowship with God is conditional 
on His revealing Himself inwardly and outwardly ; the incarnation 
is the completion of the divine self-revelation. Then, again, the 
idea of humanity being that of a perfect organism, its perfection 
depended on the realization of the organism ; and that was incon- 
ceivable apart from the God-Man, its head,|| who is at the same time 
also the centre of all creation and all rational beings, through whom 
God is manifest to and becomes the point of union for all spirits. T 

This being the general point of view, but for the fact of sin, which 
he stoutly denies to have been the ground of the incarnation, while 
allowing that it furnished an additional justification or reason for it, 
the second part of his system would have been devoted to showing 
how humanity — which till the incarnation had been merely psychi- 
cal, and not as it was designed to be, pneumatic — and the world 
along with and in humanity, was gradually raised by the joint action 
of the God-Man and of the Holy Ghost, to the condition for which, 
according to the divine idea, it was created. 

The aim of the first part, as defined by himself, is the scientific 
deduction or demonstration of the centre of the Christian faith, 
namely, Christ, the God-Man, who, as we have seen, is the centre at 
once of the history of humanity and of the world. The line of 


* Glaubenslehre, II., 388, 396. f Ibid., 393. 

§ Ibid., 395. | Ibid., 245, 397 ; cf. I., 651. 

39 


t Ibid., 393. 
IT Ibid., 397. 


602 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


argument summarily stated is this. From the nature and constitu- 
tion of God — specially the ethical, which is the supreme aspect 
thereof — may be deduced the first creation with its culmination in 
man ; then religion, which is defined as a relation between two, or, 
as it is significantly designated in the Old Testament, a “cove- 
nant further , revelation, without which religion cannot exist, and 

the essence of which is a movement of God out of His hiddenness 
or the manifestation of His inward nature ; finally , incarnation, 
which is the completion of revelation. Under the general head of 
revelation are discussed the subjects of miracles and inspiration : 
under that of incarnation the question of the preservation of the 
completed revelation, by means of a canon of Scripture.* In a 
further section, the chief heathen religions, Judaism and Moham- 
medanism, are briefly passed in review for the purpose of showing 
that in them all there are traces of the tendency to a union of God 
and man, which is the essential goal of religion ; that Christianity is 
the key to the riddle of the religious yearnings and seekings of the 
non-Christian world ; and that all these religions are a preparation 
and prophesy of Christianity. Were this not the case it could not 
be the absolute religion ; for the absolute religion must comprise 
what is true and fulfil what is best in all religions, f 

What, then, is the position of Judaism in this organism ? He re- 
plies, “ It is unique, because in it revelation, which elsewhere, though 
provided for, yet developed only in one direction, and sooner or later, 
even when it did not recede, came to a full stop, continuously pro- 
gressed without relapse until it reached its goal. This was possible 
in the chosen people, because of the clearness with which they first 
distinguished the world and God from each other, and then, on the 
basis of the distinction, correlated them to each other. To them 
God revealed Himself as the Omnipotent Creator, Sustainer and Ruler 
of the world, and evinced His rule by ever new communications, 
especially, however, by the revelation of His holiness, which became 
the basis of legislation. Prophecy sprang up out of the soil of the 
consciousness of the divine holiness and righteousness.’’ % A sec- 
tion on Christianity as the historical completion of religion and reve- 
lation closes the first part. 

The second division, instead of going on, as I remarked it naturally 
would, to show how humanity and the world gradually realized their 
divine idea, begins with a long and careful discussion of sin, through 
the intervention of which the incarnation and work of the Logos, 
instead of having simply completion, had also salvation, deliverance, 


Glaubenslehre, I., 658. 


f Ibid., 671. 


t Ibid. , 696. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


603 


atonement for their end. This constitutes the first part ; the second 
is devoted to Redemption. This again is divided into two great sec- 
tions, treating respectively of Christ’s person and work as the ob- 
jective realization of redemption, and of the Church or the King- 
dom of the Holy Ghost as the subjective realization of redemption. 
What is in principle accomplished once for all in Christ becomes the 
possession of humanity through faith ; whilst redeemed humanity — 
that is, the Church — becomes, in its turn, at once the result and or- 
gan of Christ’s activity, the germ and centre of the kingdom of God. 

One is at first surprised to find the Incarnation so elaborately dis- 
cussed in the second part after the position assigned to it in the 
Apologetic ; the explanation is simply that, in the former its necessity 
is established, as it were, on speculative, a priori grounds, itself being 
expounded only so far as was necessary for that purpose ; in the 
latter it is treated as an historical actuality, requiring to be under- 
stood as such. 

Much attention has been called of late to Dorner’s eschatological 
views, or, rather, to just one point therein, namely, that in which he 
affirms that, as Christianity is the absolute religion,* no one’s final 
destiny can be considered settled who has not had an opportunity of 
accepting or rejecting it, that, consequently, all who have not had 
such an opportunity here must have it yonder. Singularly enough, 
too, this position is termed “ Dornerism.” It forms no part of my 
present design to pronounce an opinion either for or against the view 
in question, but it is somewhat unfair to Dorner to treat him as though 
he were the originator of the idea. In point of fact, on various 
grounds this view has been held by not a few German theologians — 
some of them of a very orthodox typef — among whom may be men- 
tioned even Moravian Brethren.:}: What is surprising, however, is 

that his critics have failed to see that it is a logical consequence of 
the position assigned to Christ, — as to which they agree with him. 
If, as Spurgeon says, “ Christ is the great central fact in the world’s 
history, to Him everything looks forward or backward. All the 
lines of history converge upon Him,” it would seem very natural to 
argue that the final destiny of men would be determined in harmony 
therewith, and that if so, no man’s destiny will be finally settled till 
the supreme fact has been brought to his knowledge. Those who 
adopt and agree with the language now so commonly used with re- 
gard to the headship of Christ and His central significance, have no 


* Glaubenslekre, II., 953. 

f For example, Sartorius, Heilige Liebe , 1861, p. 565 ; Gerlach, Die letzten Dinge, p. 71. 
t For example, Plitt, Evangelische Glaubenslekre. 


604 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


logical right to object to Dorner’s position. To avoid the result 
they must raise objections at an earlier stage in the system ; they 
must object to his view of the cosmical relations of Christ. 

This latter is one of the points, too, on which I venture to think he 
is very open to criticism. As to it, indeed, I question his self-con- 
sistency. On the one hand he makes Christ the end of the ways of 
God, on the other he makes the kingdom of God the end, to whose 
realization Christ, as the incarnation of the Logos, is the means. 
He might reply, indeed, that Christ is both means and end ; end, 
so far as His incarnation is the realization of the kingdom in prin- 
ciple, in germ, while the kingdom itself as an actuality is merely the 
full-grown tree, the actualization of the principle. But this only 
changes the venue. The real end is, after all, the kingdom, and the 
incarnation is as subordinate thereto as the seed is to the full-grown 
tree ; He is swallowed up in the kingdom, or He and His subjects 
form co-ordinate parts of one great whole.* 

It were well, I may be allowed to remark in passing, if those who 
introduce Dorner’s name into this controversy would always keep in 
view the five theses in which he sums up his discussions of the sub- 
ject, especially the last, which runs, “ Blessedness is possible only 
where there is holiness ; there can be neither a condemned peni- 
tence nor an unholy blessedness.” f 

Were it practicable, I should havp not a little more to say in the 
way of criticism, both of the ground-plan and of some of the minor 
details of arrangement. One serious fault may be mentioned, 
namely, that each great division contains either too much or too lit- 
tle. As an example I may mention the subject of sin, which comes 
repeatedly under consideration in the first division, although 
rightly belonging alone to the second or to an intermediate place. 
But, indeed, Dorner himself felt the difficulty — a difficulty which 
could have been avoided, if it were avoidable at all, only by mak- 
ing the first division, far more exclusively than it is, a sort of logic of 
theology,:}: a system of principles, and by relegating altogether to 
the second division the consideration of actualities, whether histori- 
cal or otherwise. 

It will probably be found that Dorner’s most important service 
to Systematic Theology has been rendered in connection with the 


* Glaubenslehre , II., 409 ff. 

f Ibid. , 972. In the note he quotes with approval from Nitzsch’s System d. chr. 
Lehre, 411— “The idea of eternal damnation and punishment is in so far a neces- 
sary one, as it is impossible that in eternity there should be either a compulsory 
holiness or a blessed unholiness.” 

| That is, in the Hegelian sense of logic. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


605 


locus de Deo , especially by the force and profound insight which 
characterize his assertion of the importance of the ethical element. 
Not a part of the doctrine is there, indeed, which he has not en- 
riched, but into this he poured out the very life of his life, with the 
result that, whether his deductions are accepted or not, its treatment 
has been revolutionized for all time. 

The subject early attracted his attention. His Christological 
studies brought him face to face with the defects which marked its 
form in the past. The opening pages of the great work on “ Christ- 
ology,” which contain, as it were, the kernel of the System of The- 
ology which we are examining, indicate that he was aware of what 
has just been noted, and later on in dealing with Gnosticism he 
makes the pregnant remark : “A religion is what it is through its 
conception of God.” * He may be said, however, to have first 
formally taken it in hand in a dissertation on “The Immutability 
of God,” f a dissertation characterized by his usual learning, breadth, 
and power of separating the husk from the kernel, of discerning 
affinities between views and tendencies superficially opposed, and of 
detecting in theories logical and practical issues of which their ad- 
vocates never dreamed. 

In this he was guided by a fine tact, such as might have been ex- 
pected in one whose eye embraced both the general features and 
main details, of great tracts of the doctrinal history of the Church. 
There was no locus which so thoroughly needed discussion and revi- 
sion as the one now referred to, nor any whose reconstitution would 
exercise a more fructifying and regulative influence on the course 
of theological thought. Indeed, as far as British and American 
thought in the main is concerned, we might speak in the present 
rather than in the past tense. Our theologians and preachers are 
still largely under the sway of a conception of God whose roots lie 
far back in Neo-Platonic speculations — possibly in those of India, 
with which we are now being made familiar — and which is certainly 
out of harmony with the great current of thought embodied in the 
Scriptures. With the fairness which marked almost all his historical 
judgments, Dorner points out in that dissertation how it came to 
pass that, at the Reformation, Protestantism took over the traditional 
doctrine of God almost unchanged from Romish theology, although 
the anthropological and soteriological sections at once underwent 
profound modifications at its hands. The leaders of thought at 


* Chrislologie, I., 358. 

f Jahrbiicher fur deutsche Theologie 1858, 1859. An abridged translation by the 
writer of this paper appeared in the Bibliotheca Sacra, some years ago, (Vol. XXXVI.)J 


606 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


that time, Luther above all, yea, even Calvin, were primarily and 
chiefly animated and guided by practical considerations. Unlike the 
recent Old Catholic movement, theirs had the pressing needs of sin- 
ful man, not the theoretical difficulties or needs of Christian theo- 
logians, for its fountain-head and motive power. Accordingly, their 
first independent theological efforts were directed to those aspects 
of the Christian faith which had been the source of peace, hope and 
life to their sin-burdened souls. The person and work of Christ, 
faith, and the justification which it brings, the means of grace, and 
especially the nature and authority of the Scriptures — these were the 
subjects which the theologians of Protestantism treated construc- 
tively. -The history of Protestant theology is largely the record of 
endeavors to arrive at more and more satisfactory views as to them. 
But the real key to the position was left unassailed. Romish An- 
thropology and Soteriology and Romish Church practice grew out of 
Romish Theology — using this word in its narrower sense. And one 
of the reasons of the sense of inconsistency and insecurity that has 
haunted Protestantism has been, unawares to itself, this very fact ; 
while, on the other hand, much of the security and wholeness which 
has marked the procedure of Rome has been due to the greater self- 
consistency of its doctrinal system, and the greater concord between 
its practice and its theory. Neither Romanists, however, nor 
Protestants have found the true key to the differences : both, there- 
fore, have failed to understand each other, and their mutual polemics 
have, accordingly, in general fallen wide of the mark. 

If, therefore, the Protestant, or, as following the example of Ger- 
many, we ought rather to say, the Evangelical Churches are to at- 
tain to a good conscience anent their position — in other words, to 
doctrinal and practical self-consistency, they must thoroughly revise 
their doctrine of God, and lay its foundations, as they have laid 
those of the other doctrines referred to, broadly on the rocks of 
biblical truth. When harmony is thus established between the 
basis and superstructure we shall go forth to the fight with 
doubt, criticism and sin, stronger and more confident than ever be- 
fore. Not a few of the weapons wielded against Christianity are 
really drawn from our own armory. If a proof is wanted of this let 
reference be made to Herbert Spencer’s “ First Principles,” where 
the arguments framed in supposed defence of orthodox Christianity 
by Dean Mansel are ably used in support of the Agnostic position. 
But Dean Mansel’s arguments were the legitimate outcome of 
premises which had had the sanction of all the most prominent theo- 
logians of Protestantism. It was reserved for him to be the unwit- 
ting instrument of unveiling their inherent and necessary antagonism 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


607 


to biblical teaching, and specially to biblical Christianity. Dorner 
here, again, still pursuing one of his great aims, intervened with ad- 
mirable insight, temper and ability by means of an article entitled 
“ The Mansel-Maurice Controversy. ” * Correctly as Maurice divined 
and pointed out the chief danger in Mansel’s position, theologically 
considered, Dorner’s is incomparably the weightier contribution to 
the subject. He discusses it with a learning, grasp, keenness and 
clearness which cannot be claimed for Mr. Maurice’s work on 
Revelation. 

Neither there, however, nor in the important treatise on “ Divine 
Immutability,” mentioned above, did Dorner attempt an all-round 
examination and treatment of the great theme. This was reserved 
for his Glaubenslehre. The account I give of it can be, however, 
only of the very briefest kind, and must, in fact, restrict itself rather 
to indicating the method pursued than to reproducing the actual 
line of thought. 

Dorner opens his discussion of the doctrine of God with a criticism 
of the traditional method of first advancing proofs of the existence 
of God and then investigating the divine nature and attributes ; in op- 
position to which he teaches that the proof for the divine existence, 
and that for the essential constitutive divine attributes, are really one 
indivisible proof, and that they can be conducted only in conjunc- 
tion with each other, f 

Recognizing with the best modern theologians that the several 
arguments are really constitutive momenta of one great argument 
maintaining that, while both formally and materially our knowledge of 
God must always be limited — the former as being subject to growth, 
the latter because it can never compass the infinite richness of the 
divine nature and life — it is real — real because God really reveals 
Himself to human receptivity ;§ and, further, opposing to the Spino- 
zistic — which is the chief — criticism of the objectivity of the divine 
attributes, ornnis determinate est negatio, the truer apothegm of 
Baader, omnis determinate est positio,\ he goes on to treat of the 
proofs of the existence of God. These he distributes into two great 
classes, the one constituted by the proof which advances from the 
conception of God to the actual existence of the conception ; the 
second by those which rise from finite existences to the being and 
conception of God : — T the former the ontological, the latter the cos- 
mological, physico-teleological, juridical and moral arguments. 

* jfahrbucker fiir deutsche Theologie, 1861. 

•(• Glaubenslehre , I., 175 f. \ Ibid., 437. 

§ Ibid . , 198 ; compare the article on the Mansel-Maurice Controversy in the Jahr- 
bticher. | Ibid., 184. Tf Ibid., 199. 


608 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


Four features of Dorner’s treatment of this locus deserve special 
attention, namely, his putting of the ontological argument ; his 
effort to strike a bridge between the a priori and the a posteriori argu- 
ments ; the position assigned to the ethical in God ; and the bearing 
given to the Trinity on the problem of the existence of God. I will 
endeavor in as few words as possible to indicate their characteristic 
features. 

After reviewing the forms given to the ontological argument by 
Anselm, Des Cartes, Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel, and assigning rea- 
sons for regarding them as rather mutually supplementary than 
mutually exclusive, he formulates its aim to be the twofold one of 
showing, first , that it is essential to the idea of the absolute, if 
thought at all, to be thought as having necessary existence ; and, 
secondly , that the idea of the absolute, so far from being contingent, 
is necessary, to rational thought.* 

Stated more completely : First, if the Supreme Being is thought 
at all, it must be thought as neither conditioned by nor dependent 
on any other being, but as unconditioned or absolute, as being 
through itself ; consequently as objectively existent. Secondly, it is 
not a matter of choice, but necessary, to think an absolute, which 
must be thought as having being if it is to be thought at all. In 
other words, whoso will think rationally and wishes so to think 
that his thinking shall become knowledge — which, be it remembered, 
is a moral duty imposed on thought f — must think an absolute. A 
rational thinker, in other words, must recognize an absolute. The 
absolute is intertwined with the very roots of rational thought and 
is the condition of its possibility ; intellect ceases to be intellect 
without it.J It must be allowed, I think, that this mode of putting 
the case is a decided advance on most, if not all, previous state- 
ments, whether the case be established or not. 

Given such an absolute, necessarily existent being or deity, we 
can at once deduce from its absoluteness the predicates of unity, 
solity, simplicity, and infinitude, which last, in the case of the exist- 
ence of a world, would be positively defined as freedom from space 
and time. 

But thought in general cannot rest in a conception of the abso- 
lute being so void of content, so empty, so utterly indeterminate, 
as that to which the ontological argument leads, still less can thought 


* Claubenslehre, I., 201. f Ibid., ioi ff. 

\ Ibid., 213. Compare Professor Flint's statement, which is akin to Dorner’s, in his 
valuable work on Theism, fourth edition, iSS3, pp. 268, 291, 292. Also Caird's Intro- 
duction to the Philosophy of Religion. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


609 


inspired by Christian faith. We turn accordingly to the remaining 
arguments with a view to supplying the lack. Here, however, the 
difficulty is encountered on which Kant especially laid such stress, 
that so far as they start from the empirical, finite world, they fail to 
rise to the absolute predicates which are the object of our search. 
By their means alone we shall never reach the being of God or the 
corresponding attributes in God. Can, then, the ontological argu- 
ment be so applied to the empirical arguments that the two shall 
really supplement each other ? Dorner thinks it both possible and 
natural. As a matter of fact, the same intellect that thinks the 
world and itself, thinks also the idea of the absolute : — shall we, 
then, pronounce the task of combining the two impossible, or are 
we condemned to intellectual dualism ? He endeavors, accordingly, 
so to combine the a posteriori class of arguments with the ontological, 
that the latter shall establish the objective existence of the predi- 
cates which the former supplied, but whose existence they could not 
prove ; nay, more, to demonstrate their necessary inherence in the 
absolute Being or in God.* 

In fact, he aims at showing that as the ideas which answer to the 
various categories which lie at the basis of the several arguments — as 
for example, that of causality at the basis of the cosmological, that 
of harmony, purpose, beauty at that of the physico-teleological argu- 
ment — are a priori inherent in mind, their recognition as appertain- 
ing to the absolute is a necessity of our rational nature, f This is 
the second special feature of Dorner’s discussion. 

The third , which is really a part of the last-mentioned, is the place 
assigned to the ethical in God. No other problem had anything like 
the fascination and interest for Dorner that the problem of the ethical 
had ; and no theologian, perhaps few ethical philosophers, have in- 
vestigated it with the like intensity and persistency, not to say pro- 
fundity and success. In the view of many, his contribution to Chris- 
tian ethics is his best ; perhaps, however, not so much because it is 
really more valuable than the other works, but because it contains 
less that evokes criticism and contradiction. 

With the juridical argument the domain of the ethical is really 
entered ; yet, though the idea of the just and right, once conceived 
by reason, cannot again be surrendered and must be recognized as a 
necessary idea, to which belongs a seat in the absolute being, it can- 
not be said to hold the supreme place. In fact it is one side — the 
negative side of the ethical ; it has its ground in the positive good or 
ethical of which it is, so to speak, the protector. For we are obliged 


* Glaubenslehre, I., 234. 


, f Ibid., 295. 


610 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


to ask, What is just and right ? And we must either reply, the just 
and right, or go on to something higher and broader still to which 
it owes its obligatory force. 

Three questions, then, present themselves for reply : first, what is 
the ethical idea in relation to the non-ethical and to righteousness ? 
second, whether it is a necessary idea of reason ? and, third, whether 
it has merely ideal existence in the form of a law or imperative, or 
absolute reality in the absolute Being, God ? To the first he replies, 
In its very nature it is supreme ; all else is subordinate to it — ab- 
solute being, life, intelligence, will — it alone is the absolute end, 
the absolute causa finalis, beyond which we do not ask to go, for 
whose reason reason does not ask, whose reason is in itself. To the 
second he answers with Kant, A rational being cannot please himself, 
whether he recognize it or not ; it is duty to will the right, and in- 
asmuch as it cannot be willed unless it is first thought, the funda- 
mental duty is to retain the law in consciousness.* With regard to 
the third point, the conclusion arrived at is, that the ethical, which 
by its very nature unconditionally demands realization — for to repre- 
sent it as an imperative which cannot be obeyed would be a self- 
contradiction — is realized, yea, perfectly realized, in the deity. In 
other words, the absolute being is through and through ethical, or 
the ethical has perfect reality eternally in God. 

But granting that in God the eternally and absolutely ethical good 
is a reality and that this supreme ethical goodness is love — as is else- 
where urged — another problem presents itself. It is essential to the 
ethical to be at once necessary' and free, to have being and yet to be 
freely willed to be. The solution of this difficulty Dorner finds in 
the Trinity, without the recognition of which, he holds, it is logically 
inadmissible to confess with the Apostle John and the Christian 
Church that “ God is love” — nay, also, that God is life and light. 

Though the task of criticism where there is so much to admire, as 
at once biblically correct, philosophically profound and practically 
weighty, is in itself disagreeable, especially to one who is sensible 
that any capability of criticism he may possibly have is largely due 
to the teacher criticised, yet as the in verba magistri jurare is a thing 
Dorner would have been the first to reprobate, I should have en- 
deavored, had space permitted, to indicate in one or two cases, what 
seem to me decided weaknesses of constructive reasoning. Among 
the points which are open to serious objection may be mentioned 
especially the Trinity and the Person of Christ. f 

* Glaubenslehre , I., 298. 

f I single these out both because of their intrinsic importance, and because Dorner 
concentrated on them special eliort. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


611 


The Trinity holds a high and large place in his system ; he at- 
taches to the doctrine, one might almost say, supreme importance, 
so far as he considers it to be the key to the Christian conception of 
God ; he has devoted to its elucidation the whole force of his specu- 
lative mind, enriched by extensive learning ; it is no purpose of his 
to reduce the distinctions to those known as Sabellian, much less to 
deny them altogether ; nor does its mysteriousness excite aversion, 
for that, he has too much sympathy with the mood of the mystic ; 
and yet his treatment of the subject seems to me eminently unsat- 
isfactory. 

I am compelled also to pass the same judgment on his doctrine of 
the person of Christ, much as there is to admire in it of insight, sub- 
tlety, and practical significance ; and certain as it is that his aim was 
to assert alike the full divinity and the full humanity of our Lord. 
Indeed, a defective view of the Trinity leads, of logical necessity, to 
a defective view of the person of Christ, and vice versa.* 

I ought to add, however, in passing, that his idea regarding the 
Headship of Christ— though I am unable myself to accept it — is 
very commonly misunderstood and misrepresented. Not very long 
ago I saw that Dr. Karl Schwarz’s account thereof in his Geschichte 
der neuesten Theologie — a book whose cold, critical and negative 
spirit ought to render it a priori suspicious to an orthodox writer — 
was quoted as though it were correct, and yet a bare glance at Dor- 
ner’s Christology, much more at his Glaubenslehre, would have shown 
the writer that he was doing Dorner an injustice. He himself char- 
acterizes the notion of a homo generalis, in the physical sense, as a 
monstrosity, and maintains that it would lead to panchristism instead 
of pantheism. f He asserts for Christ a true, veritable individuality, 
but an individuality, whose essential characteristic is to be free from 
the one-sidedness which is chargeable on all other individuals ; and 
he holds that one-sidedness is not essential to the idea of humanity, 
considered in itself. The true idea of humanity is arrived at not by 
abstracting what is common to all, but by a living combination of 
what is found in all, and pneumatically such was Christ. To this 
He owed His universal position ; this constituted Him the progenitor 
and head of pneumatic humanity ; in virtue of this He could be and 
is the Redeemer of all.J 

I have already made pretty frequent references to Dorner’s more 
personal characteristics — the characteristics of the man ; I will now 
conclude with a brief notice of some of his characteristics as a theo- 
logian and writer. 


* Glaubenslehre, II., 407, 4x1, 426 ; I., 650 f. 


f Ibid., 424. | Ibid . , 425 f. 


G12 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


By competent judges of German style, though complaints are made 
of his fondness for Latinisms and Grecisms, he is held to have pos- 
sessed in a remarkable degree the power of clear exposition. In 
his plastic hands the most subtle and complicated problems assume 
intelligible form ; and yet there is a complete absence — perhaps, in- 
deed, too complete an absence — of the cut and dried, formally logical 
method that to many seems necessary to clearness. Indeed, he 
wrote more after the manner of the essayist or litterateur than after 
that of the professional theologian, allowing his mind to play freely 
round and on any subject he had in hand, though in reality he never 
lost sight of his goal and kept the spirit of the prophet in subjection 
to the prophet.* Until one has studied a work like the Glaubens- 
lehre one is very apt to think that he has here and there ignored a 
consideration or overlooked a difficulty ; but wait, and it will gen- 
erally be found that he recurs to it in some other connection. While 
allowing this, I must confess, for my own part, that this letting the 
mind go its own sweet way results in something very like rambling, 
and leads to a good deal of repetition — a fault with which the 
Glaubcnslehre is certainly chargeable.* 

A characteristic of a large class of German theologians — if not, in- 
deed, of them all — namely, that of personifying abstractions, is shared 
in a high degree by Dorner. It appertains, indeed, to theologians of 
other countries, yet I scarcely think to the same extent. This is 
especially the case with words that belong to the domain of ethics : 
The Ethical, the Good, the Right, Justice, are reasoned about, are 
represented as doing, forbidding and the like, exactly as if they had 
an independent, concrete existence. One finds one’s self a good deal 
perplexed when one attempts to transfer the reasonings to a real 
world — to descend from the thin air of abstractions to mother earth. 
It were well, indeed, if all theologians — not to mention philosophers 
and scientists — would be on their guard against the same fault. 
“ Justice,” for example, is sometimes reasoned about among our- 
selves, as though it were an objective force or power which must 
manifest itself in this and the other way. 

One scarcely knows whether to describe Dorner as a speculative 
historian or a historical speculator. The two elements dominate his 
work in a remarkable degree. In this respect he greatly resembled 
one of his masters, Schelling. He must always plant his feet on 
history, and yet history is not a human herbarium or museum of dead 
facts. On the contrary, it is instinct with life and meaning to him ; 
all history is the embodiment and development of principles. He 


See N. E. Kirchenzeitung quoted in his son’s article in the Stud. u. Kri liken. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


613 


never was so much at home, even in private conversation, as when 
he was unfolding the significance of historical events ; correlating 
those which seemed unrelated, discovering inklings of great truths 
even in practices, customs, rites, ceremonies, doctrinal positions, 
systems, that a less profound thinker would have simply passed by 
or treated as absurdities. Accordingly, on the one hand he looked 
to history for light on the problems awaiting solution, and for guid- 
ance as to the direction to be taken by investigation, while, on the 
other hand he felt that to break historical continuity was to render 
impossible the attainment of satisfactory results, either in theory or 
practice. In fact his whole intellectual life was one long protest 
against two opposed and equally mistaken tendencies : one, which 
self sufficiently ignores history and sets out to construct the world in 
absolute independence of the thought of the past ; another, which 
seeming to despair of the present generation or of the truth, would 
have us restrict ourselves solely to history. 

Not that he was faultless in his dealings with history ; on the con- 
trary, he was sometimes swayed by prepossessions, and fell into the 
error of unconsciously seeing in facts only that which suited his im- 
mediate purpose. At the same time, there have been very few men 
less chargeable with this fault than he — specially few Germans. 

His power of tracing historical tendencies and results to ideal 
causes was remarkable, and exercised to striking purpose. This is 
one of the most valuable habits which the careful study of his works 
may help to form or foster. It has been said often enough that 
ideas determine history, but it seems as though our own generation 
were singularly slow to recognize the law, at all events in the do- 
main of theology. One of his favorite exercises, if one may use the 
word, is to point out how one extreme is sure to call forth another 
— an exercise which led to his being accused of following a quasi- 
Hegelian method. The idea, probably, was suggested by Hegel’s 
method of antitheses, but there is all the world of difference between 
Dorner’s application thereof and the application made of it by thor- 
ough Hegelians. 

Another ruling idea of his — suggested, perhaps, by Hegel, though 
carried out in a different way from that of theologians of the true 
Hegelian type — was that the various phases of doctrine which have 
arisen in the course of the generations — whether of the person of 
Christ, or of the Atonement, or of the Trinity — represent so many 
momenta, mutually complementary, of a complete and perfect doc- 
trine : they are not a mere series of deviations from some previously 
existent perfect doctrine. Within limits this is unquestionably true. 
Human thought, whether in the Church or outside it, whether on 


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divine or created things, is in constant flux. There never was, for 
example, a properly orthodox system of theology, one, namely, that 
was allowed to have realized the idea of a system — not even in the 
Romish Church. Alterations are made, even if it be only in method ; 
and changes of method and arrangement always involve more or less 
changes of matter. Each succeeding thinker aims .to present the 
truth more clearly and perfectly. This principle Dorner carries out : 
it is the intellectual correlate to his ethical large-heartedness. 

Another feature of his thinking that deserves notice is the objec- 
tivity of its aim, method and results. Some have, indeed, accused 
him of subjectivity, but the charge is based on a false, or, at any 
rate, a widely divergent conception of what constitutes objectivity. 
This is not the place to discuss the two conceptions, but surely that 
method scarcely deserves the stigma of subjectivism which starts with 
a recognition of the necessity of direct experience of the objects of 
which a theologian treats ; which affirms that God really has revealed 
Himself to man, and that the Christian thinker has not to do merely 
with his own states or fancies, but with God Himself in Christ ; that 
the Scriptures are a real medium through which Christ is presented 
really to us and so forth. One of the great merits of Dorner’s sys- 
tem is that it asserts for Christian knowledge the objectivity which 
is claimed in the present day almost exclusively for natural science. 
It is, of course, easy to say that that method is alone objective 
which starts with the New Testament regarded as the infallible source 
of knowledge about God ; but it is surely a profounder and more 
real objectivity to maintain, as Dorner does, and as the older Puri- 
tan divines did, that it is God Himself who testifies infallibly to 
Himself through the Scriptures. For, as was remarked before, the 
only way to get objective, infallible knowledge of any object, divine 
or human, created or uncreated, is to go, not to a witness, however 
perfect, but to the object itself. And this is Dorner’s objectivity.* 

It would be most natural, I imagine, to class him philosophically as 
an eclectic. Greatly as he was influenced by the several teachers of 
whom mention was previously made, he cannot be said to belong to 
the school of any one of them. He was neither a Kantian, nor a 
follower of Jacobi, nor a Schleiermacherian, though, as we have seen, 
he assimilated elements from all three, for he held that the intellect 
can and should attain to true objective knowledge ; nor, again, was 
he a Schellingian or a Hegelian, for, while recognizing the objectivity 


* All that a witness can give us, even if his infallibility could be established — which 
it could not be, save by means of a comparison between him and that of which he wit- 
nesses — is inferential certitude ; not direct, real — i.e., objective certitude. 


ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 


615 


of thought and the legitimacy of speculation, he could not identify 
thought and its object, and in opposition to pure apriorism insisted 
on the necessity of experience as the starting-point and constant 
corrective of all inquiry. He was not, however, an eclectic in the 
sense of having no definite principle of his own, or in that of con- 
structing a system out of disparate elements gathered from other 
writers. 

Theologically he may be regarded as the ripest and ablest rep- 
resentative of the Mediatory School ( Vermittelungstheologie ). It 

owed its rise to the influence of Schleiermacher, though all its mem- 
bers diverged from him more or less completely in one fundamental 
respect — namely, that they refused to restrict Systematic Theology 
or Glaubenslehre to a description of the states of believing Christians 
( fromme Gemiithszustande ), and held it to be its function to treat 
of the object of piety and the causes of Christian experience. One 
might, perhaps, arrange them as follows :* Twesten and Nitzsch 
stand nearest to Schleiermacher, alike in time and spirit ; the rest 
may be divided into two groups — the right one consisting of those 
who approximated more closely, at all events in method, to the 
“ Church” theology, as, for example, Muller, Plitt, Ebrard, Gess, 
and Reiff ; the other marked by a stronger speculative element, 
Liebner, Lange, Martensen, Dorner, Schoberlein, and, perhaps, 
Rothe. There is, of course, much that is common between him and 
the rest of the school, especially in the treatment of the question of 
inspiration, but careful examination will show, I think, that there 
is scarcely a respect in which Dorner is not in advance of his prede- 
cessors. 

I cannot do better than close this very imperfect account and 
estimate of the man and his work, by quoting a few sentences from 
the discourse which he delivered in 1864 as Rector of the University 
of Berlin, partly for their own sake, chiefly, however, because they 
bring out the remarkable range of his interests as a thinker and 
teacher. After referring to the fact of the growth of the reciprocal 
independence of the several faculties of the Universities during the 
present century, he goes on to say : 

“ The confusion of their several spheres and the attempts at domination over each 
other have been brought to an end, especially by the ever-growing necessity for division 
of labor. Not only have the several domains secured full freedom to teach both by 
word and writing, but by attaining insight into the essential principle of their life and 
activity, they have also made material advances toward inner emancipation. . . . This 
state of things, however, imposes new obligations — above all, the obligation that the 
several sciences shall not regard each other with hostility, or, still worse, with indiffer- 


* I refer here exclusively to those who are chiefly known as systematic theologians. 


616 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


ence. In proportion as they do this, in that proportion will the intellectual life of the 
nation be split up into factions, and sooner or later science itself fall a prey to a philis- 
tine practicality. . . . Although no science can lay exclusive claim to hegemony, it is 
necessary that the departments which promote general culture — namely, philology, his- 
tory, mathematics, philosophy — should not only maintain their position, but even obtain 
larger attention. . . . Each individual science should esteem it its function to be and 
do something for the rest ; for surely all parts of the universe are connected in their 
deepest depths by real and rational, even though secret, ties ; and the ethical business 
of humanity is to bring this fact to light and give it vital actuality, and to confess that 
there is one God, one world, one humanity, yet in such wise that the boundary lines of 
the several domains shall not be blurred, still less be made impassable ; that, on the con- 
trary, bridges and transitions from one to the other shall everywhere be opened. It is 
no one’s business to prescribe or judge with regard to other departments of investiga- 
tion as he may and must with regard to his own ; but every one is bound, while culti- 
vating with all his might his own section of the great field of science, to keep an open 
eye for all that is human. . . . Once this general duty recognized, philology will seek 
to incorporate her classical treasures with the culture of the nation and to make them 
common property ; history will unveil the eternal moral laws which regulate the rise 
and fall of nations and kingdoms, and set before the rising generation examples of 
faithfulness in little as well as in great things — of the victories of patience as well as of 
heroism ; philosophy will throw up a spiritual breastwork against materialism and 
scepticism, w'hile helping to evoke the ideal and generous impulses of youth ; the 
natural sciences will sharpen the eye for concrete realities and accustom the mind to 
surrender itself without prepossessions to the objective ; jurisprudence, doing service 
to the eternal idea of law and justice, will foster the feeling for historical continuity, 
and from her, as from the elect fountain, will go forth the influences that develop man- 
liness of character and give tone and vigor to the organism of the University ; and, 
lastly, theology will marry all these forms of knowledge of the world and man with the 
knowledge of God ; for its specific function is to direct the human mind, whether in 
or out of the Universities, with its multiform interests and activities, and its noblest 
impulses, to Him who is the Author and Hope of the Universe, the Father of lights, 
who gives to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and from whom comes every good 
and perfect gift.” 


Congregational Theological Hall , Edinburgh. 


D. W. Simon. 


II. 


SCIENTIFIC SPECULATION. 

L ORD BACON’S best service to science is embodied in the rule 
that the observation of nature must be the referee and umpire 
for deciding all scientific controversies. But in making it the duty 
of science first to observe and register the facts of nature, and only 
subsequently and cautiously to generalize upon them, and thus to 
find out laws of nature, he reversed the only possible course of re- 
search ; and his mistake is aggravated by those who would debar 
science from the privilege of speculation in any of its stages. (By 
the term science, used without qualification, is meant material sci- 
ence.) Nature is too complex an affair to be analyzed and registered 
wholesale ; and before going to consult it we must see that we have 
some idea of the kind of information required. Many of the great 
discoveries have been made by means of one or a very few experi- 
ments : a single case of vivisection of a dog revealed the difference 
between motor and sensor nerves ; a single observation of the brain 
of the lizard Sphenodon explained the pineal body of the brain as 
being the relic of a third eye in the vertebrate head (the trace of 
one that is lost, or the root of a suppressed incipient eye) ; and two 
observations on the oviparous reproduction of the Australian duck- 
bill and spiny-anteater have broken down the law that all mammals 
bring forth their young alive. A single case is often the basis of 
sound scientific inference. But in order to justify the inference 
there must be antecedent, and concurrent, and subsequent specula- 
tion ; not vague guessing, but such shrewd guessing and inferring 
as can be attained by a trained scientific mind. Even when it is 
necessary to observe facts on a large scale, this is often best accom- 
plished by non-scientific agents, who are not smart enough to falsify 
the returns, and best of all by dead machines, as photographic 
cameras and self-recording apparatus, without bias or personal 
equation. 

The method which all successful investigators have followed is to 
find out problems which may be tested by experience (by observa- 
tion, with or without experiment). They begin with speculation, 
40 


618 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


which they must confront with the phenomena of nature. Their 
success depends on (i) their ability to discover the right kinds of 
problems, (2) their shrewdness in finding and applying the test. 
Speculation normally leads the way, propounding the problem, 
devising modes of solution, and, when requisite, readjusting the 
problem, so that it may coincide with the verification. Experience 
of the facts of nature constitutes the jury before which speculations 
are sent for trial ; and speculation again plays the role of judge, to 
receive the verdict, to adjust the sentence accordingly, and to apply 
it to like cases. The speculation concerns the facts of nature, occurs 
to a mind somewhat conversant by its habits and previous experience 
with natural phenomena, but yet is only a process of doubtful ratio- 
cination, only a tentative hypothesis, until we give it a foundation 
in material nature itself ; and science is the resultant of speculation 
compounded with experience. 

Some of the hypotheses brought to be tested are new creations of 
the investigator’s genius, or are suggested by his fellow-workers ; 
and many of them with the ablest men prove still-born, being 
crushed by their authors’ own criticism, or killed in the attempt to 
verify them. Absolute liberty must be allowed to start and ex- 
amine all kinds of hypotheses, the only limit allowable being the 
discretion of the investigator. Hypotheses that conflict with recog- 
nized principles of science, of philosophy, or of theology are all 
legitimate subjects of examination. Just as an explorer in Palestine 
does not go under instructions to see only what will confirm Scrip- 
ture, so an explorer in science is not bound to tie his speculations 
to current views of things. An investigator sometimes by following 
a wrong track reaches a right conclusion ; or he may reach a wrong 
conclusion in such a way as to demonstrate the error at the start ; 
and, at any rate, he may congratulate himself on making any start, 
knowing that in the end he shall get some result to repay his toil. 
The recognized maxim of testimony is that the friends of truth 
ought to welcome evidence from all quarters ; and it is only those 
who desire to help a bad cause that will exclude evidence. Adverse 
as well as favorable evidence when well sifted ultimately aids the 
truth. As to the bearing of science on the Being and Providence of 
God, we should court scrutiny, with no misgiving as to the out- 
come. The danger is not in speculation, but in a bad bias ; and we 
ought to encourage the right kind of men to unfettered investiga- 
tion of branches of science, which are pushing their way into phi- 
losophy and faith, as well as affecting our secular interests. 

The queries confront us, why is scientific theory so often astray, 
and so often hostile to the sober convictions of men ? and what 


SCIENTIFIC SPECULATION. 


619 


security have we that anything scientific is established ? and would 
it not be better to let science have its last word before men speculate 
upon it ? It will not appear strange that science should sometimes 
err, if we consider its methods. It has, in fact, gained much solid 
knowledge ; every telegram you receive or despatch implies a cer- 
tificate of your confidence in it ; during the last half century our 
knowledge of the structure and physiology of plants and animals 
has so greatly extended as to add largely to the health and comfort 
of the human race. Yet the only available scientific method is not 
logically sound ; a general inference is drawn from particular pre- 
mises, often only from a single fact (as where the experiment on the 
nerves of one dog was applied to all dogs, and to other animals, 
man included) ; and this is always done by what in formal logic is 
condemned as an illicit process. The conclusion is always too broad 
for the premises ; and there is also involved an assumption of the 
uniformity of nature, an assumption which is probably true only 
within a limited compass. The argument is a process of experi- 
mentation, comparable to men’s speculating on the rise and fall of 
stocks in the market ; but with checks and correctives which do not 
pertain to the stock-broker. The flaw in the logic secures gain in 
the result, which is wider than the premises. It is the application 
of the old maxim ex uno (or ex paucis) disce omnes ; and the results 
are only probable. Yet by the system of limiting and testing the 
results, human knowledge is greatly advanced, and a high degree of 
certainty may be reached. The frequent changes in scientific doc- 
trines that appear are usually not signs of weakness, but stages of 
progress. Fairly verified scientific theories may sometimes be 
amended and put in new form, and are often limited by new discov- 
ery, but are not changed in substance. Even the emission theory 
of light was parallel with the truth ; and as soon as the verifications 
were applied, its one defect was rectified. 

The adequate verification of theories is not left to the discretion 
of their inventor ; many eyes scrutinize his work, and are ready to 
detect his shortcomings. A common mistake with outsiders is to 
suppose that scientific men are a sceptical ring, banded together to 
help each other in ventilating and favoring their schemes. On the 
contrary, they are under pressure to find out each other’s shortcom- 
ings, as this is the road to success ; and they jealously watch each 
other. None except scientific men are competent in ordinary cases 
to detect or expose their errors ; but science is its own censor ; and 
every new discovery attests how promptly it seeks to repair its fail- 
ures or transgressions. In 1871 Haeckel published his splendid 
monograph on the calcareous sponges, full of brilliant but poorly 


620 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


verified phylogenetic speculations ; and he has lived to see his work 
examined and condemned, and, his system rejected by Polejaeff and 
others. Much of the work of Huxley has already become obsolete, 
some of it indeed condemned by himself ; and there are few prom- 
inent scientists who have not frequently found the searcher unpleas- 
antly detecting their errors. 

Another office which occupies the time of scientific men, espe- 
cially in the earlier stages of experimental research, is to sift the 
traditional doctrines of nature which were born in prescientific ages. 
Ancient and modern books, including the sacred writings of many 
nations, abound in theories which have been found false. Here 
science plays the part of iconoclast, confuting polytheism, Hindu- 
ism, Zoroasterism, Confucianism, Mohammedism, and the multi- 
tudes of speculations which mediaevalism appended to Christianity. 
The Japanese student who learned so much science at his university 
as- to make him an infidel, and who was afterward led by a book on 
Christian evidences to accept the religion of the Bible, is a typical 
instance ; for modern science forces on us, as alternatives, either in- 
fidelity in some of its modifications or Christianity. It has also come 
to our aid by abolishing men’s faith in necromancy, witchcraft, 
astrology, fortune-telling, the black art, and in healing by the royal 
touch ; with many cognate delusions which kept mankind in terror, 
and which still dominate in semi-civilized nations. Medical practice 
is most largely indebted to science for its advance. The old system, 
with its jargon about ferments, and the association of sulphur, 
quicksilver, and salt, and its singular maxims (one of which, siniilia 
iimilibus curantur, is still inherited by a particular school), and its 
application of phlebotomy to nearly every case (to dead as well as 
living subjects), and its prescription of herbs, because of a fancied 
resemblance to diseases, was no better than the art of the Indian 
medicine-man. It was largely homicide in the name of science, as 
bad as judicial murder. Under improved methods the average du- 
ration of human life has been much extended within the last century 
in civilized countries. 

The spirit of science in these matters has not been amiable ; it 
has hurt many prejudices and made enemies. Nor is it strange if 
its destructive criticism should sometimes strike at the Bible. The 
usage of Scripture in accommodating itself (as we all necessarily do) 
to forms of expression, without regard to their original inaccuracy 
— as where love and knowledge are ascribed to the heart, emotions 
to the bowels, convictions to the reins or kidneys — and its liberal 
use of the usual figures and even extravagant metaphors of current 
language, make it an easy target for small critics. A good many 


SCIENTIFIC SPECULATION. 


621 


errors have been engrafted on it by commentators, as each man 
fancies he can discover his own speculations in its pages ; and the 
modern commentators are sometimes as bad as the ancients. Kitto 
explains the survival of Jonah in the whale by the extraordinary 
principle that an animal stomach “ has no power over substances 
endued with vitality Dr. William Smith finds the curse of the 
serpent fulfilled by a fancied habit of serpents eating clay or ashes 
along with their food ; and Whately’s scheme of the tree of life 
rendering men immortal, and explaining antediluvian longevity by 
its physical power, has been adopted by some of our latest commen- 
tators. Commentators ought to know at least the rudiments of 
natural science. 

The first chapter of Genesis has been a tempting field for this 
style of speculation. We there catch a glimpse into the unknown 
past, comparable to the more extended glimpse into the unknown 
future given by the seven seals of the Apocalypse. Both the seven 
days of creation and the seven seals of Revelation are a help to faith, 
as they indicate that all is from God, and all for God, that the world 
never was and never shall be a ship drifting about without helm or 
Governor. They have also in several important points received 
confirmation from without, the Mosaical record from Geology, and 
the Apocalyptic visions from History. But all attempts to furnish 
an expanded parallelism between Genesis and Geology on the one 
side, and between the seven seals and History on the other side, 
have proved unsuccessful. Perhaps we have not materials in the 
present state of our knowledge for the complete solution of these 
problems. This fact, however, has been a stimulus to men’s inven- 
tive powers, and we have had schemes of forced conciliation, which 
are scarcely consistent with the reverence due to the Word of God, 
and are not conducive to piety. One man who held the dogma of 
spontaneous generation found it in the command that the seas 
should bring forth their monsters, and in the idea that Herod An- 
tipas was destroyed by internal parasites (once supposed favorable, 
now deemed fatal, to the dogma). Those who believed in the trans- 
mutation of species, even so good an observer as Sir Thomas Brown 
(1641) assuring us that with his own eyes he saw a shell-fish barnacle 
turn into a barnacle-goose, found it in the transformation of a speak- 
ing quadruped into a hissing serpent that crawled on his belly. 
Less than a century ago the great authority of Cuvier placed before 
the world the dogma of the fixity of species, applying this to the 
many hundreds of thousands of species which have successively 
peopled the world during long geological ages. Without much 
inquiry the response of this French oracle was so completely en- 


622 


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grafted on Scripture, that a shock was felt when it was assailed by 
the later speculations of Darwin. Once more, many of the friends 
and a few of the enemies of the Bible fancy they can find Darwin’s 
Origin of species summarized in its exordium. Haeckel, though 
himself atheistical, is enthusiastic over the scientific genius of the 
old evolutionist Moses, and writes: “Although Moses looks on the 
results as the direct actions of a constructing creator, yet in his 
theory there lies hidden the ruling idea of a progressive develop- 
ment, and a differentiation of the originally simple matter. We can 
therefore bestow our just and sincere admiration on the Jewish law- 
giver’s grand insight into nature, and his simple and natural hypoth- 
esis of creation, without discovering in it a so-called ‘ divine reve- 
lation ’ ’’ ( Creation , vol. i., p. 38, Appleton’s translation). Romanes 
of the same school accentuates the harmony between Genesis and 
both Geology and Evolution ; but neither of these authors suggests 
how it comes that Moses could anticipate by thousands of years the 
scientific views which have crowned the labors of our generation. 

The Word of God is in no way responsible for the glosses which 
men may place on its statements ; and science has rendered it a 
good service in clearing away an overgrowth of crudities. It is also 
sometimes cleared by the same instrumentality from charges of 
error ; thus we were recently informed by religious writers that the 
Book of Proverbs is inaccurate in its account of the habits of ants, 
though several years ago Moggridge and our own McCook had con- 
firmed its description. We have here a significant lesson in Scrip- 
ture-evidence ; a book produced among the ancient Jews, yet not 
partaking of the gross errors which abound in their other books, 
and in all other ancient books. There are many difficulties in Scrip- 
ture which have not yet been elucidated, especially in those parts 
which we cannot test by contemporaneous records ; but its refer- 
ences to natural phenomena are remarkably sober and truthful ; and 
in this respect it is unique among ancient records. 

This argument is re-enforced by reflecting on the influence of sci- 
entific speculation not merely on false views of religion, but on infi- 
delity itself. The necessary policy of infidels is to be abreast of 
contemporary science, and to press into their service whatever 
branch of science is most popular. But science does not stand still, 
and the book which is up to the acquirements of to-day will soon 
be antiquated. Thus one phase of infidelity must give place to 
another. Not many years ago the favorite speculation favored a 
plurality of human species, the negro being regarded as not a brother 
of his white master. Darwinism gave this theory its quietus, and 
broached an opposite scheme, that man is scarcely worthy to be 


SCIENTIFIC SPECULATION. 


G23 


called a distinct creature, being merely an offshoot of some of the 
catarrhine monkeys. Once more the scientific speculator started 
difficulties, alleging that even if we grant evolution for other beings, 
there are grave scientific objections to its extension to man ; and 
Claus, himself a believer in evolution, says in our best book on 
zoology that the doctrine of man’s evolution by natural selection is 
r ‘ only a deduction from the Darwinian theory.” All attempts to 
find evidence for it have failed, and so far our science is in favor of 
the historical opinion that in man’s creation there was something 
special. As to the world at large the article on “ Geology” in the 
eighth edition of the Encyclopedia Brita?inica, and that on “ Cos- 
mogony,” in Chambers' s Encyclopedia, represent the world as prob- 
ably without beginning or end, and as passing through an eternal 
round of cyclical changes. Later theories favor the notion that it 
is like a great clock that has been wound up (they know not how), 
that from a primeval nebula in unstable equilibrium it has been 
rapidly running down through the dissipation of energy, and will 
continue to run down to some unknown conclusion ; and this view 
appears in the new edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Nay 
more, even Scientific Infidelity is coming to amend its manners : it 
is not bold enough to say that there is no God, or that the world 
was not created out of nothing ; but it trims itself in the presence 
of criticism, so as to go in the garb of monism, or pantheism, or 
agnosticism, doubting rather than denying the essentials of Christi- 
anity. Scientific research compels men to look behind what is seen 
and transitory, and to ask whether there may not be some higher 
and permanent existence of which these are the shadows. 

When speculations broaden out into large generalizations they 
lose their susceptibility of verification, except by the aid of reason- 
ing more or less remote from experience. Thus they drift from 
their scientific moorings, and become the playthings of fancy or of 
the personal animus, of the author. Unless managed with rare abil- 
ity such speculations are of small account within scientific circles. 
But they may gain an adventitious reputation among the laity ; if 
of the apologetic kind, very poor productions may be received as 
valuable contributions to religion ; if sceptical in tone, they may 
seem dangerous, and may excite prejudice against science, though 
in themselves they are not worth attention. It is necessary in such 
cases to draw a distinction between supposed errors in scientific 
deliverances and heresies in religion. The student of science is 
usually not conversant with theological questions, and cannot foresee 
all the inferences that you can draw from his opinions. Nor can 
you enact a scientific creed to limit his liberty of speculating. 


624 


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Fidelity to revealed truth is essential to religion, and a religious 
creed is defensible ; progress into the unknown is the aim of science, 
and the attempt to arrest its movements by a creed would be intol- 
erable. Nor is it possible for any except scientific men to try cases 
of science ; on the contrary, even among scientific men it is only 
the specialists in a particular department that can render a safe 
opinion. Errors here always reflect back on their authors. 

The history of Darwinism is suggestive of the method to be 
avoided as well as of that to be followed. When the Origin of 
Species first appeared, every intelligent reader saw that it was 
crowded with unsolved problems ; but notwithstanding these, it was 
recognized by the ablest men as a book of extraordinary scientific 
merit. I cannot pass sentence on the soundness of its main prin- 
ciple, but I know that it has reorganized science very much for the 
better. It at once gave easy solutions of perplexing problems, put 
classification on a new basis, and marshalled our disjointed knowl- 
edge into a consistent unity ; and the lapse of time, while starting 
new objections against it, has fortified its claims as a working 
hypothesis that is fertile of new discoveries. Nor was it in any way 
opposed to religion, though some men, by putting atheism into their 
definition of evolution, are able to get it out again as part of the 
result. It was only an attempt to show Nature’s (or God’s) way of 
doing things. 

There are two modes of dealing with a case of this kind. We 
may resist the new theory, and stake the authority of Scripture on 
its failure, and even reproach the masters of science because they 
will not surrender to our call. This course was adopted by some, 
and may be estimated from its fruit. “ How comes it,” asked a 
friend of ours of a biologist in one of the foremost universities of 
the Old World, “ that nearly all the biologists of this place are 
sceptical?” “ Because we were taught in school,” was the reply, 
” that if Darwinism is right, then the Bible must be in error ; and 
on coming to college, we found evidence that after all Darwinism is 
right, and we decided accordingly.” The usual opinion among 
students in that place is that if a man aspires to be a biologist he 
cannot be a Christian. Infidelity took advantage of this juncture, 
both friends and enemies of the Bible agreeing that the success of 
evolution would be fatal to religion ; and Christian young men were 
deterred from branches of science that portended ruin to their faith 
or exposed them to suspicion. 

The other way of meeting the case is to acknowledge, so far as 
seems just, the merits of evolution, and the force of arguments in its 
favor, recognizing whatever weakness or objections may be charged 


SCIENTIFIC SPECULATION. 


625 


against it ; to take advantage of the help that it can give us in our 
researches ; to refrain from committing ourselves to or against it, 
till the way be clear ; and above all to resolutely decline to place the 
authority of the Bible in either scale of an uncertainty. The scien- 
tific theory must be decided on its own merits, to be investigated by 
the usual ways ; and the authority of the Word of God, which is 
guaranteed by its own evidence, does not appear to be greatly con- 
cerned with the fate of evolution. 


Princeton College. 


G. Macloskie. 


III. 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 

N OTHING can be more saddening to one who wishes well for 
his kind than the conspicuous indifference and antagonism 
which man, in all time, has shown to truth, its seekers and preachers. 
Impatient Pilates, dismissing debate and justice with the cynical 
query “ What is truth ?” have been legion among men ; and the sin 
of Jerusalem, which “ killed the prophets, and stoned them that 
were sent unto her,” has been repeated with such disheartening fre- 
quency in all lands and times, as to tempt one, in the presence of 
universal sword, and stake, and cross, to adopt Mr. Lowell’s words 
following as a complete statement of the philosophy of history :• - 

“ History’s pages but record 

One death grapple in the darkness ’twixt old systems and the Word ; 

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.” 

Nor is it till history’s atonements have been viewed, and we see the 
‘ ‘ scorn of one century develop into the doubt of succeeding days, 
the wisdom of yesterday, and the child’s lesson of to-day,” that we 
sympathize with conclusions more hopeful for truth’s ultimate 
triumph, and gratefully accept Mr. Lowell’s remaining lines as em- 
bodiment of the truer and more pleasing view : 

“ Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.” 

Then we heartily subscribe both to the poetry and power of Signor 
Balbo’s optimistic conception of History, “ that science in which God 
Himself has not disdained to be a teacher,”* and, with a creed sanc- 
tioned as much by induction as by inspiration, Magna est veritas 
et prevalebit, confidently assert that time’s process will ever indicate 
and vindicate the sacredness of truth and life. 

To the formation of a faith so cheerful a study of the career and 
fate of Giordano Bruno will make valuable contribution. 


* Quel/a scienza nella quale non isdegnb dettare Iddio stesso. Cesare Balbo : Pensieri 
della Storia d' Italia. 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


627 


Two hundred and eighty-seven years ago the streets of Papal 
Rome were crowded with visitors from all quarters of the world. 
Clement VIII. was occupant of the chair of St. Peter, and had pro- 
claimed observance of the Year of Jubilee, instituted three centuries 
before. Attracted by the liberal offer of a century’s indulgence,* 
three million loyal and enterprising Catholics, from all quarters of 
Christendom, undertook the expense of a journey to the Holy City, 
attesting by attendance and enthusiasm the power the Church yet 
wielded eight decades after Luther. To signalize the occasion 
special ceremonies were instituted in the Chiesa del Gesu, and con- 
ducted by the Pontiff in person, attended by a brilliant cohort of 
fifty cardinals. And, as if in direct evidence of the Church’s undi- 
minished power, and of her excommunicative attitude toward heresy, 
an object lesson, for many years in preparation, was given the multi- 
tude of visitors. 

A recreant Dominican, weakened by nine years’ imprisonment, is 
brought from his cell. Strong soldiers, in seeming ironical allusion 
to his weakness, guard him on all sides, and ecclesiastics, vestured 
for a special occasion, accompany his dire convoy toward the Campo 
dei Fiori. Among the foreigners along the route it is whispered that 
Giordano Bruno, the heretic, who had sown poison in the world’s 
intellectual capitals, is about to meet a merited fate. 

Impelled by curiosity, many join the cruel cortege, and, antici- 
pative of an appeal for mercy at the last moment, crowd as near as 
may be to the stake where the soldiery fasten the unresisting monk. 
But their expectation is disappointed ; and the spectacle, designed 
by the Pontiff to intimidate the heretically inclined, becomes to 
some, mayhap, a stimulus toward loyalty to conviction, and to many, 
the birthplace of doubt. Bruno never falters : physical weakness is 
merged in moral strength ; not a cry escapes him as fire consumes 
his quivering flesh ; with thought centred on his convictions, he 
averts his face even from the proffered crucifix, and leaves the world 
with creed uncompromised by the surrender of a single article. 

This was the first year of the seventeenth century, and one might 
have expected that Bruno’s name, spoken by the returning pilgrims, 
would at once have gained wide celebrity and attention in Europe. 
But years passed away, and memory of the man and martyr seemed 
almost forgotten. His books became the “ black swans of litera- 
ture thirty pounds sterling were, paid for a single dialogue in 
England ; and in the minds of many a luckless searcher for his works 
the belief was engendered that persecution extended even to his 


* So Hallam ; and Stringe in his Vita di Clemente VIII. 


628 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


books. But retribution came with this century of rehabilitation. 
Schelling’s christening one of his dialogues* * * § with the name of the 
philosopher of Nola was a stimulus to the study of Bruno, and 
Hamann’s vain inquiry, in three countries, for the dialogues De la 
Causa and De F Infinito, started Wagnerf on the search, resulting, in 
1830, in publication of the Italian works. Four years later Gfrorer^; 
issued a partial collection of the Latin works, and Bartholomess§ 
supplied a wide demand by publication, in 1848, of his two-volume 
work, giving erudite critical estimate of Bruno’s system, and con- 
jectural account of his life. The rise of the Venetians in revolt 
against Austrian rule in the same year provided material for a later 
biography, based on official, statistical sources. While Manin was 
President of the revived Venetian Republic, access was free to libra- 
ries closed during foreign domination. Cesare Foucard took the 
opportunity to copy in the archives of the Savii sopra FErcsia, the 
original records of Bruno’s imprisonment and trial, and upon these 
documents Signor Berti, the first countryman of Bruno to give him 
critical study, bases his masterly biography of 1 868. j| The docu- 
ments, strange to say, contain data for an account of Bruno’s life 
more complete than we possess for that of any of his contemporaries, 
and mainly from his own lips. 

Thus, in the process of two hundred and eighty-seven years, the 
personal evidence which condemned Bruno in the Inquisitorial court 
has become basis for his biography, and furnishes Berti with auto- 
biographical excerpts ingenuous as true. A curious fulfilment, 
surely, of Bruno’s own prophecy : “ La morte in un secolo fa vivo in 
tutti gli altri /”T 

Nor did interest in Bruno die with publication of Signor Berti’s 
first work.** Its favorable reception, on the contrary, warranted the 
issue, in 1880, of a brochure containing documentary evidence sup- 
plementary to that found in the appendix of the first work, and from 
the aggregate sources hereinbefore mentioned, and some others, not 
necessary to be detailed here, Brunnhoferff prepared his book of 


* Bruno : oder iib. das gottl. u. nat. Princip der Dinge. 

f Adolph Wagner : Opere di Giordano Bruno. Leipzig, 1830. 

( A. Fr. Gfrorer : Jordani Bruni Scripta quae Latine conficit omnia. Stuttgart, 
1836. 

§ Bartholomess : Vie de Giordano Bruno. Paris, 1848. 

|| Vita di Giordano Bruno da Nola , scritta da Domenico Berti. Firenze, 1868. 

TT Opere Italiane. 

** Documenti intorni a Giordano Bruno. D. Berti. Roma, 1880. 
ft Giordano Bruno's Weltanschauung und Verhdngniss, von Dr. Hermann Brunn- 
hofer. Leipzig, 1882. 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


629 


1882 — the third signal service and honor the German rage for rehabili- 
tation has done Bruno’s memory. 

Nor had history yet fulfilled all her purpose toward Bruno. In 
his History of the Conflict between Science and Religion , written in 
1873, Mr. Draper wrote with the mantle of true prophecy on his 
shoulders when, in speaking of Bruno’s murder, he said : “ Perhaps 
the day approaches when posterity will offer an expiation for this 
great ecclesiastical crime, and a statue of Bruno be unveiled under 
the dome of St. Peter’s.”* Three years before these words were 
penned, Victor Emmanuel entered Rome, and, by the plebiscite of 
October 2d, 1870, the city abolished the rule of the Pope within her 
walls. To the events leading up to this crowning achievement of 
the Italian War of Independence Bruno’s name is not without a 
nexus. It was before his monument in Naples, that the students of 
the University, in 1865, burned that encyclical letter of the Pope, 
with the syllabus condemnatory of eighty specific so-called ” errors 
in religion, philosophy, and politics,” which made revolting Italians 
whet their swords still sharper, and gave increased vim, and ultimate 
victory, to their protest against secular ecclesiasticism. Exultant in 
the success of intervening years, it thus became the ambition of 
free Italians to honor Bruno in Rome herself, the city of his mar- 
tyrdom. 

On a building in the Via Quirinale, where, sixteen years ago, 
a poster could not have been placed without preliminary inspection 
by a Papal officer, there was affixed till recently a flaming advertise- 
ment calling for subscriptions to the Bruno Monument Fund. In 
historical justice to Bruno’s connection with countries other than 
his own, by the pilgrimages he made, and the influences of the 
philosophy he formulated, there were many foreigners on the com- 
mittee having the fund in charge, and, on the 17th February last, 
thanks to generous responses to the call for subscriptions, Draper’s 
prophecy was, in spirit at least, most wonderfully fulfilled, by the 
erection of a monument to Bruno on the day of his death, and the 
scene of his sufferings, f 

The shaft over the spot of Bruno’s martyrdom is a monument to 
many things : to justice done him personally ; to the progress of 
Italian freedom ; but it will not fulfil its whole purpose if, beneath 


* International Scientific Series. Vol. xii., p. 181. 

f “ More than $6000 has already been raised for a monument to Giordano Bruno, 
and it is expected that the structure will be dedicated on February 17th next, the an- 
niversary of his death. It will stand in the Campo dei Fiori, on the very spot of his 
martyrdom.” New York Tribune, February, 1886. 

A later issue of the same paper announced the completion of arrangements. 


630 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


the inscriptions on its face, we fail to read the double truth of all 
history, that 

“ The thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns,” 
and that, while 

“ The mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small.” 

Bruno’s life was so largely a protest, his dialogues are so largely 
satire, his philosophy so much more controversial than constructive, 
that a review of the Italy of his day must precede the account of 
his career and creed. 

The modern world, birthed by the capture of Constantinople by 
the Mohammedans, was almost a century old when Bruno was born 
in 1548. The Greek teachers, with tenets so alien to the faith of 
the prophet, fled westward, to find in Rome a city of refuge and 
in Nicholas V. an enthusiastic Maecenas. The encouragement in 
high place thus given the Humanists, induced the addition of Greek to 
their curriculum, and in a short time Pontiff, prince and professor, 
were mutually emulative in study of the ancient classics. The power 
of quotation became the aim and fame of the literary and philosophic 
man ; and agreement with the utterances of the past the touch- 
stone of truth. Not even the discovery, by Columbus, of a new 
continent on the earth, with its immediate corollary so fatal to the 
physical conceptions of the time, nor the bolder announcement, by 
Copernicus, of great archipelagoes of existence in the heavens, could 
disturb the tendency of the day. America’s existence, so far as fa- 
vorable to increase of Papal revenue, was at once recognized, but cos- 
mological inferences, fatal to Ptolemaism and prevalent philosophy, 
were scorned and scourged as apocryphal and heretical. With the 
teachings and traditions of the Church the philosophy and litera- 
ture of Paganism gained parity of authority, and the mental map of 
the prominent and powerful continued to contain only “ the world 
as known to the ancients.” 

Of the new St. Peter’s, which Nicholas V. had begun, the gods 
of Greece and Rome took unchallenged possession, and made it a 
Pantheon, thoroughly Pagan in influence and 'endeavor. To the 
ears of many of the popes “ Jupiter sounded better than Jehovah 
in their sermons the Christ of Art was Apollo, and the Virgin, 
Minerva.* 

Meantime the vices of old Rome were imitated as successfully, if 
not as avowedly, as the roll of Ciceronian periods, and history re- 
peated in many of the popes the combined cruelty and lust of 
Nero. Sixtus IV. anticipatively sanctioned murder committed in 

* J. Addington Symonds : Age of the Despots , p. 370. 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


631 


the very midst of the holiest offices of the Church, and personally 
approved the intoning of the Incarnatus as signal for the sacrilege 
and crime.* Alexander VI. kept within the Vatican a harem 
which even the contemporary Sultan might have envied, and de- 
lighted a soul in which pity and purity were alike unknown, by 
adding murder and massacre to lust.f Leo X., generous patron of 
learning as he was, was yet an atheist in creed, and a diseased liber- 
tine in life. Adrian VI., who succeeded in 1522, possessed the 
learning requisite for election to the succession, but lacking the 
levity and lust indispensable to popularize his primacy, Rome, dis- 
gusted with his Puritanism, rejoiced that he died within a year.:}: 
Thus, while observant and reasoning men, such as Machiavelli, 
criticised the Papacy, declaring, in words like those of his diary, 
that, “ In proportion as we approach nearer to the Roman Church, 
do we find less piety prevail among the nations,” most Italians 
failed to notice “ the irreconcilable incongruity between the popes’ 
profession of the primacy of Christianity, and their easy Epicurean 
philosophy. Ӥ If they noticed it, and were prudent, they were 
silent, like Machiavelli ; if they noticed it and voiced their criti- 
cisms, they met the fate of Savonarola and of Bruno. 

But coupled with the pedantry, the idolatry of antiquity, and 
aversion to research of this age, and associated with its incestuous 
conduct, was a zeal for creed and dogma with which Bruno was to 
come into more direct contact and conflict. Alexander VI., dead 
as he was to the spirit and interests of Christianity, “ never flinched 
in formal orthodoxy, and the measures which he took for riveting 
the chains of superstition upon the people were calculated with the 
military firmness of a Napoleon.” || It was he who established 
censorship of the press, and he but represented in this the deliber- 
ate policy of the Church, which at this time systematically anathe- 
matized every extender of man’s horizon of thought. Eight years 
before Bruno’s birth, the Order of Jesuits, with its peculiar mode of 
commending the tenets of the Church, was sanctioned by Paul III., 
in hope the new order might prop up the tottering authority of the 
Vatican. The Inquisition’s operations, during the same Primacy, 
were extended to new areas ; and, as if in unhallowed preparation and 
prophecy of Bruno’s fate at its hands, Naples received this ecclesi- 
astical Star Chamber, not without protest, but a year before his 
birth. But further measures seemed necessary to check the con- 
tagion of Protestantism, and, in 1559, when Bruno was but eleven 

* Symonds : Age of the Despots , pp. 330-33. (London edition.) 

f Ibid. , p. 346, p. 376. t Ibid., pp. 376-77. 

§ Ibid., p. 320. J Ibid., p. 351., 


632 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


years old, and just entering upon his studies in Naples, the Council 
of Trent confirmed the Index Expurgatorius , supplying basis for the 
charge of reading prohibited literature later to be laid against the 
young monk. 

Bruno’s life, therefore, marks the contest between the faith of 
antiquity and scholasticism, of which Aristotle and Aquinas were 
standards, and the nascent faith of the newer world, of which Cusa 
and Copernicus were philosopher and founder. 

Here, accordingly, we begin an outline of Bruno’s life, will trace 
his attitude toward his age, review his system, and estimate his 
claims to gratitude and greatness as an advancer and anticipator 
of modern thought. 

Filippo Bruno was born in 1548, at Nola, a city of Campania, 
distant about twenty miles from Naples. In imperial days the city 
had shared with Pompeii the prestige of Rome’s holiday patronage ; 
and it was the soft air of Nola that both Octavius and Augustus 
breathed in their last years. If Pompeii was the Nice, Nola was the 
Mentone of the Empire. Throughout the Middle Ages aristocratic 
memories clung about the city, and the recent name and fame of 
two eminent sons, Albertino Gentile, the jurist, and Merliano, “ the 
Neapolitan Michael Angelo,” made Nolan birthright, in Bruno’s day, 
a heritage still prouder. Ambrogio Leone, the historiographer of 
the place, exhausts all the Italian diminutives of endearment and 
augmentatives of admiration in description of its clime, its history 
and society ; and the late monograph on Bruno,* by Mariano, is 
little but a prose poem celebrative of the beauty of the region, with 
Bruno’s growing name attached as advertisement. 

From Bruno’s own satire upon British boorishness, we know it 
was his lot to move among a society characterized by all the urban- 
ity and elegance native to Nola ; and it was this early association, 
and companionships as eclectic, mayhap, as that of his father for 
the poet Tansillo, that made the persecuted Dominican, in later years, 
a gentleman welcome in the courtly society of France and England. 

An influence not less potent in the moulding of his mind was the 
natural beauty of the region. For him, so much of whose time was 
to be passed in learning, as a pilgrim, from sunrise and light, and sun- 
set and night, and whose task it was, as the Wordsworth of his day, 
to call pedants from their dusty tomes into the study roofed by 
God’s sky, there was infinite suggestion in that soft Italian South, 
where ” God has driven every cloud from the sky, and all dissonance 
from the language,” and sonnet and song are spontaneities of clime. 


* Raffaele Mariano: Giordano Bruno, la Vita e /' Uomo. Roma, 1881. 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


633 


Before Bruno’s day, as Mr. Symonds so eloquently says, “ Man had 
lived enveloped in a cowl. He had not seen the beauty of the 
world, or had seen it only to turn aside and cross himself and pray. 
Like St. Bernard travelling along the shores of Lake Leman, and 
noticing neither the azure of the waters, nor the luxuriance of the 
vines, nor the radiance of the mountains with their robe of sun and 
snow, but bending a thought-burdened forehead over the neck of 
his mule — even like this monk, humanity had passed along the high- 
ways of the world and had not known that they were sight-worthy, 
or that life is a blessing.”* It was to be the great service of Bruno 
so repeatedly to reiterate his sympathy with the Psalmist’s words : 
“ Thou Lord, hast made me glad through thy works. I will 
triumph in the works of thy hands,” as to call men forth to imbibe 
the ‘‘optimism of the breathing air,” and that the neighborhood of 
Nola had much to do in inspiring this endeavor, his works and words 
admit no question. Nola is both standard of comparison and 
synonym of perfection to him : “ Nolan,” he christens his philoso 
phy ; London contents him because “ kindness makes it Nola to 
him,” and Nola, gradito dal cielo, e posta insieme talvolta capo e destra 
di quest o globo, governatrice e dornitrice de l' alt re generazioni, is, in his 
own grateful apostrophe, Maestrae madre di tutte le virtudi , discipline 
ed umanitadi. 

With influences of Nola, those of Naples began to be joined when 
the boy was but eleven years old. Two teachers, one of them an 
Augustinian, gave him instruction in the customary curriculum, f 
and it was the influence of this Augustinian, Teofilo da Varrano, a 
metaphysician of renown in his day, which decided Bruno’s bent 
toward metaphysical studies, and induced him to attend the public 
lectures of the University in that department. Mr. Lewes is un- 
doubtedly wrong in his explanation of the next step of Bruno’s life— X 
entrance into the monastery of San Domenico — as a check purposely 
imposed on his ardent and already doubting disposition. It as- 
sumes a possession of prudence and knowledge impossible in a boy 
of sixteen ; and Bruno has not left us without indication that he 
entered upon his novitiate with attitude thoroughly orthodox toward 
the philosophies and faiths of the day ; and that, if his mind was 
pregnant with doubt, the doubts were birthed, at least, in San 
Domenico. He chose the Church because he was a believer, and 


* Symonds, ut supra , p. 14. 

t Languages, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, music, logic, poetry, astrology, physics, 
metaphysics, and ethics. 

t History of Philosophy. Vol. ii. p. 92, “allured by the contrast monastic life offered 
to his own character.” 

41 


634 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


study a delight ; he chose San Domenico because philosophy was 
his passion, and the memory of Thomas Aquinas beckoned him to 
cloisters wherein the footsteps of the great schoolman had been 
wont to echo. 

But if Bruno began his novitiate as an orthodox Catholic and 
schoolman, it was not long ere he developed doubts. In three years 
he gave evidence of kinship sympathetic with Thomas Didymus 
rather than with Thomas Aquinas. At eighteen a process was 
ordered against him, and avoided only through the leniency of his 
superior. The heresy consisted of advice to a young brother to read 
the “ Fathers,” rather than the “ Seven Joys of the Virgin,” and of 
disrespect shown some images of the saints. The doubter, who was 
in his last days to reject even the last and dearest symbol, the cruci- 
fix, had already taken his first steps toward beliefs alien and antag- 
onistic to the Christian creed. 

The process against Bruno, abandoned though it had been, ex- 
posed him to suspicion, and forced him, in the remaining years of 
his cloister life, to study in secrecy. He was not yet ready openly 
to attack Aristotle, “ the Goliath of the age,” and while we must 
not think of him as gaining support with absolute hypocrisy through 
the seven years of his monastic life, he certainly was indulging the 
freedom of a truth-seeker, in perusal of books condemned in the 
Index Expurgatorias. The quotations and references in Bruno’s 
books betray an omnivorous reader. He did not neglect the Scrip- 
tures, but the imagination and audacity of his exegesis recall Renan 
and Tolstoi rather than Augustine or Origen. Citations from the 
Fathers, from Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, the Neo-Platonists, 
Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Cardano, evidence acquaintance with 
a wide exegetic and philosophic literature. 

Among the classic poets, Virgil, as a Pythagorean, was his favor- 
ite : Tansillo, as a Protestant in belief and a Copernican in science, 
among the modern. He had knowledge also of Arabic and Persian 
lore, mediated, probably, through Alexandria. 

But there is a trio of thinkers as yet unmentioned to whom Bruno 
was under special obligations, and of whom mention must now be 
made. They are the three who, in his own estimate, left him 
largest legacies of truth, and if he cites most of the writers above 
enumerated, with criticism as main purpose, he mentions Raymun- 
dus Lullus, the Cardinal Cusa, and Copernicus of Thorn, only to 
commend them, and record his gratitude. 

The life of Lullus is a romance which tempts the pen, but it must 
suffice here merely to outline his career and mention the nature of 
Bruno's indebtedness to him. Repentance for a youth as dissipated 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


635 


as Augustine’s was the inspiration of his mission. Reclaimed by the 
purity of his Majorcan home life, he left his family and all, to pre- 
pare, on the solitary top of Monte Randa, for the conversion of the 
infidel to Christianity. His untutored acquisition of Arabic and 
Latin was marvellous almost as the gift of tongues. Leaving his 
hermit hut he passed to Paris, and published his book, the Magna 
Ars, an arbitrary mnemonic for the unification and acquisition of 
knowledge, inspired by the design and hope of converting Islam to 
Christianity. From Paris, impelled by a voice within, he .went, 
through many perils, to Tunis, and there personally strove to confute 
the followers of the prophet. Forced to flee thence for his life, he 
returned to Europe, and found followers in Naples, ere passing 
through France, Spain, and Italy, to establish, in rapid pilgrimages, 
schools for instruction in his great art. Returned to the soil of 
Islam, he continued to confute, with tongue and pen, the Moham- 
medan infidel, sending books to Europe for publication meanwhile, 
and preaching with enthusiasm amid privations and persecutions the 
most extreme, till, at eighty years of age, he reached Majorca in 
1315, and died in intense agony from maltreatment at the hands of 
the Mohammedans of Tunis. 

It was the fate of the imaginative Art of Lullus to be appropriated 
by both infidel and faithful after his death, and to incur at last the 
opprobrium and excommunication of the Church, which had prima- 
rily protected it. Its alchemistic ingredients attracted mystical 
minds, such as Paracelsus ; its missionary inspiration continued its 
popularity among Church teachers, such as Domenico da Siena. 
With the logic of Ramus its dialectic secured equal favor, till the en- 
thusiasm of its disciples elevated it to rank superior even to the mys- 
teries of faith, and aGiunta of twenty masters recommended Gregory 
XI. to prohibit it.* The Council of Trent, in 1563, the first year of 
Bruno’s novitiate, confirmed this decision, and perhaps stimulated 
the doubting Dominican to pry into its prohibited pages. 

Bruno almost exhausts the superlatives in speaking of the “ Art ” 
of Lullus ; and the adulation is so honest that Berti ascribes much 
of the turgidity and extravagance of his Latin style to familiarity 
with so faulty a model. 

This, then, was one of the trio to whom Bruno gave hearty atten- 
tion, and that his admiration was limitless, his imitations and appro- 
priations of the Lullic system would leave no doubt, had we not the 


* “ Doctrina Raymundi Lulli excellit omnium aliorum doctrinam in bonitate et veri- 
tate etiam Augustini. Theologi nostri temporis nihil sciunt de vera theologia.” 
From the Directorium Inquisiticms. 


636 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


phrase by which he characterizes Lullus in one of his books, divinus 
ccrte genius rudi incultoque insinuavit eremitce. 

While Bruno derived his dialectic from Lullus, he gained his meta- 
physic from the Cardinal Cusa — the fisherman from the Moselle — who 
received investiture with every honor of the Church, save the su- 
preme tiara. Community of method in linking metaphysics and 
mathematics makes Cusa an anticipator of Bruno, as was Bruno of 
Leibnitz. Bruno, therefore, in gratitude acknowledges indebtedness 
to him for ideas more fully developed by the third teacher he 
canonizes — Copernicus, the seer of Thorn. 

Copernicus published his book but five years before Bruno’s birth, 
and its ideas, mayhap, were a subject of conversation in the boy’s 
home. But Bruno was slow to desert the traditional beliefs, and a 
passage from La Cena de le Ceneri, giving the history of his attitude 
to the new science, may be here inserted : “ Years ago,” he says, 
“I held Copernicanism simply true; when younger and less in- 
structed I regarded it as probable ; when I was but a novice in specu- 
lative affairs, I held it as so thoroughly false , as to wonder that 
Aristotle had not only deigned to make mention of it, but devoted 
more than half of his work on the heavens and earth to demonstrate 
that the earth does not move.” * 

The faith so slowly reached, however, Bruno held with unflinch- 
ing tenacity, nor is there anything of the timid humility with which 
Copernicus introduced his system to Paul III., in the Brunonian 
apologetic for the new astronomy. Copernicus apologized for 
Ptolemy’s errors by suggesting “ the heavens had, mayhap, changed 
since his day Bruno impeaches the sanity of Peripatetics and 
Ptolemaists. Copernicus is the new Columbus who has shown there 
is no Ultima Thule to existence. While Bruno is thus grateful to 
Copernicus, however, he does not hesitate to criticise him for atten- 
tion to mathematics to the exclusion of metaphysics, and the criti- 
cism may be taken as prophecy of the character of the Brunonian 
system. It will be a philosophic system founded on the new science, 
and in conflict, therefore, with Ptolemaism and Peripateticism. The 
metaphysical conceits of Cusa will be joined with the mathematical 
conclusions of Copernicus ; and in much of the phraseology, as al- 
ready intimated, influences of the Lullic dialect may be anticipated. 
In the scientific elements of the system, Bruno’s imagination will 
leap where the mathematics of Copernicus were lame to carry him, 
and the universe will be widened. 

Nor is it difficult to anticipate, to return now to Bruno’s monastic 


* Italian Works. Vol. i., p. 179. 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


637 


life, that the Dominican, secretly studying prohibited Lullus, and 
science and philosophy in arms against the Church creed, will soon 
come to open rupture with his superiors. The expectation receives 
instant justification. 

Bruno gained his full orders in 1572.* * * § In San Bartolomeo, near 
Naples, he chanted mass in the same year ; and, after a tour among 
neighboring monasteries, returned to San Domenico. He was now 
a confirmed doubter, nor could he longer restrain open avowal of his 
sentiments. In 1576 process was again instituted against him, and 
the distance he had gone from traditional landmarks may be esti- 
mated by the extent of the impeaching indictment, containing one 
hundred and thirty charges. Truth is, Bruno had already, in all 
probability, justified the charge made against him in the letter of 
Scioppius.f that there was no heresy, either of ancient or modern 
times, with which he had not expressed sympathy. Between him, 
a Copernican, and his Ptolemaic accusers, there was difference, wide 
as the universe, in science ; between them, Schoolmen in philoso- 
phy, and him, a rationalist, there was no premiss for agreement ; 
between them, blindly obedient to existent authority in religion, 
and himself, already inimical to all positive religions, there could be 
only war. Bruno himself openly declared the war by defence of 
Arianism, and when to this charge a formidable file of kindred 
heresies was added, he fled.:}: 

This was in 1576. Gregory XIII., the reformer of the calendar, 
was then pope ; and from his professed interest in science Bruno 
hoped for something-, and turned his fugitive footsteps toward 
Rome. But report of his heresies came from Naples ; a new indict- 
ment was drawn up, and, warned by the fate of Carranza, § Bruno 
fled again, and reached Genoa by sea. He now abandoned the 
Dominican habit, and reassumed his baptismal name of Filippo, ex- 
changed for Giordano when he entered the priesthood. 

Genoa offering no means of support, he removed to Noli, where 
persecuted Dante, three centuries before, had received hospitality ; 


* The following is the chronological order of Bruno's cloister life; 1563, Vesture; 
1564, Profession; 1569, Sub-diaconate ; 1570, Diaconate; 1572, Priesthood. 

f See infra. 

X There Was animus against the Schoolmen in the method of Bruno’s defence. His 
prosecutor called the Arians “ ignorant" because they did not employ scholastic 
phrases ; Bruno replied that though they did not they conveyed their ideas quite as 
clearly. 

§ Formerly one of the most conservative Catholics in the Council of Trent and arch- 
bishop of Toledo, but from 1565 to 1576 a prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo. Prose- 
cuted by the Inquisition, he was forced to abjure, and died, May, 1576, in St. Maria 
Minerva. 


(538 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


and there Bruno for five months taught grammar to a class of boys, 
and lectured on “ the sphere” to some young men of the place. 
Thence he wandered through Savona to Turin ; and Berti draws an 
effective contrast between his life-path and that of Tasso, present 
in Turin at the same time : “ Tasso, a Christian, and cantor of the 
cross ; Bruno, averse to every religious symbol. The former, weary 
and worn by the world, finishes his days in conventual quiet ; the 
latter commences in the convent, and dies at the stake with eyes 
averted from the crucifix.” 

From Turin, impelled by poverty, he moved on to Venice, and, 
with a view to self-support, published a book on the “ Signs of the 
Times,” after submitting it to inspection by a brother of his former 
order. If the book exists, it is now, with many other of Bruno’s 
works, in the archives of the Vatican, and access to them has not 
yet been accorded. The money from this publication exhausted, 
Bruno again travelled in search of sustenance ; and, in October, 
1576, after short halts at Padua, Brescia, Milan, and Turin, while 
the pestilence was decimating Italy, took the mountain pass of Mont 
Cenis and reached Geneva. Calvin was twelve years dead, but the 
ecclesiastical republic he had founded was strictly and sympatheti- 
cally administered by Galeazzo Carraciolo ;* and Bruno was forced 
to divest himself of the Dominican habit, reassumed on advice of 
some liberal members of his order for purposes of travel. By econ- 
omy and with charity, however, he managed to manufacture a fit- 
tingly sober outfit, and for two months and a half worked as a proof- 
reader in Geneva. 

But Bruno was as little Calvinistic as Catholic ; nor could he long 
remain in the city without being questioned concerning his creed. 
With the premisses of the philosophy to which he was already com- 
mitted, however, the choice of this earth as elect planet of the uni- 
verse for display of the divine perfections could have no reconcilia- 
tion. Insistence upon faith as the condition of salvation, and with 
seeming exclusion of good works, was as repugnant to him as a cos- 
mological Calvinism, for Bruno’s criticism and criterion of religions 
already proportioned their worth to their ethical incentive and 
effect. The “ reformed ” religion he, therefore, called “ deformed,” 
scorned all proselytizing overtures, and in 1577 left Geneva for 
Lyons. 

Here he hoped for employment in the printing-houses where 

* One of the most remarkable of the Reformers, by birth Marquis of Vico, and a 
relative of Paul III. A sermon by Pietro Martire Vermigli, on the Pauline doctrine of 
justification, converted him to enthusiastic Protestantism. He voluntarily disinherited 
himself, left Italy, and refused even his father’s solicitations to return. 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


639 


Henry Stephens and Servetus had worked in the capacity of proof- 
readers. But no employment offered, and Bruno bent his steps 
toward Toulouse, the second university of France. Ten thousand 
students were there ; and, under a regency which had admitted the 
agnostic Sanchez to lecture it was not difficult for Bruno to gain a 
hearing.* * * § In two months a chair was vacated, and Bruno was suc- 
cessful enough to exchange the Master of Arts degree, taken on en- 
trance, for that of Doctor, and to secure the position. For two 
years, therefore, he lectured here on the De Anima of Aristotle, 
the theme of the age, imposing on himself, however, certain debat- 
ing limitations lest he should too openly provoke the authorities. f 
Vanini’s fate, a few decades later, warranted this caution.:}: 

In 1579 he removed to Paris and utilized the privilege of his doc- 
torial degree by teaching in the Sorbonne. Here he took as theme 
“ thirty divine attributes, ” selected from the Summa of Thomas 
Aquinas, § and was soon made extraordinary professor by King 
Henry III., whose favor he further acquired by a book on the Lullic 
Art, dedicated with extravagant servility. || An ordinary professor- 
ship offered him he refused, as it entailed the celebration of mass. 
The refusal is not less creditable to his courage than to his convic- 
tions, for St. Bartholomew was but seven years back, and the cry 
“ La messe on la mort !” had but lately ceased to echo through the 
streets. 

It was with Bruno’s arrival in Paris that his publications of im- 
portance began. The De Umbris Idearum , already referred to, is 
mingled Neo-Platonism and Lullism ; but we defer reference to the 
passages indicative of Bruno’s creed to a later period of this paper. 
Two other Lullic books ** followed. The II Candelaio , “ a comedy by 
Bruno the Nolan, academician of no academy,” published in 1582, 
is a dramatic satire upon Bruno’s age. Astrology and avarice are 
strongly satirized in the persons of Bartolomeo and Bonifacio ; but 
it is upon Manfurio, the pedant, that the whole weight of Bruno’s 


* The era was a sceptical one in France. Montaigne was yet living, and was visiting 
Tasso as Bruno was leaving Italy. 

f Conditiones disputationis, from Lullus. 

t Julius Caesar Vanini, Neapolitan, burned, 1619, at Toulouse, for atheism. 

§ It is curious to note that the new edition of Thomas Aquinas, issued by the Papal 
press, has kept pace with the progress of the Bruno Monument Fund. 

|| “ Excellent luminary of the people, reflected through pre-eminence of mind and 
loftiness of genius most renowned !” 

TT The Lullic books all claim the attention of an esoteric circle. The De Umbris has 
the dedicatory caveat : Umbra profunda sumus, ne vos vexetis , inepti. Non vos sed 
dodos tam grande quarit opus. 

** Cantus Circceus , and De Compendiosa Arckiledura et Complemento Artis Lulli. 


640 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


invective and sarcasm is expended. Here, as in his philosophic dia- 
logues, Bruno is merciless on the “ prolegomenists, glossers, com- 
posers of books deserving well of the republic, constructors, adden- 
dists, methodicians, scholiasts, translators, interpreters, compendi- 
arists, new dialecticians, appearers with a new grammar, a lexicon, 
a varia lectio, approvers of authors, an authentic approved — with 
epigrams Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, prefixed to their books, 
wherefore this one and that one arealike consecrated to immortality 
as benefactors of this and future centuries — unfortunate centuries 
thus obliged to dedicate them statues and colossi in the Mediter- 
ranean seas, in the ocean, and other uninhabitable places.” * * * § 

In passages such as this Bruno pours out the Italian Billingsgate 
on the pedantry of the time, and declares himself enemy of the 
worship of antiquity at the expense of the present. That he re- 
garded pedantry as the greatest vice of the day, the retention of 
Manfurio, under other names, f throughout all his dialogues, abun- 
dantly proves. If the marquis was the “ plastron of Molieire,” the 
pedant was the plastron of Bruno. \ The comedy gives insight also 
into Bruno’s familiarity with the religious insincerity of the time. 
Here his sarcasm borders on blasphemy, and the obscenity of the 
whole plot, which turns on adultery, was possible only to mediaeval 
Italian comedy.§ It was the day of the prostitution of literature to 
such infernal purposes as Leonardo Bruni’s ” Hermaphrodite,” and 
we need not marvel, perhaps, that a page of Bruno’s play could not 
be presented in these times till its phraseology was wholesomely 
fumigated. Happily, however, between Bruno as a dramatist and 
Bruno as a philosopher, there is divergence as wide as between the 
Shakespeare of ” Venus and Adonis” and the Shakespeare of 
“ Hamlet.” Yet even many of Bruno’s philosophic dialogues would 
need expurgation ere they could be placed in tender hands ; and 
Berti’s assertion is well founded that, “ In all the philosophic works 
the writer of comedy is present, as the author of the philosophic 
works is present in the comedy.” 


* II Candelaio. Proprologo, p. 15. 

f Eg. as Prudenzio in La Cena de le Ceneri ; as Polinnio in De la Causa ; as Fracas- 
toro in De P Infinito. And the Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo is a tremendous satire upon 
classicism. 

t Demogeot, Histoire de la littlrature Franfaise, p. 422. 

§ The astrologist, eg., manufactures a pulvis Christi and sells it at an enormous profit. 
He thus speaks of money, A chi manca il danaio, tnanca la vita istessa. Ques/o da la vita 
temporale e I'eterna ancora, etc. Sanguino says of one of the rogues un scelerato conic 
costui sarrebbe predicatore se avesse studiato. Scaramore defends prostitution on 
Church grounds. Ascanio suggests annual absolution. When we recall that the comedy 
was partly written in Bruno’s cloister days its familiarity with sexual vice is suggestive. 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


641 


We now pass to Bruno’s connection with England. He lived for 
over two years in London as the guest of Signor Castelnuovo, am- 
bassador of France. This was almost the only time in Bruno’s life 
wherein there was leisure to formulate his system. His polemic 
pilgrimages from land to land largely disturbed constructive labor. 
In the vicissitudes of precarious boarding life, he was liable to relapse 
into Lullism. The London visit was his freest and clearest period. 
Contact with refined society in Castelnuovo’s home was no doubt of 
great service to him. Sir Philip Sydney and Fulke Greville were 
his intimate friends, and before the execution of Mary Queen of 
Scots disturbed the amity existent between France and England,* 
he saw something, too, of the court of Elizabeth. Had he under- 
stood English he might have met yet more leaders, but with the ac- 
complished Sydney, studious as Spenser of Italian literature, he 
needed only his native tongue ; and the playwright Shakespeare, 
working his way upward while Bruno was in London, f had not yet 
made the acquirement of our language a literary aim. Bacon, too, 
was just beginning his marvellous career. 

Though Bruno’s host was a zealous Catholic, his guest was al- 
lowed plenary option to attend or neglect the domestic mass, and 
the option is eloquent both of Bruno’s character and of Castel- 
nuovo’s liberality. Castelnuovo resolved religion into the two con- 
stituents of “humility and simplicity,’’ and seems to have been 
averse to “ fixing the faith of ages with a show of hands.’’ 

Bruno had two controversies on his English visit. One was at 
Oxford. Immediately after reaching England he had directed a 
Lullic book:}: to the Chancellor of the University, and, with applica- 
tion for permission to lecture, grandiloquently announced himself 
“ the awakener of the dormant, and conqueror of presumptuous 
ignorance, who is neither Italian nor British, male nor female, 
bishop nor prince, professor nor day laborer, monk nor layman, 
but a citizen and resident of the world, child of father sun and 
mother earth.” Bruno gained admission, however, and passed into 
halls where a five-shillings fine was imposed for every whisper against 
Aristotle, § to lecture on the “ immortality of the soul,” and “ the 
quintuple sphere.” 

That the ideas advanced here were anticipative of Darwin, we 
shall see when we come to review the books of the period. There 
could not but be conflict, and when the Polish Prince, Alberto di 
Alasco, came to visit England, the contest reached its climax. In 

* Castelnuovo was an ardent sympathizer with the unfortunate queen. She was god- 
mother of his daughter Marie de Castelnuovo. 

f 1584. t Explicatio triginta Sigillorum, etc. § Lewes, Hist, of Phil., p. 93. 


642 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


the intellectual combats instituted in honor of the Prince, Bruno 
threw down the gauntlet in defence of Copernicus, and fifteen times, 
he tells us, brought his opponent to the dust. This astronomical 
debate was resumed in London at the house of Fulke Greville, and 
here again Bruno claims to have silenced his adversary. 

But we must now hastily outline the remainder of Bruno’s life 
and return to review the books* of the London period, which chroni- 
cle the statements of belief he advanced both at Oxford and at Fulke 
Greville’s table. 

Castelnuovo quitted London in 1585, and Bruno with him. Con- 
scious of the power acquired in his English sojourn, he again rushed 
into the lists of controversy in Paris. The later confessor of Ravail- 
lac the regicide was then University regent, and to him Bruno 
directed one hundred and twenty theses against Aristotle. His 
friend Hennequin undertook a defence of his position, and attracted 
great attention by the rhetorical glow of his presentation of the new 
astronomic metaphysic. On this Parisian visit Bruno applied for 
readmission to orders, and the fact reads strangely. It means, how- 
ever, not that he was Catholic in creed at this time — phrases of the 
Spaccio destroy this theory — but that there was a languid desire 
within him to replace, by the quiet of conventual life, the freedom 
from care he had known in the London home. And while Catholi- 
cism had ceased to have evidential value for him, it had ethical rec- 
ommendations reconciling it with his theory of religion. The appli- 
cation was, however, refused. 

Girding himself anew, therefore, and summoning courage by the 
motto of his hardships : “ Ne malis cede , sed contra audentior ito !" f 
he passed into Germany, and asked a hearing at Marburg. The re- 
quest was discourteously refused, and Bruno was aroused sufficiently 
to make wrathful comment and reply. 

In Lutheran Wittenberg more hospitable treatment awaited him, 
and for two years he lectured there with full liberty. But, with 
prospect of the Calvinistic rule of Christian I. of Saxony, Bruno 
feared interference, and voluntarily resigned his chair. In a eulo- 
gistic adieu he called Wittenberg the “Athens of Germany, ’’ and 
Luther the “ Hercules of reformers.” 

Bruno now went to Prague, a Catholic city, and conciliated the 


* These are : La Cena de le Ceneri ; De la Causa Principio ed Uno ; De l In fini to ; 
Universo e Mondi. Dedicated to Castelnuovo. Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante , Ca- 
bala del Cavallo Pegaseo ; Degli Eroici Furori. Dedicated to Sir Philip Sydney, 
f Opere Italians, p. 195, vol. ii. 

t Wittenberg books: De Lampade combinatorial De Lampade venatoria ; Adversus 
A rislotelicos. 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


643 


favor of Rudolph II., who was addicted to alchemistic and astrolog- 
ical study, by two Lullic books. To these, with a view to self- 
support, he soon added a long thesis* against the mathematicians 
and philosophers, and Rudolph rewarded the issue with a handsome 
honorarium. 

No opportunity for teaching offering, he next removed to Helm- 
stadt, and took advantage of the death of the duke to pronounce an 
extempore oration, and secure favor, and a liberal fee, from his suc- 
cessor. f On this he lived for some time, but the local pastor rose 
in church within two months after his arrival, and placed him under 
such ecclesiastical bann that he was forced to leave. 

To Frankfort, centre of the book trade of Germany, he now bent 
his way, with publication in view. Arrived there he found lodging 
in a convent, and issued two books with dedications appreciative of 
the Duke of Helmstadt’s kindness.:}: 

Bruno’s Frankfort residence of six months was characterized by 
such literary activity as to link it with London in the history of his 
constructive work. In London all the Italian books (stamped with 
the Venetian seal to increase their sale) were published ; Frankfort’s 
presses printed the most important Latin works. The intellectual 
commerce of Bruno with the frequenters of Frankfort’s book-fairs 
now hastened the tragedy of his life. 

In 1591, Ciotto, a Venetian bookseller, came to Frankfort with a 
commission to engage, if possible, a certain Bruno of Nola, to teach 
a young Venetian noble, Giovanni Mocenigo by name, the princi- 
ples of the Lullic art. Lullism had already impaired Bruno’s liter- 
ary style ; it was now to be responsible for the loss of his life. Bruno 
accepted the invitation, and reached Venice and his native land after 
five Wanderjahre as a knight-errant of truth participant in the 
tourneys of Geneva, Toulouse, Paris, London, Oxford, Marburg, 
Wittenberg, Prague, Helmstadt, and Frankfort. Arrived in Venice 
he at once began work with his pupil, moved freely in the literary 
and philosophic circles of “ the city of the sea,” and, in the neigh- 
boring Paduan University, supplemented his income by delivery of a 
few lectures. Unfortunately, however, it was as little Bruno’s nature 
to conceal his sentiments now as in Neapolitan days. The timid 
and truthless Mocenigo, under control of his confessor, charged 
Bruno with falsity in fulfilling his tutorial contract, demanding that 


* Centum et sexaginta articuli adversus hujus tempestatis mathematicos atque philo- 
sophos. 1588. 

f Oratio consolatoria. 1589. 

t De triplici minima et mensura ; De monad e , numero, et figura, liber consequens 
quinque de minimo, etc. 1591-98. 


644 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


he be instructed in all his teacher knew. Bruno replied he had not 
come to impart his whole system, but merely his mnemonic art. 
Mocenigo again demanded information in all that Bruno knew and 
believed. Bruno refused to comply, except on the basis of a new 
contract, and ere he was aware of any hostile intent, was seized at 
Mocenigo’s direction, robbed of his books and pamphlets, and sent to 
the dungeons of the Piombi as a suspect of the Inquisition. 

This was in 1572, six years before Galileo began lecturing in the 
Padua Bruno had left. The process, with Mocenigo as complainant 
and prosecutor, was speedily ordered and begun, and its outset was 
marked by an appeal for mercy on the part of the prisoner. When 
interrogated, however, concerning the truth of the charges made 
against him, he assumed the defensive, summed up as a statement of 
his creed the scattered teachings and tenets of his books, and refused 
surrender of the principles of his philosophy, even while knowing 
this would entail the loss of his life. 

After a year’s imprisonment in the Piombi, frequent renewals and 
adjournments of the trial, and as frequent assertions on the part of 
the prisoner that he had stated his whole creed, Rome demanded 
his extradition. Venice seemed anxious to comply with the re- 
quest, but the jus gentium was sacred and severe, and it was some 
time ere an adequate excuse for the outrage upon justice could be 
invented. It was only when Rome demanded Bruno as a prisoner 
against whom were still pending proceedings instituted in Naples 
and Rome seven years before, that Venice consented to the extradi- 
tion, “ in evidence of the readiness of the Republic to justify the 
Holy See.” * 

Bruno now passed into the hands of the San Severina, who, in his 
diary, characterizes the day of St. Bartholomew as ” the merry day 
of Catholicism,” and in the hands of this ecclesiastical butcher it is 
not hard to predict Bruno’s fate. Seven years passed, however, 
(1593-1600) ere sentence was read and recorded against Bruno, and 
that, during all this time, he refused to surrender or compromise his 
creed, alike when threatened and when cajoled, is evidence not the 
least satisfactory of the strength of his soul. In all these years he 
persistently pointed to his books as record of his mature and endur- 
ing belief, and the time is opportune for us to open them, as well to 
gather his creed for ourselves as to gain materials for inductive 
prophecy of his fate. 

The books from which an outline of Bruno’s system shall be taken 
are mainly those already mentioned, but they may be re-enumerated 
and recalled here. 

* Come segno della continuata pronlezza della Republica a farle cosa grata. 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


645 


1. Scientific and metaphysical works : La Cena de le Ceneri ; De 
la Caasa, Principio, ed Uno ; De l hijinito, Universo, e Mondi. These 
from the London period. — De Imaginum, Signorum, et Idearmn 
Composition ; De Triplici Minimo ; De Monade, Numero et Figura. 
These from the Frankfort period. — Summa Terminorum Metaphysi- 
corum . Posthumous. 

2. Ethical works : Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante ; Degli Eroici 
Furori ; La Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo. All these from the London 
period. 

As a truth-seeker, Bruno has full confidence in the credibility of 
reason’s conclusions. Religion itself he founds upon reason rather 
than on authoritative revelation. “ Theologians as learned as religious 
have never entertained prejudice against the liberty of philosophy ; 
and truly religious and well-conducted philosophers have always 
favored religions, for both know that FAITH is necessary for the in- 
struction of coarse peoples who must be governed, and DEMONSTRATION 
is demanded by the contemplative who know how to govern both them- 
selves and others.”* But he further claims that philosophy’s teach- 
ings are grander than those of current theology. It is the task of 
philosophy “ to free the mind from imprisonment,” “ to teach it to 
regard the infinite universe,” and “ liberate it forever from the 
pseudo Mercuries and Apollos descended from the skies, who have 
filled the world with multiform impostures, and infinite foolishnesses, 
bestialities and vices, smothering that light which made the souls of 
our ancestors heroic and divine, and confirming the caliginous dark- 
ness of sophists and asses ; hence, time it is that philosophy should 
leave the earth and mount toward heaven, per riportarne lo perduto 
ingdgno. ’ ’ f 

These passages sufficiently indicate the trend of Bruno, and we 
may anticipate no exhibition of alarm on his part if reason leads him 
to tenets directly contrary to those of the time. He will read new 
meanings into Scripture phrases, and explain passages contrary to 
his scientific and philosophical conclusions, as designed to teach 
ethics to common people, in language they would comprehend, rather 
than give instruction in scientific language, which they could not 
appreciate.^; 

Opening now his books we shall find how far he was removed from 
his time, and how near he is to our own. 


* De /’ Infinito, p. 27. Compare Lullus — “ homines grossi ingenii et illiterati facilius 
trahuntur ad veritatem per fidem ; sed homo subtilis, etc.” 

\ Opere Italiane , vol. i., p. 125. 

| This was the defence he made at Greville’s table when charged with falsifying the 
Bible. 


646 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


The science of Bruno asserts, with Copernicus, the existence of 
the solar system in the sense of modern astronomy, but goes beyond 
him in the following particulars. He is the first to assert the rota- 
tion of the sun about its own axis, and with Cusa believes in the 
movements of the fixed stars about one another. But to him this 
means more than to Cusa. He believes in sun systems : in other 
words, that the fixed stars have planets circling about them, invisi- 
ble to our eyes, and that, in the infinite reaches of space, a fixed 
star, with all its attendant, unseen planets, revolves about another 
whose family is to us alike invisible. Space is infinite, and in its 
limitless expanses shine these flaming orbs, “ ambassadors annunci- 
ative of the glory of God.” In space we need hope for no Alcyone, 
the centre of existence, for in infinity every point is a centre, and 
there are as many centres, therefore, as there are points in infinity. 
Earth is therefore neither the centre of the universe, as Catholicism 
taught, nor conspicuous among its members, as Calvinism, through 
a localization of Deity’s operations, inclined to teach.* 

In some elements of his astronomy Bruno has, therefore, antici- 
pated the most signal discoveries of our century. The Brunonian 
biology is also akin to theories of our time, though upon a different 
basis. Comparative anatomy has established modern evolution ; 
Bruno’s evolution, while not void of anatomical evidences, rests mainly 
on metaphysical grounds — the theory that the universe is an exist- 
ence-mode of God, the Life. The earth to him is a sacrum animal , 
“ participant by its revolutions and performances, conservative of its 
existence, in the universal intelligence of the universe.” Instinct is 
different in degree , therefore, and not in kind , from intelligence. 
“ Water-drops assume globular shape not without a certain degree 
of sensation or knowledge. Everything is thus in a certain degree 
participator in experience, a mode of utterance of the universal intel- 
lect distributed through the universe.” The first stage of expres- 
sion, in the vegetable kingdom, is dim and dull. The second, in 
the animals, is clearer ; the third and highest is in man — the apex 
of the pyramid. One species is point of departure for another. 
“ Nature prophesies every species before birthing it. ” f Man, dow- 
ered with intelligence as he is, rules, not through his mental power, 
but by his hand, “ the organ of organs.” % 

* See Brunnhofer, pp. 158-74, for an account of Bruno’s astronomy vindicated step 
by step by quotations from his books. This is, indeed, the great value of Brunnhofer’s 
work. Historically and critically Berti’s is far better. 

f Natura dat involutas species antequam tradat easdem explicatas. De Umbris, 
p. 309. Una species alterius est principium sicut ab embryoni specie sine resolutione ad 
animalis hominisve speciem datur accessus. De Triplici Minimo, p. 71. 

| “ It is to the possession of two limbs which are freed from any organic duty other 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


G47 


“ Could a serpent’s head form itself to the shape of a human head, 
and its bust expand to the volume of a human breast ; could its 
tongue lengthen, its shoulders broaden, and be ramified by arms 
and hands, and where the tail terminated, a twin growth of legs 
grow and agglutinate themselves, the serpent would understand 
(with its new head), would breathe (with its new lungs), would 
speak (with its new tongue), would work and walk (with its new 
arms and legs), not otherwise than man, for it would not be other 
than man."* * This passage both identifies intellect and instinct, and 
anticipates the announcements of anatomical evolution. 

We purposely prefix this outline of Bruno’s science to our account 
of his metaphysic. Astronomy was the point of departure for his 
metaphysic. Convinced of the existence of great continents in the 
ocean of space, he formed a philosophy intuitive rather than induc- 
tive, poetic rather than methodic, and in presence of the stars lost 
sight of his soul. Space is peopled with infinite worlds, and is itself 
infinite, because nothing less than its infinity would be worthy of the 
creative power of an infinite God. Infinite, it is an eternal entity 
where God has revealed Himself. An eternal entity, it is revealed 
in the phenomenal world as Number, Quantity, and Idea. “ Nature 
is substance and source of all art, and mistake is an unknown word 
in the economy of the universe. Truth is not only physically 
present in things, but is itself the creative might of life and Nature.” 
Nature is therefore the great revealer of secrets, “ itself the fire Pro- 
metheus stole from heaven, itself the tree of the knowledge of good 
and evil, itself the exact image of the Idea.” 

But Bruno passes from this nature concept to a concept of God, 
allowing no dichotomy in the universe. “ The act of divine cog- 
nition is substance of the being of all things,” and Bruno formulates 
an expression of the All Unity to which Spinoza might have set 
hand and seal. 

i. Divine existence is infinite. 

“ 2. The consequence of the mode of being is the mode of pos- 
sibility. 

“ 3. The consequence of the mode of possibility is the mode of 
activity. 


than attack and defence, and which are adapted to grasp weapons and tools, that man 
owes his enormous advantage over the lower animals. It opens to him possibilities 
which do not exist beneath him. The first club or spear he grasped, the first missile he 
threw, inaugurated a new era in the history of life and opened the way to man’s com- 
plete mastery.” Charles Morris, “The Making of Man,” American Naturalist. June, 
1886. Nihil sub sole novum est ! 

* Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo, p. 277. 


G48 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


“ 4. God is the simplest existence in which there is neither com- 
position nor divergence. 

“ 5. Consequently Being, Possibility, Activity, Will, Power, and 
all that can be predicated of Him are in Him the same. 

“6. Consequently, the divine Will is not only necessary, but 
necessity itself, whose antithesis is not only impossible, but impos- 
sibility itself. 

“7. In simple being there can be neither antithesis nor dissim- 
ilarity — i.e., Will and Power are neither opposed nor unlike. 

“ 8. Necessity and freedom are the same.”* * * § 

But Bruno passes to more decided pantheism. “ Nature is noth- 
ing but God manifested in things. ”f If he uses both phrases, Deus 
et Natura and Natura et Deus , his whole system writes equation 
marks between them. ” God and Nature are one and the same 
material.” But what is material? ‘‘The source of actuality,” 
Bruno answers ; and ” The act of divine thought is substance of the 
being of all things” seems to make material, in Bruno’s view, pure 
spirit. The universe to him, therefore, is but the existence-form of 
God, and contraries in the ultimate estimate are coincidences in a 
substrate reality where contrariety cannot exist. 

Bruno’s ethic is outcome of his metaphysic, and pushes it to its 
last conclusion. It is formulated, polemically, in the Spaccio de la 
Bestia Trionfante and in the Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo ; and, con- 
structively, in the Eroici Furori. In the two former Bruno’s cyni- 
cism reaches its climax. 

The “ Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast,” as the title of the dia- 
logue indicates, is proposed by Jove himself in the council of the 
gods 4 Declaration of his intention is made after a heavy dinner in 
the dining-hall of the gods, when he becomes suddenly repentant 
and resolves to efface from the heavens the constellations, book- 
keepers of their crimes.§ From the pole of the heavens the ‘‘ Great 
Bear,” memorial of Jupiter’s incest, must therefore be removed.! 
Truth, by vote of the syndic, is put in its place. In such a manner 
Bruno no doubt voiced a criticism of the impurities consequent upon 


* De Immenso. Bk. I., chap, ii., p. 189. 

f Natura aut est Deus ipse aut divina virtus in rebus ipsis manifestata. Gfrorer, 
p. 495. Natura non e altro che Dio nelle cose. Spaccio , p. 226. Physis optima Deitas. 
De Immenso , p. 251. 

I Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante proposto da Giove, effetuato dal Consiglio, svelato 
da Mercurio, recitato da Sofia, udito da Saulino, recitato dal Nolano. 

§ “ Men after dinner sit and talk of what they are pleased to call— their sentiments.” 
— Thackeray (I think). 

| A rechristening of the constellations, on similar grounds was proposed by the 
Venerable Bede. 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


649 


the old beliefs, and puts Truth as pole of the Copernican system and 
core of the Brunonian belief. Similarly all the other constellations 
are replaced by virtues such as Courage, Prudence, etc. Proposals 
for the disposition of the expelled divinities give Bruno an oppor- 
tunity to betray the observing traveller and sarcastic humorist, as 
when, for instance, Momus proposes to send the Great Bear to the 
“ bears” of Great Britain, to the Orsini faction of Rome, or to the 
people of Berne. Aquarius should go to Germany and “ temper 
the native beverages.” Throughout the book, Momus, by consent 
of the gods, is allowed to exercise all the causticity of his tongue, 
and the “satiric Momus among the gods, and the misanthropic 
Timon among men,” is, no doubt, Bruno himself. The Papacy re- 
ceives frequent and undisguised scourge. 

Apocryphal beliefs and the most sacred verities are treated alike. 
A “ relic of the animal that carried Christ to Jerusalem” is spoken 
of as exhibited at Genoa, but is questioned by Bruno as much as by 
any one of the present day. Similar criticism is applied to biblical 
records. “ Let Aquarius go,” says Jove, “ and ask how a flood could 
have been general, when it is impossible that all the waters of the 
sea and sky could have covered both hemispheres. Let him bring 
back also the true report that the real migration was from Olym- 
pus, not from Armenia. Besides, how could there have been a flood 
as recent as the time alleged when the newly-discovered part of the 
earth, called the new world, has records dating more than ten thou- 
sand years back ?”* 

Parallelisms, suggesting the falsity of both, are formed between 
biblical and pagan fables. “ Let Aquarius further determine,” 
says Jove, “ which is the original, Noah lying naked, and covered 
by his two sons walking backward, or the Thessalian Deucalion, to 
whom, with Pyrrha, his wife, the stones were pointed out as the 
principle of human reparation, whence two people, walking back- 
ward, threw them on the uncovered breast of mother earth ? For 
both cannot be history, and which is fable ? And if both are fables, 
which is mother and which daughter?” The whale of Jonah is 
spoken of as “ galley, coach, and tabernacle” to the prophet, and 
the prophet as “ food, medicine, and emetic” to the whale. He 
says that the story “ of the sending of the raven from the ark to see 
if the earth was dry, that time when men drank so much that they 
burst, is wonderfully unlike the story of sending a raven from heaven, 
when the gods were almost dying of thirst,” and so scatters sarcasm 
over the whole biblical record. 


Spcccio, p. 235. 

42 


650 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


Throughout the book there is a -strong attempt to explain the 
Hebrew religion on naturalistic grounds. He makes much of the 
worship of the serpent in the wilderness, and even attempts to con- 
nect the statement that Moses had horns (Latin Vulgate),* with pre- 
vious worship of beasts, on the part of the Hebrews, in the land 
whence they had come. 

Yet he does not find this reprehensible ; on the contrary, the 
worship of the Egyptians is not to be ridiculed, for all the things 
they adored are referable to “ a divinity of divinities, and fount of 
ideas, above nature.” 

The only religion, indeed, which Bruno finds totally unworthy is 
the ” reformed religion.” He names as “ vile and absurd the fancy 
of those esteeming themselves kings in heaven and sons of the gods, 
who yet believe more in a vain, bovine, asinine faith than in a useful, 
real, and magnanimous action and effect.” They are “ poltroon- 
esque pedants ( poltronesca setta di pedanti), who, without doing 
good, according to divine and natural law, esteem themselves, and 
wish to be esteemed, as pleasing to the gods, and say to do good is 
well, and to do wrong is ill, but not through good that is done, or 
evil that is not done, does one come to be pleasing to the gods, but 
through hoping and believing according to their catechism.” 

Whence, then, shall come an ethic to replace the destroyed bibli- 
cal ethic ? we may well ask of Bruno. That it cannot come from 
Catholicism the criticisms of the Spaccio, and the severer character- 
izations of the Cabala, wherein Catholicism and asininity are identi- 
fied, abundantly prove. 

The last line of the Spaccio and the constructive Eroici Furori 
furnish Bruno’s answer and alternative. “I go to my nocturnal 
contemplations," says Wisdom, as the discussion of “ The Expulsion 
of the Triumphant Beast” closes ; cojitemplation is the ethic and re- 
ligion Bruno advances in place of all he has demolished. 

” The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast” meant removal, 
through proof of the Copernican system, through criticism of the 
Papacy, through overthrow of all positive religions, of all obstacles 
in the way of building up a new ethic, founded on the scientific be- 
liefs of the new age. Characterization of devotion to Catholicism 
in the Cabala as asinine meant reflected heroism on the principles, 
ethical and religious, of the Eroici Furori. 

But the ethic is really mysticism — an absorption of the soul in con- 
templation of deity. “ Unworthy the love of Petrarch for Laura,” 


* The Vulgate is responsible for the horns on Michael Angelo’s Moses in S. Pietro 
in Vincoli also. 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


651 


cries Bruno, “ when he might have poured out expressions of affec- 
tion for supreme truth and infinite deity.” 

From what has been here so sparsely and imperfectly outlined it 
is easy to see that Bruno could hope for no mercy from the Inquis- 
itors. Belief in an infinite universe was repugnant to a science which 
placed the Ultima Thule no farther from the earth than modern 
science holds the sun to be, and to a theology which made the 
heaven of the superior beings so near that the angels ascending and 
descending the ladder need not have wearied on their errand to the 
patriarch Jacob. The Church of the time decreed that the earth 
constituted the universe, that the heavens were made for it, that 
God, the angels, and the saints inhabited an eternal abode of joy, 
situated above the azure sphere of the fixed stars, and they embodied 
this gratifying illusion in their illuminated manuscripts, their cal- 
endars, and their church windows.”* In a chart of the Middle Ages, 
representing the authoritative astronomical system, we find in the 
heaven of Jupiter and Saturn the words, “ Seraphim, Dominationes, 
Potestates, Archangeli, Virtutes Ccelorum, Principatus, Throni, 
Cherubim, all derived from the time’s theology. A veritable muddle ! 
The angels placed with the heroes of mythology, the immortal Virgin 
with Venus and Andromeda, and the saints with the Great Bear, the 
Hydra, and Scorpion !”f 

For one who, with his terrific Spaccio, had cleared space of such 
superstition there could be no mercy ; much less for one who took 
the crown from earth, and made it but one of infinite worlds wherein 
infinite vicegerents of God might hold court and conscience. 

Criticism of the Church and of all positive religions could no more 
be brooked. Sentence was therefore passed with the horrible 
euphemism ‘‘to be punished without shedding of blood ” ( sine 
sanguinis effusione ), which meant — death by fire. “ In pronounc- 
ing sentence,” said the unintimidated Bruno, “ you experience more 
fear, perhaps, than I in receiving it.”:}; 

It was no idle boast ; Bruno died courageously ; and if the flames, 
in the satiric words of Scioppius, did not “ take him to the worlds 
which he imagined,” Bruno at least did not fear immortality, for to 

* Blake, Astronomical Myths. London, 1887. P. 186. 

f Ibid. , p. 188. The plan of the great Catholic religious paintings embracing heaven 
and earth, therefore, is cosmological miniature, not artistic imagination. The Disputa , 
from the altar to God the Father, was dictated in arrangement, by the science, as well as 
the theology, of the Church. 

I Gaspar Schopp or Scioppius wrote to Conrad Ritterhausen a letter dated 1600, de- 
scribing as an eye-witness the execution of Bruno. See Berti, p. 401. Forsan majori 
timore sentsntiam in me fertis quam ego accipiam. Letter of Scioppius. Periit, renun- 
ciaturus credo, in reliquis illis, quos finxit mundis. 


652 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


him there was no death, no heaven, no hell in the universe. Me- 
tempsychosis links him with Brahminism, as does his contemplative 
ethic. 

As we stand in imagination before the funeral pyre of this great 
thinker, anticipator of Haeckel and Darwin in evolution ; of Herschel 
in astronomy ; of Spinoza and Schelling and Leibnitz in philosophy, 
we cannot but regret he was embryo also of the most vulgar of the 
rationalists. His greatness was his weakness. Aglow with the new 
astronomy he did not see that 

“ Two worlds are ours ; ’tis only sin 
Forbids us to descry 
The mystic heaven and earth within, 

Plain as the sea and sky.” 

That he widened the universe there can be no question. But as 
from the Spaccio he goes to his “ nocturnal contemplations,” we hear 
from him no words of moral grandeur such as those of Kant : 

“ Two things fill the soul with wonder and reverence, increasing 
evermore as I meditate more closely upon them ; the starry heavens 
above me and the moral law within me. 

Bruno’s astronomy was nurtured at the expense of psychology, 
and true metaphysical science did not begin till Descartes took 
knowledge both of the world within and the world without. With 
the eloquent utterances of De /’ hifinito yet resonant in our ears, a 
voice that spake of old is heard asking, with utterance succinct and 
sad : “ What shall it profit a man if he gain a whole universe and 
forfeit or lose his own self ?” 

Walter Laidlaw. 

West Troy, N. F. 


ELEMENTAL EMBLEMS OF THE SPIRIT. 


AIR — WATER FIRE. 

A CCORDING to the Ancients, there were four elements — Earth, 
Water, Air, Fire. These formed an ascending scale, from 
Earth (which stood for all that was heavy, gross, dark — in a word, 
“ earthy”) to Fire, which seemed a thing of Heaven. Water and 
Air held an intermediate position between Earth and Fire, but had 
their associations with the higher rather than the lower. Earth 
alone was positively gross. All the rest were refined, and had, 
moreover, refining and purifying power. Water was much less gross 
in texture than Earth, more mobile, more alive, and had besides 
the power of giving to Earth whatever life it had ; for waterless 
earth is always desert. Then it was pure, except where Earth mixed 
with it and stained it, and it had the beneficent power of washing 
earth-stains away. 

Air, again, was still more refined than Water, lighter, more 
ethereal, more mobile, pure, and invigorating, except when charged 
with earthy particles — soot or smoke or dust, or something foreign 
to its native purity ; and then it was specially associated with life — 
for man lives in the Air and by the Air, and only when he is ready 
for the grave does Earth receive him to itself. Fire, as we have 
said, was highest of all. It seemed a thing of Heaven come to 
Earth. Hence the old theory of Prometheus stealing Fire from 
Heaven — a fable which, like many of its kind, is more than fable — 
for is not the Fire element heavenly in its origin as none of the 
others are ? Our water and our air even are our own, all contained 
within earth's envelope or sphere ; but our light and heat, our fire, 
comes to us from another orb, far away, is stolen, as it were, from 
Heaven. And this is even more true than it seems, as science has 
made plain by teaching us that the hidden fires of coal and all in- 
flammable substances are ” imprisoned sunbeams” of long ago. 
See, too, how much of the heavenly nature is in this Fire element. 
It shines with its own light, it is full of life and action — life and 


654 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


action not given to it as when you throw a stone or set a stream of 
water running down a slope, but life and action which seem to come 
out of its own being ; and then see how it diffuses the warmth and 
light of Heaven through the darkness and cold of Earth ; and, while 
all other things tend downward, it always soars, as if struggling to 
get back to its native Heaven. 

We know, of course, that these old world ideas were not scien- 
tifically correct ; but there was, and there is, a great deal in them. 
They give at least phenomenal truth ; and then they are full of that 
poetry which is, after all, the deepest truth ; and so looked at they 
help us to appreciate the wealth of Scripture imagery, especially in 
relation to the Holy Spirit and His cleansing, quickening, and re- 
fining power. Man as a sinner is “of the earth earthy” — dull, 
heavy, dark, dead. God’s Spirit comes to him like water, like the 
wind, like fire (for these are the three great symbols of the Spirit ; 
the others are subordinate to these, as, for example, the oil which 
feeds fire, or the dove which is the visible embodiment of the light 
and air-like visitation of the Spirit), bringing life, and purity, and 
refinement, and all good things, from the heavenly sphere. Earth, 
dark as it is, and dead as it is when left to itself, is yet stored with 
abundance of life germs, remaining dormant and to all appearance 
quite dead, till “ the scent of water makes them bud and then up 
into the air they grow ; on it and by the water they feed, every leaf 
a lung, and every rootlet a mouth, while by the grace of light and 
heat they come to lovely flower and luscious fruit. Is there not a 
whole world of wealth of poetic imagery in these old elemental em- 
blems ? We can do little more than show the way to some of it. 

I. Let us begin with the wind or the AIR, as the first and simplest 
— first, for the very word for “ Spirit ” in the language of the Bible, 
as in almost all languages, means breath, or air ; and simplest, as 
containing the most elementary conceptions of the Spirit’s person 
and work, and therefore used by our Lord in giving to Nicodemus 
his first conception of the higher things of the new dispensation. At 
first, indeed, it seems disappointingly negative in its suggestions. 
Air cannot be seen, it cannot be felt, and when you seem to hear it 
coming as wind, it is only “ the sound thereof,” it is known only by 
its effects ; and then it “ bloweth where it listeth,” having appar- 
ently no law but its own arbitrary will, and “ thou canst not tell 
whence it cometh or whither it goeth” — all negative and disappoint- 
ing — it starts in the unknown, it leads to the unknown, its ways are 
unknown, it is itself unknown ; it is all unknown, unknown ; why 
not be an Agnostic, then, and have nothing to do with it ? 

But you cannot. Notwithstanding all its mystery, there it is, and 


ELEMENTAL EMBLEMS OF THE SPIRIT. 


655 


you cannot get away from it. Though you do not see it, and even 
when you do not feel it, it is all about you, in close relation to you, 
and your very life depends on it. It is true we are in the habit of 
treating it as if it were nothing. We use it as a symbol of unreality 
and emptiness ; and yet nothing is more real, nothing more vital to 
our well-being, more necessary to our very being. And, again, we 
use it as a symbol of fickleness and inconstancy ; and yet there is 
nothing in all nature on which we can more certainly and absolutely 
depend. Though we can never tell “ whence it cometh or whither 
it goeth, ” we are always sure of it wherever we go, into whatever 
treeless desert or waterless waste — when everything else fails us, air 
fails us never — we are always sure of it just when and where and in 
what quantities we need. It amounts to this, that so long as we 
make a mere study of this subtle breath that breathes around us, it 
is full of mystery and of insoluble difficulty, and the more we try to 
enter into it and understand it, the more lost we are and ready to 
take refuge in the convenient retreat of the Agnostic ; but when we 
cease to perplex ourselves as to whence it cometh, or whither it 
goeth, or what it is, and just take it as it is, open our windows and 
doors and let it in, or go out into the fields and let it blow around 
us, we find it all we could desire, and in it life, and health, and 
satisfaction. 

“So is every one that is born of the Spirit.” The Spirit cannot 
be seen, nor grasped by the hand, nor comprehended by the intel- 
lect ; but He is near, He is all about us. It is seldom that His 
presence makes itself felt in any startling way. Once in a long time 
it seems as if there came from Heaven a “ mighty rushing wind 
but usually it is more like the soft wing and quiet footsteps of the 
dove. It is like the gentle breeze which finds a tongue in the mur- 
mur of the leaves, so that its voice is easily missed. But at any 
time we have only to get away from the noise and bustle of the 
world, and, having hushed to rest all the uneasy motions of our own 
spirit, to wake up our hearts to listen, and we shall certainly hear 
the voice of God — it may be in awful tones, like the moaning qf the 
pine-tree in the dark, or even terrible, like the rush of the tempest, 
so as to compel the cry, “ What must I do to be saved ?” or in its 
more familiar tones of gentlest whisperings, like these : “ Come unto 
Me and I will give you rest,” “ Thy sins are forgiven thee ; go in 
peace.” 

“ At any time ?” But the “ wind bloweth where it listeth,” and 
how can I make sure of it when I list ? Look at the symbol once 
again. Little as we know of the motions of the wind, and impossible 
as we find it to control its currents, there is one thing we know for cer- 


656 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


tain, that wherever we make space for it, in it will come. The house 
a man lives in may be full of the most noxious gases, and so long as 
he keeps open drains beneath it, and these never cease to send up 
their noisome exhalations, there must be death in the house ; but if 
only he will close these drains, or have them flushed and cleansed, 
and then open up his doors and windows, death will be driven out 
and life and health will come in. He does not need to know all 
about meteorology to be sure of this ; he may be totally ignorant of 
ventilation, or even thoroughly sceptical about it ; but common- 
sense will tell him that he has only to trust the wind ; let it blow as 
it list, no matter “ whence it cometh or whither it goeth,” he has 
only to let it in ; and presently the house will be clean, and sweet, 
and wholesome, and will remain so, if he in the first place has 
thoroughly cleansed it down to the very foundation, and in the sec- 
ond place opens the windows often enough to let in a fresh supply. 
Is it not then a good thing, after all, that “ the wind bloweth where 
it listeth ” ? So long as it always listeth to bring such blessings on 
its wings to all who make it welcome, let it blow on, however little 
we understand about it, however helpless we may be when we try to 
command it otherwise than as it listeth. 

The supply is unfailing. For while the air we breathe is the 
most valuable and indispensable of all the gifts of God to men, it is 
the one of all others that has been given in greatest abundance. 
The supply is inexhaustible ; and the poorest is as welcome to it as 
the richest. Men may buy and sell the earth on which we tread. 
Even water must often be bought with money ; and there are places 
where it is not to be had at all. Light is bought and sold, heat is 
bought and sold ; but atmospheric air never. Men have to pur- 
chase horse-power, water-power, steam-power ; but the power of the 
wind is free to all. Free as the air we breathe or the wind that blows 
around us is the Spirit’s quickening grace. None can buy it, none 
can earn it, but all may have it in rich abundance if only they will 
ask it— in unmeasured quantity one might say, for it is true, just as 
it is true of the air, with this qualification, that the measure is limited 
only by the capacity of that which is open to receive it. “Open 
thy mouth wide and I will fill it.’’ Blessed be the God and Father 
of our Lord Jesus Christ for the royal bounty of His Spirit’s grace 
as set before us in the, at first sight disappointing, but in the end 
most satisfactory and encouraging, symbol of the air. 

II. We now pass to the symbol of WATER. But before doing so 
let us endeavor to get some idea of how the two symbols of air and 
water stand related to each other. The research of modern science 
has brought out the fact that this air which breathes around us, 


ELEMENTAL EMBLEMS OF THE SPIRIT. 


657 


even when it seems most utterly transparent, is laden with germs of 
life ; and wherever there is susceptibility for their development, 
nothing more than contact is needful to secure it. Take off the 
seal from the infusion, expose the surface, and life will spring up at 
once. 

Now, the susceptibility for development of which we have spoken 
consists especially in the presence of water. Without water there 
can be no springing up of life. We know how absolutely necessary 
it is to all forms of vegetable life- —waterless land is always desert. 
And we have learned from recent experiments that in the same way 
it is only when a watery surface is exposed to the air that the germs 
with which the atmosphere is stored awake to life. Bearing this in 
mind as the link of connection between air and water as to the de- 
velopment of life, let us now proceed to consider the truth concern- 
ing the Spirit as set forth in the water symbol. 

There are so many passages in which the Spirit is set forth under 
this symbol that it is not necessary to refer to them further than to 
call to mind that just as the word “ spirit ” suggests the symbol of 
air, the way in which the Spirit is most frequently promised suggests 
the symbol of water : “I will pour out My Spirit.” Perhaps, how- 
ever, one very definite passage may be referred to, that in which the 
Lord Himself, after speaking of Himself as the fountain, refers to 
the flowing of the waters, and adds, “ This spake He of the Spirit.” 
More of this anon. 

We have seen that the emblem of the air applies readily to the 
universal presence of the Spirit of God in all places and at all times ; 
but this one of water suggests some manifestation of the Spirit 
which is not equal everywhere and always, but is found here and 
there, like fountains and springs, and, instead of moving hither and 
thither, like the wind, which “ bloweth where it listeth,” flows in cer- 
tain channels, like our streams and rivers. Accordingly, we find that 
whenever the symbol of water is used, the reference is to the Spirit 
of the Lord — not as everywhere present, but as present in some 
particular man or men who have thus become fountains of living 
waters. The well-known prophecy, “ a man shall be as rivers of 
water in a dry place,” is fulfilled first in Christ (the anointed One, 
anointed with the Spirit), who receives the Spirit without measure, 
and who is therefore the fountain-head of all living waters ; and 
next in those who have received of His Spirit and who thus in their 
turn become fountains or rivers. 

The symbol is even more appropriate than at first appears. We 
have learned from chemistry that between air and water there is one 
element in common, and that the great life-giving element of each 


658 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


— viz . , oxygen. But there is this difference, that the oxygen of the 
air is free — i.e., uncombined with any other element ; while in water 
it exists only in combination with another element. It is oxygen 
that gives value to water as well as to air ; but in the air it does its 
work immediately and directly, in its own name, so to speak ; in 
the other case it does its work mediately — not as oxygen, but as 
water. Now let us think, alongside of this, of the ways in which 
the Spirit of God reaches us. First, His presence is diffused every- 
where, like the air, and we have only to open our hearts to Him to 
have Him come to us immediately and directly, as the Spirit of 
God, like the wind which “ bloweth where it listeth.” But besides 
this, He has entered into combination with the human spirit, so 
that human life and thought and feeling have been, so to speak, 
saturated with His grace. Thus it was that “ the prophecy came not 
of old time by the will of man” merely, but “ holy men of God spake 
as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” This speaking in the 
Spirit is the flowing of the waters ; and hence it comes to pass that 
this water symbol is so constantly associated with the Word ; as, for 
example, when the Church is spoken of as “ sanctified and cleansed 
with the washing of water by the Word.” The Word is the water, 
but what is the oxygen that gives it its value ? It is the Holy 
Spirit’s grace. He does not come in His own name, but He comes 
through the medium of the Word ; just as the oxygen, which in the 
air is free, comes, unrecognized perhaps, but really comes, through 
the medium of the water. Thus in the water, which, unlike the 
omnipresent air, springs from a particular point and flows in certain 
well-defined channels, we have a fitting emblem of the Spirit of God 
as poured out upon men , who become, as it were, channels of divine 
grace, flowing forth from them to others. And just as oxygen in 
both its forms is necessary to life— for we cannot live without water 
any more than without air — so in order to spiritual life we must 
have the Spirit in both His manifestations : “ Except a man be born 
of zuater and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of 
God.” It will not do for a man to shut his Bible, and turn away 
from Christ and His apostles and prophets, and say, “ Why should 
I trouble myself about what Moses, or David, or Isaiah, or John, or 
Paul, or even Christ has said ? Is not God’s Spirit present every- 
where, and cannot He speak to me directly? My temple is this 
great universe, my God is the God of great Nature, who can speak 
to me as well in the green fields, or on the purple hills, or in the 
light of setting suns, or in the moaning of the lonely sea, as He can 
speak to you in your little church, or from your Bible, or through 
the life and lips of Jesus of Nazareth.” Perhaps that might have 


ELEMENTAL EMBLEMS OF THE SPIRIT. 


659 


sufficed if it had not been true that “ that which is born of the flesh 
is flesh,” while only ‘‘that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.” 
It might have been sufficient if we had been not carnal at all, but 
spiritual, our souls in closest touch with the omnipresent Spirit of 
God, ourselves pure and holy, with no earthliness or sin to hinder our 
receptivity of the divine. But manifestly it is not so. None of us 
is so exceedingly receptive of the divine. Hence we must have the 
divine brought nearer to our capacities as men, mortal men of flesh 
and blood. So the Word must become flesh and dwell among us. 
We cannot reach God in any independent fashion. We cannot ‘‘ by 
searching find out God.” The result of any such quest must be, as 
we find in these days it is, the void of Agnosticism. We must find a 
point of contact, of vital contact with the Spirit of God, and this is 
found only in His Son Jesus Christ. He was filled with the Spirit 
of God, and when we are united to Him by a living faith, by the 
loving trust of the Spirit, the contact is established — and then, like 
the rush of healing, cooling, refreshing, life-giving waters, the Spirit 
of God flows in upon our souls. 

And now we can see how it is necessary to welcome the Spirit in 
both His manifestations in order that we may be quickened and 
refreshed. There must be first the Word, saturated with the Spirit’s 
grace, the Holy Scriptures which testify of Christ the living Word ; 
but this is not sufficient ; for how often are the Scriptures read, 
even read with attention and interest, without any saving result ! 
and that not only when the Gospel is scornfully rejected, but even 
when it is respectfully listened to. What is wanting ? Is not the 
Spirit there in the Word ? True ; but He must also be welcomed 
immediately and directly, coming as the air or breath of God. As 
we read or hear the Word, we must lift up our souls in prayer for the 
coming of the Spirit directly to our own minds and hearts that He 
may quicken into life the seeds of truth it carries. “ The Spirit 
breathes upon the Word,” and it becomes living waters to our 
thirsty souls. 

But the symbol of water carries us further than this. It has im- 
portant teaching, not only as to the way in which life is received, 
but as to the way in which it is communicated to others. On that 
great occasion when the waters from the fountain of Siloam were 
poured out beside the altar, and amid the rejoicing throng, Jesus 
stood and cried, “ If any man thirst let him come to Me and drink.” 
He did not stop there, but went on to say, “ He that believeth on Me, 
out of his inmost life shall flow rivers of living water. This spake Fie 
of the Spirit which they that believed on Him should receive.” Al- 
ready this had been realized in the case of those “ holy men of old,” 


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who “ spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost but the time 
was coming when it should be a promise for all : “ It shall come to pass 
in those days that I shall pour out My Spirit upon all flesh." Every 
believer in Jesus was now called not merely to drink himself, but to 
become a fountain of living water to others. As the prophet Joel 
put it in a less known portion of his great Pentecost prophecy, “ It 
shall come to pass in that day that . . . all the brooks of Judah shall 
flow with waters.” In the olden time there had been here and there 
a man “ like rivers of water in a dry place” — a Moses, a David, an 
Isaiah ; but now “ all the brooks" are to “ flow with waters.” 

For an illustration of the fulfilment of the promise on the largest 
scale we cannot do better than look at the great change that passed 
over the disciples at Pentecost. They had been drinking of the 
fountain all the time of their discipleship, but only then did they 
become fountains themselves ; only from that time did the rivers of 
living water begin to flow from them. And just think what rivers 
they were ! Think of John — his life saturated with the Spirit of his 
Master, sending forth constant streams of blessing for nearly seventy 
years ; his gospel, no mere record, as of a scribe, every sentence of 
it flowing, not from his pen, not from his fingers, not from his 
mind merely, but from the inmost recesses of his soul ; his letters so 
instinct with the life of his Master, so full of His Spirit of love and 
tenderness ; his Apocalypse, what an opening of Heaven that has 
been, not to John himself merely, to make up for the shutting of 
earth, but to what multitudes since then ! We get bewildered with 
the magnitude of that one man’s influence for good ; but take a 
little portion only as a sample. Suppose we could trace the history 
of the last two chapters of the Book of Revelation down the ages, 
and get some idea of the comfort and refreshment and revival they 
have brought to human lives, would it not be a most wonderful 
story, a new Apocalypse ? Was not his own symbol a prophecy of 
it, ” a river of water of Life proceeding out of the throne of God 
and of the Lamb ”? God and the Lamb were enthroned in his 
heart, therefore from its recesses these rivers have flowed. And so 
will it be in measure with all hearts where God and the Lamb are 
enthroned. We cannot all be Johns, indeed ; but according to our 
capacity and opportunity we may be fountains of living waters, and 
all of us to a much larger extent than we are apt to imagine. It 
might be presumption, indeed, for me to expect that out of my poor 
little life should flow such streams of living power. But it is not 
from me, it is from the Christ-life in me that they are to flow : 
“ He that believeth on Me, out of him shall flow.” ” This spake 
He of the Spirit.” The man is only the channel. The Spirit is the 


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living water, and though it might be vain for a man to think he 
could be a source of blessing, may he not be a channel of it ? Look 
at John again, what could he have done as John ? Probably no 
more than any John among us. May there not then be for any 
believer, not of course the special usefulness of the Apostle, but 
something, at all events, far removed from the commonplace or the 
poor ; something really worthy of Christ from whom the Spirit 
comes, and of the Spirit Himself ; something far beyond what apart 
from the power that worketh in us “ we could even ask or think ”? 
And if it is still difficult to entertain such large expectations, we 
may be helped to it by remembering that our lives do not stand 
alone. Each life influences many other lives. There is no follower 
of Christ, however obscure, who might not be the means of bringing 
some other soul to life, from whom rivers of living water might 
flow. And why only one ? Why not two, three, four, more, many 
more ? And if so, at once we are launched on streams flowing out 
into the plain of the future, with ever larger possibilities as time 
passes on. Thus in grace, as well as in nature, the tiniest stream 
may in process of time become a very Amazon. “ He that believeth 
on Me, out of his hidden life shall flow rivers of living water.” 

And if individual life have such promise and potency, what shall 
be said of Church life ? Recall the striking vision of Ezekiel in his 
forty-seventh chapter, of the waters issuing from the House of the 
Lord close beside the altar, rising first to the ankles, then to the 
knees, then to the loins, then to the depth of a great river to swim 
in, and so flowing on and on, carrying life and verdure and blessing 
all along its course, through the wastes of the wilderness of Judah, 
and at last sweetening the waters of the Dead Sea itself. What a 
grand ideal of the Church, and Church life and power— partially 
realized at Pentecost, where we can see the waters issuing from be- 
side the great world-altar at Jerusalem, from beside the cross on 
which Christ “ lifted up” began to “ draw all men unto Him we 
can see them flowing on through Judea, and Samaria, and Galilee, 
and Cyprus, and Asia Minor, and Macedonia, and Greece, and Rome, 
and westward, westward ; we can see them even sweeten the -waters 
of the Dead Sea of Roman corruption and barbarian brutality — we 
can trace it all in history ; not that the vision is fully realized, but 
enough to give an earnest of its final accomplishment, as sketched 
in the Apocalypse of Patmos : “ And he shewed me a pure river of 
water of life, clear as crystal ” (not muddy, as the river which started 
at Pentecost too soon, alas ! became, but clear as crystal), “ proceed- 
ing out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the 
street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the Tree of Life, 


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which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every 
month ; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the 
nations. And there shall be no more curse.” 

That is the final fulfilment, the realization of the true ideal of 
Church life and power. Meantime why should we not approximate 
it, seeing the Pentecostal blessing is still at our disposal as much as 
ever ? It is hardly possible to overestimate the power for good even 
of a small community of Christians, if only they would make the 
promises of Christ their own, and yield themselves, emptied of self 
and sin, to be filled with the Spirit, so that it might be said of them 
as it was prophesied of the first little church in Judah : ” It shall 
come to pass in that day that all the brooks of Judah shall flow with 
waters.” And if such is the power of a single little community 
filled and flowing with the Spirit of Life, what might we not expect 
if the Church of to-day were so filled with the Spirit. And why 
not ? Why should there not be a general waiting on the Lord : 
“ Until the Spirit be poured out from on high, and the wilderness 
become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a 
forest ”? 

III. But the highest symbol of the Spirit’s power still remains, that 
of FIRE. The symbol of air belongs to all dispensations alike, but 
it was specially characteristic of the Old Testament. “ Whither shall 
I go from Thy Spirit ? If I ascend up to Heaven Thou art there ; if 
I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of 
the sea Thou art there” — such utterances as this show how fully the 
Old Testament saints realized the omnipresence of the Divine Spirit, 
so well set forth in the air symbol, which is embodied in the very 
name by which He was known. Water is also frequently used in 
the Old Testament as a symbol of the Spirit, but almost always in 
the way of prophecy, pointing on to the time of the Incarnation, 
when it becomes prominent. The meaning of the symbol was not 
fully unfolded until Christ, first at ‘‘Jacob’s Well” and then at 
Jerusalem, in connection with the pouring out of the water from the 
pool of Siloam, set forth Himself as the fountain and His people as 
the rivers to convey the grace of the Spirit of God, the Water of 
Life, to a thirsty and sinful world. These waters were to flow on 
through the next dispensation ; but inasmuch as they took origin 
from Christ Himself, they may be reckoned as pertaining to the 
time of the Incarnation. But there still remains a symbol which is 
the special property of the dispensation under which we live, which 
began at Pentecost, and is therefore known as ” the dispensation of 
the Spirit.” In the Old Testament the Spirit was known under the 
symbol of the air, and promised under the symbol of water. In the 


ELEMENTAL EMBLEMS OF THE SPIRIT. 


663 


time of Christ the Spirit began to be known under the symbol of 
water, and was promised under a new symbol, as in these striking 
words of John the Baptist : “ He shall baptize you with the Holy 
Ghost and with fire." And in accordance with this the outward 
accompaniment of the Pentecostal baptism was the appearance of 
“ tongues of fire” — tongues, the old idea of the Word, which, as we 
found, was symbolized in the water ; but now it is not merely a word 
like flowing waters, but like spreading fire. 

Fire had been from the beginning a symbol of the Divine pres- 
ence, as every reader of the Bible knows ; but now it is set apart as 
the distinctive symbol of the Spirit since the exaltation of Christ. 
We found in the beginning that while air and water belong to earth, 
fire is a thing of Heaven — they are of this little planet, it is of the 
great and distant sun. It seems especially appropriate, then, that 
after the Ascension the blessing of the Spirit coming down from 
the heavenly throne should be set forth under the symbol of fire. 
And we have now reached a point of view in which we can see also 
the naturalness of the order in which the symbols are developed in 
the Scriptures. If it had been a simple ascending scale, it would 
have been first water, then air, and lastly fire. But it is not an as- 
cending scale. There is a deep descent into the valley of humilia- 
tion, followed by an ascent to the throne. Even in the Old Testa- 
ment God humbled Himself to dwell among men in the spiritual 
sense — a presence which is fitly symbolized by the air which is all 
about the earth, but not at all of it. It was a much deeper humili- 
ation when He “became flesh and dwelt among us,” a presence 
which is, as we have seen, appropriately represented as living waters 
issuing from an earth fountain and flowing along earthy channels. 
But now He that first descended has ascended above all Heavens, 
and so His presence among us now is most fitly represented under 
the heavenly emblems of light and heat that come down to us from 
the sun, or, to put all in a single word — the emblem of fire. 

At first sight, indeed, it does seem strange that the same thing 
could possibly be represented under symbols so utterly diverse as 
those of water and fire, which seem to be sworn foes, mutually de- 
structive. But this is only to a superficial view. Modern chemistry 
and physics have taught us not only that the life-giving element in 
air and water is the same, but that this same oxygen, so potent in 
its life-giving power in the air and in the water, is equally potent in 
the fire. What is fire ? It is the combination of this invisible, im- 
palpable, ethereal element with some grosser substance. Take, for 
example, the familiar case of coal, which is dull, heavy, hard, dead, 
emphatically “of the earth, earthy,” until this wonderful ethereal 


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element combines with it ; and then it lives, it leaps, it glows, it 
sparkles, it soars, develops latent power in the most marvellous 
manner — drives engines, sets whole factories to work, runs trains, 
does the work of a thousand men or horses — and then ascends into 
the unseen, claiming no credit to itself, “ only remembered by what it 
has done.” So is every one that is touched by the heavenly flame of 
the Spirit, every one who truly and fully receives the baptism of fire. 

This baptism of fire implies both a new element of life and a new 
energy of life — a new element, so that Christians are spoken of as 
living in the Spirit and walking in the Spirit ; and a new energy, for 
we read equally of the Spirit being in them and working in them. 
In truth, all the different symbols of which we have been speaking 
lend themselves to this twofold conception. Air is the element in 
which we live ; but it must enter into us, by the nostrils and lungs 
into our very blood it must enter, that we may live by it. Then, 
water, for purposes of cleansing, must be applied from without ; but 
we must also drink it, take it within us, that we may live by it. So 
in the same way when we would heat a cold iron, we must first put 
it into fire, so that the heat may be all around it ; but presently we 
find that the heat has entered into it, deep into the inmost recesses 
of its compact structure. Not only is the iron in the fire, but the 
fire is in the iron, too. The new element around has developed a 
new energy within. So is every one that is baptized of the Spirit. 
By faith in Christ we are introduced into a new element of life. We 
see everything through a different medium — we see in the light of 
eternity, we judge by the measures of eternity. The temperature is 
changed ; we have passed out of the winter of selfishness into the 
summer of love — from the region of the cold North and East winds, 
in which all living things wilt and die, into that of the warm South 
and West winds, whose breath brings life and spreads dewy fra- 
grance all around. Thus genuine faith in Christ changes the very 
temperature in which we live — it gives us a new environment. But 
we need not only a new environment, but a new life. When the 
warm South wind comes, it wakes new life in every bud — some 
warm germinating power is set to work within — and it is this unseen 
energy working in millions of life germs and buds which brings about 
the blessed change that ushers in the summer life and beauty. So 
is it in the heart of every one that truly believes in Christ. The fire 
without is answered by the fire within. 

This fire within has a two-fold energy. It is first a cleansing 
fire. This cleansing agency is of course very prominent under 
the symbol of water. But there is far more energy in this sym- 
bol, which suggests the idea of searching, penetrating, resistless 


ELEMENTAL EMBLEMS OF THE SPIRIT. 


665 


agency. There are some stains that water cannot take out. It 
may be that they are so ingrained in the substance that water 
only passes over them ; or that they are so far within the intricacies 
of its mechanism or constitution, so out of reach, that no mere 
washing can touch them. The only way to get rid of such stains is 
to have them burned out. For while water only affects the outside 
of a hard substance, fire penetrates the pores ; it searches into the 
inmost recesses of the heavy, hard, compact iron, for example. Its 
work is thorough. When it changes a substance it changes it 
through and through, as when the hard rock becomes quick-lime. 
Such is the cleansing power of the baptism of fire. John’s was the 
baptism of repentance, and when the soldiers asked him, “ What 
shall we do ?” he said, “ Do violence to no man, neither accuse any 
falsely, and be content with your wages when the publicans asked 
the question, he said, “ Exact no more than is appointed you 
when the people asked him, he said, “ He that hath two coats let 
him impart to him that hath none ; he that hath meat let him do 
likewise.” All very good, most valuable, and necessary, but all 
belonging to the surface of the life, such as the baptism of water 
might reach. How different from Him that came after him, who 
searched down to the angry thought, the lustful look, the covetous 
heart, penetrating to the deepest thoughts and intents of the hidden 
life of the Spirit ! Now, when the Spirit comes in the name of 
Christ, He carries His cleansing fires right in, in, in, to the deepest 
recesses of the heart, and burns out the impurity which had been 
there ingrained, even that which seemed to have become part of our 
very nature. Oh, are there not many that need this burning out ? 
Do not all need it more or less ? Then let us not shrink from it, let us 
welcome it, let us petition for it : “ Come, Holy Spirit, come ; come 
as the fire, the cleansing fire, and make us pure within !” And why 
should any one shrink from it ? It is no wasting, desolating fire with 
which He comes ; it is the blessed fire of love — a love, however, 
which has for its counterpart a holy jealousy, keenly sensitive to 
anything that mars the union of the soul in marriage covenant with 
the Heavenly Bridegroom — a holy fire of love, which, even as the 
sun allowed with full ray to stream upon the fire in the grate is sup- 
posed first to pale it and then put it out, so, if allowed full play 
in the heart, will really cause the old wasting fires of lust and pas- 
sion first to pale and then to perish, quenched in the blessed light 
and heat of Heaven. 

But the energy is not of cleansing merely, but of quickening. 
Here again we are on the old ground. We had it in the symbol of 
the air. We had it also in the symbol of the water. But here again 
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there is an energy in the new symbol of fire which is lacking in the 
others. Water and air are restoratives. But fire does not merely 
restore an energy which belongs to the life already. It comes as a 
new energy altogether, where there was none before — a new energy 
working all through, making that which was dull before to burn and 
glow, causing that which before lay useless, only taking up room, 
like dead coals in a fireplace, to kindle up and live and send out rays 
of light and heat in all directions, scattering a benign warmth and 
radiance on all surrounding objects ; for the quickening power of 
fire, while it acts first on the substance itself, making it alive and 
glowing, never stops there. From the very nature of fire it cannot 
remain where it is generated — it must give itself out. It is the very 
law of its being to scatter itself in all directions. We can confine 
earth in a vessel without any difficulty. With some difficulty we can 
confine water, making the vessel water-tight. With greater difficulty 
we can confine air, making the vessel air-tight. But we cannot con- 
fine fire. That same penetrating power by which it searches its way 
deep into the hidden structure of that which is subject to its power, 
enables it to search its way out, so that, however walled in, with 
iron, for instance, your fire may be, as in a close stove, it must out 
in all directions, and so it forces itself through the pores of the iron 
and radiates heat through all the room. But are there not fire-proof 
materials? No doubt there are; and these materials maybe so 
adjusted, as in a safe, as to keep fire out ; but there is no safe ever 
made or that could be made that would keep fire in. Shut it in, 
give it no outlet, and presently there is none of it — as soon as you 
confine it it dies. So is it with the fire of Heaven ; and it is greatly 
to be feared that many a soul which has had its early fires of love 
and devotion repressed by conventional usages warranted fire-proof 
has had the fire first burn low, and then lower and lower till it went 
quite out. It comes to this, then, that this quickening fire will find 
an outlet to warm and quicken others, or it will die. In dealing 
with the symbol of water, we found it quite possible for the Chris- 
tian to drink himself, without being a fountain to quench the thirst 
of others. But this is not possible in the baptism of fire. The 
blessing comes first, like the other, as a personal blessing ; but it 
cannot stop there ; from the very nature of it, it is expansive, scat- 
tering light and heat, carrying life and blessing to all with whom the 
fire life is brought into contact. And here, again, there is not only 
the irrepressibility of which we have been speaking, but there is far 
greater energy. Water flows down for the most part gently and 
quietly, but see how the light flashes and the fire spreads ! Water 
flows wherever there is a channel for it, but light and fire ask no 


ELEMENTAL EMBLEMS OF THE SPIRIT. 


667 


prepared channels, no beaten track to travel on ; they make a . track 
for themselves anywhere, everywhere, leap over obstacles, or clear 
them away, and make their power felt in all directions, up and 
across and athwart, as well as down. Such was the power of the 
little church of one hundred and twenty members on the occasion of 
the first baptism of fire. Such has been the power of Christians and 
of churches whenever the promise has been welcomed and its fulfil- 
ment realized — a promise, be it remembered, which is as good now 
as it ever was : “ The promise is to you and to your children, and to 
them that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” 

And yet it is greatly to be feared that only a very, very few look 
for the fulfilment of it, only a very few expect or receive the bap- 
tism of fire. It is to be thankfully acknowledged that the promise 
of the flowing waters is largely realized and fulfilled. It was not 
always so. A century ago, while there were not a few who quenched 
their own thirst at the fountain-head, there was very little accom- 
plished in the way of sending streams out from the Church to fertil- 
ize the wastes around. But now it is generally understood that 
churches and congregations of Christians exist not only for their 
own salvation and edification, but for spreading the Gospel around 
them. There are channels of work carefully made, and in these 
channels the living streams do flow. We have our Sunday-school 
work, and our mission work, and our open-air preaching, and our 
tract-distributing, and so on, and along these and similar channels 
flow many life-giving streams. But it is greatly to be feared that 
we know almost nothing of the baptism of fire. Many Christians 
seem scarcely ever to think of such a thing, and some would shrink 
from it as almost a calamity. To have anything so startling would 
seem quite out of keeping with that quiet and even tenor of our way 
which seems so proper and becoming. We do not for a moment 
mean to say that there is no light and no warmth. God forbid ! 
That would mean utter death. There is light and there is heat dif- 
fused all through the Church, as light and heat are diffused in the 
atmosphere on a bright summer day, and in fact even on a cloudy 
winter day ; but what we do mean to say is that there is very little 
of that powerful and concentrated light and heat which makes fire, 
which not only warms but kindles. Even the heat of August will 
not kindle the best set fire. It needs the touch of flame to set it 
going. Only fire can kindle fire in common coal or common clay. 

Think for a moment how many fireplaces there are around us, and 
in the midst of us, too — in the midst of our Christian communities 
and congregations — how many fireplaces, with fires well laid, fuel all 
ready, plenty of Christian ideas and knowledge lying there in the 


668 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


minds of our young people and many who are no longer young, but 
lying cold and dead, wanting the touch of fire — not the mere general 
warmth of a Christian atmosphere, but the hot touch of flame, which 
can come only from a heart baptized with the Holy Ghost and with 
fire ! Now, even if we did not want the baptism of fire for our- 
selves, if we were content to flow along in the accustomed channels 
of our life, without any sparkle or glow or flame of Christian joy to 
gladden our course, should we not earnestly desire that we had just 
a little fire to apply to these cold fireplaces ? Do not we parents 
who are mourning that our children are so cold in things spiritual 
long for just a little of this baptism of fire on ourselves, that we 
might be able to touch their lives with the heavenly spark ? Do not 
Sunday-school teachers long for it, or for more of it ? Do we not all 
desire to have some share in this blessed work of kindling the flame 
of heavenly love in human hearts? If only we would all take to 
ourselves this promise and make it our own, waiting for its fulfil- 
ment as the one hundred and twenty did during those ten days, 
what a change there would be ! What a blessed summer-time ! What 
a glow of true devotion and warm brotherly love, and here and there 
and many-where what flashes of light and gleamings of flame and 
kindlings of fuel ! And presently our neighbors would feel it, our 
churches would feel it, other churches would feel it ; and who can 
tell how far the warmth would spread and the light would shine ? 
We were impressed as we thought of the grand possibilities there 
are for Christians and the Church, in view of the promise of the 
Spirit under the symbol of water ; but they are grander still, espe- 
cially as regards the prospect of speedy results, as we think of the 
promise of the Spirit under the symbol of fire. It takes time, long 
time, for the tiny stream to grow into an Amazon ; but “ see how 
great a matter a little fire kindleth !” It takes very little time to 
produce great results with fire. We all know it as regards the de- 
structive energy of earthly fire ; it is equally true of the blessed 
energy of the fire that comes from Heaven. How important, then, 
that the Church should welcome the promise of the Spirit in all the 
fulness of life-giving power, which is within her reach in this “ dis- 
pensation of the Spirit !” 

Welcome, Blessed Spirit, in all the fulness of Thy grace, and love, 
and power — come as the wind to revive us — as water to cleanse and 
refresh us and flow through us as channels of grace to others — as fire, 
to purify us in the inmost recesses of our souls, to quicken us to a 
warmer and brighter life, and to give us the blessed power of kin- 
dling life all round about us. “ Come, Holy Spirit, come !” 

J. M. Gibson. 


London , England. 


V. 


SIDNEY LANIER 


“ Genius takes its rise out of the mountains of rectitude.” — Emerson. 

Longfellow “ saw . . . that in the morality of human life lies its true beauty.” — 
George IV. Curtis. 

“ Time, whose judgments are inexorably moral.” — Lanier. 

THE ETHICAL ELEMENT GIVES LIFE TO LITERATURE. 

T HE hope “ to write something which the world will not will- 
ingly let die,” is a noble ambition. But they are fatally in 
error who hope to write for all time, yet who do not know and use 
the language of all time. In the noblest literature of the world, as 
in society, it is the great moral ideas which preserve from decay. 
Righteousness, goodness in life, is the one great antiseptic in soci- 
ety. And in letters, it is before all the ethical element which pre- 
serves and perpetuates. What should one generation of men care 
to receive from another, and to hand on to posterity, if not that 
vital element in ” habits” which is coined in the Greek word 
” ethics” — the essentially best in “ customs” and ” manners” which 
men have called ” morals” ? 

More writers fail to make an abiding name in literature from blind- 
ness to this law than from ignorance of the maxims of the rhetori- 
cians. The gravest defect which stands in the way of success for 
ambitious young writers is the lack of the true artist’s sense of 
illuminated moral vision. It is the lack of this gift rather than of 
any other which shuts out all save the truly great souls from pure 
and abiding literary fame. It was no less a master in the literary 
world than Goethe who said that “ without the ethical sentiment 
the actual is the low, the vulgar, the gross.” All the great masters 
of the “ literature of enduring power” speak again and again in 
this same strain. 

Yet many who profess the literary vocation are led by a strange 
infatuation utterly to ignore this great truth. There is a persistent 
bias in many authors and critics to distrust the value of the ethical 
element in art, and particularly in the arts of poetry and fiction. 
Such writers dare not reckon upon the moral nature of man. All 


670 


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appeals to the ethical impulse they decry — if direct, as “ preach- 
ing,” if indirect, as marring art by a “ tendency,” a “ didactic pur- 
pose.” The thoughts which in their best moments are true and 
all-important to them, they dare not trust themselves to utter to 
their fellow-men. They do not venture to express boldly and 
earnestly what they see of moral beauty and abiding moral truth. 
They seek other dominating ideas in their conceptions of a work of 
art. They rely upon lower interests and less noble motives when 
they appeal to the reading world for an audience. Even among 
those who are the professed advocates and conservators of the good, 
the true and the beautiful in the art of letters, there is commonly 
an infatuation of indirection — an incapacity for giving the best 
place in thoughts and words to the best things, to the highest 
ideals. The cry ” art for art’s sake” is repeated as a shibboleth by 
critics and by so-called artists who have never seen the first princi- 
ple of all art, that there can be no true art which is not in harmony 
with the “holiness of beauty,” and suggestive of the “beauty of 
holiness. ” 

Thus it happens that while the souls of men hunger for moral 
truth "expressed in forms of beauty, while men will reward with an 
immortality of loving regard the author who supplies this deep hun- 
ger of the soul, the lives of too many who make literature a profes- 
sion are spent in exhorting one another not to “preach,” and in 
adjuring young authors who would succeed not to say that for 
which men are athirst. 

Among too many such writers, one here and there appears of a 
different voice and filled with a higher faith regarding moral truth 
and that beauty which has never been and can never be divorced 
from moral and religious truth. He sees life and nature in “ that 
light which is the master-light of all our seeing.” He is “ impas- 
sioned for beauty and truth.” What he sees and believes and loves 
he dares to utter. Rather, he utters it as a necessity of his nature 
and because he loves to utter it, with no thought of daring. He 
has seen that “ a breath of will blows eternally through the universe 
of souls in the direction of the Right.” On that unchanging trade- 
wind his soul is borne, in his commerce between the world of 
beauty and the hearts of his fellow-men. Not attempting to cultivate 
style by long practice in indirection, not dallying with pretty 
phrases, he fixes his eyes on the central truth and speaks it out. 
All men are delighted. The master-chords, strongly struck, reveal 
the artist-master. And graces and art in expression come once 
more to have a value, because men see again what is too often lost 
sight of in the mass of literary criticism — that there is truth to be 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


671 


uttered, and that only in uttering truth that is vital to men’s souls, 
and that binds men to God, can man’s noblest gift, the power of 
true and helpful utterance, whether in prose or poetry, find its 
freest scope and its greatest beauty. 

LANIER SAW THIS TRUTH. 

Sidney Lanier was an artist of our own land and of our own 
younger generation, in whom this gift of clear-sighted, passionate 
loyalty to the loftiest moral truth was joined with the richest gifts 
of poetic imagination and utterance. We may well be content to 
recognize a difference between American literature and the later 
literature of England, if we can see such sane principles as are cited 
at the head of this article giving tone and color to the literature of 
our land. Let the sickly school of “ Mors and Eros” flourish 
where the most of Whitman’s admirers are to be found, among men 
fed on Swinburne’s falsely beautiful because immoral rhapsodies ; 
let the still younger school of poets who carve ” pretty faces on 
cherry stones,” if they must live, thrive in England, rather than in 
America. But let us hopefully expect a continuance among us of 
that line of the seers and singers of sound morals and beauty whose 
helpful mission is suggested by the thoughts and the names which 
are linked with Lanier’s in the caption of this article. 

That we may know something of the soul of the man from the 
first, let us have before us these extracts from the prose writings of 
Lanier : 

“ The greatest work has always gone hand in hand with the most 
fervent moral purpose” ( The English Novel , p. 281). 

“ The requirement has been, from time immemorial, that wherever 
there is contest as between artistic and moral beauty, unless the 
moral side prevail, all is lost. Let any sculptor hew us out the 
most ravishing combination of tender curves and spheric softness 
that ever stood for woman ; yet if the lip have a certain fulness that 
hints of the flesh, if the brow be insincere, if in the minutest par- 
ticular the physical beauty suggest a moral ugliness, that sculptor — 
unless he be portraying a moral ugliness for a moral purpose-may 
as well give over his marble for paving-stones.” “ He who has not 
yet perceived how artistic beauty and moral beauty are convergent 
lines which run back into a common ideal origin, and who therefore 
is not afire with moral beauty just as with artistic beauty ; ... he 
is not yet the great artist” (Eng. Novel, pp. 272-3). 

“ It may be, indeed, that there are more persons, nowadays, who 
retain the 4 elegant ’ ideal of poetry which was prevalent a century 
ago than would willingly face an explicit statement of that ideal. 
But it must be said that the world as world has abandoned it.” 
44 The painful undertone which we hear in dearest Keats’s introduc- 
tion to Endymion, as if he were not free from a sense of intrusion in 


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challenging the world’s attention to forms of pure beauty which did 
not directly concern either trade or politics ; the amateurish trifling 
which crops out in such expressions as ‘ polite literature,’ used even 
by Poe, . . . and still to be traced here and there in current talk, 
are things of the past. That all worthy poets belong substantially 
to the school of David, that it is the poet’s business to keep the line 
of men touching shoulders with each other, that the poet is in 
charge of all learning to convert it into wisdom, . . . these will not 
be regarded as merely visionary propositions” ( Intr . to Science of 
Eng. Verse). 

In such sentences from an artist and a poet, there is something of 
the dignity of the seer announcing his own high mission ; and the 
young man who wrote them had that “ character which gives 
splendor to youth.” Many of us recall the delight with which we 
used to welcome his poems as they appeared in the Independent, or 
Scribner s, or Lippincott' s. As we saw his passionate love of beauty 
and purity, as we learned more and more of the rich endowments of 
his artist nature, we felt a sense of joy in the possession of such a 
compatriot. It is no slight matter when a poet, on whose soul 
God’s creative touch has set the starry splendor of genius, is born, 
in any land, and finds his heaven-appointed means of expression ; 
and there was a grateful sense of hopeful joy and of promise for the 
future of our literature attendant on the recognition of the fact that 
in our time and in our land a soul as richly gifted as was that of 
Sidney Lanier had been heard to speak, and by its utterance had 
been known and hailed as royal-born in the kingly line of great- 
souled singers. Here was a dignified young manhood, rich in that 
perception of the beauty of morality which renders immortal the 
artist who has it and who does his work in its light. Here was a 
fresh stream on American soil flowing full and strong from those 
“ mountains of rectitude” where genius has its rise. And when that 
heroic battle against poverty and hopelessly confirmed consumption 
which he fought with unwavering valor for fifteen years, ended in his 
victorious defeat ; when, to use the words of his devoted wife, 
“ that unfaltering will rendered its supreme devotion to the adored 
will of God,” and the tidings of his death passed through the land, 
many of us who had never seen him felt bereaved of a helper and a 
dear friend, while all who watch the progress of letters in our land 
knew that American literature had lost in him one whose accom- 
plished work gave the most abundant promise for great fame in the 
future. 

It is now three years since his collected poems were published, 
preceded by a ” memorial ” from the pen of Dr. William Hayes 
Ward, of the Independent. To this memorial, a model of brief biog- 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


C73 


raphy and graceful and deeply sympathetic criticism, all who wished 
to learn of the life of Lanier, and all who write of him, must 
acknowledge a debt of gratitude. The opening sentence of that 
memorial declares the writer’s belief that Lanier “ will take rank 
with the first princes of American song.” And the constantly 
increasing number of thoughtful men and women who have learned 
to love and honor Lanier within these last few years goes far to 
confirm the prophecy. 


HIS LIFE IS A LESSON. 

Personality is the most potent teacher. “ Happy is the nation 
that knows its own great men.” And the life of Lanier, from the 
intensity of his personality, has a value for us hardly inferior to that 
of his writings. Indeed, it is difficult in this case to separate the 
poet from the poetry. There is nothing in the life of this teller of 
noble truths to make one question the sincerity of his utterances, or 
wonder, as we are forced to do when we read the lives of certain 
poets, that such beauty in the thought should fail to beautify the 
life. We may apply to Lanier his own words (although he expressly 
affirms that no poet yet has “ wholly lived his minstrelsy”) ; he 
fulfilled his ideal in many ways, and so 

“ Lived and sang that Life and Song 
Might each express the other’s all, 

Careless if life or art were long. 

Since both were one, to stand or fall. 

“ So that the wonder struck the crowd, 

Who shouted it about the land ; 

His song was only living aloud , 

His work, a singing with the band.” 

In that well-known passage in The Republic in which Plato, depict- 
ing the ideal “ good man,” so marvellously portrays in many of its 
minutest details the life and death of Jesus Christ, we are told that 
the truly virtuous man must be poor and despised, that it may be 
evident to all that he is not good merely because virtue pays him 
well. If the true artist, the man of letters by a call from above, 
were to be made manifest by a similar testing process, while all cir- 
cumstances seemed against him, Lanier’s life and struggles might be 
taken as the type of such testing. 

HE WAS NOT LEFT TO BE A LAWYER. 

Like many another name of honor in English literature, Sidney 
Lanier’s was inscribed in his younger manhood upon the roll of 
students and practitioners of the law. But he was not left to be a 


674 


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lawyer. God said to him, There are wrongs to be righted, there 
are sacred birth-rights of the race to be defended, there is an inherit- 
ance of beauty and truth which as poet you can secure to your 
brother-men, of infinitely higher value and more abiding worth than 
any which as attorney you could win or hold for your clients ! 

Here is a sentence from a letter to his father replying to the 
request that he reconsider his decision to give up the practice of the 
law. It was written from Baltimore, where he had determined to 
settle, in 1873, to give himself to the study of poetry and music : 

“ My dear father, think how, for twenty years, through poverty, 
through pain, through weariness, through sickness, through the 
uncongenial atmosphere of a farcical college and of a bare army, and 
then of an exacting business life, through all the discouragement of 
being wholly unacquainted with literary people and literary ways — 
I say, think how, in spite of all these depressing circumstances, and 
of a thousand more which I could enumerate, these two figures of 
music and poetry have steadily kept in my heart so that I could not 
banish them. Does it not seem to you, as to me, that I begin to 
have the right to enroll myself among the devotees of these two 
sublime arts, after having followed them so long and so humbly and 
through so much bitterness ?” 

Noble lessons from such an experience are written in his poems. 
He learned to press to his desired work and to its desired end with 
indomitable purpose and energy. “ The great heart,” says Emer- 
son, “ will no more complain of the obstructions that make success 
hard than of the iron walls of the gun which hinder the shot from 
scattering.” And in the brief poem, “Opposition,” Lanier 
enforces the same truth : 

“ Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill, 

Complain no more : for these, O heart. 

Direct the random of the will 
As rhymes direct the rage of art. 

“ The lute’s fixed fret, that runs athwart 
The strain and purpose of the string, 

For governance and nice consort 
Doth bar his wilful wavering. 
****** 

“ Of fret, of dark, of thorn, #f chill, 

Complain thou not, O heart ; for these 
Bank-in the current of the will 
To uses, arts and charities." 

As we look at the circumstances of his life, let us carry with us 
the strains of this poem, which interprets the use of crosses, inter- 
ferences, and attempted thwartings of one's purpose ; for the 
ethical value of Lanier’s life and writings can be fully understood 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


675 


only by remembering how much he overcame and how heroically he 
persisted in manly work in his chosen art through years of such 
broken health as would have driven most men to the inert, self- 
indulgent life of an invalid. The superb power of will which he dis- 
played is a lesson as valuable as the noble poems which it illustrates 
and enforces. 


HIS EARLY LIFE. 

Sidney Lanier was descended from a Huguenot family whose 
earlier members were famous at the court of the Stuarts for their 
gifts of music and their love of art. Transplanted to Virginia in 
1716, the Laniers were honored citizens of the colony and the State. 
Again and again the strain of artist’s blood has shown itself among 
them ; and in the family of the poet’s mother, Mary Anderson, of 
Scotch descent, like gifts had marked more than one of her kinsmen. 

Born at Macon, Ga. , in 1842, Sidney early showed a passionate 
fondness for music and wonderful powers as a musician. While still 
a boy he could play upon any musical instrument which came within 
his reach ; but his favorite instrument was the violin, although he 
so far yielded to his father’s fear of the fascinations of the violin 
as to lay it aside for the flute. His friends were opposed to his 
devoting to music the time and attention which he wished to give 
it. But he could not be wholly restrained from his dearest delight. 
It is an evidence of the sensitive susceptibility of his fine-nerved 
organism that, under the influence of violin music in his boyhood, 
he several times passed into a state of trance while he was playing. 
Apparently unconscious, he would seem to hear the richest music ; 
and the nervous strain would leave him sadly shaken. 

AT COLLEGE AND IN THE WAR. 

At the age of fourteen he entered Oglethorpe College as a sopho- 
more. He was graduated in i860, and he held the position of tutor 
at the college until the outbreak of the Rebellion. The first call to 
arms, in April, 1861, found him marching toward Virginia with the 
first regiment that left his State. He and his dearly-loved younger 
brother, Clifford, enlisted as privates. They were tent companions, 
and three times Sidney declined promotion because it would have 
rendered necessary their separation. 

After three campaigns together they were at last separated, and 
each was placed in command of a privateer. Captured in an 
attempt to run the blockade, Sidney was for five months a prisoner 
at Point Lookout. His flute, his inseparable companion in his army 


676 


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life, he had slipped up his sleeve as he entered the prison ; and with 
it the boy-prisoner made many friends. 

His prison experience is recorded in his only novel, Tiger 
Lilies , written and sent to the press within three weeks, in 1867 — a 
story now out of print, but described as “ luxuriant, unpruned, yet 
giving rich promise of the poet,” abounding in evidences of a fertile 
imagination and of high ideals of art. 

' Released from prison a few days before Lee surrendered, he 
reached home, emaciated and feeble, only in time to witness his 
mother’s death from consumption. Congestion of the lungs seized 
on him then, and he never afterward knew vigorous health. Indeed, 
from this time his life was a prolonged struggle with consumption. 

HIS MARRIAGE. THE POET’S WIFE. 

For two years he faithfully discharged the humble duties of clerk 
in a shop, at Montgomery, Ala. In 1867 he became Principal of an 
Academy at Prattville, and a few weeks later he married Miss Mary 
Day. The marriage was a most congenial one. Her faith in her 
husband’s future was most stimulating, and it never faltered in the 
dark years that followed. He dedicated to her many of his poems. 
From one of them, My Springs, here are some stanzas : 

“ In the heart of the hills of life, I know 
Two springs that with unbroken flow 
Forever pour their lucent streams 
Into my soul’s fair Lake of Dreams. 

“ Not larger than two eyes, they lie 
Beneath the many-changing sky, 

And mirror all of life and time. 

Serene and dainty pantomime. 

***** 

“ Always when faith with stifling stress 
Of grief hath died in bitterness, 

I gaze in my two springs and see 
A faith that smiles immortally. 

“ Always, when art, on perverse wing, 

Flies where I cannot hear him sing, 

I gaze in my two springs, and see 
A charm that brings him back to me. 

***** 

“ O Love, O Wife, thine eyes are they, 

My springs, from out whose shining gray 

Issue the sweet celestial streams 

That feed my Life’s bright Lake of Dreams. 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


677 


“ Oval and large and passion-pure 
And gray and wise and honor-sure, 

Soft as a dying violet-breath, 

Yet calmly unafraid of death ; 

“ Thronged like two dove-cotes of gray doves, 

With wife’s and mother’s and poor-folks’ loves 
And home-loves and high glory-loves 
And science-loves and story-loves — 
***** 

“ Dear eyes, dear eyes ! And rare complete — 

Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet — 

I marvel that God made you mine — 

For when He frowns, ’tis then ye shine !” 

Never has true conjugal love in its sustaining, ennobling, every- 
day helpfulness to an artist-soul been more truly sung than by 
Lanier. He makes generous “ Acknowledgment” o.f his debt to his 
wife for suggestions and inspiration, in the poem that bears that 
name ; 

“ Twice-eyed, with thy gray vision set in mine 
I ken far lands, to wifeless men unknown, 

I compass stars for one-sexed eyes too fine." 

And when the “ Laus Marise” of his verse has expressed more than 
most men who have not noble-hearted wives will accept as true (yet 
how much less than some of us know as truth !) of the preciousness 
of married life where hearts and souls are joined, he thus repels the 
charge that love so intense may interfere with supreme love to God : 

" Wife-love flies level, his dear mate to seek, 

God-love darts straight into the skies above ; 

Crossing, the windage of each other’s wings 
But speeds them both upon their journeyings.’’ 


THE LAW. STILL FAILING HEALTH. 

Before the first year of his married life had passed a violent hem- 
orrhage from the lungs forced him to give up his position as Prin- 
cipal of the school at Prattville. Yielding to the wishes of his 
father, a lawyer who still practises at Macon, Ga., he settled at that 
place, and for five years studied and practised law. The spring and 
summer of 1870 brought an alarming decline and a distressing cough. 
Most pronounced symptoms of consumption in 1872 drove him to 
New York for medical assistance, and later to Texas for a change of 
air. The conviction was now forced home upon him that he had 
but a short time in which to do his life-work. From his earliest 
years he had known a consciousness of great powers, seldom spoken 
of, and never boastfully. It is easy to ridicule the confidence with 


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which such richly-endowed young natures sometimes speak of their 
own powers ; but sooner or later the possession of real genius 
becomes known to its possessor, and usually he is conscious of it 
himself before he puts it to the proof that convinces others. Lanier’s 
college note-books reveal to us noble ideals, and the high hopes of a 
boy “ who had found in himself a standard above anything in his 
fellows.” In these memorials of a “generous-seeking” youth 
there is a consciousness of power and a consecration to lofty aims 
which remind us of Milton’s student-days. And now, at thirty, a 
consumptive exiled to Texas for his health, that his wife may take 
courage and share his high hopes for his future, he writes to her of 
“ fresh revelations of the very inner essence and spirit of all songs.” 
“ All day my soul has been cutting swiftly into the great space of 
the subtle, unspeakable deep, driven by wind after wind of heavenly 
melody.” 


HE GOES TO BALTIMORE TO STUDY POETRY. 

Convinced that his life was likely to be a short one, and feeling 
that he held sacred gifts in trust, he determined to devote what 
remained of life and strength to music and literature. 

In December, 1873, he found in Baltimore the opportunities for 
broader study which he desired ; and, after the fullest deliberation 
in that correspondence with his father of which we have seen a part, 
he began a life of systematic study, supporting himself meantime by 
filling the place of first flute for the Peabody Symphony Concerts. 
It was a courageous struggle, this long-continued effort to support 
his wife and children with pen and flute, by such work as he had 
strength to do between frequent hemorrhages. He had need of 
faith in his art and in himself, in his vocation as a singer of sweet, 
strong thoughts to cheer men’s hearts. 

Who that has read his Jioie Dreams in January , written in 
1869, but first printed after his death, can forget the passionate, 
artistic aspiration, the bitter disappointment, and the triumphant 
strain of success immediately dedicated to the wife and child who 
had inspired it, which mark this powerful though unfinished poem ? 
The picture of poverty and of acknowledgment long delayed is a 
literal transcription of his own experience — too literal to bear publi- 
cation until he had won enough of success to take away the pangs 
of the long delay. 

At Baltimore he entered at once upon an eager and a thorough 
course of study in Anglo-Saxon and in English literature. These 
might be styled his professional studies, since they were intimately 
connected with his own improvement in his chosen art, Poetry. 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


679 


But he also read eagerly along lines of Natural Science, Philology, 
Metaphysics, and Art. He sought to make himself the full man, 
whose mind should be stored with well-ordered knowledge of all 
that concerned his time. He saw clearly what so many poetasters 
seem never to suspect, that a great poet must know, first of all. In 
his marsh-songs there is evidence of a breadth of scientific thought 
that is cosmic in its far-reaching sweep and in its suggestions of 
orderly power and unchanging relations, alike in the natural and in 
the- spiritual world. No poet of our time, unless it be Tennyson, 
has written verse which is at once so instinct with poetic beauty and 
fire, and so crowded with suggestions of the scientific theories of our 
time. These poems demand and repay careful study. They 
breathe the keenest delight in nature, and yet inanimate nature and 
human life are at one in them, not because the poet’s moods are 
mirrored in nature, not because he has formally resolved to see 
human life in symbols, but because soul-life is to him so emphatically 
the Source and the Support of all life, that the growths and phases 
of nature are not only interpreters of spiritual and aesthetic truth, 
but naturally and spontaneously speak that language and share in 
and express that life. 

The years from 1873 to 1876 he spent in Baltimore, alone, his 
family remaining in the South. His flute and his pen supported 
them ; but his sense of the sacred trust imposed upon the artist was 
so deep, that he would never write for pay alone ; and he published 
only when he was sure that he had a message of truth and beauty 
for the hearts of men, and that he had expressed it in the most per- 
fect form at his command. No artist has had at heart more steadily 
than did he through long years of poverty and of physical weakness 
the principle which Ruskin emphasizes : “If your work is first with 
you and your fee second, work is your master and the Lord of 
work, who is God. But if your fee is first and your work second, 
fee is your master and the Lord of fee, who is the Devil. Work 
first, you are God’s servant ; fee first, you are the Fiend’s.” And 
no temptations from the Master of Fees could buy this poet, who 
listened to ‘ ‘ the voice of the God of the artist, ’ ’ and took heed to fash- 
ion his poems “ after the pattern that was shown him on the mount. ” 

Until his marriage his love of art had found expression in music 
rather than in poetry. His earlier poems were comparatively unim- 
portant ; but after his marriage, poetry became his chosen form of 
expression. He soon began to acquire confidence in the use of 
rhythm and to express himself more freely. 

His poem “ Corn,” published in Lippincott' s Magazine in 1875, 
won him many friends, and among them Bayard Taylor, who felt 


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the new poet’s power, and interested himself warmly in introducing 
Lanier to literary friends. Lanier’s first letter to Taylor, grateful 
for recognition, yet dignified in tone, contains a pathetic sentence, 
which helps to explain that hunger of the soul which had driven 
Lanier to Baltimore : “ Perhaps you know that with us of the 
younger generation at the South since the war, pretty much the 
whole of life has been merely not dying.” 

EFFECTS OF THE WAR UPON LITERATURE IN THE “NEW SOUTH.” 

This sentence of Lanier’s contains a suggestion of the shaping of 
his life by the war, which deserves more than a passing notice. 
Great ideas, free and full powers of literary expression, strong tides 
of impulse toward artistic creation, attend upon and follow great 
social crises. Before the civil war the people of our Southern States 
had been notably deficient in evidences of such power. The appeal 
to arms, in 1861, called out the noblest young men, there as here. 
To young men reared in a society fevered and blinded by the 
poisonous exhalations of slavery, its ideas perverted by the vicious 
political doctrine that supreme allegiance was due to a so-called 
“sovereign State” and not to the United States, the Southern 
cause seemed the cause of liberty. At least, it was the cause of 
their families and their homes. That was a terrible awakening 
which came to them later, and taught them not only that they were 
defeated in war, but that they had been entirely wrong in their 
allegiance to the principles and the ideas which had led to the war. 

Under the readjusting influences of such an awakening to truth, 
the younger men of the South have been moulded as they have 
approached middle life. Shattered hopes, ruined fortunes, desolated 
homes, and the grim demand that richly-endowed but passionate 
natures accept new social conditions and readjust their lives along 
lines which were untried and seemed unpromising, but which were 
still seen to be fixed by justice and maintained by irresistible power 
— this has been the experience of the young men of the South since 
the war. 

We know that for too many in the South the result of the war was 
discouragement, “shiftlessness,” and desperation; while others 
devoted themselves solely and intensely to money-winning. But 
for certain nobler souls, the result was a deep, intense intellectual 
and spiritual life. The man who has had the error burned out and 
the truth burned into him in the very agony of defeat and disappoint- 
ment knows the truth and its power, for it has conquered him. 
And certain men who have passed through this experience have 
become as reverently and passionately devoted to the truth they 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


631 


have accepted and now advocate as was the subdued giant, Chris- 
topher, to the divine little child he bore, beneath the weight of 
whose pure white hand his giant strength had yielded. 

And this stern test has brought from the South such evidences of 
rich endowment in literature and art as her children have never 
before given to the world. 

Nothing in the entire field of American literature is fuller of 
promise for our future than this awakening of the South to the con- 
sciousness of literary power. To mention but three among many, 
what a trio of names in literature the New South has given us in 
“ Craddock” and Cable and Lanier ! 

The fact that Lanier had been in the Confederate army lent an 
especial propriety to Bayard Taylor’s suggestion that he be chosen 
to write the words for the cantata at the opening of the Centennial 
Celebration at Philadelphia, when a reunited North and South first 
learned to know each other in peace. That Lanier had become a 
true patriot, sincerely ready to accept the issues of the war, and 
loyally confident in the future of our country, no one can doubt who 
reads The Tournament (written in 1862 and 1865) and the Psalm 
of the West. 

The larger reputation which Lanier was now acquiring gave him 
hope and added confidence ; but he did not “ waste manhood on 
success.” He was stimulated to deeper study and greater effort by 
the encouragement which began to come to him. And he needed 
encouragement, for it was nothing less than heroism for an invalid, 
who should have been nursing his own health so to toil as to sup- 
port his family by fugitive publications and by his flute. ” To 
coquette with starvation” was E. P. Whipple’s synonym for depend- 
ing upon occasional literary articles to support one’s self. But 
Lanier by such articles supported not only himself, but the wife and 
children who were dearer to him than his own life. If he had a 
growing confidence in his powers, there was need of such confidence. 
We have seen his early consciousness of power. He writes now to 
his wife : 

“ So many great ideas for Art are born to me each day, I am 
swept away into the land of All-Delight by their strenuous, sweet 
whirlwind ; and I find within myself such entire yet humble confi- 
dence of possessing every single element of power to carry them all 
out, save the little paltry sum of money that would suffice to keep 
us clothed and fed in the mean time. I do not understand this.” 

“ Why can we poets dream us beauty so, 

But cannot dream us bread ?” 

Says Ruskin : ” I believe that the first test of a truly great man 
44 


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is his humility. I do not mean by humility doubt of his own 
power or hesitation in speaking of his opinions ; but a right under- 
standing of the relation between what he can say and do and the 
rest of the world’s sayings and doings. All great men not only 
know their business, but they usually know that they know it ; . . . 
only they usually do not think much of themselves on that account. ’ ’ 

Tried by this standard, the humility of Lanier is fully vindicated. 

In the summer of 1876 his family joined him in WestChester, 
Pa. ; but symptoms so alarming followed a severe cold that his 
physicians warned him that he could not live until spring unless he 
sought a warmer climate. The winter of 1877 was passed in Florida. 
To this Southern Italy of ours his wife accompanied him, and in the 
autumn of 1877 he first ventured to bring his family to Baltimore, 
with the hope of making for them there a permanent home. He 
resumed his place in the orchestra, where he was known as the finest 
flute-player in the country. Indeed, many who heard him in those 
concerts at Baltimore feel that the world has never had a truer artist 
in marvellous flute-effects. 

HIS LECTURES ON ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

His devoted study of English literature, continued through all 
these years, now bore fruit in a course of lectures upon Elizabethan 
verse, delivered to a parlor class of thirty ladies. The warm praise 
which these lectures received led to a more ainbitous course, upon 
Shakespeare. The lovers of art and letters in Baltimore rallied to 
the support of thefee lectures with something of that generous desire 
to aid struggling genius, mingled with a willingness to be known as 
the discerning early patrons of a nascent reputation, which marked 
Carlyle’s first lecture courses in London. The undertaking was 
much talked of, and the lecturer received unlimited encomiums ; but 
the course was so managed that it yielded little or no money to the 
needy poet. 

It had one result that was most welcome to him, however. Presi- 
dent Gilman was led by it to offer to Lanier a lectureship on English 
literature in Johns Hopkins University. The official notification of 
his appointment reached him on his birthday, in 1879, an d brought 
with it the assurance of a fixed income, however small, for the first 
time since his marriage, twelve years before ! 

This welcome recognition of his literary powers found the poet 
exhausted by another hemorrhage, his body so enfeebled that it 
could not hold prisoner for a much longer time the rare soul that 
had so valiantly struggled against adversity. Still in his feebleness 
he did the full work of a strong man. Occasional poems were 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


6S3 


printed, beautiful and carefully finished. Within six weeks, in 
the summer of 1879, he wrote The Science of English Verse, a 
volume which in itself merits an essay. Beyond question the Eng- 
lish language contains no other such suggestive, artistic, yet scientific 
analysis of the “ formal element in poetry,” of the effects of vowel 
and consonant sequences, and of the acoustic basis and the capabil- 
ities of the differing rhythms and measures in poetic composition. 

And now, while the last clear flames of his life are burning out in 
song and in poetic prose so perfect that we can scarcely credit the 
record of the bodily weakness in which such work was done, let us 
turn from the history of the poet’s life to note some characteristics 
of his poetry. 

LANIER’S POWER OF IMAGINATION. 

We have spoken of the ethical element in poetry as contributing 
more than any other element to give a poet a place in “ the litera- 
ture of enduring power but let no one suppose us to hold that 
the mere perception of moral maxims can make a poet, or that 
moral essays are poetry. Lanier has that wealth of imagination 
which marks the great poet. He “ saw nothing alone.” Great 
truths were reflected in nature, flashed back at a thousand varying 
angles from the visible word. It is for this beautiful imaging of 
truth that we are most indebted to him. Not only does he have 
power to make us see in his poetry 

“ The dearest boon imparted from above, 

The greener meadow and the bluer heavens 
And the deep heart of wonder and of love 

but he looks through the phenomena of nature to a spiritual mean- 
ing that underlies them. He sees with a double vision. Something 
there is in Lanier of the spirit that prompted these impassioned 
words of that poet-artist, frenzied with beauty, William Blake : 
“ What, it will be asked, when the sun rises do you not see a round 
disk of tire, somewhat like a guinea ? Oh, no, no ! I see an 
innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying, ‘ Holy, Holy, 
Holy is the Lord God Almighty ! ’ I question not my corporeal 
eye any more than I would question a window concerning a sight !” 
Lanier saw with wonderful accuracy, and reported truly what the 
” corporeal eye” can see ; but deeper than that he saw the ideal, 
the eternal. He could see well ; and “ the actual well seen is the 
ideal !” And those who do not yet know Lanier, if they listen to 
him in his prose or in his verse, will share the feeling of him who 

“ Heard one sweet voice ere he sailed away, 

And in his joy passed on, with ampler mind.” 


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HOW ESCAPE THE TYRANNY OF THE COMMONPLACE ? 

No one who hopes to live the intellectual life can with safety 
undervalue the imagination. A fact is precious. But we can do 
nothing with the fact ; the fact can be nothing to us, save, perhaps, 
an inexorable limiting condition, until it is imaged forth to us in its 
ideal relations to other facts, to our own life. A definite thought 
clearly expressed, an idea instinct with power, an impulse given to 
our own thought, emotions, and will, comes to have an ever-higher 
value for all thoughtful men as their experience of life increases. 
More and more we learn to dread the subtle tyranny of the common- 
place and the trivial. “ Plain living” does not in itself and by its 
own inherent tendencies stimulate “ high thinking.” Those who 
live in a routine of fixed duties and in quiet surroundings, even if 
those duties have some bearing upon the intellectual and the spir- 
itual life, still find it needful to guard themselves zealously if they 
would not be marked by the meannesses and leannesses that are the 
slavish livery of routine. By ideas we live. Through ideas God 
the Father of our spirits speaks to us. “ Life is energy of mind,” 
said Aristotle. The truly living soul carries ever in itself a sense of 
possible changes toward an unchanging ideal more and more clearly 
seen. The soul grows by conscious approaches to its ideal, by suc- 
cessive changes of its course of life. Each day’s experience if we 
are making progress places us in a new point of view. A new light 
falls upon our course from the inspiring conversation of a friend, or 
from the grave periods of some deep-thoughted essayist, or some poet 
whose soul speaks to ours like the voice of a brother, wiser than we, 
but so akin to us that even if centuries have passed since he wrote, 
the intervening years are nothing. From such sources and from 
countless others, but oftenest from poetry, come the impulses which 
remind us that we are living souls, and should be aspiring and 
achieving. 

THE LOVE OF NATURE. 

Among such renovating influences come the sweet, silent min- 
istrations of nature to the soul of man. In her sweet silences 
from human utterance she speaks to the reverent listener great 
primal, strengthening truths. We do well to take for ourselves 
hours of silent communion with nature. Mother earth, “ the green 
things growing,” the infinite wealth of up-springing life and insect- 
busy-ness in the June clover field ; the musical allurement of the 
tinkling brook when no ear but yours hears it, and your willing feet 
follow its pebble-strewn, grass-carpeted, shadow-canopied course 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


685 


alone ; the emerald-tinted half glooms of the deep wood, where all 
the whispering trees seem pausing to listen, and you cannot resist 
the feeling of which we have all been dumbly conscious — the feeling 
which some one once expressed to Emerson, that as soon as we shall 
have passed on, the genii of the place will resume the converse we 
have interrupted ; who is not better and stronger for hours thus 
spent in the sweet, quiet tutelage of mother-earth ? Such lessons 
are not of the earth, earthy ; they shine with the transfiguring light 
which shows us that all nature is but the fringes of the garment of 
Him who is Wisdom and Purity and Power and Love. 

But however close to nature’s heart we may fancy ourselves to be, 
she has other children who have loved her even better than we. 
They can tell us wonderful things of her which we shall miss without 
their guidance. To see her as she is we must have the artist’s 
vision. 

“ He murmurs near the running brooks, 

A music sweeter than their own.” 

Man’s soul needs the ministrations of poetry, that he may receive 
the highest teachings, whether of nature, of human society, or of 
spiritual truth. We must have this manna of the soul, or our spirits 
faint and die in the sand-wastes of routine. 

LANIER PERSONIFIES ALL NATURAL OBJECTS. 

If you love nature and enjoy the suggestive wealth of imagery 
and association which abounds in the best poetry of nature, you will 
delight in Lanier. Through all his verse there breathes a feeling of 
brotherly sympathy with everything that has life. 

“ And I am one with all the kinsmen things 
That e’er my Father fathered.” 

Since St. Francis of Assisi hastened along the up-sloping eastward 
pathway at sunrise with arms outstretched as if he would embrace 
the morning sun, hailing it as “ dear brother mine,” because it ran 
so willingly on God’s errands, and preaching of God’s love to the 
birds and the fishes as his little brethren, who were so full of life, 
God’s gift, that he must needs speak with them of God’s great good- 
ness — since St. Francis, no soul has seemed so heavily overcharged 
with this feeling of brotherhood for all created things. But with 
Lanier this love does not take the form of a vague, pantheistic 
blending of men and things, destructive of all moral agency in men 
and all moral distinctions in deeds. It is manifested rather in a 
sense of personality so keen that animals, trees, and stars must share 
it ; and as servants of the Supreme God, they, too, must consciously 


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wear His livery of holiness and beauty, and be consciously bent 
upon doing His will. Lowell says that in Wordsworth’s “ noblest 
utterances man is absent, except as the antithesis that gives a 
sharper emphasis to nature.” With Lanier, on the other hand, 
man and personality and will are so intensely real and so constantly 
underlie his thought, that his most beautiful descriptions of nature 
take the form of successive personifications, and nature, beautiful as 
she is and deeply as he loves her, becomes only the antithesis that 
gives a sharper emphasis to man’s power of self-direction, of self- 
determination. Beauty is always seen as conformity to law, and is 
a term exchangeable in his thought with purity, truth, holiness. 
The obligation which rests on every man to make his own life, in 
the use of all its powers, conform to law, is the supreme fact in 
personality ; and personality is so supremely the all-important fact 
in the universe that all animate and inanimate objects come into the 
scope of his vision personified and related to himself. 

His sense of beauty and his heart of love fill him with a passionate 
tenderness toward all that is beautiful in nature. He shows again 
and again an overmastering love of broad, free spaces — the marshes, 
the sea, the night sky. 

“ Oh, is it not to widen man, stretches the sea?” 

And he has the gift of setting all his work at times in such 
wide, cosmic views of nature as flash upon the reader broad gener- 
alizations and far-reaching relations whose radiant luminousness has 
been compressed into a phrase or a verse. But however wide the 
quick excursion of his thought may be, however terrific the import 
of the thought-annihilating distances in time and space through 
which his imagination hurries you, and of the elemental forces whose 
fury rages about you, always the thinking soul is the calm centre on 
which all turns and to which the poet constantly refers, “ in the 
consciousness that the whitest of these lightnings cannot singe an 
eyelash of his immortal personality.” 

There is room for a most valuable essay upon the doctrine of per- 
sonality, the key-note to Lanier’s conscious and unconscious phi- 
losophy, elaborated as it is in The English Novel, and flashing 
out again and again in his poetry. We shall speak of it more fully 
when we notice his teaching as to the artist’s responsibility. 

HIS APPRECIATIVE LOVE OF TREES AND PLANT-LIFE. 

Beyond any other poet, Lanier shows a love for plant-life and 
trees. Does he love them because they live and grow, yet never 
make capricious or wilful choice of evil, but grow steadily to their 
appointed form, breathing out a quiet beauty? 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


687 


“ To company with large, amiable trees” 

was a delight and a necessity with him. Early and late he sought 
them. 

“ In my sleep, I was fain of their fellowship, fain 
Of the live-oaks, the marsh and the main ; 

The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep. 
******** 

I have come ere the dawn, O beloved, my live-oaks, to hide 
In your gospelling glooms.” 

Again and again the praise of trees and of forests recurs in his 
verse, like the delicious veins of rich, penetrating forest-odors that 
cross your pathway in mountain travel, lending an added charm to 
the beauty of the scenery. 

“ The wood-smells, that swiftly but now brought breath 
From the heaven-side bank of the river of death.” 

Here is the secret of the charm of a sunset forest-scene, caught 
in a couplet : 

“ And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem 
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream.” 

He speaks of 

“ Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noonday fire, 

Wildwood privacies — closets of lone desire.” 
******** 

“ Pure with the sense of the passing of saints thro’ the wood 
Cool, for the dutiful weighing of ill with good — ” 


The presence of trees was a ministration to his soul. He sought 
the forest for refreshment as a lover seeks the sight of his lady’s 
face. It is as if his soul in some pre-existent state had plighted 
troth with a hamadryad ! Hear him as he lifts the curtain of moss 
and slips in among the live-oaks, away from carking cares : 

“So, 

Affable live-oak, leaning low — 

Thus, with your favor — soft, with a reverent hand, 

Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the Land, 

Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand 
On the firm-packed sand, 

Free.” 

And the passionate purity of his forest thoughts is seen in such lines 
as these : 

“To loiter down lone alleys of delight. 

And hear the beating of the hearts of trees, 

And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white 
By green wood-pools and pleasant passages.” 


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Here is a picture of the oak colonnades of a grove : 

“ Between 

Old companies of oaks that inward lean 
To join their radiant amplitudes of green." 

But it is the soothing yet inspiring companionship of trees that is 
his favorite note : 

" For love, the dear wood’s sympathies, 

For grief, the wise wood’s peace.” 

This ministration of trees to a mind and heart “ forspent with 
shame and grief ” finds its culmination in the pathetic lines upon 
that olive-garden near Jerusalem, which to those of us who have sat 
within its shade must always seem the most sacred spot on earth. 
The almost mystic exaltation of the power of poetic sympathy which 
inspired these intense lines, Into the Wood my Master went, may 
impair their religious effect for many devout souls. But to many 
others this short poem will express most wonderfully that essential 
■human-heartedness in the Son of Man, our Divine Saviour, which 
made Him one with us in His need of the quiet, sympathetic minis- 
trations of nature — perhaps the heart of the reason why this olive- 
grove was “ the place where He was wont to go” for prayer. 

You have noticed the difference between the confused masses of 
indistinct shadow which the gaslight throws upon the city pavements 
from the leafy branches of intervening trees, and the crisp, photo- 
graphic distinctness of the shadow-pictures of leaf and twig and 
moving branch cast at your feet by the incandescent electric light — 
shadows in which each individual leaf, its shape, its transparency or 
opacity, and the angle which its plane makes with the rays of light 
and with the pavement, is exactly written ? As wide as this differ- 
ence is that between the vague, general terms in which most other 
poets write of trees (where they write of them at all) and the loving 
delineation of the minutest peculiarities of tree-life and leaf-life 
which this ardent lover of trees gives us again and again. The long 
list of living growths for which “ the flute” speaks in the Sym- 
phony might almost serve as the classed catalogue of the botanist, 
so full is it ; yet see how it breathes with the poet’s love for that of 
which he writes : 

“ I speak for each no-tongued tree 
That Spring by Spring doth nobler be. 

And dumbly and most wistfully 
His mighty prayerful arms outspreads 
Above men’s oft-unheeding heads, 

And his big blessing downward sheds. 

I speak for all shaped blooms and leaves. 

Lichens on stones, and moss on eaves, 

Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves, 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


689 


Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes, 

And briery mazes bounding lanes, 

And marsh-plants, thirsty cupped for rains, 

And milky stems and sugary veins. 

For every long-armed, woman-vine 
That round a piteous tree doth twine ; 

For passionate odors, and divine 
Pistils, and petals crystalline ; 

All purities of shady springs, 

All shynesses of film-winged things 
That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings ; 

All gracious curves of slender wings, 

Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings, 

Fern-wavings and leaf flickerings, 

Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell 
Wherewith in every lonesome dell 
Time to himself his hours doth tell.” 

This selection illustrates that lavish wealth of phrase and fancy 
which at times needs restraint in Lanier’s poetry. Such a poem as 
The Harlequin of Dreams is evidence that his over-active imag- 
ination often crowded upon his mind throngs of suggestions which 
remained unuttered. His later poems show a growing mastery of 
that “ power to leave out,” which makes the highest works of genius 
as noteworthy for what they have refrained from including as for 
what they contain. The lush luxuriance of vegetable forms which 
these lines from the Symphony bring before the eye reminds one 
of Keats. In the “ fervent hymns” which the “ Spirits of June- 
Heat” upraise, in the Psalm of the West (p. 120), there is an- 
other passage where the verse is overweighted with beautiful 
imagery. Have the “ innumerable stars,” in their celestial beauty 
of grouping, ever been described with such a dazzling profusion of 
metaphor and simile as in the lines beginning : 

“ O stars wreathed vine-wise round yon heavenly dells, 

Or thrust from out the sky in curving sprays, 

Or whorl’d or looped with pendent flower-bells. 

Or bramble-tangled in a brilliant maze,” etc. ? 

Surely he had been “ holding the heavens in his heart for contem- 
plation.” And not only does he feel their splendid profusion and 
the rich forms of beauty in their grouping, but he sees them in his 
thought separated by those vast interstellar spaces which none but 
astronomers and poets can apprehend, while 

” Each grave star, 

As in his own still chamber, sits afar 
To meditate.” 

These last quoted lines are from A Florida Sunday , a poem 
which is an ideally perfect reproduction of a landscape mirroring a 


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mood which it suggests. In one of his charming letters Charles 
Lamb expands with delight, I remember, over a wonderful line of 
Coleridge, 

“ And tranquil muse upon tranquillity.” 

Lanier’s Florida Sunday might have been suggested by that line. 
Turn to it for a picture of Southern seas : 

“ Pale in-shore greens and distant blue delights, 

White visionary sails, long reaches fair 
By moon-horned strands that film the far-off air, 

Bright sparkle-revelations, secret majesties, 

Shells, wrecks and wealths are mine.” 

******* 

Long, lissome coast, that in and outward swerves, 

The grace of God made manifest in curves — 

All riches, goods and braveries never told 
Of earth, sun, air and heaven — now I hold 
Your being in my being ; I am ye 
And ye myself ; yea, lastly, Thee, 

God, whom my roads all reach, howe'er they run. 

My Father, Friend, Beloved, dear All-One, 

Thee in my soul, my soul in Thee I feel, 

Self of myself.” 

******* 

“ Thou, Father, without logic tellest me 
How this divine denial true may be, 

How all’s in each, yet every one of all 
Maintains his self, complete and several." 


HIS DOCTRINE OF PERSONALITY. 

See how carefully, even if unconsciously, Lanier guards his choicest 
treasure, the inviolable self of a self-conscious personality, in these 
last lines. None of the pantheistic poets feel more deeply than does 
he the solvent, blending power of the Father-Love which makes all 
nature one. 

” But in the multichord of ecstasy 
Our souls shall mingle yet be featured clear.” 

He has learned the essential emptiness of a Nirvana that blots out 
God’s handiwork, the individual soul. To Buddha he says : 

“ All the All thou hadst for needy man 
Was Nothing, and thy Best of being was 
But not to be.” 

And to the half-pantheistic tendencies of the modern disciples of this 
doctrine, with their reiterated assertions and implications that 
“ Good and Evil are but different and partial names for one and the 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


691 


same thing,” Lanier steadily opposes the clear intuition of a self- 
determining personality. He will not be misled by 

“ Emerson 

Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost 
Thyself, sometimes.” 

He never halts at that old confusion (in our day renewed) of the 
“ good ” in deeds with the “ good ” in things or “ the pleasurable” 
in experience, which led Plato to speak of “ suffering injustice” and 
“ doing injustice” as alike moral ” evils,” though one was a greater 
and the other a less evil. He sees that morals have to do only with 
self-activity of deed and feeling. 

Yet this constant perception of responsibility and of law, far from 
making him sternly repellent, is joined with the deepest reverence 
for Love as supreme. “ The great artist can never work in haste, 
never in malice, never in even the sub-acid, satiric mood of Thack- 
eray ; in love, and love only, can great work, work that not only 
pulls down, but builds up, be done ; it is love, and love only, that 
is truly constructive in art” (The English Novel , p. 204). 

It is the blending of the “ conception of Love as the organic idea 
of moral order,” with an austerity of purity, an intense white-heat 
of admiring devotion to holiness and truth, which makes Lanier the 
Apostle of Beauty and Holiness in the history of American art and 
letters. 

While he is not distinctively a religious poet, there are not want- 
ing passages in his poems as well as in his prose which express those 
convictions that early in life led him to membership in a Christian 
church of the fellowship which lends a name to this Review. The 
experience of later years broadened his faith, and his poetic percep- 
tions of a scope in certain feelings too wide for formulated words led 
him to speak less sympathetically of creeds as tests for laymen’s 
thinking. But always he held that the hope of society is in those 

“ Godly hearts, that, grails of gold, 

Still the blood of faith do hold.” 

It would be difficult to find a sharper contrast between the spirit of 
enlightened Christian faith and the spirit of agnosticism than you 
will feel if you compare with Lanier’s Marshes of Glynn and 
Florida Sunday the utterly pathetic lament of the brilliant young 
scientist, Clifford, over the loss of cradle-faiths : “ We have seen the 
sun shine out of an empty heaven to light up a soulless earth ; we 
have felt with utter loneliness that the Great Companion is dead.” 
To Lanier, the universe beats warm with the presence of a Personal 
God whose will upholds its laws, whose Love is Life, and whose 
high behests the artist, the poet is quick to hear and swift to obey. 


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THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


“WHAT worth, the whole of all thine art?” 

His conception of the function, the “ mission” of the artist we 
need not infer from mere allusions. He distinctly formulates it in 
more than one of his poems, as well as in his prose writings. In 
Individuality , the cloud (which, “ still-eyed and shadow-browed, 
steals off from yon far-drifting crowd,” “ And comes and broods 
upon the marsh”) is arraigned by the poet for “ contempts on 
Mercy, Right, and Prayer,” because but yesterday 

“ Thy lightning slew a child at play, 

And then a priest with prayers upon his lips 
For his enemies, and then a bright 
Lady that did but ope the door 
Upon the storming night 
To let a beggar in,” etc. 

****** 

What myriad righteous errands high 
Thy flames might run on !” 

To which the cloud makes answer : 

“ What the cloud doeth 
The Lord knoweth, 

The cloud knoweth not. 

What the artist doeth 
The Lord knoweth ; 

Knoweth the artist not ?” 

***** 

“ Awful is art, because ’tis free. 

The artist trembles o’er his plan 
Where men his self must see ; 

Who made a song or picture, he 
Did it, and not another, God or man.” 
****** 

“ Each artist, gift of terror, owns his will.” 

Not Arthur’s Difference between Physical and Moral Law t not 
Hazard’s Man a Creative First Cause , is more explicit in its 
doctrine of responsibility. This Puritan-like sense of man’s account- 
ability, “ as ever in the Great Task-Master’s eye,” pervades his 
poems. And in particular upon the artist, Lanier lays the heaviest 
responsibility for the right use of the great gifts entrusted to him. 
The thought of artists as 

” harps that stand 

In the wind, and sound the wind’s command,” 

breathing out, irresponsibly, a strain in praise of good or ill, is repel- 
lent to his soul. The true key-note and master-tone is the holiness 
of beauty. With this all a man’s words and deeds should be in 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


693 


harmony. And neither in artists nor in common men can he toler- 
ate that clanging, discordant looseness of tone which inevitably 
follows the surrender or the forgetting of responsibility, of personal 
allegiance to ethical law. 

HIS CRITICISMS OF POETRY. 

But while he loyally insists upon allegiance to moral law as under- 
lying all true beauty, Lanier is not blind either to the fleeting 
beauties or the defects of poets who renounce that allegiance. Hear 
some of his epigrammatic judgments of the fleshly school of poets : 

“ There was something in Whitman,” he says, which when he first 
read Whitman at his best, “ refreshed me like harsh salt spray.” But 
this is his verdict : “ Whitman is poetry’s butcher. Huge, raw 
collops, slashed from the rump of Poetry — and never mind gristle — 
is what Whitman feeds our soul with. Whitman’s argument 
seems to be, that because a prairie is wide, therefore debauchery is 
admirable ; and because the Mississippi is long, therefore every 
American is a God.” And as an artist and a teacher Lanier warns 
his fellow-countrymen against the assumption that there is to come 
from democracy a “ revolutionized democratic literature, which will 
wear a slouch hat and leave its shirt open at the bosom, and gener- 
ally riot in a complete independence of form” {The English Novel , 
p. 2 7). 

Of Swinburne he says : “ He invited me to eat ; the service was 
silver and gold, but no food therein save pepper and salt.” And of 
William Morris : ” He caught a crystal cupful of the yellow light of 
sunset, and persuading himself to dream it wine, drank it with a 
sort of smile.” 

While Lanier held to the loftiest ideals in art, he believed that 
poetry would vindicate its value even if tried by utilitarian standards. 
He wrote that he might fortify men’s souls, and so minister to their 
deepest needs. He held no art true art which failed of this. The 
beauty and the teaching service go hand in hand. The truth that a 
poet should minister to others is set forth in The Song . of the 
Chattahoochee , with a delicate grace of descriptive beauty and 
imitative melody that makes this one of the most bewitching 
“ stream-songs” in all literature. It is more beautiful than Tenny- 
son’s brook, in its pure, stream-cool imagery. It is as full of the 
motion of hurrying water as are Southey’s celebrated lines, How 
the Water conies down at Lodore. But Southey’s verse is a mere 
agglomeration of syllables, over which you must hurry and stumble in 
the effort to pronounce them. After study of both, when you com- 


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THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


pare Southey’s lines with the on-sweeping, impetuous, swaying rush 
that lends unity to thought, metre, and choice of words in the beau- 
tiful interpretative poem of Lanier, the comparison well illustrates the 
difference between a versifier’s tour de force , and the fine, spontaneous 
outburst of a poet responding to and interpreting the phases and 
voices of nature which he loves and feels. 

“THE NOBLE AND PROFOUND APPLICATION OF IDEAS TO LIFE.’’ 

The poet or preacher who feeds the souls of men with truth which 
is the life of the soul does them greater and higher service than the 
distributer of coal and bread ; for 

“ He that feeds men serveth few, 

He feeds all that dares be true.” 

“ We live by admiration wisely fixed.” In turning men’s thoughts 
continually to the worthiest objects of admiration, and in holding 
that the poet’s mission was “ to keep the line of men touching 
shoulders with each other,” and to discharge “ the function of 
elevating all commonplace life into the plane of the heroic, by 
keeping every man well in mind of the ego within him, which 
includes the possibility of all heroic action,” Lanier gave ample 
evidence of what Matthew Arnold has called “ the most essential 
part of poetic greatness” — “ the noble and profound application of 
ideas to life.” In Clover, the beautiful poem which he inscribes 
to the memory of Keats, in answer to the question, “ A poet, thou ; 
what worth, what worth, the whole of all thine art?” he declares 
that 

“ The artist’s market is the heart of man, 

The artist’s price, some little good of man.” 

And in The Bee he tells us how this service is to be rendered to 
men by the poet : 

“ Wilt ask, ‘ What profit e’er a poet brings ? ’ 

He beareth starry stuff about his wings, 

To pollen thee, and sting thee fertile.” 
****** 

“ For oft these pollens be 
Fine dust from wars that poets wage for thee.” 

While the higher lessons of soul-life are especially the province of 
the poet, in his Southern “ dialect poems” he set himself the 
immediately useful task of opposing two dangerous tendencies of the 
planters at the South after the war — excessive borrowing and 
“ speculation.” 

But in the main it was by strengthening “ those sacred bases of 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


695 


personality upon which the fabric of our modern society rests” that 
Lanier sought and hoped to serve his fellow-men. “ The possibility 
of making one’s life a good life invests it with a romantic interest 
whose depth is infinitely beyond that of all the ‘ society pleasures ’ 
{Eng. Novel , p. 254). “ The possibility of such moral greatness on 

the part of every most commonplace man and woman completely 
reduces to a level the apparent inequality in the matter of genius, 
and so illustrates the ‘ russet-coated epic ’ of every-day life and 
common people” {Eng. Novel , pp. 192, 194). 

The Symphony. 

Through an ethical impulse, always associated in Lanier’s con- 
sciousness with an aesthetic feeling, men are to be brought to a 
steadier voluntary conformity with law ; the “ free, preferential 
power” of the man is to be used for good. And while the poet 
always knows that reforms must begin with the individual, and can 
go forward only as men, one by one, become possessed of nobler 
ideas and take on the new life at the touch of Truth, yet Lanier was 
keenly alive to those social problems of our age which in their out- 
come have to do with men in the mass. In many respects the 
Symphony seems his most characteristic poem. It reproduces 
marvellously many of the effects of the orchestral symphony, taking 
up the motif, varying the mode of presentation to represent the 
different instruments, recurring to the theme, now bold and clear, 
now delicately suggestive and remote, now throbbingly pathetic. 
But see what an intensely practical and warmly human theme the 
artist in music and verse has chosen for this typically artistic pro- 
duction ! This beautiful poem is full of large-hearted sympathy 
with the laboring men and the “ prisoners of poverty,” and under its 
poetic imagery gives a summary of the political economy of “ the 
labor question. ” 

Lanier was pre-eminently a musician in his art. In his literary 
criticism there is abundant use of the “ imagery” of music — “ notes” 
and “ tones” and “ melodies” and “ harmonies” and ” tone-colors” 
are his natural language. He believed, too, that 

“ Music, on earth, much light upon heaven had thrown 

and his most helpful views of the future of men on earth, as well as 
his most inspiring outlooks into the heavenly distances and the vast 
futurities of the soul, are most frequently given in terms of music. 
In a noble passage on the development of music as at once the 
effect and the evidence of the development of the modern idea of 
that personality which Wordsworth says may “ make each soul a 


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separate heaven, a court for deity,” the sentence which we quote 
blends love of music, individuality, and hope of the moral amelio- 
ration of men — three marked characteristics of Lanier’s thought. In 
orchestral harmony he sees : “ The highest type of social develop- 
ment, where the melody is at once united with the harmony in the 
most intimate way, yet never loses its individuality ; where the 
melody would seem to maintain toward the harmony almost the ideal 
relation of our finite personality to the infinite personality, at once 
autonomous, as finite, and yet contained in and rapturously united 
with the infinite” {Eng. Novel , p. 144). 

LANIER AND “SCIENCE” IN ART. 

He was possessed by the deepest conviction that the beauty of the 
art of poetry, like all other beauty, had its foundation in law. So 
dominant was this conviction that, publishing but little, he held all 
his powers of expression in reserve until by intense study he could 
formulate a scientific theory of the art of verse, under which he 
could be free (for freedom is possible only by voluntary conformity 
to law) — free to work freely “ for time, not for the day.” The 
Science of English Verse gives us the result of these studies. It 
deserves a fuller criticism than is possible in this article. Its central 
inspiring idea is to be inferred from that sentence of Dante’s which 
Lanier inscribed upon its title-page : ” But the best conceptions can- 
not be, save where science and genius are.” While it was written 
and prepared for the press within six weeks, in one of those white 
glows of rapid, intense, and free creation, which are the mark of 
genius, it embodies the methodical study and the thought of years. 
Lanier had no sympathy with the poet-friend who objected to 
any theory of verse, and said, “ As for me, I would rather continue 
to write verse from poetic instinct.” To him Lanier quotes Ben 
Jonson’s lines eulogizing the knowledge and trained skill with which 
Shakespeare “ shakes a lance at ignorance” in every “ well-turned, 
true-filed line,” 

“ Who casts to write a living line must sweat 
(Such as thine are) and strike a second beat 
Upon the muses’ anvil.” 

“ For a good poet's made as well as born.” 

Lanier’s was a trained mind, remarkable for its combination of 
artist- impulse with scientific knowledge of music, methodical per- 
sistence of acquisition, careful and wide reading, especially in 
English literature, and capacity for broad generalizations based on 
facts carefully observed, but not allowed to tyrannize the soul. For 
natural science he had a marked fondness, and in The English 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


097 


Novel he has written most inspiring truths as to that vexed ques- 
tion in aesthetics, the effect of science upon the art of poetry in the 
future. He does not fear that the secrets of God are so shallow 
that science will explore all the unknown, and poetry will die in an 
atmosphere exhausted of all mystery.. “ Science, instead of being 
the enemy of poetry, is its quartermaster and commissary,” he 
declares ; and if you wish for a beautiful commentary on this sen- 
tence, read such passages in his own poetry as that from Sunrise 
in the Marsh Hymns , beginning, “ O artisan born in the purple 
— Workman Heat.” Into his chosen art he must carry a truly 
scientific (yet not the less an artist’s) method ; for Dr. Ward has 
justly said of him, “ His mind was as truly philosophically and 
scientifically accurate as it was poetically sensuous and imaginative.” 
He knew that no artist consciously works by rule at the moments 
when he is most truly inspired. But he insisted with equal clearness 
upon the counter-truth (too often forgotten by weaklings who talk 
of “ hours of inspiration” and do not study), that the normal rules 
of art are to be deduced only from careful study of the masterpieces 
of art wrought at their best moments by those master-minds who 
knew by heart the laws which they unconsciously obeyed. 

“ Nay, as the poet, mad with heavenly fires, 

Flings men his song, white-hot, then back retires, 

Cools heart, broods o’er the song again, inquires, 

Why did I this, why that? and slowly draws 
From Art’s unconscious act Art’s conscious laws.” 

— Psalms of the West. 

His volumes of prose are invaluable for students, because they 
incessantly demand of the reader and the would-be poet that he 
study, learn, acquire. ” The trouble with Poe was, he did not know 
enough,” says Lanier. “He needed to know a good many more 
things in order to be a great poet.” And to young poets : ” You 
need not dream of winning the attention of sober people with your 
poetry unless that poetry and your soul behind it are informed and 
saturated with at least the largest final conceptions of current 
science.” “ Once for all, in art, to be free is not to be independent 
of any form ; it is to be master of many forms.” 

Such sentences as these make it a matter for congratulation, as 
we look to the future of American letters, which suffered so deep a 
loss in Lanier’s death, that the reports of librarians at all our literary 
centres show that rapidly increasing numbers of our young people 
are consulting the works of Lanier for inspiration and guidance. As 
the generous-hearted youth of Cambridge once undertook a mis- 
sion to Oxford, sending a delegation of their finest scholars to 
45 


698 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


awaken at Oxford a love for Shelley and an appreciation of his 
poetry, so may the love of this noble American poet spread from 
college to college. 


CHARACTERISTICS AND “HAPPY PHRASES.” 


His wealth of imagination ; his fine powers of poetic conception ; 
his skill and art in the coining of happy phrases ; his ” deft marshal- 
ling” of vowels and consonants ; his constantly-increasing mastery of 
the forms of verse ; his union of close study and broad reading with 
deep poetic insight, the finest flushes of poetic feeling, and the most 
daring freedom in the use of passionate, thought-laden outbursts of 
expression ; his quick, full, and unvarying reliance upon intuition 
and the intuitive perception of great truth as the poet’s supremest 
gift, at the moment when 

“ Belief overmasters doubt, and I know 
That I know 

— all these mark him as a great poet. 

One is tempted to group certain happily phrased verses, many of 
which reveal his wonderful power of hearing the sounds and voices 
of nature, and his gift of coining expressions, which illustrate the 
Arabian proverb, “ That is the best description which makes the 
ear an eye 

“ The cricket tells straight on his simple thought, 

Nay, ’tis the cricket’s way of being still.” 

“ A one-desiring dove 
Times me the beating of the heart of love.” 

“ And down the hollow, from a ferny nook, 

'Lull' sings a little brook.” 

“ As some dim blur of distant music nears 
The long-desiring sense, and slowly clears 
To forms of time and apprehensive tune.” 


“ Yet precious qualities of silence haunt 
Round these vast margins, ministrant.” 


Of the sudden outburst of a bird’s song : 

*■ Dumb woods, have ye uttered a bird ?” 

Of the sun : 

“ Unto thee, whence the glittering stream of all morrows doth roll.” 

“Up the sky 

The hesitating moon slow trembles on, 

Faint as a new-washed soul but lately up 
From out a buried body.” 

“ The dew-drop, morn, may fall from off the petal of the sky.” 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


699 


One might multiply without number beautiful lines, particularly 
those which touch on the sweet antithesis and familiar rhythmic 
interplay of night and day, full of mystery and beauty to him as to 
all true poet-hearts. The gracious charms of the hours of dawn and 
even, when Night and Day are blending and interchanging, he sings 
again and again with a dewy, dawn-like freshness and a full-throated, 
evening-robin song of peace. 

HIS LAST WORK. 

But we left the poet just made happy in his illness by his appoint- 
ment, on his thirty-eighth birthday, in 1879, t° a Lectureship on 
English Literature at the Johns Hopkins University. Let us follow 
him hurriedly through the two years of life left to him. 

Before the heaviest strain of ill-health fell upon him, he had 
recorded in verse this prayer, fully answered as the life of his body 
waned and the beauty of his soul grew clearer : 

“ Would that my songs might be 

What roses make, by day and night : 

Distilments of my clod of misery 
Into delight.” 

It was in May, 1880, that the final fever fell upon him. After 
that date he lived only because soul and will triumphed over a body 
that, but for their transcendent power, must have yielded at once to 
disease. A summer in the open air at West Chester prolonged his 
life, and the autumn-time saw him again in Baltimore, his wife and 
children about him. In December all hope was abandoned ; but he 
rallied, and in February he delivered his second course of Lectures 
at the University, since published as the Development of the 
English Novel , a most delightful and thoughtful volume, already 
recognized as a classic. He had the strength to write with his own 
hand only the earlier lectures of the course. The later he dictated 
in whispers to his wife. A tragic interest will always attend the 
memory of these lectures as they are recalled by affectionate hearers. 
They listened, one has said, “ with a sort of fascinated terror, as the 
beautiful thoughts fell from his lips, in doubt whether the hoarded 
breath would suffice to the end of the hour.” It was in December 
of this winter, when too feeble to raise food to his mouth, with a 
fever temperature of 104°, that he pencilled that glorious out- 
burst of poetic life and fire, Sunrise on the Marshes , his greatest 
poem. He seemed to fear that his soul might lose its feeble 
servant, the body, before this message from the world of beauty, 
where that soul already floated far above pain and suffering, could 
be left on record that other men might by it be uplifted. 


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These lectures finished, he devoted some time to the prosecution 
of a task which well illustrates his love of the pure-hearted, honor- 
able boys of our land. The Boy s Froissart , The Boy's King 
Arthur , The Boy's Mabinogeon, and The Boy' s Percy , “ edited 
by Sidney Lanier,” have already reached an aggregate sale of 
nearly 25,000 copies ; and the boys who from these titles become 
familiar with the name of the man who gave his latest strength to 
preparing for American and English boys these noble volumes, will 
surely seek later in life some acquaintance with the sweet-souled 
poet and critic in his own works. Lanier will be remembered where 
even fiery-souled old Pindar felt that heroes had their noblest 
laurels, ‘‘ in the gentle fellowship of young boys’ themes of song.” 

As soon as the return of spring would allow a change, they bore 
the dying poet to the Carolinas, as a last hope, to try the effect of 
tent-life in a milder climate. His brother Clifford became once 
more his tent-companion, as in the days of their army life. Laid 
thus close to the bosom of mother-earth, breathed upon day and 
night by her soft mother-breath, he lingered yet a little while — he 
even seemed to rally back toward strength. 

His brother, summoned suddenly by important business, left him, 
in hope of seeing him again, so marked had been the improvement. 
But in September, 1881, alone with his wife, as they would have 
chosen to meet the inevitable, his eyes closed on this world, looking 
last of all into those dear eyes of hers, that were his “ Springs of 
Peace.” 

“ Just when he seemed to have conquered success enough to 
assure him a little leisure to write his poems,” says his biographer, 
“then his feeble but resolute hold upon earth was exhausted. 
What he had left behind him was written with his life-blood.” 
“ High above all the evils of the world, he had lived in a realm of 
ideal serenity, as if it were the business of life to conquer diffi- 
culties.” 

In an age which is so strongly marked by blind devotion to money- 
getting he lived in the spirit of his own fine lines, 

“ The artist's market is the heart of man ; 

The artist’s prize, some little good of man.” 

Alone, with a flute that breathed out music which was almost 
poetry, with a soul that saw only the law of love and beauty and 
truth, consumption grudging him every breath he drew, poverty 
pinching those dependent ones whom he loved best, serene he faced 
the hardest blows that Providence can deal to such a man, his soul 
and his verse mirroring only beauty, purity, and faith in God. 


SIDNEY LANIER. 


01 


To an age assailed by the dangerous doctrines of the fleshly school 
in poetry, and by that unhealthy “ gestheticism” and that debauching 
“ realism” which see in vice and uncleanness only new fields for the 
artist’s powers of description, and no call for the artist’s divine 
powers of denunciation — to save young men into whose ears is dinned 
the maxim, “ art for art’s sake only,” “ a moral purpose ruins art,” 
Lanier came, noble-souled as Milton in youthful consciousness of 
power, yet humble before the august conception of a moral purity 
higher than he could hope to utter or attain, discerning with the 
true poet’s insight the “ beauty of holiness” and “ the holiness of 
beauty. ” 

Had he lived and died in England, how he would have been 
embalmed in loving odes, his sepulchre how perpetually draped with 
insignia of national appreciation ! He is ours ! He was an Ameri- 
can to the centre of his great, loving heart. Shall we cherish his 
memory any the less lovingly because his works are the first-fruits 
of a reunited people — the richest contribution to our national fame 
in letters yet made by our brothers of the South ? 

Merrill Edwards Gates. 

Rutgers College, New Brunswick, N. J. 


VI. 


CRITICAL NOTE. 

SOME EXEGETICAL NOTES ON 1 TIMOTHY.* 

VII. The Meaning of i Timothy rv. 14. 

The word x^P l 0 P a suggests a miraculous gift that had been conferred on 
Timothy. If vve may assume this, the passage becomes somewhat easier. This 
divine gift, it is asserted, was given through the medium of prophecy. The 
phrase pera e 7 ri^effeoo? tgdv jezpoSK rou npsa fivrsplov cannot be pressed 
beyond the assertion that the laying on of the hands of the presbytery, by 
which seems to be meant Timothy’s ordination, was concomitant with the 
giving of the x a P lG P a — this took place at the same time as that. 
If now we turn to 2 Timothy i. 6, and read that Timothy received this 
XapiGpa tov 3 eov. (6), this gift of the Spirit (7), through the medium of the 
laying on of Paul’s hands, there can result no inconsistency with what is here 
taught. The medium is in the one case declared to be “ prophecy,” in the 
other, 11 the laying on of the Apostle’s hands;” and it is only necessary to 
suppose that the Apostle did not silently lay on his hands to bring the two state- 
ments into exact harmony. 

It is not necessary for us to distinguish (for the Apostle distinguishes for us) 
between the laying on of his hands, which conferred the gift, and the laying on 
of the hands of the presbytery, which conferred ordination, and was only con- 
comitant with the conferring of the gift. Ordination could doubtless be con- 
ferred by an apostle, although this was ordinarily the function of a presbytery ; 
but the conferring of miraculous gifts by the laying on of hands seems to have 
been ordinarily confined to the apostles, as Simon MaguS early discovered 
(Acts viii. 18). Possibly there is only one case of a miracle being wrought by 
the laying on of hands of others than an apostle recorded for us (Acts ix. 
12-17), and no case of miraculous gifts being so conferred. The case of the 
Samaritans is a very instructive one (Acts viii. ). Hitherto, apparently, con- 
verts had received the power of working signs, or speaking with tongues or 
other Spirit-given manifestations, by the laying on of the apostles’ hands at 
baptism. But the Samaritans were converted by one not an apostle, and it 
was not until Peter and John were sent to them that they “ received the Holy 
Ghost” (Acts viii. 14-17). The same results followed the imposition of 
Paul’s hands (Acts xix. 6, cf. xxviii. 8). On the other hand, ordination was 


* Continued from July number. 


SOME EXEGETICAL NOTES ON 1 TIMOTHY. 


703 


something distinctly different from this ; in Acts vi. 6 the apostles ordain, and 
in Acts xiii. 3 an apostle is ordained by those who were not apostles ; in Acts 
xiv. 23 again ordinations take place by Paul and Barnabas, and in 1 Timothy 
v. 22, and apparently Titus i. 5, ordinations take place in the absence of apostles. 
It seems clear, then, that we must distinguish between ordination in which the 
presence of an apostle was not necessary and the conference of miraculous gifts 
which came only by the imposition of the hands of an apostle. 

1 Timothy iv. 14 and 2 Timothy i. 6, when taken together, tell us thus that 
the ordination of Timothy was the occasion on which by prophecy and by the 
laying on of the hands of Paul the miraculous gift was conferred. But this no 
more confuses the ordination with the laying on of Paul’s hands than with the 
prophecy, or than in earlier times baptism was confused with the impartation 
of spiritual gifts. It may have been in one composite act that Timothy re- 
ceived both ordination and the gift ; but still the ordination came by the lay- 
ing on of the hands of the presbytery and the gift by the prophecy and the lay- 
ing on of the hands of Paul. Though not distinguished in time, the two were 
distinguishable in source. 

VIII. The Several Classes of Widows in i Timothy v. 3-16. 

A careful scrutiny of this passage will show us that Paul here speaks of no 
less than four classes of widows. He first divides all widows into two general 
divisions : those who have descendants to whom they may look for support, 
and those whom he calls real and desolate widows. The former class he ex- 
pects to receive their support from their descendants, who will please God by 
learning to show (filial) piety first at home, and to requite the former good- 
ness of their progenitors (verse 4), and who are declared to be worse than un- 
believers if they do not provide for their own (verse 8). The real and desolated 
widows include within their number three separate classes. First, there are the 
desolated widows, so far as husband and children go, who unbecomingly live a 
life of luxury and pleasure ; they are dead though living, and the Church has 
nothing in them (verse 6). Next, there are the real and desolated widows, 
who have neither descendants nor wealth to depend upon, but can only set their 
hope on God, and abide in petitions and prayers night and day * (verse 5). 
These are to receive from Christian charity the help that they need. Finally, 
there is a still narrower class of these latter needy ones, which the Apostle 
speaks of at some length in verses 9-16, and which we may call, for lack of a 
more definite name, “ listed widows. ' ’ Exactly what these “ listed widows” 
are has been a standing subject of dispute among commentators and writers on 
ecclesiastical organization, although it does not seem impossible to learn from 
the Apostle’s description their true status. 

Putting behind us, then, what has been written about them, and attending to 
the text itself, it may be remarked, first, that the “ listed widows” do not seem 

* That these words are not intended as praise to the widows, but as a sign of their 
desolation is clear from the context. Cf. Weiss in loc. 


704 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


to be an ecclesiastical order, whether of deaconesses or presbyteresses. This 
may be urged on three grounds : (a) The requirement as to age — “ not 
under threescore years old,” with no limit in the upward direction (verse 9) 
— seems inconsistent with the “enlistment” being to an office with duties 
and, in some sense, active functions, (b) That the enlistment was not to 
official activity, but was rather a relief from the necessity of labor, follows from 
verse 13, where the Apostle expresses his fear that the younger widows, if en- 
listed, would only learn to be idle, * and so become busybodies and gossip- 
ers. An office does not beget idleness, (c) The placing of a widow on the 
list made her a burden to the Church (verse 16) ; and this is scarcely a usual 
way of speaking of the officers of an active body. If, then, the enlistment in 
question can scarcely be enrolment into an ecclesiastical order, we may note, 
secondly, that it is an enrolment into a body of pensioners of the Church’s 
bounty. For this assertion much the same reasons may be urged as were 
pleaded against the former notion. More explicitly : (a) On enrolment, a 
widow became a burden to the Church (verse 16), and that in such a sense 
that she would no longer need the aid of private charity. (£) On enrolment 
the widow was relieved from the necessity of labor (verse 13) to such an extent 
that were she young enough to continue active, she was in danger of reaping 
the fruits of idleness in deterioration of character and growing carelessness of 
speech, (c) The whole context may be pleaded, which, at verse 3, begins 
with the subject of the support of the widows, and does not leave it until verse 
16 ; whereas if the “ listed ” widows be an ecclesiastical order, the paragraph 
treating of it is inserted in the midst of a discussion with which it has nothing to 
do, and without any warning as to the double change of subject, first from (verse 
9) and then back to (verse 16) the general subject of the section. In order 
that we may not be misunderstood, we ought to add, thirdly, that the “ listed 
widows” are not, however, to be regarded as the only widows entitled to the 
charity of Christians. It is clear that the ri/ua of verse 3 (note the “ but if ” 
of verse 4) includes monetary help, and the whole drift of verses 3-8 shows 
that all needy widows were to be aided by charity. So, too, verse 1 6 demon- 
strates that the Church felt the duty pressing upon her of relieving all widows 
that were “widows indeed” (cf. verses 3-5), while even beyond these there 
were some who had claims on private charity. The “ listed widows,” there- 
fore, were but one class of those whom the Church helped, and the objection 
so often urged against understanding them to be a body of pensioners — “ Would 
the Church thus limit her alms ?” f — is meaningless. St. Paul certainly dis- 
tinguishes between a larger body of alms-receivers (“ widows indeed,” verses 
3-5) and a less inclusive body of alms-receivers (“ widows-enlisted, ” verse 9) ; 
and our task is simply to discover what distinction he made between them. 

* That “ learn to be idle” is the proper sense of this clause seems certain both be- 
cause no suitable meaning can be got from any other connection of pavdavovcnv, and 
because otherwise apyai becomes very subordinate, whereas both its position and its 
repetition in verse 13b show it to be the most important idea of the clause. For the 
linguistic point involved, see Field, “ Otium Norvicense,” Part III., p. 126. 

f e. g. Ellicott in loc. 


SOME EXEGETICAL NOTES ON 1 TIMOTHY. 


705 


The distinction seems to lie ready at our hand. All desolate widows, young 
or old, were to receive the alms of the Church in accordance with their need 
and its ability. But these alms were to be given from time to time, to relieve 
present need, and without entailment of the future. Thus these widows stood 
in the same relation to the almsgiving body that other needy persons did, and 
received their aid from time to time as they needed it. But there was another 
narrower circle of widows, called “ listed widows,” who were enrolled as per- 
manent pensioners of the Church ; to them the Church assumed the position 
of children ; it recognized them as its “ mothers,” so to speak, and it engaged 
for their entire support for all their future life. These were, indeed, “bur- 
dens” on the Church — “burdens” which it cheerfully undertook, but, none 
the less, permanent “ burdens.” Naturally enough, enrolment on this list 
was to be carefully guarded. All widows, whether young or old, whether their 
past life would bear scrutiny or not, might receive alms in their times of need ; 
and they might count upon these alms in the charity of the Church so long 
as they had need. But the Apostle wisely decrees that none should be placed 
on the list of permanent pensioners, for whose whole future the Church under- 
took to provide, who had not already reached an age which would render it 
probable that they would need help for the rest of their natural lives, and who 
had not only been pure in their marital relations, but had been of approved 
Christian character in all their relations. Only mothers in Israel should be 
honored by being adopted as the mothers of Israel. The exclusion of the 
younger widows from this list is justified by him on the two grounds that their 
enlistment placed them in an equivocal position, and that the freedom from care 
for their livelihood that resulted would beget idle and gossiping habits. He 
does not forbid these younger women to be helped ; they were to be helped 
according to their daily needs. But he bids them to look for their permanent 
support where they naturally would seek it — in that second marriage and 
family activity which their youth and energy fitted them for ; rather than that, in 
their first feeling of desolation, they should by an open and public step pro- 
claim that they had no hope but in God (verse 5), and could henceforth have 
no spouse but Christ (verse ix), lest in the course of nature they should at 
some time wax wanton against Christ and wish to marry again, and so be forced 
to condemn themself as breakers of their first faith (verse 12). Far better for 
the Church to remember their youth for them at a time when they naturally 
forget it, and refuse them opportunity for ostentatious proclamation that they 
are dead to the world at a period when their life in it is scarcely begun, and 
for thus making that second marriage, which would naturally succeed the first, 
an open disgrace rather than what it really is, a second blessing. 

We may venture to say that the completeness with which this interpretation 
of the “ listed widows” unties all the knots of this rather difficult paragraph is 
a convincing proof of its correctness. It accounts for the insertion of the 
paragraph here, where the support of widows had been the theme (verses 3-8). 
It accounts for the arrangement of the matter through the paragraph itself, 
which seems to be the following : 1. Prerequisites for enrolment — viz. ( a ), 


?06 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


age over sixty years ; (h) purity in marital relations ; (c) reputation for good 
works (9, 10). 2. Justification of the requirement as to age — viz., it is an 

equivocal position for young women (rr, r2), and it is a dangerously idle life 
for young women (r3). 3. Intention for the younger widows — viz., they 

should marry, lest they fall into temptation and sin (r 4, T5). 4. The source 

of support for the unlisted women — viz. , their relatives, if they have such, and 
Christian charity if they are desolate (r6). It accounts still further for the 
details of the discussion. For instance, it accounts fully for the requirement 
of age ; and as the position of permanent pensioner was one of necessary 
honor, for the requirement of virtue and good works. The Church would 
honor and reward such women. 

It accounts again for the very difficult statements of verses rr-r3, adduced 
in justification of the exclusion of younger women. Verses n, 12 are read by 
those who understand the “ listed widows” to be an ecclesiastical order, as 
implying that a vow of “ celibacy” was a prerequisite to entrance into it ; and 
some even say this would be “ self-evident.” But is not this reading a later 
age into Paul’s words ? No doubt this verse has become the support of celi- 
bate orders, and perhaps it helped to found them ; but certainly by a misun- 
derstanding. It is not marrying, but ‘ ‘ wishing to marry, ’ ’ that is the fault here ; 
it is not falling away from faith, but “ breaking the first faith,” that is con- 
demned in the woman’s conscience. Paul does not object to the younger 
widows marrying ; it is possible that he does not even object to the “ listed ” 
women marrying again ; what he objects to is permitting a woman to enroll 
herself as one who will never have hope in any but God for her support, and 
thus proclaiming to the world her permanently desolate position, who, there is 
every reason to believe, is taking a temporarily despondent view of her true 
case. His object is to protect both the church and the woman ; but his- 
language is framed, as it is also in verse 13, from the point of view of the 
woman’s need. No doubt it is implied that all the listed women are without 
husbands and are not to marry again ; but this grows out of the very nature of 
the case that the enlistment is of those who have and will never have any one 
to look to for their support but the Church of their God, in whom their only 
hope is set (verse 5). They do not, then, pledge themselves not to marry', 
but they represent themselves as without any possible hope of marrying ; and 
under such circumstances the Church assumes their support Therefore the 
Church cannot accept these representations in the case of one who is so young 
that they need not be true ; and for one who gives such assurances and then 
“is wishing to marry,” an inconsistency results which is little short of a 
scandal, and which must produce a self-condemnation which need not be less 
sincere because her broken faith is based on obligations arising from monetary 
aid rather than from a recorded vow. The reason given in verse 13 rests 
also on a reminiscence of verse 5 ; freedom from care and the necessity of 
self-support in the older women means, in accordance with the contemplative 
character of increasing years, sitting at home to pray ; but in the activity of 
youth it means idleness and its consequent vices. Herefrom arises another 


SOME EXEGETICAL NOTES ON 1 TIMOTHY. 


707 


sound reason for excluding young widows from the list — a reason that would 
be inoperative if enrolment brought service instead of leisure. 

Lastly, this understanding of what a ‘ * listed widow’ ’ is accounts for the re- 
turn to a question of support in verse 1 6, which must ever remain inexplicable 
on any other hypothesis. 

Perhaps it ought to be said in closing that verse 15 does not refer to the 
“ listed widows,” but rive? means simply some younger widows who had not 
married. We cannot appeal to this verse, therefore, as showing that for a 
listed woman to marry was to “ turn off behind Satan what it teaches is just 
the opposite — viz., that for a younger widow not to marry placed her in danger 
of being led “ off behind Satan.” The “ waxing wanton against Christ” in 
verse- 1 1 is doubtless used figuratively, according to the current designation of 
the Old and New Testaments, of Christ as the bridegroom of the soul ; but the 
“ turning off behind Satan” of our present verse seems to refer to literal im- 
purity. The widow of the first century was in every way in a dubious posi- 
tion, and her chief safety was in an early remarriage. On the understanding 
of our present passage which we have commended, the Church’s care for her 
widows is brought out in a remarkable light. Not only did she busy herself 
with the relief of their necessities, but she appears to have honored them by 
adopting them, under proper safeguards, as her own “ mothers,” and thus to 
have placed them in a position of respect which, though it appears to have 
had no official meaning when Paul penned these words, could not fail to develop 
into an ecclesiastical order. How it did so, and what growth resulted, the 
records of later ages tell us. Only we must not read those later records back 
unto Paul ; far rather, the Pastoral Epistles here, as elsewhere, approve them- 
selves as standing behind the developments of the second century as their root 
and source. 


IX. The Train of Thought in i Timothy v. 17-25. 

In his instructions to Timothy as to his dealing with the various classes in 
the Church, Paul reaches at verse 17 the Presbyters. And here he gives in- 
struction as to three separate circumstances — viz., what should be Timothy’s 
attitude (1) toward deserving Presbyters (17, 18), (2) toward the undeserving 
(19-21), and (3) toward candidates for the office (22-25). I n ea ch °f these 
sub sections there are points of difficulty and interest. 

1. The phrase, “ the Presbyters that rule well," does not imply a distinction 
between two orders of Presbyters, but only between individuals within the 
one body of Presbyters; and no less the words, ” especially those that labor 
in word and doctrine,” seem not to distinguish between two separate orders 
of Presbyters, one of which preached and the other .only ruled, but Should 
apparently be taken as distinguishing between two sets of individuals within 
the one order. There can be little question but that the whole body of 
Presbyters is here represented as combining the functions of ruling and 
teaching (cf. iii. 5, 2 ; Titus i. 9). Every Presbyter might rule well ; and 


708 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


every Fresbyter might labor in word and doctrine ; and the amount of honor 
accorded to each was to be measured by the excellence of his work in the two 
functions that belonged to him. Just as in the case of the widows, so in the 
case of the Presbyters, the Pastoral Epistles belong at the beginning ; in our 
present matter they were written before the teaching function was differentiated 
to the exclusive possession of one “ order” of Presbyters. The “ double 
honor” is doubtless not to be taken numerically, but rather in an indefinite 
“ higher” sense. But “ honor” here, just as the cognate verb in verse 3, in- 
cludes pecuniary reward, as the yap of verse 18 informs us. And it is to be 
noted that thus we learn, apparently, that the whole board of elders received 
‘‘ pay” at Ephesus, with the Apostle’s approval, although this “ pay” was 
graduated among them according as they ruled well, and especially accord- 
ing as they labored in the word and doctrine. This matter, too, of salary was 
as yet in an undifferentiated state. 

The conjunction here of a passage from Deuteronomy and a passage from 
Luke as equally written Scripture (// ypacprj) cannot be escaped by any of the 
shifts of the commentators ; and besides fully authenticating Paul’s rule for 
the payment of the laborers in the harvest, also demonstrates to us that Paul rec- 
ognized Luke’s Gospel as given by inspiration and as authoritative to the Church. 
This can create objection only if we have adopted theories of the rise of the 
New Testament canon which covertly assume it to be a natural development 
rather than a divine gift. As a matter of mere fact, Paul does accept Luke 
and call it Scripture. 

2. Paul, first under this sub-head, cautions Timothy as to the reception of 
accusations against Presbyters, and formulates the safe rule that no accusation 
be listened to except in the presence of two or three witnesses (verse 19), and 
then proceeds to prescribe that the rebuke of those convicted of sin shall be 
administered only in the presence of all their brother Presbyters, that “ the rest 
too may have fear” (verse 20). This verse opens up a curious view of early 
Church life, and one for which we should be ill prepared were it not for the 
details of 1 Corinthians. Converts from heathenism could not but bring their 
characters into the Church with them, and the transforming sanctification of 
the Holy Spirit was a slow process. Even the Church officers thus needed 
from the first the most careful watching and discipline. Finally, the apostle 
most earnestly warns his delegate against prejudice in the investigation of 
charges or in any other dealing with the Presbyters (verse 21). 

3. “ Neither doing anything by partiality” prepares the way for the third 
and last sub-section, that which concerns ordination. For that ” lay hands 
suddenly on no one” refers to ordination is certain, not only from the fixed 
sense of the phrase, but also from the context itself (24, 25). The reason not 
so much for delay as against over-haste in ordination is given by the second 
clause of verse 22 ; by over-haste the ordainer becomes sharer in others’ sins, 
by which is apparently meant all the sins that arise out of the evil deeds of an 
unfit Presbyter. ” Keep thyself pure,” adds the apostle, with solemn warning, 
and then parenthetically adjoins (verse 23) a sentence which is seemingly in- 


SOME EXEGETICAL NOTES ON 1 TIMOTHY. 


709 


tended to guard Timothy against supposing that this exhortation included an 
approximation of his life to the asceticism that was already prevalent, and against 
which Paul had already warned him (i Tim. iv. i-io). With verse 24 he returns 
to the matter more immediately in hand, and adduces a justification for seemly 
delay of ordination. Time develops the real character of a man ; both the 
good and evil in him shows itself only after awhile. If, then, Timothy should 
not wish to be partaker in others’ sins, let him “ lay hands suddenly on no 
man,” but bide his fit time, that even those whose sins follow slowly behind 
may be made apparent in their true character, and those whose virtues are hid- 
den may be brought to light. The gist of verses 24, 25, thus is that the 
proper men for ordination cannot be hastily selected ; the bad often on first 
acquaintance seem good ; the good often appear of no worth ; let time, the 
true revealer, pass, lest in hasty ordination you become partakers of others’ sins. 
So read these verses not only take their place in the context, but become the 
analogue of the requirements in iii. 6-10. “ No neophyte is to be ordained 

bishop ; no one is to be ordained deacon until he, too, has been tried and 
found blameless ; therefore lay hands suddenly on no man, lest you become 
partaker in others’ sins. For how can you know the true character until you 
have observed the course of life ? Some men’s sins, no doubt, are afore-evident 
and drag on into judgment ; but others, they only follow after. And likewise 
the good works too are either afore-evident or else cannot permanently be 
hid. ” If verse 23 be taken as parenthetic, it is thought that this connection of 
verses 24, 25, which have always been a puzzle to commentators, approves itself 
as sufficiently natural to be acceptable. 

X. Disposition of the Matter in i Timothy. 

This expistle is the most abrupt in its beginning and closing of all St. Paul’s 
letters, with the single exception of the Epistle to the Galatians. After a brief 
address of two verses it at once passes to the serious matters of Timothy’s work, 
without a trace of that introductory thanksgiving which is a characteristic of this 
Apostle’s letters ; and it closes, without salutation or personal mention of any 
sort, with a sudden and unexpected benediction. Why Paul has departed from 
his customary form of composition here it is useless to speculate. In the case 
of the letter to the Galatians we perceive the abruptness to grow out of the cir- 
cumstances of the case and the ardor of the Apostle’s argument. But here 
there is nothing analogous to this to be discovered ; on the contrary, the letter 
is specially tender, and filled with the signs of the Apostle’s unbroken regard for 
“ his own son in faith.” The disposition of the matter is as follows : 

After a biief address and greeting (i. 1, 2), in which the Apostle so expresses 
himself as to show that he is writing an official letter in the prosecution of his 
duty as an apostle appointed by God and with the concerns of salvation weigh- 
ing on his heart, the letter proceeds (I.) to remind Timothy of the exhortation 
which had been before given to him to silence the false teachers at Ephesus, 
and to justify the charge thus placed in his hands (i. 3-20). In this connec- 


710 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


tion the Apostle explains the evil nature of this false teaching (i. 6— 1 1 ), his 
own justification in assuming authority over it (i. 12-17), and his choice of 
Timothy for the work (i. 18-20). Opening now the new matter for which the 
letter was composed, Timothy is exhorted (II.) properly to order the Church 
life in Ephesus (ii. i-iv. 11), and this particularly in two particulars — viz., 
(1) with reference to the public sendees of the Church (ii. 1— 1 5) and (2) with 
reference to the choice of proper men for the Church offices (iii. 1— 1 3). Under 
the former of these captions the duty of universal intercession is explained 
(ii. 1-7), directions are given as to the proper manner in which public prayer 
shall be exercised (ii. 8-10), and a general command that women keep silence 
in the public services is given and justified (ii. 11-15). Under the latter, the 
requirements for the ordination of bishops (iii. 1-7) and of deacons (iii. 8-13) 
are given at some length. Then the Apostle proceeds (3) to point out the 
importance of these directions as to church services and officers (iii. 14-iv. 11), 
asserting it from the nature of the Church as God’s house and Church (iii. 
14, 15a) and enhancing it by the function of the Church as the pillar and 
ground of the truth (iii. 1 5<5, 16), and still further by the danger which impends 
over the truth from the false teachers (iv. 1-11). The paragraph is closed 
(iv. 6-1 1 ) with an exposition of Timothy’s personal duty in these circumstances, 
and this forms a natural transition to the next subject (III.), in which earnest 
exhortations are addressed to him to make full proof of his ministry at Ephesus 
(iv. 12-vi. 2). In this section, beginning with his duty to himself and his 
calling (iv. 12-16), his proper attitude toward, or his proper dealing with, or 
his proper exhortations to the various classes in the Church come under review : 
the old and young of both sexes (v. 1, 2), the various kinds of widows 
(v. 3-16), the presbyters (v. 17-25), and the slaves (vi. 1, 2). After this the 
Apostle pauses only to add (IV.) some concluding warning to Timothy against 
the dangerous element in the Church (vi. 3-19), in which he describes the 
false teachers in their essentially corrupt and greedily avaricious character 
(iv. 3-5), expounds the true relations of godliness and wealth (vi. 6-10), and 
exhorts Timothy (vi. 1 1— 1 6), and through him the rich members of the Church 
(vi. 17-19), to set their minds on high things, to trust only in God, who alone 
can give richly, and to treasure up good works. Finally, he most touchingly 
exhorts Timothy to keep faith and avoid error (vi. 20, 21a), and closes 
abruptly with the benediction (vi. 21 b). 

Benjamin B. Warfield. 

Princeton. 


VII. 


EDITORIAL NOTES. 

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

The rapid march of empire Westward, and the place that Presbyterianism oc- 
cupies in the Western part of this Continent are well indicated in the fact that 
the General Assembly of the Northern Presbyterian Church met this year in 
Omaha, and that of the Canadian Church in Winnipeg. The former body 
met on May 19th, and was opened with a sermon by the retiring Moderator, 
Rev. Professor D. C. Marquis, D. D., from Rev. iii. 8 : “ I have set before thee 
an open door and no man can shut it.” 

A number of ministers were nominated for the moderatorship, any one of 
whom would have filled the position admirably, and all of whom were so well 
known in the Church as to make entirely unnecessary the nominating speeches 
by means of which they were introduced to the notice of the Assembly. 

The choice of the body fell upon the Rev. Joseph T. Smith, D.D., LL.D., 
of Baltimore, who proved his rare qualifications for the position by the admir- 
ably efficient manner in which he performed the duties pertaining to it. The 
Assembly itself is spoken of as a thoroughly business-like body. The reports 
show that important matters were brought to the notice of the judicatory, and 
that its proceedings were happily characterized by wise action and few words. 
The Assembly gave its emphatic approval to the proposal to raise a Five-Million 
Fund as a memorial of the Centennial of American Presbyterianism ; and it is 
to be hoped that the movement in this direction will be successful. The en- 
deavor to raise one million dollars in behalf of the Fund for Disabled and In- 
firm Ministers is a part of this scheme that should enlist the generous support 
of our entire Church ; and it is with no ordinary regret that we learn that more 
than twenty-eight hundred churches failed last year to contribute to this fund. 
Such negligence is altogether inexcusable. 

The Assembly at Omaha signalized itself by making sweeping, in fact, al- 
most revolutionary, changes in the management of the Board of Publication. 
The nature of these changes has been fully explained in the columns of the re- 
ligious papers, and it is not necessary to refer to them here. The Assembly 
places at the head of this reconstructed Board the Rev. E. R. Craven, D. D., 
under the title of General Secretary. Dr. Craven will carry with him to his 
new work a wide experience, great wisdom, accurate scholarship, the habit of 


712 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


patient attention to details, executive ability, thorough knowledge of the practi- 
cal life of the Church, and exceptional acquaintance with ecclesiastical affairs. 
Few men have rendered the Church greater service than Dr. Craven, and we 
trust that his greatest service will yet be done in the responsible position where 
he is now placed. 

It is not too much to say, perhaps, that some progress has been made this 
year toward the reunion of the Northern and Southern Presbyterian Churches. 
The resolutions of the Missouri Synod respecting the spiritual character of the 
Church were adopted by our Assembly. Very able committees of conference 
have been appointed by both Churches, and good results may be expected to 
follow from their deliberations. There seems to be a growing desire for Re- 
union among the ministers and elders of the Southern Church, but it is also 
quite evident that there is still a very effective opposition to it. We shall be 
glad to see a reunion effected when the time comes, and we should be happy 
to think that the time will come soon. But it is not well to magnify too much 
the importance of organic union. The two Churches are territorially separate. 
They are both doing a very important work ; they can co-operate without 
coalescing. A generation of separation has developed differences that may 
prove more serious obstacles to organic union than the eager advocates of union 
now suppose. There are questions of administration about which the two 
Churches seriously differ, and while it may be natural for us to suppose that 
our way is in all cases the right way, it would be neither modest nor rn good 
taste for us to press this idea upon our Southern brethren, at a time when we 
are urging upon them the problem of reunion. It is likely that Reunion when 
it comes will be the fruit of mutual concessions ; and it does not seem as if the 
spirit of concession was abroad in either church. We hope that the negotiat- 
ing parties will look at all the questions that are lrkely to be involved in the 
proposed partnership, and that neither Church will allow itself to be precipitately 
drawn into a union under the influence of the enthusiasm of centennialism. 

We were glad to see that our Assembly responded in appropriate terms to the 
Commission of Conference on Church Unity appointed by the General Conven- 
tion of the Protestant Episcopal Church. It is impossible, of course, to fore- 
cast the future, but one must have read history to little effect if he does not feel 
that tendencies are at work that are the harbingers of some very important 
change of relationship between the different Protestant churches. To our eyes 
anything beyond co-operation in Christian work and a more generous appre- 
ciation of each other on the part of Christian denominations seems chimerical. 
Episcopalians have no idea, apparently, of giving up their doctrine of apostolic 
succession ; and Presbyterians betray no tendency to adopt the prelatic mode of 
church government. The agitation of the Reunion question will, however, 
open in all probability a new chapter in controversy ; and that, to be profitable, 
must go behind the discussion of the New Testament Episcopos, and deal with 
other questions than the place of prelacy in the patristic writings. Episcopa- 
lians cannot defend prelacy by showing that it is old ; and Presbyterians must 
not suppose that they have said the last word for Presbyterianism when they 


GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 713 


have accounted for the evolution of diocesan episcopacy. The knot of the 
controversy is to be found in the place that must be given to development in 
the organization of the Church. 

Several matters besides the one just referred to came before the Assembly, 
and the Assembly, as the published Minutes will show, expressed its solemn 
opinions regarding them. 

It is becoming the custom for the General Assembly to “ confirm” the elec- 
tion of Professors in the Theological Seminaries. Thus, on page 93 of the Min- 
utes, we read, “ Your committee recommend that the Assembly confirm the 
election of the following professors.” The General Assembly has no such 
power as that which is implied in this recommendation. The Constitution of 
Princeton Seminary, for example, distinctly says, “ The Board of Directors 
shall have power to elect the Professors and to remove them from office, such 
election and removal being subject to the veto of the General Assembly.” As 
one of the results of the union of the Old and New School Churches, it was 
resolved “ that the several Boards of Directors of these seminaries, which are 
now under the control of the General Assembly, shall be authorized to elect, 
suspend, and displace the professors of the seminaries under their care, subject 
in all cases to the veto of the General Assembly” (New Digest, p. 386). The 
difference between the right to confirm and the right to veto is very appreciable. 
It is one thing to say that the electing act is complete unless vetoed by the 
Assembly, and a very different thing to say that it is incomplete until confirmed 
by the Assembly. This, however, is the difference between the action of the 
Assembly just referred to and the plain statements of the law that should have 
governed it. It is better in all such matters to adhere strictly to the law. 

It was found that the Overture respecting the eligibility of ruling elders for 
the moderatorship of the General Assembly had failed to meet with the approval 
of even a majority of the Presbyteries, and that the Overture relating to mar- 
riages of affinity had been approved by more than two-thirds of the Presbyteries. 
The General Assembly, thereupon, in the exercise of the power vested in it by 
the Constitution, enacted that the clause of the Confession of Faith contemplated 
by the Overture be stricken out. The Report upon this question was brought in 
by the Rev. Dr. Cameron, and as it is likely to be possessed of historic value we 
print it here. 

It is as follows : 

“ Whereas, One hundred and fifty-six (156) Presbyteries, being more than 
two-thirds of the Presbyteries under the care of the General Assembly, have, in 
writing, approved of an amendment of Chapter XXIV., Section 4, of the Con- 
fession of Faith, by striking out the last period thereof ; therefore, be it enacted 
by the General Assembly that the following words, ‘ The man may not marry' 
any of his wife’s kindred nearer in blood than he may of his own, nor the 
woman of her husband’s kindred nearer in blood than her own,’ be, and are 
hereby stricken from Chapter XXIV., Section 4, of the Confession of Faith.” 

Nothing that was done at Omaha impresses us as having greater importance 
than the passage of this resolution. For nothing is the Omaha Assembly more 
46 


714 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


likely to be referred to in the future than for the fact that in establishing the 
first precedent for a revision of the Confession of Faith it has conformed to the 
requirements of the Adopting Act of 1788. 

Princeton. F. L. PaTTON. 

GENERAL SYNOD OF THE REFORMED (DUTCH) CHURCH. 

This body met at Catskill, N. Y., June 1st, and continued in session eight 
days, the Rev. C. I. Shepard, of Newtown, L. I., President. There was an 
unusually large attendance of both ministers and elders. A novelty of the ses- 
sion was the accommodation of all the members under one roof, that of the 
Prospect Park Hotel. This was found to be very advantageous as well as 
agreeable, for it afforded much more opportunity for the meeting of commit- 
tees and the interchange of views than was possible when the members were 
scattered round in different places. This was felt so keenly that when the in- 
vitation was given to meet next year in the same place, it was accepted with 
enthusiasm. 

The first question that came before the body was that of organic union with 
the Presbyterian Church. The committee to whom the subject was referred 
reported that six Classes had memorialized the Synod against such action and 
only two in its favor, and hence it was considered “ that the indications of 
Providence are not of such a nature as to make the present effort of some in 
this direction wise or hopeful of good to the Church ; from all present appear- 
ances, it would be only detrimental to peace, unity, and prosperity.” Resolutions 
to this effect, after being debated as fully as any one desired, were carried item. 
con., a. very gratifying result, since it was quite clear that whether such union 
in itself was wise or unwise, the Church was not prepared for it. Many of the 
Synod were opposed to the measure, because in the nature of the case it would 
be a simple merging or absorbing of the smaller body into the larger ; because 
it would lessen the number of independent witnesses to the truth ; because it 
would greatly diminish the work and gifts now proceeding from the smaller 
body ; and because it would make the larger booty too large for the proper 
working of its system.* The committee appointed in 1886 to confer with a 
similar committee from the Reformed (German) Church reported that they 
were unable to do anything because the General Synod of the sister church, 
which meets only triennially, did not have a session until the present month. 
Our committee, according to their instructions, collected and reported consid- 
erable information on the general subject, which was well digested and care- 
fully arranged by the Chairman, Dr. William J. R. Taylor. The committee 
was continued, and it is supposed will be able to report definitely next year. 
Union between these “ Reformed ” bodies would be desirable on many ac- 


* The writer was present last May when several prominent delegates to the General 
Assembly at Omaha were speaking of its doings. One said, “ The fact is, the Assembly 
is too large a body to do business properly,” and all the rest assented. 


GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 715 


counts, if it could be effected kindly, cordially, without sacrifice on either side, 
and with a fair approach to unanimity. The Board of Foreign Missions re- 
ported a prosperous year. Ninety-three thousand dollars had been expended. 
An endowment for the Isaac Ferris Seminary, at Yokohama, has been secured. 
An attempt was authorized to secure $50,000 to establish a theological school 
in connection with the Arcot Mission, and at this writing the larger part of the 
sum has been obtained. The aspect of all the fields is encouraging, especially 
in Japan, where events move with astonishing rapidity, and where all Christian 
bodies need to act promptly and seize the advantages of the moment. The 
Board of Domestic Missions reported favorably. A legacy of $30,000 (three 
fourths paid in) was received, the interest of which is to be used by the Board. 
The policy to be pursued was patiently discussed, and measures were adopted 
to secure a better working of the system, and a larger support from the 
churches. The Board of Education reported a slight increase of receipts, but 
still an amount far below the abilities of the Church and the needs of the 
cause. The sum of endowed scholarships now is $150,000. The Board of 
Publication was directed to issue a monthly magazine under the editorial con- 
trol of the Boards. This, it is presumed, is an effort to imitate the example of 
the Presbyterian Church, who have made such a splendid success in their new 
periodical, The Church at Home and Abroad. The statistical tables show an 
increase of eleven churches and of over five thousand communicants during 
the year. The subject of co-operation in mission work with other bodies of 
like faith was taken up, and provision made for the appointment of delegates 
to confer with the delegates of the Boards of other churches as to the measures 
to be adopted. The Dutch Church, having pursued this policy for more than 
twenty years at Amoy, is, of course, ready to extend the same to the whole 
field. The usual number of delegates to the Council of the Alliance of the 
Reformed Churches, to be held at London next year was appointed. 

The sessions of the Synod were spirited and harmonious, almost the only 
drawback being the sacrifice of a full working day to a pleasant excursion, 
which it appears could be enjoyed on no other day. The feeling was very 
general that now that the Church had decided anew to maintain its distinct 
eccelesiastical existence, there should be a generous and hearty development in 
every branch of its activity to justify this decision. Love ought to express itself 
by constant liberality and self-sacrifice. T. W. Chambers. 

GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 

The General Assembly of 1887 will bear comparison with some of the more 
important of its predecessors. An unusual amount of business was despatched 
in an excellent tone and spirit, and with laudable expedition. By a happy 
coincidence, in the year of the jubilee celebration of Her Majesty’s accession, 
the Moderator-elect, Dr. George Hutchison, Minister of Bauchony-Ternan, 
hails from the Presbytery within the bounds of which the Queen has her High- 
land home. He ably supported the dignity of the Chair. Equally appropriate 


716 


HE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


had been the appointment of Lord High Commissioner in the person of the 
Earl of Hopetoun. Himself a Presbyterian, it was pointed out that the name 
of one of his ancestors — Edward Hope — stands next but one to that of John 
Knox in the Sederunt of the first General Assembly of the Reformed Church 
of Scotland, in 1560 ; and that in the interval between others of his line had 
stoutly upheld the Presbyterian cause, and represented the Sovereign in the 
Supreme Court of the Church. 

On the motion of the leader of the House, Dr. Phin, the Assembly unan- 
imously resolved, as its first duty, to hold a special service of Thanksgiving on 
the following Tuesday, and thereafter to adopt an address of congratulation to 
the Queen. The service itself, which was conducted by the Moderator and 
clerks in a crowded Assembly, was singularly impressive. 

Notwithstanding the long-continued depression in trade, commerce, and 
agriculture, the Christian liberality of the Church had in the past year been 
fully sustained, the contributions amounting to £343,595 as compared with 
£311,378 for 1885, and with £304,077 for 1884. In these sums, however, 
neither the pew-rents nor the revenues derived from the investment of capital 
or from grants from the Ferguson Bequest and Baird Trust are included. They 
are exclusively contributions for the year on behalf of religious and charitable 
purposes connected with the Church. Read in the light of these figures, the 
complaints of diminished revenue on the part of the conveners of most of the 
spending committees received a partially satisfactory explanation. It would 
sefcm to be that while there had been a falling off in contributions to the 
schemes of the Church, local enterprise in individual parishes and congregations 
had under adverse circumstances considerably increased. It appeared from the 
Reports on Presbyterial Superintendence that the number of communicants 
is 571,029, being an increase of 6594 over the previous year. This was said 
to be a low ratio of increase, owing partly to emigration, and partly to the lack 
of suitable clothing interfering with the attendance of the poorest class of com- 
municants. It is rather ahead of the rate at which, according to the Registrar 
General’s returns, the population of all Scotland has increased — being as 1.18 
to 1.06 — but it affords no ground of belief that the Church has made any great 
palpable impression during the year on those who have lapsed from all Christian 
influences. At the same time, the Reports of Committees clearly indicated 
that the usefulness of the Church is on the increase both at home and abroad. 

The Home Mission Committee announced only a small income — £8540 — 
which, contrasted with that of 1885, showed a decrease of £15 33. They had 
under their charge 64 mission stations or districts without churches and 72 
mission churches, with a certified average attendance of 20,796, of whom 11,302 
partook of the Communion when last administered. They had also voted £3017 
toward the erection, enlargement, or acquisition of 1 5 places of worship, with 
accommodation for 6462, and to meet a total cost for these purposes of 
£25,915. Their great auxiliary, the Endowment Scheme, reported the erection 
of 5 new parishes, each endowed with the minimum annual stipend of £120, 
making, in all, 356, since 1846. As the resolution come to in 1876, to endow 


GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 717 


an additional ioo churches, had'been successfully carried out in 1885, last year 
had purposely been a year of comparative inactivity. No special appeal had 
been made, and in consequence the year’s ordinary revenue had dropped 
from £13,141 in 1885 to £9213. But in view of the reports and recommenda- 
tions received from Presbyteries, the committee proposed that a further effort 
should be made to endow and erect into parishes at least other 50 unendowed 
chapels and districts, a proposal which was adopted and warmly commended 
by the Assembly. The administration of the Aged and Infirm Ministers’ Fund 
and of the Small Livings Fund had a slightly diminished income. The latter 
had dealt with 313 parishes, but drew attention to the fact, that the stipend 
of each of 233 parishes in receipt of a grant was still under £200 — the 
total amount distributed being £8441. A considerable increase in commu- 
nicants and a marked increase in the contributions to the schemes of the Church 
within the last ten years were adduced as indications that a change was in prog- 
ress in the Highlands in favor of the interests represented by the National 
Church. One of the earlier sessions incidentally brought to view the difficulties 
with which some of our Highland ministers have still to contend. A member 
said that he ministered at three outlying stations in turn, one of them being 5 
miles, another 12 miles, and a third 17 miles distant from the parish church. 
To attend a meeting of presbytery often necessitated a week’s absence from 
home, while the visiting of one’s own parish meant the frequent crossing of 
treacherous fords and stormy ferries. The number of Sunday-schools connected 
with the Church was given as 2067, with 210,197 scholars on the roll, and an 
average attendance of 165,481, taught by 19,681 teachers. Compared with 
last year, there is an increase of 50 schools, 3927 scholars on the roll, 4086 
in average attendance, and 420 teachers. There were besides, in advanced 
olasses, 33,784 taught by ministers, and 7282 taught by elders and others not 
ministers. In these schools £2838, a slight increase on the previous year, 
had been collected. The number of parishes returned as without schools was 
29, and of non-reporting schools, 30. The cause of temperance was stated 
to have made marked progress during the year, although few parishes had 
temperance associations directly connected with the Church. The Committee 
on Christian Life and Work preside over evangelistic effort among our 
fishing population, the development of personal and congregational life by 
means of young men and young women’s guilds, and the management and 
circulation of the Year Book and Parish Magazine. These did not escape criti- 
cism, but the drift of the discussion was mainly of a friendly nature. The 
problems with which the Committee were now more immediately engaged 
were the organization of deaconesses on Scriptural and Presbyterian lines, and 
the best way of reaching the lapsed masses, a subject which was pointedly 
brought before the Assembly by an important overture from Glasgow. 

Regarding the Church’s work abroad, the statements made for the Colonial 
Mission, with its subdivisions on army and navy chaplains and continental 
chaplaincies, the Jewish and the Foreign Mission and the Foreign Correspond- 
ence Committee, were couched, on the whole, in hopeful and encouraging 


718 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


terms. In speaking to his Report, the convener of the Jewish committee 
pronounced it to be the most encouraging which they had submitted. The 
tokens of divine favor were twofold : in their own mission and in the Jewish 
community. There had been fifteen baptisms in less than two years ; and the 
utterances of the leading rabbis breathed a more conciliatory spirit. The 
schools of the mission were prosperous. Evidence of recovery in the affairs 
of the Foreign Mission was cordially welcomed. The year’s income at home 
and abroad — £35,163, inclusive of £6357 contributed by the Ladies’ Associa- 
tion — was given as the largest hitherto obtained. A remarkable movement, 
resulting in the baptism of 443 converts, was reported from the Punjab. There 
had also been 154 baptisms at Darjeeling and Kalimpong. The institution 
at Calcutta continued to prosper, while that at Madras had been raised to a 
college of the second class. The Universities’ Mission had been founded in 
Independent Sikhim. The mission staff at 15 stations consisted of 28 European 
missionaries, of whom 17 were ordained, and 77 native agents, of whom 3 were 
ordained and 3 licentiates. The Committee had to deplore the untimely death 
of Mr. Macfarlane, founder of the Darjeeling and Universities’ Mission. There 
was a debt of some years’ standing ; and as there was no reserve to meet current 
expenditure, there was a heavy charge for interest on overdrafts. To meet these 
burdens, the Assembly resolved to raise a further sum of £10,000 ; the conviction 
at the same time finding free expression that the Church still came far short of 
its duty in this wide field. The Committee on Correspondence with Foreign 
Churches had supplemented the efforts of two societies in France, the Societe 
Centrale, or Home Mission of the French National Church, and the Evange- 
listic Society, which works in harmony with it. The Evangelical Society of 
Geneva, the Waldensian Church in Italy, and the Amos Commenius Society 
of Bohemia had also been remembered. Deputations from the Irish Presby- 
terian Church and the Synod in England connected with the Church of Scot- 
land were present, and addressed the Assembly. A proposal to authorize two 
or three members of the Synod to sit as members without a vote in all future 
convocations of the General Assembly met with very general approval, and was 
referred for consideration to a committee. 

The far-reaching import of an Overture on the subscription of the Confession 
of Faith by elders, to lessen the difficulties which conscientious men have in 
accepting office, cannot be overrated. The subject has frequently been con- 
sidered by the General Assembly, but never before with the same promising 
results. The motion in support of the Overture was entirely confined to the 
case of elders. But after an animated and weighty discussion the motion was 
withdrawn, and an amendment adopted, which refers the whole subject of the 
subscription presently required of the officebearers of the Church, whether min- 
isters or elders, to a committee whose duty it will be to report to next General 
Assembly whether any modification is desirable. Not less significant was the 
treatment accorded to another Overture which craved the Assembly to devise 
some better means of presbyterial supervision. The practice at present is to 
issue schedules in which queries are addressed to members of Presbyteries in 


GEN. ASSEMBLY OF FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 719 


the various departments of pastoral work. But complaints have long been rife 
regarding its effects. It was stated on this occasion that 15 parishes have no 
eldership, while 6 have only one elder each. In other words, there are 21 
parishes without a Kirk Session. The injunctions of the Assembly also in 
regard to collections for missions and the schemes of the Church are persistently 
neglected. In this case also a motion was unanimously adopted, which re- 
mitted the Overture to a committee to consider and report to next General 
Assembly. The matter of the relations between the Scottish Presbyterian 
churches was brought in this Assembly to a definite issue. In the belief that 
a desire had been unmistakably manifested by the people of Scotland for re- 
union, on the basis of a national recognition of religion, the Church of Scotland 
had made proposals for union, and in particular to the Free Church, on the basis 
of its own standards. In its reply the Free Church expressed its willingness to 
enter into conference, but with the stipulation that the question of Disestablish- 
ment and Disendowment should be left open for discussion. The Committee on 
Church Interests, having been empowered to draw up an answer, now recorded 
their profound regret that no ground appeared to be left open upon which a cor- 
respondence could be continued. On the one side, the Free Church had by 
many recent public acts pledged itself to a policy of Disestablishment and Disen- 
dowment, which it considered to be not inconsistent with its recognized stand- 
ards. On the other side, the Church of Scotland held that it would be disin- 
genuous to enter into conference under the stipulation which had been laid 
down. It could not pretend to leave the very constitution of the Church an 
open question. All that it could now do was to instruct the Committee to 
watch for opportunities of kindly co-operation. The Churches will therefore 
go, each of them its own way. The Assembly, which had opened on the 
19th, terminated its sittings on the 30th of May, with an address from the 
Moderator and the Lord High Commissioner. 

Malcolm Campbell Taylor. 

Edinburgh. 


GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 

There seems little need, in an account of this Assembly for The Presby- 
terian Review, to record the little ups and downs in the current operations of 
the Church, which are always found in annual reports, but are of little interest 
to those outside. It seems more suitable that we should confine our record 
to any features of unusual interest that may serve to indicate the spirit of the 
whole, the attitude which the Church occupies to the forces of the age, and 
the measure of success that attends her endeavors. 

I. We may therefore dismiss in a few lines the statistical view of her affairs. 
(1) Finance. The sum total of all her funds for last year is ^564,442, being 
for Sustentation Fund, ^171,467 ; Local Building, ^54,060; Congrega- 
tional Fund, £zo \, 626 ; Missions and Education, ^118,758, and Miscellane- 
ous, ^15,531. There is a decrease of nearly ^30,000 on the whole, mostly on 


720 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


Local Building, Missions, and Miscellaneous ; the decrease on Missions arising 
from the fact that last year some very' large legacies were received. That the 
ordinary funds should be so well sustained in a year of great depression is justly 
regarded as matter for great thankfulness. (2) Membership. The number of 
members is 331,243, a small increase on last year. (3) Students 0/ Divinity. 
Last year there were at Edinburgh, 164 ; at Glasgow, 112 ; at Aberdeen, 36 ; 
total, 318, being an increase of 5 upon the unusually large number of 1886. 
(4) Sunday-schools. Number of schools, 1910;' of senior classes, 1266. 
Teachers (including ministers when they teach senior classes), 18,979. Scholars, 
169, 563 ; senior classes, 48,377 ; total, 217,940. Contributions for missionary 
purposes during the year, ^6840. Decrease in number of schools, 29 ; of senior 
classes, 4 ; of teachers of senior classes, 6. Increase in number of teachers, 881 • 
of Sabbath scholars, 6081, and of senior scholars, 2533. (5) Welfare 0/ Youth. 

This scheme invites the youthful members of congregations to competitions in 
biblical subjects, the shorter catechism, and the composition of an essay. 
Number of competitors, 3788, being an increase of 71 1, of whom 19 were in 
Calcutta, 9 in Bombay, and 15 at Constantinople. (6) Training of Teachers. 
The Church still maintains three normal colleges for the training of teachers — 
at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. The Privy Council Education Depart- 
ment examines yearly for certificates of merit. Last Christmas 142 male and 
249 female teachers obtained these certificates ; this year there are 400 students 
in attendance. In the practising schools are 1349 pupils and 26 pupil teach- 
ers. (7) Publications. Circulation of Free Church Monthly and Missionary 
Record, 78,000, being an increase of 1500; of Childrens Record, 80,000, 
being a decrease of 500. 

II. With regard to the character of the proceedings of the Assembly gener- 
ally', there has been for a few years back a very obvious change from former 
days. It has been the lot of the Free Church during her forty-four years of 
separate existence to have a large share of controversy' on public questions. 
Now it was on union with other churches ; now on Robertson Smith, and now 
on the connection of Church and State. It was always the best days that 
were set apart for these questions, and the most crowded audiences that assem- 
bled for their discussion. Now that we have no such burning questions, it 
came to be asked, Will the meetings of Assembly be as popular and as crowded 
without them ? Happily we may now answer that question in the affirmative. 
We have found, for example, that Foreign Missions attract as full a house, both 
of members and public, as the battles did in former years. Other subjects that 
proved very attractive this year were, the proceedings connected with the open- 
ing and the closing of the Assembly, addresses on the state of religion, and the 
religious state of the Highlands. This seems to indicate a wholesome advance. 
The heart of the Church is becoming more and more set on practical work. 
All through the history' of the Church of Scotland she has had to strive so much 
for the integrity of her machinery, and the right to work it free from secular 
control, that the actual work has sometimes fallen out of sight. But the feel- 
ing has become strong and decided, that inasmuch as the machinery is now 


GEN. ASSEMBLY OF FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 721 


wholly under her control, and no serious external hindrance exists to its active 
working, the main and most earnest effort of the Church should be directed 
toward the production of the results for which the Church exists in the world. 

III. That the spirit of the Free Church continues to be evangelical and evan- 
gelistic is apparent in many ways. One of the most interesting parts of the 
proceedings of the Assembly is to hear accounts from this quarter and the other 
of the breaking out of a fresh religious interest, and of the deepening of the 
Christian life. Of such narratives there were not a few at the recent meeting. 
And again and again it turns out that some minister who was not thought to 
be in very warm sympathy with such manifestations has himself been warmed 
and brightened by what has been going on around him. Expectation of simi- 
lar blessing is aroused in other hearts, and both ministers and elders return to 
their congregations with the assurance that the Spirit of God is not straitened, 
and that the promise still stands — “ prove Me now, saith the Lord, if I will 
not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing that there shall 
not be room to receive it.” 

I 

IV. Yet the Church would not shut her eyes to the difficulties of the day, 
whether as regards the foundations of the Gospel itself or the application of 
Christian principles to the social and political problems of the age. Nothing 
could have shown a more open, candid, and yet hopeful spirit, in reference to 
the present conflict of Christianity and unbelief, than the opening address of 
the new Moderator, Principal Rainy. He most frankly conceded the great 
importance of the recent attitude and achievements of natural science and his- 
torical criticism, and did not wonder that they had caused perplexity and un- 
settlement to some minds, and something more to others. He was as far as 
possible from counselling the Church, in reference to such things, to take the 
ostrich policy of plunging her head in the bush and ignoring them. Equally 
far was he from thinking that our policy ought to be one of mere concession, 
of slowly receding before the advance of natural and historical science. The 
Christian Church had its own special grounds for confidence in the truth, and 
likewise for summoning all men to yield allegiance to Christ. What he chiefly 
desired on the part of the Church was an attitude of candor on the one hand, 
and patient trust on the other ; patience emphatically ; for as Christianity had 
withstood many a siege, it would survive the present conflict, too, and as at other 
times, it would come out of the battle purified and strengthened. 

V. The Free Church is somewhat cautious of uttering its voice with refer- 
ence to the political and social questions of the day. With reference to the 
question of the crofters in the Highlands, the prevalent feeling is that of warm 
sympathy with them as a body of men who have been harshly treated, and who 
are now beginning to be lawless not from inherent lawlessness, but from sheer 
exhaustion of patience. There is much of the same feeling, too, with regard to 
the Irish peasantry. It is distressing to see the strong arm of the law applied 
to repress with violence what in many instances is the cry of distress and the 
claim of justice. Yet the Church cannot but hold that there is not in present 
circumstances the excuse for resistance to the law which our forefathers had 


722 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


when they were required not only to forego their rights, but violate their con- 
sciences. It cannot but discourage the attitude of opposition to the law. And 
with reference to the deeper and larger questions that are now raised as to the 
tenure of land and the distribution of property, the Church maintains a similar 
attitude. It is obvious that Christianity embraces certain of the principles of 
socialism. The brotherhood of humanity ; the obligation of the strong to bear 
the infirmities of the weak ; the recognition of all property and other gifts as 
talents lent by the great Owner, to be employed not for the selfish purposes of 
the holder, but for general benefit, in accordance with the will of the Master : 
the fact that the earth has been given to the children of men not for the bene- 
fit of the few, but of the race — such are undeniable principles of God’s Word, 
of which it cannot be said that they are exemplified in our present social con- 
dition. Yet the Church feels that it is not her part to rectify all social dis- 
orders, but rather to instil the spirit and urge the principles which bear in that 
direction. And this was manifestly the feeling of the late Assembly. 

VI. The Free Church has always cultivated friendly relations with other 
Churches when congeniality of views and spirit enabled her to do so. With many 
of the Churches in the Continent of Europe she has long been on terms of cordial 
friendship. For some time past it has been her great regret that she has not 
been able to render them more substantial asistance for their evangelistic work. 
What is called her continental fund is chiefly employed in maintaining charges 
in Italy (Rome, Florence, Naples, Leghorn, Genoa, etc.), while, at the same 
time, a good deal of assistance is given in other forms, apart from the Conti- 
nental Committee, to various continental countries. When the Italian stations 
were formed, Italy of all countries was most difficult of access for the Gospel ; 
now it is the most free. This year an important step was taken, with a view to 
the welfare of the Reformed Churches of Hungary and Bohemia. The ex- 
Moderator, Dr. Somerville, was requested, in addition to the many similar services 
of the like kind which he has rendered to other countries, to visit the stations 
of the Jewish mission, and to make an evangelistic tour in Hungary and Bo- 
hemia. As many of the pastors of both countries have been educated at the 
Free Church College of Edinburgh, there can be no doubt of his meeting with 
a very cordial welcome. 

VII. That the Free Church should not accept the offer of the Established to 
discuss the subject of union on the basis of connection with the State will not 
surprise those who remember that again and again the Assembly has declared 
disestablishment to be the only feasible solution of the Church problem in Scot- 
land. To some members it appeared that the Established Church introduced 
a new element into the proposed basis of discussion by a somewhat vague refer- 
ence to “ the Claim of Right” — the document which set forth the claims of the 
Church as against the civil courts, in 1842. It appeared to these brethren as 
if the Established Church were now looking more favorably to that claim than 
it ever did before. But the great majority of the Free Church conceive that it 
is out of the question to discuss the subject on L that footing. The Claim of 
Right affirmed that the Church had a legal claim to the emoluments that came 


GEN. ASSEMBLY OF FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 723 


to be sacrificed in 1843, consequently, if the claim were conceded, compensa- 
tion would be due for forty-four years’ injustice, and the lost benefices should 
all be restored. The Free Church would never dream of making such a claim 
to day. She is content to bear the great wrong then inflicted on her, and 
desires to turn no man out of his benefice. But neither, on the other hand, is 
she prepared to form a new concordat with the State, nor is she ready to risk 
her organization, erected at such cost and labor, in order to become a pendicle 
of a Church which has never expressed regret for her expulsion, nor admitted 
that she did right in her deed of separation. 

VIII. And yet, in spite of all this, I believe that there is a deep current in 
Scotland flowing toward Church union. We are all feeling more the force of the 
adverse currents that affect us — rationalism, worldliness, laxity of church at- 
tendance, socialism, and atheism. There is a growing conviction that in order 
to resist these, to maintain the tone of religion in the country, and to do ag- 
gressively the real work of the Church, we need the union of all our forces. 
There can be no doubt that the heart of all our churches is more bent on work 
at the present time than it has been in former years. We must all justify our 
existence by substantial fruits. The more that this spirit spreads, the more 
will the spirit of union grow. 

IX. At the meetings of Assembly this year there was no lack of evidence of 
fresh speaking power among younger brethren. One who is certainly not 
young, but who has seldom spoken in the Assembly, Dr. Walter Smith, author 
of the “ Bishop's Walk” and other well-known poems, made an excellent 
speech on the state of religion, and another on the Sustentation Fund, which 
elicited unbounded applause. A brilliant address on Temperance was given 
by Rev. Dr. M. Ross, Dundee. Mr. Lee, a young minister at Nairn, is rapidly 
rising to a high place both as a speaker and an organizer. We have several 
young laymen of high speaking and debating gifts, and thoroughly imbued 
with the Christian spirit. It might be invidious to select names, yet one 
cannot help laying stress on that of Mr. Charles J. Guthrie, advocate, youngest 
son of the late Dr. Guthrie, who holds the honorable post of law adviser of 
the Church. 

The next meeting of the Assembly is to be held at Inverness. We are so 
conservative a people, and Edinburgh is by so long tradition the ecclesiastical 
capital of the country, that to many it seems as if a right Assembly could not 
take place anywhere else. The capital of the Highlands, however, has great 
claims to an exceptional honor, and no doubt every effort will be made to 
secure a successful and interesting meeting. The Celtic population of Scotland 
has not too many friends, and this token of interest on the part of the Free 
Church will not be without its use. 


Edinburgh. 


W. G. Blaikie. 


724 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE IRISH CHURCH. 

Since the subject of Instrumental Music was by common consent, at the 
Assembly of 1886, allowed to drop for three years, no ecclesiastical question 
has arisen to excite keen feeling or debate in Ireland. The result is that the 
Assembly of 1887 was a quiet meeting, in which the practical business of the 
Church was transacted and discussed without any collision or discord whatever. 

The Assembly met in Cooke’s Church, Belfast, on Monday evening, June 
6th. The outgoing Moderator, Rev. Robert Ross, of Londonderry, was suc- 
ceeded by Dr. John H. Orr, of Antrim, who has for many years filled the 
office of Clerk, and whose efficiency and character entitled him to the highest 
honors. 

Much of the time of the Assembly was occupied with routine and adminis- 
trative business, important to individuals, but of no general interest. Dr. Todd 
Martin was elected by a large majority to the Professorship of Christian Ethics 
in the Assembly’s College, Belfast, left vacant by the retirement of Professor 
Henry Wallace, who has been in the public service of the Church for more 
than sixty years. During the year the loss of ministers by death has been heavy, 
and to the places left vacant various brethren were appointed. 

The Statistical Report showed that the General Assembly has on its roll 614 
ministers and 557 congregations ; the total income of the Church for religious, 
charitable, and ecclesiastical objects being ,£159.550, which is ^2721 over 
the preceding year. The Commutation Fund — that is, the aggregate sum paid 
over by the Government to the Church in 1871, at the time of Disestablishment 
— has produced this year only ^24,395, which is less by ^£4500 than it yielded 
ten years ago, while the Sustentation Fund this year has produced only 
.£23,123, being nearly £2000 less than the preceding year. The general 
result is that the supplemental annual dividend is only £15 over and above 
the income to each Minister before Disestablishment. The highest point the 
supplemental dividend ever reached was £22. There has thus been for some 
years a general falling off in ministerial income ; but these are times of 
great hardship in Ireland, and an unceasing drain of emigration is yearly di- 
minishing the population. The Sabbath-schools in active operation are 1107; 
the teachers, 8939 ; and the scholars, 101,230. During the year the schools 
have collected £2951 for missions and for other religious objects. 

In regard to Ireland, Church extension is in a great measure stayed, owing 
to social causes, the poverty of the country, and a declining population. The 
whole effort now' is not so much to enlarge the borders of the Church as to 
hold the ground already gained. Ten congregations in Ulster, two in Con- 
naught, twenty-two in Leinster, fourteen in Munster, and upward of eighty mis- 
sion stations received grants during the year. The means adopted for reaching 
the surrounding masses are preaching, colportage, and mission schools. The 
results are not so visible as could be desired ; but it requires great strength of 


GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE IRISH CHURCH. 725 


conviction in young or old to avow a change of religious opinion in Ireland, 
and any who wish to change their ecclesiastical relations prefer to do it with 
the sea between them and the “ Emerald Isle.” Congregations in Leinster and 
Munster are much weakened of late. Many of their members consisted of 
Scottish and of Ulster people, who were brought South in the employment of 
the gentry ; now, owing to the non-payment of rents and the general depres- 
sion, the local gentry have been compelled in many cases to contract their ex- 
penditure, dismiss their servants, and leave the country. The result is that the 
congregations sparsely scattered over the South and West have lost some of 
their most useful members. The Assembly held a conference to consider what 
could be done to help struggling and dying congregations ; but nothing more 
practical was suggested than to send them frequent deputations of ministers 
and elders residing in the North. 

Of late years the interest in Foreign Missions is very much increased. Oper- 
ations are carried on in India and China, and the income of the scheme for the 
year is ^12,728 — a small sum compared with the necessities of the case, but 
large as compared with the means and the numbers of the home church, and 
the calls made upon her. About three thousand persons have been gathered 
out of paganism. Four native congregations have been organized. Four 
native students are nearly ready for license. It was agreed that as soon as 
possible they should be ordained as pastors appointed to act as evangelists in 
their districts, and formed into a separate Presbytery. The natives should be 
taught from the first the duty of supporting their own pastors. There can- 
not be a doubt that this is a step in advance. The Jewish, Continental, 
and Colonial mission schemes were also reported as in a fair condition of 
prosperity. 

Deputations from the Church of Scotland, the United Presbyterian Church, 
and the Presbyterian Church of England attended and addressed the Assembly 
at Belfast. The Free Church was not represented this year, as, owing to a 
special arrangement, their deputation to Ireland is only biennial. The ad- 
dresses, as usual, were very able, and the speakers were heard with great atten- 
tion, as they gave details of the work on which their respective Churches are 
engaged in the home country and in other lands. The relation of the Irish 
Church to the Scottish Churches is somewhat peculiar. For more than forty 
years she has been in closest terms of fellowship with the Free Church ; but 
the bond of attachment has of late been relaxed a little, owing, as some think, 
to the unexpected amount of sympathy which the opinions of Professor Robert- 
son Smith received among the younger ministers of the Free Church, and 
owing to the belief, entertained by others, that the extreme voluntaryism devel- 
oped in that Church of recent years is in some degree a departure from the 
position taken up in the Claim of Right, and is a new and needless barrier in 
the way of that general union of the three Churches in Scotland which nearly 
all Presbyterians desire. Further, it is believed that the Church of Scotland 
now enjoys privileges which, if the State had only extended them to her in 
1842, would have prevented the Disruption, and that in many parts of Scotland 


72G 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


at this moment she is doing a good and noble work. Lastly, the Irish Assem- 
bly is not very ardent in its voluntaryism ; but it can never do anything but 
love a Church which (like the United Presbyterian) has among its leaders such 
men as Principal Cairns, Professor Calderwood, and Dr. James Brown. Irish 
Presbyterians are now in correspondence with all three Churches, some of which 
are not in correspondence with each other. The Established Church is believed 
to be more in svmpathy with her Irish daughter on the Home Rule Question 
than are the other two Scottish Churches. But when the day comes — and it does 
not seem to be very distant — when the question of Scottish Disestablishment 
shall be before Parliament, if Irish Presbyterians do not then stand to the Church 
which now stands to them, that Church will be much disappointed, and count 
them somewhat ungrateful. On the other hand, to unite with her in resisting 
Disestablishment and holding her position, would be an offence that the Free 
Church and the United Presbyterians would not easily forgive. This is a some- 
what precarious position for a Church to occupy, and it is not impossible that the 
attempt to keep friends with three Churches which are not all in friendly union 
with each other, may lead to a disruption of feeling some day which it will 
not be easy to avoid. To attempt to sit on three stools at once may result in 
an undignified posture in the end. 

An interesting debate occurred during the sittings of the Court on an over- 
ture to assign to each minister for evangelistic operations a certain well- 
defined territory in connection with his church, for the working of which he 
and his elders would be responsible. The advantages supposed to flow from 
such an arrangement were perhaps a little exaggerated in the course of the 
discussion. The want of such limits at present does not impose the slightest 
restraint upon any man who is willing to work ; neither could the most care- 
ful delimitation of territory put in motion any man and church who are not 
willing. Perhaps all that can fairly be said is that a settlement of boundaries 
in towns and parts of the country where churches are thickly planted would 
economize pastoral labors and keep ministers from overlapping each other in 
their work. But the Assembly thought that a parochial system would not 
work in their circumstances. Their churches are unequally distributed over 
Ireland. Many villages have none ; some have two or three. In the latter 
case, if each church is to stand on its own territory, it must stand not in the 
centre, but on the very edge of the territory assigned to it. At present should 
any man neglect his duty, some zealous neighbor supplies his lack of service, 
and possibly visits his people ; but by the proposed arrangement the man who 
came into the territory of another, whether it was cultivated or neglected, 
would be counted a trespasser, and would some day find himself indicted at 
the bar of the Church courts. Every removal of an old church or erection of 
a new might require an alteration of territory, and this territory would in its 
extent vary to a great degree. In Belfast it would extend to a few streets ; in 
the country to a parish or barony ; in the South to a whole county. It would 
lead to misunderstandings and complaints. The Assembly thought it wise, for 
the present, to refuse its sanction to the Parochial System, and dismissed the 


GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE IRISH CHURCH. 727 


overture. It is not new machinery that is needed so much as power to make 
the existing machinery move effectively. 

The Assembly did not again take up the question of Home Rule for 
Ireland, further than by reaffirming the resolutions passed against it in the 
spring of 1886. This is the mind of, perhaps, 610 out of the 614 ministers, 
and of a similar proportion of the elders, and of the Presbyterian people. 
They are, indeed, anything but satisfied with the treatment, which, in regard to 
public employment, they receive from Government, for Government seldom, 
except underpressure, confers any office of honor or emolument upon a Presby- 
terian ; they suffer, as well as Roman Catholics, from back rents, which the land 
is not able to pay ; but one and all of them would regard an Irish Parliament, 
leading up, as they believe it would, to separation, or an attempt at separation 
from Great Britain, as the greatest calamity of all. The Irish Parliament when 
it did sit in Dublin was the most unprogressive of all Parliaments ; it governed 
in the interests of one Church and one class ; it imposed the Penal Laws ; its 
leaders had to be bribed in order to do anything that the British Government 
wished, and finally it had to be bribed in order to put itself out of existence. Any 
political freedom worth possessing has been obtained not from the Irish, but 
from the British Parliament. If such have been the fruits from Protestant 
ascendency, it would be very sanguine to expect better from Catholic ascen- 
dency. In Ireland Home Rule is already not so much a social as a religious 
question. Roman Catholics, with few exceptions in Ireland, are all for Home 
Rule ; Protestants, with still fewer exceptions, are all against it. The Pro- 
testants in its favor are, as a rule, those who live outside Ireland. Roman 
Catholics in Ireland are, to all Protestants united, in a majority of four to 
one ; as a rule, intelligence, culture, property, trade, and obedience to the law 
are found with the minority ; and people here do not think much of an 
arrangement that would set ignorance to rule over culture, poverty over wealth, 
and inexperience over knowledge. If the State of New York were a Roman 
Catholic State in the proportion of four to one'; and if a proposition were made 
to withdraw New York from the jurisdiction of Congress, and give it a Con- 
gress of its own, practically independent ; and if this State Legislature were 
clothed with legislative and administrative power, so as to have under its con- 
trol the lives, property, religion, and liberty of the Protestant minority ; and if 
the Protestant minority had before them the certainty of being governed in per- 
petuity by such men as the popular vote now casts to the surface in Ireland — 
we here wonder how all this would be regarded by the Protestant minority in 
the State of New York ? All who understand this will understand perfectly 
why it is that the idea of an Irish Parliament is repulsive to the General 
Assembly and to the Protestants of Ireland. 

Thomas Witherow. ' 

Londonderry. 


728 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN 

CANADA. 

The General Assembly met at Winnipeg, Man., on Thursday, June ioth, at 
7.30 p.m. The retiring Moderator, the Rev. Dr. Smith, preached an earnest 
sermon on Zeal in the Lord’s Service, from Zeph. iii. 16. The Rev. Dr. 
Burris, of Halifax, N. S., was unanimously called to the chair, which he occu- 
pied with the utmost tact, urbanity, and judgment. 

Winnipeg is a long way from the parts of Canada where population is densest 
and Presbyterianism strongest, but no member of the late Assembly regrets the 
distance he had to travel in reaching this rising city. The place of meeting 
was doubtless chosen - in order that the Assembly might come closely in con- 
tact with the mission work of the Church in the wide fields of the North-West, 
and thus learn more adequately to realize the magnitude of that work ; while, 
on the other hand, its presence might somewhat encourage those who are 
laboring with much self-denial in territory as yet for the most part sparsely 
populated. 

The meeting of Assembly, it is hoped, has not entirely failed in accomplish- 
ing these important ends. Mission work in the North-West is to many a more 
vivid reality than before, and the liberality of the Church can hardly fail to be 
stimulated in support of our great Home Mission, as well as of the Indian Mis- 
sion, by what shall be heard from members of the Winnipeg Assembly. 

Nothing could exceed the hospitality with which the Assembly was enter- 
tained — the Governor of Manitoba, the Corporation of Winnipeg, and several 
public bodies of the city showing special courtesies to the members. 

Fortunately, the Assembly was able to give almost its entire time to the con- 
sideration of the work and schemes of the Church. It had not a single Appeal 
Case, and hardly any Questions. The absence of appeals, whether due to a 
good condition of the Church or to the success of the lower judicatories in 
dealing with cases, was a great relief to the General Assembly. 

The Home Mission field of the Canadian Church extends from ocean to 
ocean, and in proportion to its resources is probably larger than that of any 
other Church. Valuable financial help has for many years been rendered by 
the Scotch and Irish Churches, but even with this assistance the work is im- 
perfectly overtaken. The great Home Mission, as already signified, is in the 
North-West. Within the last sixteen years the congregations and missions in 
this region have increased from 9 to 389, and the ministers and missionaries at 
present number 1 1 5. In British Columbia there is, in addition, a Presbytery 
with eleven ministers. In the Home Mission four classes of laborers are em- 
ployed, ordained missionaries, licentiates, students for the ministry (whether in 
Theology or Arts), and catechists who are not proceeding to the ministry. 
Much difficulty is experienced in keeping the fields supplied when the students, 
who constitute so large a part of the force, return to their classes in autumn. 


PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN CANADA. 


729 


During the college session the presbyteries and the energetic Superintendent 
of Missions do the best they can to keep the work going, but many places 
remain unoccupied, and not a little of the fruit of preceding labor is lost. 

The Home Mission has exceeded its revenue during the year, and the re- 
serve fund, which has stood it. in good stead for several yeais, is exhausted ; 
nothing, therefore, but increased liberality can obviate the necessity of retrench- 
ment in a province of labor where retrenchment simply means that some — per- 
haps many— congregations and stations shall be left without the ordinary means 
of grace. 

The Scheme for Augmentation of small salaries shows a slight increase of 
$1000 in the contributions of the year ; but as — here again — a considerable 
reserve has been exhausted, the Church must either do better or fail in reaching 
the very modest minimum of $750 and a manse. Presbyterianism, not to say 
Christianity, enforces the duty of the strong helping the weak, and no church 
should decline to recognize the obligation of large and wealthy congregations 
to supplement the inadequate salaries which many weaker charges must offer. 
The Canadian Church has not found it possible to copy the Sustentation 
Scheme of the Free Church of Scotland, but the principle of mutual helpful- 
ness which underlies that scheme is a clear deduction from the oneness of the 
body of Christ and the law of Christian love. 

The Foreign Missions of the Church are in China, India, the New Hebrides, 
the West Indies, and among the Indians of the North-west. The staff consists 
of 27 ordained missionaries (2 native Chinese), 2 medical ladies, 3 zenana 
teachers in India, 4 lady teachers in Trinidad, and 2 among our own 
Indians, “and the usual additional teachers and helpers in the several mis- 
sions.” The statistics of these missions cannot here be given in detail. The 
record of the year testifies to earnest labor of missionaries and an encouraging 
measure of success. In Formosa there are already 38 native preachers, and as 
many preaching stations, while 20 students are preparing for the ministry in 
the College at Tamsui. Church-members in Formosa have increased by 3 1 5 
during the year. 

On all hands there is evidence of growing interest on the part of the Ca- 
nadian Church in the evangelization of the heathen world. Two matters may 
be specially noted in this connection : 1. The Woman’s Foreign Missionary 
Society is extending its influence over the whole Church, while its funds are 
yearly increasing. Though organized but a few years, it has this year added 
over $20,000 to the contributions of the general Society. And, what is of still 
greater value, the intelligence circulated, the prayers offered, the sympathy 
with missions awakened throughout the whole Church, are giving a higher 
place to this holy enterprise than it had hitherto secured. 2. The other token 
of progress is the inception of Foreign Mission work by Students’ Missionary 
Societies. These societies have existed in our colleges almost from their be- 
ginning, but hitherto their attention has been confined to the home field. The 
societies of Queen’s College and Knox College have now, with the sanction of 
the Assembly, resolved to take part in the foreign work, and Messrs. Goforth 
47 


730 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


and Smith, graduates of this year, will in a few months proceed as college 
missionaries, probably to Northern China. The salaries of these missionaries 
will be paid by the alumni of the colleges, without drawing upon other sources. 

Nothing can be matter of greater thankfulness to the churches over this 
whole Continent than the zeal of their students in Foreign Missions. That 
1 500, or more, young men in the colleges of America should have signified 
their readiness to “go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creat- 
ure’ ’ is a thing to which, probably, no parallel has been witnessed since the 
early ages of the Church. The fire burns in Canadian colleges as in those of 
the United States, and no limit is imposed to the development of Foreign Mis- 
sions except by the Church’s ability or willingness to send forth the men who 
are ready to go. 

On the evening devoted to Foreign Missions most interesting addresses were 
made by Rev. Messrs. Flett, John McKay, and Hugh McKay, missionaries to 
the Indians. Very suitable it was that in an Assembly held so near the scene 
of their labors these brethren should lift up their voice on behalf of the forlorn 
race to which this Continent once belonged, and should assert, as they ener- 
getically did, the duty of the Church and country to those whose lands we have 
possession of. 

The evangelization of the French Canadian Roman Catholics is a work re- 
quiring, in addition to zeal, great wisdom and patience. The difficulties are 
exceedingly formidable. The Church of Rome is a political as well as a relig- 
ious power, and in Quebec her social influence is nearly irresistible. Yet the 
duty of giving the pure Gospel to those who are in great ignorance of it seems 
unquestionable. This conclusion will be reached independently of any views 
on the validity of Romish baptism or ordination. The Presbyterian Church is 
specially bound to engage in this work, and has special historical advantages in 
conducting it. During the past year over $33,000 has been expended in 
French evangelization, and while a good many people have been reached in 
various ways, the educational work has been specially successful. 

The Reports from the colleges occasioned little discussions, but they were 
quite encouraging. The aggregate number of graduates in Theology is prob- 
ably greater than in any preceding year of the Church’s history ; two or three 
of the schools send forth the largest classes they have ever reported. Yet con- 
sidering that the Church has 775 pastoral charges, and 309 groups of mission 
stations (to say nothing of foreign work), the 52 or 53 graduates are surely not 
too many. Without additions to our ministry from other sources we could 
not hitherto have carried on our work ; and while some of these additions have 
been of excellent quality, it is on the whole better that a Church should not 
depend largely on foreign sources for its ministry. 

Two of the colleges, Queen’s and Manitoba, give instruction in Arts as well 
as in Theology ; Queen’s has University powers. The other colleges are the- 
ological seminaries, whose students take their Arts course wherever they please, 
provided they complete the Arts curriculum required by the Church. 

In view of the importance of medical knowledge to foreign missionaries the 


PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN CANADA. 


731 


Assembly was overtimed on the subject of accepting certain medical studies in 
lieu of some part of the Arts or Theological curriculum. A scheme of equiv- 
alence was prepared by a Committee of Assembly, and was sent down to the 
theological schools to be considered and reported on to next General Assembly. 
It seems only reasonable that two or three years spent in the study of medical 
science should have some recognition in the curriculum of the Church ; and if 
these years must be simply added to the seven devoted to Arts and Theology, 
many candidates for the foreign field will be deterred from seeking attainments 
which on all hands are regarded as exceedingly valuable to the missionary in 
India and China and other countries. On the other hand, neither the ordi- 
nary Arts course nor the ordinary Theological course must be lightly impaired. 
No work could be accepted in substitution for any part of these which did not 
imply equal mental discipline, or which would leave a candidate seriously de- 
ficient in his preparation for the work of the ministry in the home church. 
The Assembly has taken the proper step in consulting the colleges, and they 
will certainly give their best attention to a subject which becomes increasingly 
practical. With its traditions and its present convictions on the subject of an 
educated ministry, there is little danger that the Presbyterian Church will ap- 
prove of any proposal by which ministerial training would be injured. No 
one desires that the standard should be lowered ; what the promoters of the 
overture seek is that ministerial education should, under special circumstances, 
receive the best adaptation to the field to be occupied. 

Some progress is being made in College Endowment, but the amount accru- 
ing from funded capital still requires large supplement from annual collections 
in congregations. Queen’s University has just announced a scheme which is 
intended to add $2 50,000 to its endowments, and of this sum nearly half has 
been already secured. Canada is not as yet a wealthy country, but in propor- 
tion to their means the people of all denominations are disposed generously to 
support education, both theological and general. 

The Assembly appointed a large Committee on Systematic Beneficence. Its 
main duty will be to influence the Church in the matter of adequate and sys- 
tematic giving for the support and extension of the Redeemer’s kingdom in 
every department of wor^. Almost every scheme — especially Home Missions 
and Foreign Missions — imperatively requires larger revenue. If this is not 
forthcoming the sad necessity of even curtailing operations will be forced upon 
the Church. But no such necessity should arise. The $1,600,000 con- 
tributed for all Church purposes (this is near the amount) cannot adequately 
represent the giving power of the Church. The sum named does not, prob- 
ably, exceed the ^ or -fa part of the revenue of members and adherents ; and 
whatever opinion is held as to the permanent obligation of giving a tenth to 
the Lord, it will surely be agreed that we Christians should not content our- 
selves with giving less. Some, indeed, cannot give the tenth, but others can 
easily give more, and this average at least should be reached. Were it so, the 
Church’s exchequer would be overflowing, and wonderful expansion of work 
would be seen in all directions. The contributions of the Canadian Church 


732 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


are probably not behind those of other churches of equal means, but this is no 
reason why the duty of Christian giving should not be earnestly and affection- 
ately pressed upon our people. Moved by such views and convictions the 
Assembly has taken this step toward raising the standard of liberality in the 
whole Church. To all the churches the subject is one of the deepest interest. 
In almost every department of her activity the entire Church of Christ is hin- 
dered by want of funds. Many individuals, and some congregations, are doing 
well — perhaps approaching the measure of their ability — but the slightest in- 
spection of the finances of any Church will show that the cause of Christ is 
receiving far less than might be expected. It is simply appalling to compare 
the amounts expended for drink, tobacco, etc., with what is devoted to the 
extension of the kingdom of Christ. 

As in the United States, so in Canada, the Episcopal Church recently passed 
Resolutions on Union, and appointed a committee to meet with any commit- 
tees which might be appointed for a similar purpose by other Christian bodies. 
The General Assembly was not slow to respond to this invitation ; it named its 
committee, and gave them power to confer with the Episcopal and other 
churches on the great question of Church Unity ; but this action was not ac- 
companied with any declaration of Church principles or any detailed instruc- 
tion to the committee. It was judged better at the present stage of proceedings 
not to make any general enunciation of views regarding the principles and 
requisites of Union. 

This movement toward Union on the part of the Episcopal Church will be 
watched with interest. At present its meaning is not quite apparent, and dif- 
ferent explanations are offered. Some see in it a truly Christian attempt to 
promote the unity and efficiency of the Church, and a revival of the better tra- 
ditions of the Church of England ; others, marking the fact that many leading 
advocates of the measure are High-Churchmen, infer that Union, as it is 
spoken of, means the submission and absorption of non-Episcopal bodies. 
We are willing to hope the best The Episcopal Church contains a large num- 
ber of people and many ministers who are wearied of hierarchical preten- 
sions and who have learned to love the brethren of other churches. For their 
sakes at least we should be forward to meet any overtures of Union which do 
not on the face of them bear evidence of a wrong spirit or of conditions to 
which we cannot assent The Presbyterian Church is in no danger of being 
entrapped into a false position, and she will know how, at the proper time, to 
maintain and defend the heritage of truth which she has received. Should it 
be that the Spirit of God is moving upon men’s hearts to seek an end which is 
dear to the Lord, who would wish to stand in the way ? 

The proposition that “ The discipline of the Church shall not be exercised 
in regard to marriage with a deceased wife’s sister, deceased wife’s aunt, or 
deceased wife’s niece,” was sent down by the Assembly of last year under the 
Barrier Act. This Remit was found to be approved by 30 presbyteries, disap- 
proved by 5, while 7 made no return. The action taken by the Assembly was 
the following : ( a ) The above recited proposition was passed into an ad interim 


SYNOD OF THE ENGLISH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 733 


Act. (£) The question was sent down to presbyteries under the Barrier Act, 
“ Shall the words of the Confession of Faith, ‘ The man may not marry any of 
his wife’s kindred, nearer, etc.,’ be struck out of the standards of this Church ?” 
The marriage question is by the recent action virtually settled, and it is to be 
hoped that after next year it will not again come before the Assembly. 

* William Caven. 

Totonto. 

SYNOD OF THE ENGLISH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 

The Synod of the Presbyterian Church of England met in Manchester on 
the 25th of April last. The sad history of the decadence of the Presbyterian- 
ism of England, so powerful an element in her religious life in Puritan times, 
is well known. Half a century ago it was represented by a small number of 
struggling congregations in the northern counties, with some in the larger cities 
— mainly composed of Scottish immigrants — and directly connected with the 
Scottish Established and Secession Churches. Although the history of a fair 
proportion of the northern congregations could be traced back to the Puritans, 
the powerful strain of Scottish blood in the Church as a whole, and the close 
ecclesiastical connection with Scotland, made “ Presbyterian” and “ Scottish” 
synonymous terms to the popular English mind. In 1843, when the Presby- 
terian Churches of the British Empire connected with the Established Church 
of Scotland were agitated by the controversy that divided the Mother Church, 
an overwhelming majority of the English Presbyterian Church resolved to sever 
their ecclesiastical connection with Scotland and to form a separate and inde- 
pendent Church on English soil. A small section, now numbering about 
twenty congregations, led by the once well-known Dr. John Cumming, re- 
mained in the old connection with the Church of Scotland, regarding it as their 
special mission to represent her and to look after her members who migrated 
to the southern part of the kingdom. The new body that, without disowning 
its Scottish kindred, aspired to represent and revive the ancient Presbyterianism 
of England, displayed singular spirit and energy, and made rapid progress. 
Led by men among the ministers like the late Dr. James Hamilton and the 
venerable Principal of the London Theological college, Dr. William Chalmers, 
supported by a band of noble-minded and generous elders, and cheered by 
the approval and sympathy of the Free Church leaders, this little Church girt 
herself for her great task with enthusiasm and hope. Although the sanguine 
anticipations of youthful days have scarcely been fulfilled, and it is now recog- 
nized that a sustained and up-hill struggle must be made ere the little one be- 
come a thousand, the rate of progress may well inspire thankfulness for the 
past and hope and energy as regards the future. One of the most cheering 
events in the history of this earnest effort to restore to England an Evangelical 
Presbyterian Church, worthy to take its place and able to hold its own with the 
other institutions that form and direct her religious thought and life, was the 
union, ten years ago, of the English congregations of the United Presbyterian 


734 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


Church of Scotland with the Presbyterian Church in England. Although the 
united Church is still but small among the powerful religious communities of 
England — having not quite three hundred congregations — she has a position of 
influence greatly beyond what her numbers alone warrant, due, in some meas- 
ure, no doubt, to the fact that she represents one of the largest and most pow- 
erful families of the Reformed Church, and yet more to the eminence of some 
of her ministers and the high average of education and ability among the rest, 
but most of all to the unswerving evangelical testimony of her pulpits and to 
the evangelistic earnestness and energy of her work at home and abroad. 

As the Synod sits only from Monday to Friday of one week, there is not 
much scope for oratory, and perhaps too little for discussion. The Convener 
of the Business Committee, Dr. Donald Fraser, keeps a keen eye on the House, 
and makes the sharp crack of his whip heard, and, if need be, its sharp point 
felt, if the pace gets too slow. The opening sermon by the Moderator of 1886, 
the popular and highly-esteemed Dr. David MacEwan, of Clapham, was short, 
clear, and impressive. But the impression gains ground that the ancient prac- 
tice of beginning a Synod with a sermon, especially on a Monday evening, and 
with only a few days for a long and varied business programme, might in the 
case of this Church be departed from without any disrespect to sermons or 
retiring moderators, and with real advantage to the main purpose of the meet- 
ing. The Synod, on the recommendation of a committee of selection ap- 
pointed the preceding year, called to the Chair, by acclamation, their senior 
Chinese missionary, the Rev. William S. Swanson, of Amoy. Mr. Swanson’s 
election was intended to honor both the missionary and the man. £Jo Church 
has a staff of foreign missionaries who more fully deserve and enjoy the con- 
fidence and affection of their brethren at home. Mr. Swanson having been 
obliged, on the score of health, to remain at home for some years, has done 
the mission immense service by his wise and eloquent expositions and appeals, 
and has thus become personally known to a wide circle. His opening address 
was a powerful plea for missions as the chief work of Christ’s Church on earth. 

The second day of the Synod was opened, according to custom, by the 
observance of the Lord’s Supper. The prayers and addresses which preceded 
and followed the silent showing forth of the Lord’s Death were in beauti- 
ful harmony with the sweet and holy solemnity, and must have helped to make 
that best hour of the Synod one of true fellowship with the Lord Jesus and 
with one another in Him. The communion was followed by a Conference on 
the State of Religion. For some years past the Synod has set apart several of 
its ministers and elders to visit the congregations of a Presbytery or District, 
inquiring into their spiritual life and working, and giving such advice as may 
seem needful for encouraging and stimulating them in the good work of the 
Lord. The Conference, starting from the Reports of these deputies, which 
were in type and in the hands of the members, yielded some valuable practical 
suggestions from such esteemed brethren as the Rev. Dr. Monro Gibson, of 
London, Mr. Lundie, of Liverpool, and others. The Conference was fol- 
lowed by the Report of the Jewish Mission. The veteran missionary, the Rev. 


SYNOD OF THE ENGLISH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 735 


T. I. Meyer, himself an Israelite, who while a student in Berlin became a 
believer in Jesus, after many years’ service on the European Continent accepted 
an invitation from this Church, nearly twenty years ago, to found a mission to 
the Jews in the east of London. He has labored faithfully, and has been 
honored to gather in year by year a remnant, mostly of the humbler classes of 
Jews, into the Christian fold. Encouraged by an offer of generous pecuniary 
help from the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, a new branch of the 
Jewish Mission has been recently established, under a devoted medical mission- 
ary, in a city in the north of Africa. 

Tuesday evening was, according to custom, devoted to a missionary meet- 
ing. The Foreign Missions Report was presented by the Convener or Chair- 
man of the Committee, Mr. Hugh M. Matheson, one of those princely mer- 
chants who write “ Holiness to the Lord” upon the methods and the fruits 
of commerce, and who by the loftiest integrity and by the largest liberality 
command the respect and confidence of all and do yeoman service to the cause 
of Christ. Though one of the smallest of the Churches of England, the China 
Mission of this Church, tested by the number of its agents and converts, is the 
largest in that great empire, with the single exception of the American Presby- 
terian Mission, with which it is in close alliance. The agents of the mission, 
European and native, number nearly one hundred and twenty ; the mem- 
bership is close on six thousand ; and those more or less loosely con- 
nected with and influenced by the mission must be three or four times as 
many. The Church has a small mission in India, which, though somewhat 
overshadowed by the work in China, is most faithfully conducted by Dr. Mor- 
rison and his gifted wife, and is writing its own record in souls won to the 
Saviour. A Women’s Missionary Association, formed and conducted on 
the American model, is rendering inestimable help, not only in the way of 
funds, but by fostering a missionary spirit among those to whom God has 
given the greatest influence in moulding the religious life of the rising genera- 
tion. The missionary meeting was large and aglow with zeal. The addresses 
of the missionaries from the several parts of the Chinese field were full of vivid 
and suggestive incidents and marked by a modest self-forgetfulness and a 
quiet yet exultant confidence in the grace and power of the Master that won 
and warmed all hearts and moistened many eyes. A speech of extraordinary 
power on the subject of the Home Heathen — reminding some of the older 
hearers of the moral enthusiasm and explosive energy that flashed and rolled 
like a thunderstorm in the oratory of the great Chalmers — was made by Mr. 
John Smith, once a minister of this Church, as the successor of Dr. John 
Cairns at Berwick, and now the colleague of Dr. Andrew Thomson in Brough- 
ton Place Church, Edinburgh, so well known in connection with its first min- 
ister, the late Dr. John Brown. 

Our space prevents us doing more than barely noticing other matters of im- 
portance which came before the Synod. The Sustentation Fund, represented 
by the joint Conveners, Dr. Donald Fraser and Dr. MacEwan, had a good 
account to give of itself, having succeeded, though not without special exer- 


736 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


tions and serious apprehensions of falling short, in maintaining the equal 
dividend to all the ministers, sharing it at the former figure of two hundred 
pounds. Dr. Oswald Dykes, who commands in an eminent, we might write 
pre-eminent, degree the confidence of the Church, and whose rising is always 
the signal for hearty applause and earnest 'attention, had a somewhat disheart- 
ening report to give of the funds of the Theological College, and felt himself 
compelled to recommend a reduction of expenditure. The work of the College 
was, however, faithfully and successfully accomplished, and a fair number of 
earnest and capable men were devoting themselves to the holy ministry. The 
other report, which it fell to Dr. Dykes also to present, on the Higher Bibli- 
cal Instruction of the Young People of the Church, was altogether of a 
brighter complexion. By recommending various biblical subjects for study, 
with the help of text-books and of ministerial classes, and by arranging for ex- 
aminations to test the proficiency of the candidates, who receive certificates or 
diplomas graduated to the scales of merit, this Committee has given an im- 
mense stimulus to biblical study and a wise direction to the spirit of inquiry 
abroad among the more intelligent young people of our day. 

It is a notable feature of the English Presbyterian Church that her courts 
have very seldom been engaged with cases of discipline, either for heresy or 
immorality. By the grace of God and the wholesome influence of conditions 
that make hard practical work and a high pulpit ideal incumbent on all her 
ministers, she has been preserved in large measure from the distracting specu- 
lations that lead away from the simplicity of the faith and from the self-indul- 
gence and ease so often fatal to purity of life. May the same grace, under like 
Providential conditions, keep her for the future faithful to the truth as it is in 
Jesus, and fruitful in every good work ! 

R. Taylor. 

Upper Norwood. 


HOW ARE INFANTS SAVED? 

The grounds for believing in the salvation of all who die in infancy are ex- 
amined in the last number of the Review. From the conclusion reached in 
Dr. Blaikie’s article I do not dissent We cannot make our opinion — our 
highly probable opinion — in favor of the salvation of all who die in infancy to 
be de fide. But the discussion of the present question stands quite apart from 
our view on the former one. If any dying in infancy are saved (which none 
deny), we still have the question presented, How are they saved ? 

Some, indeed, place the salvation of those who die in infancy on ground 
which affects our present topic. They argue that infants not having sinned 
their salvation is matter of necessity — of justice. Pelagianism certainly affects 
both questions — the universal salvation of infants, and the manner of it. But 
in this case salvation cannot properly be spoken of ; for salvation is deliverance 
from sin, and cannot be predicated of those who have not sinned and are not 
involved in the penal consequences of sin. If you say that infants have no 


HOW ARE INFANTS SAVED? 


737 


taint of nature — have nothing in them to expose them to condemnation — you 
cannot speak of their salvation, though you may of their future felicity. 

It is thus important that we should begin our statement with the distinct 
affirmation of the sinfulness and condemnation in Adam of the entire human 
race. The question of Mediate or Immediate Imputation need not be raised, 
for in either case the condition of infants brings them under condemnation. 
If infants are left without some work of grace upon them, if left merely to 
develop the tendencies which are in them, they cannot inherit the kingdom of 
God. The Lord’s declaration, therefore, touching the necessity of the new 
birth applies to infants as to adults, and no answer to the question before us 
which ignores this fact can be entertained. That which is born of the flesh 
remains flesh, and only by a second and spiritual birth can the kingdom be 
entered. 

The Confession of Faith teaches that “ elect infants, dying in infancy, are 
regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and 
where, and how He pleaseth.” Such infants are saved ( a ) by Christ. He 
atones for them ; for they have need of expiation as have others. No one, old 
or young, can enter heaven except by Christ, and all who appear before the 
throne have washed their robes in His blood. But also, (<5) through the 
Spirit. The Spirit must regenerate. This necessarily follows from the fact 
that infants are sinful. The Spirit must renew the nature, take away its evil 
tendencies, and give adaptation to a holy destiny. Nothing but the utmost 
misconception of the moral and spiritual elements of the problems can deter- 
mine any one to think otherwise. The human race is fallen — sinful — in all 
its members, and none can be saved unless “ by Christ through the Spirit.” 

This is all certain, and is not denied by any who hold the evangelical doc- 
trine ; but the question remains, How are infants saved by the work of Christ 
and through the Spirit ? In a most important respect their case differs from 
that of persons who can understand the method of grace. The work of the 
Saviour and of the Spirit is by such intelligently regarded as the way of salva- 
tion. Faith embraces Christ and unites them to Him, and the Spirit in regen- 
erating and sanctifying them works by means of the truth concerning Christ. 
Knowledge and faith are both indispensable. “ How shall they call on Him 
in whom they have not believed ? And how shall they believe on Him of 
whom they have not heard ?” But in the case of infants there can be no 
knowledge, and no faith springing from knowledge. This at least is the con- 
clusion which we should reach from the appearances of the case ; for there is 
nothing to suggest that infants are capable of such intellectual and moral 
activity as we know to be connected with salvation in the case of others. The 
difficulty, therefore, seems to remain. If we hold that mental activity is indis- 
pensable in the appropriation of salvation, we shut out infants from the king- 
dom of God. 

The difficulty does not lie in the Scripture statements which make faith and 
knowledge necessary in salvation ; for though infants may not be expressly 
excepted from the application of these statements, no violence is done to Scrip- 


738 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


ture, if, on sufficient grounds, such statements are limited to adults or to 
those who have a measure of developed intelligence. And when we take into 
account cases like those of Jeremiah (Jer. i. 5) and John the Baptist (Luke i. 
15), of which there may be very many, we must not insist upon an unlimited 
application of the texts referred to. 

The question then is merely respecting the way in which infants “ are made 
partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ.” 

Here let it be carefully noted that the case of infants dying in infancy is the 
same as that of regenerated infants who do not die in infancy. And this, we 
may believe, is not a rare case. A considerable proportion, perhaps, of those 
who become faithful sen-ants of Christ were the subjects of grace from an early 
period ; many before intelligence was awakened. Not only so, but we look 
for a time when such instances of early renewal shall be far more frequent — 
when, indeed, renewal in infancy or childhood shall be the rule and not the 
exception. This will unquestionably be a higher condition of the Church 
than that in which years of indifference to religion so often precede the religious 
life. The Church longs for the day in which her children shall grow up in 
the kingdom, and shall not know a time in which they were not subjects of it 
and in sympathy with it Hence the interest of our question widens .and 
passes greatly beyond the case more immediately before us. 

All except Pelagians, as already said, hold that infants in order to salvation 
must be regenerated. The question then comes to be, How is their regener- 
ation effected ? Now here again there is common ground in a most important 
matter, for all ascribe regeneration to the Holy Spirit as its efficient cause. 
But at this point a wide difference of opinion emerges ; for some hold that 
regeneration lakes place in baptism and is effected by it or in connection with it, 
while others earnestly reject this doctrine. 

Romanists, Lutherans, and many of the Anglican communion agree in 
holding baptismal regeneration. The Canons of the Council of Trent are ex- 
plicit* Baptism is defined as “ sacr amentum regenerations per aquam in verbo.” 
Baptism, as Rome teaches, cleanses from inherent corruption, secures remis- 
sion of the penalty of sin, infuses sanctifying grace, unites to Christ, impresses 
upon the soul an indelible character, and opens the portals of heaven (New- 
man’s Lectures on Justification). There can be no salvation therefore without 
baptism : to die unbaptized is to be lost, and to die with the efficacy of bap- 
tism unimpaired is to be saved. Bellarmin says : “ The Church has always 
believed that infants perish if they depart this life without baptism. For 
although little children fail of baptism without any fault of their own, yet they 
do not perish without their own fault, since they have original sin.” We thus 
see in what way the Church of Rome answers the question. How are infants 
dying in infancy saved ? They are saved by baptism. If unbaptized neither 
infant nor adult can enter heaven. 

The Church of Rome further teaches that faith is required in the case of the 
baptized, and while infants do not believe by their own proper act, “ parentum 
fide, si parentes fideles fuerint, sin minus, fide universae societatis muniantur. 


HOW ARE INFANTS SAVED? 


739 


Not less clearly does the Lutheran Church teach that regeneration is through 
baptism. “ De baptismo docent quod sit necessarium ad salutem, quodque 
per baptismum offeratur gratia Dei, et quod pueri baptizandi, qui per baptis- 
mum oblati Deo recipiantur in gratiam Dei. Damnant Anabaptistas, qui im- 
probant baptismum puerorum et affirmant pueros sine baptismo salvos fieri” 
( Confessio Augus/ana). While the doctrine is toned down and even evacuated 
by many Lutheran divines, such is the confessional ground of the Church. 

It is unnecessary to set forth the modifications of this doctrine introduced by 
Anglicans, apparently with the view of evading the objections made to the opus 
operalum of Rome. 

We are not here expected, of course, to refute the doctrine of baptismal re- 
generation. It might easily be shown that it is inconsistent with the whole 
nature of true religion, that as regards adults it places baptism in the position 
assigned to faith, that it is not sustained by fair exposition of any passages of 
Scripture, while it is contrary to the plain meaning of other passages, and that 
it is contradicted by experience — which unquestionably shows that many bap- 
tized persons are not regenerated, and that many persons are regenerated pre- 
vious to their baptism. There is no escaping the force of this latter consider- 
ation except by giving a new and unscriptural meaning to regeneration. 

But the Lutheran Church seeks to avoid the substitution of baptism for 
faith, and makes faith necessary even in the case of infants. The fides infan- 
tiuvi was propounded by some of the schoolmen, and it is definitely embraced 
by the Lutherans. This faith is described as praesumpta, implicita, per bap- 
tismum sine verbo (or, sine cognitione) infusa, talis affectio in infante qualis 
Deo placet, dispositio ad justitiam, etc. Luther's Larger Cathechism says : 
“ Citra fidem nihil prodest baptismus, tametsi per sese coelestis et insestimabilis 
thesaurus esse negari non possit” And again : “ Absente fide, nudum et 
inefficax signum tantummodo permanet/’ The Smaller Cathechism : “ It is 
not water indeed that does it, but the Word of God which is with and in the 
water, and faith which trusts in the Word of God in the water.” Quenstedt : 
“ By baptism and in baptism the Holy Ghost excites in infants a true, saving, 
life-giving, and actual faith, whence also baptized infants truly believe.” Ger- 
hard : “ Nos non de modo fidei sumus soliciti sed in ilia simplicitate acquies- 
cimus, quod infantes vere credant.” Chemnitz : “ Nequaquam conceden- 
dum est, infantes, qui baptizantur, vel sine fide esse, vel in aliena fide bap- 
tizari.” Though the production of faith may not be separated from the Word, 
baptism, which is the visible Word, produces faith in the infant. 

But to impute faith to an infant is to deceive ourselves with words ; it is to 
surround ourselves with a dense fog in which nothing can be seen. The only 
reason for inventing this kind of faith is to fulfil the condition which makes 
faith essential to salvation. But if the faith of infants is something quite dif- 
ferent from faith in the ordinary use of the term, the condition is not fulfilled, 
and we have imposed upon ourselves with a mere figment. That an entirely 
new meaning is given to faith is evident from the fact that not one of the ele- 
ments of faith as ordinarily defined is found in this faith of infants. Faith is 


740 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


said to embrace Noti/ia, Assensus, Fiducia. Faith presupposes knowledge ; it 
is not a blind thing, but has eyes. Something must be known regarding the 
object of faith — enough to warrant its exercise. In regard to Christ faith ap- 
prehends the truth that He is able and willing to save, and that salvation is 
freely offered to us in the Gospel. Faith implies the exercise of the under- 
standing. The truth referred to becomes the material on which the mind 
operates, and there is conscious apprehension and reception of this truth ; 
while the affections and the will unite with the understanding in embracing 
Christ and resting upon Him. Of this mental activity, in all its parts, infants 
are incapable. 

Nothing is gained by calling the faith implicit, or germinal, or the like. In 
any proper sense of the term faith is a conscious act, and to designate some- 
thing in which there is no mental activity at all by the same name is only to 
abuse terms. 

We are not helped to accept this doctrine of infant faith by learning that the 
faith is implied in regeneration, and that regeneration is effected in baptism. 
This is only to add difficulty to difficulty, and to supply us with further reasons 
for rejecting the doctrine. All the arguments by which we refute baptismal 
regeneration are now proper to be used against the faith of infants, which is 
alleged to be the fruit of their regeneration or part of it. 

The only specific Scripture proof which seems to be offered in support of 
such faith is Matt xviii. 6 : “ But whoso shall offend one of these little ones 
which believe in Me,” etc. But here the “ little ones” will very naturally 
mean those who have the disposition of little children. The parallels in Mark 
and Luke support this view ; but in any case we must remember that naiSia 
are not necessarily infants. 

The secoTid view as to the method of infant salvation is content to hold that 
infants are saved through the merits of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, 
but attempts no explanation of the way in which the Redeemer’s merits are 
applied and in which the Spirit accomplishes regeneration and sanctification. 
No attempt is made to advance beyond the statement of the Westminster Con- 
fession, which is not only the substance of all that can legitimately be said, 
but is felt at once to be sufficient. 

It is, of course, involved that the work of Christ may be applied, and the 
work of the Spirit accomplished apart from the communication of that knowl- 
edge of Christ and apart from those mental exercises which, in the case of 
adults, ordinarily accompany salvation. Should any one decline to take this 
ground he must fall back upon that of the Church of Rome or of the Lutheran 
Church. 

(a) As to the work of Christ, less difficulty will perhaps be found in accept- 
ing what has just been stated. There is no obvious reason why the merits of 
the Saviour should not be counted to an infant, so that He should be accepted 
on the ground of them. We cannot demonstrate, and it is not axiomatic, that 
the exercise of intelligence must precede such divine imputation ; more espe- 
cially when we reflect that our connection with “ the first man” precedes con- 


HOW ARE INFANTS SAVED? 


741 


sciousness, and that infants come into the world with the burden of this con- 
nection upon them. The divine justice may be entirely satisfied with the work 
of Christ for infants, though they cannot comprehend that work, and to argue 
the opposite from the case of adults, when the knowledge of Christ is requisite 
to the production of certain saving graces, as repentance and faith, is clearly 
not allowable. But certain it is that infants need atonement, and the view we 
are sustaining does not for a moment forget that fact. 

(i 5 ) But the work of the Spirit in infants is equally necessary with the work 
of tne Lord for them ; and here it is that special difficulty has been found in 
apprehending the method of their salvation. In adults — in persons of devel- 
oped intelligence — the Spirit works through the truth. In both regeneration 
and sanctification the truth is the instrument which He employs. The Church 
is “ sanctified and cleansed with the washing of water by the Word ” (Eph. v. 
26). “ Sanctify them through the truth ; thy Word is truth” (Jno. xvii. 17). 

“ Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the 
Spirit . . . being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by 
the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever” (1 Pet. i. 22, 23). In 
like manner we read that the heart is purified by faith (Acts xv. 9). The 
understanding, will, conscience, affections, are all called into exercise in the 
Spirit’s working, and it is hardly supposable that we should be renewed and 
sanctified by the Spirit, and yet the entire process lie outside the sphere of con- 
sciousness and mental activity. How, then, shall those who are incapable of 
such mental activity become subjects of the Spirit’s work so as to be qualified 
for heaven ? 

Now let it be remarked that the question is only an appeal to our igno- 
rance ; for no one can prove the impossibility of the Spirit’s accomplishing His 
work apart from the exercise of intelligence in the subject of that work. We 
know too little on the one hand of the Spirit’s power, and on the other of man’s 
nature — of the human soul — to hazard any such assertion. We do know, 
indeed, that the Spirit in acting upon persons and things must act in accord- 
ance with their nature and characteristics. His action, therefore, upon an 
infant will not be after the manner of His action upon purely material sub- 
stances, as when He “ renews the face of the earth ;” but we cannot maintain 
that the Spirit’s work in the infant must come into the region of knowledge 
and faith. Still less can we assert the impossibility of the Spirit’s operating 
upon the infant mind at all. 

Even in adults regeneration precedes the conscious turning of the soul to 
God. There is a creative work of the Spirit in which our mental activity bears 
no part. Whatever action of the truth upon mind and heart has gone before, 
the creative power of God is exerted immediately upon the nature, giving it 
new qualities and tendencies, and the whole cannot be described as a purely 
rational process. But if so, we can the more readily believe in the possibility 
of the Almighty power so operating upon an infant as to result in spiritual 
renovation ; nor can it be shown that the important distinction between a per- 
son and a thing is thus disregarded. The Spirit’s work is inscrutable, and we 


742 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


have no right to say that the possibility of it is conditioned upon the exercise 
of intelligence. In due time the regenerated infant, if spared, will manifest 
the fruits of the Spirit ; but if early death prevent the appearance of fruit or 
blossom upon earth, the work of renewal is accomplished all the same, and 
the fruit will mature under brighter skies. By immediate omnipotent action 
upon the qualities of the infant’s soul the Spirit has made them holy, and this 
has been done in harmony with the nature of the soul. Cases like those of 
Jeremiah and John the Baptist show that the Spirit can and does so work. 
The same is clearly deduced from the Lord’s declaration regarding little chil- 
dren, that of such is the kingdom of heaven. The fact is established, however 
little our curiosity may be satisfied regarding the method of the Spirit’s work- 
ing. But those who remember the Lord’s conversation with Nicodemus con- 
cerning the new birth will not be surprised that a work which we cannot com- 
prehend in any instance should be specially hidden from our inspection when 
it precedes the exercise of reason and intelligence. 

The Reformed do not receive the Lutheran doctrine touching the faith of 
infants. Certainly they do not ascribe to infants actual faith. Calvin says : 
“ At quomodo, inquiunt, regenerantur infantes, nec boni nee mali cognitione 
prsediti ? Nos autem respondemus, opus Dei, etiamsi captui nostro non sub- 
jaceat, non tamen esse nullum. Porro infantes qui servandi sunt, ut certe ex 
ea aetate omnino aliqui servantur, ante a Domino regenerari minime obscurum 
est. Nam si ingenitam sibi corruptionem e matris utero secum afferunt, ea 
purgatos esse oportet, antequam in regnum Dei admittantur, quo nihil ingredi- 
tur inquinatum et impollutum” {Inst., Lib. IV., Cap. 16, Sect. 17). 

It seems of little use to admit, with Turrettine, that while infants have not 
actual faith they have the root of faith or the seed of faith in them : “ Non 
potest ipsis negari semen vel radix fidei, quae a Spiritu Sancto ipsis a teneris 
ingeneretur, et suo tempore exeat in actum,” etc. {Inst., Vol. II., Loc. XV., 
Quaest. XIV. ). The seeds or germs of all graces are undoubtedly contained 
in regeneration, but there is no greater reason on this account for ascribing 
faith to infants than for ascribing to them the other Christian virtues. Turret- 
tine would oppose the Anabaptists, “ qui omnem fidem non modo quoad 
actum, sed etiam quoad habitum et formam denegant infantibus.” But what- 
ever the error of the Anabaptists may be, it does not need to be met in this 
way. The language is misleading, giving, as it does, a meaning to faith which 
it bears neither in Scripture nor in theological literature. We may indeed say 
with Calvin, “ The seed of repentance and faith lies hid in them by the secret 
operation of the Spirit,” or, with Dr. A. A. Hodge, “ Infants may receive 
from the Holy Ghost the habit or state of soul of which faith is the expres- 
sion. ’ ’ But the habitus of the soul is one thing and the habitus of faith, in 
distinction from its actus, is another thing. 

Nor is it necessary in vindicating the right of infants to baptism to adduce 
any such consideration as the following : “ De fide infantium federatorum 
idem dicendum, quod de ipsorum ratione. Utraque inest ipsis actu primo, 
non secundo ; in semente non in messe ; in radice non in fructu ; interna 


RUPERTUS MELDENIUS AND HIS WORD OF PEACE. 743 


Spiritus virtute, non externa operis demonstratione” (Turrett., de Baplismo). 
We can certainly speak of the principle of faith as distinct from the acts of 
faith, but it is of very doubtful propriety to attribute faith to those who have 
not begun to think or reason. Infants possess every' principle or component 
part of our nature, and regenerated infants possess that nature in such moral 
condition that faith will appear as soon as the requisite development of faculty 
takes place ; but inasmuch as faith is not a faculty or part of the nature, but 
the reception of divine truth upon proper evidence, it is an improper use of 
language to speak of a faith which cannot possibly be actualis. 

Moral qualities or conditions belong to the soul before there are any con- 
scious actings of it. If so, infants are moral beings, and the Almighty Gra- 
cious Spirit can mould them as He will — touch them to what spiritual issues He 
will. He can before the first gleam of intelligence appears infuse new moral 
habitutes and qualities — regenerate — sanctify — prepare for a heavenly home. 
It is enough to know and be sure of this general fact which the Word of God 
so clearly establishes ; and we should exclude from our reasoning on this in- 
teresting subject all such doubtful psychology as the faith of infants. 

The glory of divine grace will shine forth forever, not less wondrously in 
the salvation of infants than in the salvation of those who through long con- 
flict, perhaps, have reached the kingdom. William Caven. 

Toronto. 


RUPERTUS MELDENIUS AND HIS WORD OF PEACE. 

In the last number of this Review I gave an account of the efforts of Liicke 
and other German scholars to trace the origin of the phrase : "In necessariis 
unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in utrisque charitas.” I also reported addi- 
tional evidence that I had discovered in several of the rare works of Richard 
Baxter and other scholars of the seventeenth century. This additional evidence 
strengthened the opinion of Liicke that Rupertus Meldenius was the author of the 
phrase. Baxter refers to Conradus Bergius as his authority for referring the 
phrase to Rupertus Meldenius. I was unable to secure any of Bergius’s works 
before I left America, but I have taken advantage of a few weeks in Germany to 
pursue the investigation. The works of Bergius and his associates in the 
University of Frankfort-on-the-Oder are extremely scarce. By combining those 
found in the libraries of Leipzig and Berlin I have been able to examine the most 
of them ; but there are some volumes not to be found in these great libraries. 
The volume from which Baxter derived the sentence is entitled, Praxis Catholica 
divini canonis contra quasvis hcereses et schismata seu de fide catholica jusque 
imprimis fundamenlo et Christianorum quorumvis circa illud consensu vel 
dissensu disserlationes IX., etc., a Conrado Bergio. Bremae“, 1639. It is 
singular that the passage should have escaped Liicke, for he mentions the book. 
It has a full index, and the name of Meldenius is there, referring to the page 
where the extract is found. The extract is in the second dissertation, entitled, 
“ De modo revelationis catholicae, tanquam principio fidei communi, quomodo 
Deus loquatur hominibus ; et quae vel qualis sit ilia revelatio, quae habeat 
authoritatem divinam et catholicam ; adeo ut omnes eos quibus ostensa luerit, 
ad credendum obliget.” This dissertation cites a very large number of author- 
ities from all the churches = of Christendom. In Section CVII. the author comes 


744 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


to the Paranesis Votiva , and begins thus : "Non pratereunda est hoc in loco, 
Paraenesis Votiva pro pace Ecclesiae ad Theologos Aug. Confessionis, auctore 
Ruperto Meldenio Theologo : qui licet tempus et locum editionis et suam 
autoris conditionem ( quod velluri) non distinct l expritnat, tamen quorum 
partium sit satis indicat. ” Conrad Bergius follows the method of quoting in 
the ordinary type of the book and inserting his comments in italics. It is clear 
from his statement that he regards Meldenius as the author, but does not know 
anything about him. His appreciation of the tract is evident from the number 
and length of his quotations from it, extending from page 159 to page 188. He 
concludes with the golden word of Meldenius and a brief comment upon it. 

“ Fol. F 2. Verbo dicam : Si nos servaremus in necessariis Unitatem ; in non 
necessariis, Libertatem ; in utrisque Charitatem ; optimo certe loco essent 
res nostras. Ita fiat Amen.” 

Baxter gives it in a slightly different form : 

“ Were there no more said of all this subject but that of Rupertus Meldenius, 
cited by Conradus Bergius, it might end all schism if well understood and used 
— viz., Si in necessariis sit Unitas, in non-necessariis libertas, in 
Utrisque Charitas, optuno certe loco essent res nostra." 

It is clear that Baxter derived the word of peace from the passage of Conradus 
Bergius given above. We now have to build on Conradus Bergius for a further 
investigation. 

As we have already seen in the last number of this Review, the phrase is also 
found in a tract of Gregorius Francus, entitled : Consideratio theologica, de 
gradibus necessitatis dogmatum Christianorum, quibus fidei , spei et charitatis 
ofificia reguntur. Franckfurt-an-der-Oder. 1628. It is found in the following 
iorm : " Summa est : servemus in necessariis unitatem, in non necessariis liber- 
tatem, in utrisque charitatem.” The phrase is here in a terser and more inde- 
pendent form, and some have thought that possibly Meldenius derived it from 
Francus. This question may be regarded as settled by Conradus Bergius, for 
he not only ascribes the phrase to Rupertus Meldenius, but he makes extracts 
from the tract of Gregorius Francus, in Section LXIX. (p. 108), showing familiarity 
with it. He would not have omitted the sentence from Francus and used it 
from Meldenius unless he wished to indicate that the sentence belonged to 
Meldenius and not to Francus. The relations between Francus and Bergius 
make this absolutely certain. Gregorius Francus was a colleague of Conradus 
Bergius in the University of Frankfort-on-the-Oder in 1627-28. Gregorius 
Francus was born in 1585, and was for many years professor at Frankfort. He 
was rector in 1616, 1624, 1633, 1640, 1645. He died in 1651. Conrad Bergius 
was rector of the University in 1628, the date of the publication of this tract of 
Gregorius Francus, and he certainly would have ascribed this golden sentence 
to his colleague and friend if it belonged to him, rather than to the unknown 
Rupertus Meldenius. 

Just at this time there was a strong movement in this University in the direc- 
tion of Christian union. In the autumn of 1627 Conradus Bergius preached two 
discourses in Frankfort on this subject, which were published with the consent 
of the theologiical Faculty of the University, so that his book appeared at the 
same time with the tract of his colleague Francus. They are in entire accord ; 
they breathe the same spirit and have the same purpose. These discourses are, 
indeed, the original edition of a work which in its third stage reached the form 
of the Praxis Catholica. We shall give the original title entire : Grund und 
Hauptsumma des ware 7 i Christenthumbs und recht alten Catholischen oder 
allgemeinen Glaubens nebenst wolmeinender Erinnerung <wie sick ein Ein- 
f ditiger fiir gefahrlichen Irthiimben am sichersten hiiten j auch ein jeder 
Friedliebender alles weitleufftigen streittens mit gutem Gewissen entschlahen 


RUPERTUS MELDENIUS AND HIS WORD OF PEACE. 745 


konne. Zu Franckfurt an der Oder in zwei Predigten erklaret. Durch Con- 
radum Bergium der H. Schrifft D. und P. und Dienern am Wort Gottes und 
mit Consens der Theologischen Facultet daselbst friedliebender Christen zu 
bessern Nachdencken auff begehren in Druck gegeben. 1628. 

These discourses were attacked by Nicolaus Hunnius, of Liibeck, and, accord- 
ingly, Bergius prepared a second edition in reply under the title : Grand und 
Hauptsumma des wahren Christenthums erleutert, und mit Nic. Hunnii 
Bedenkeh und Widerlegwigen zusammengehalten. Franckfurt-an-der-Oder. 
1633. This was finally enlarged and published in Latin under the title, Praxis 
Catholica, etc. Bremen, 1639. Bergius had removed to Bremen in the mean 
while. There can be no doubt, therefore, that Conradus Bergius knew what he 
was doing when he ascribed the phrase to Rupertus Meldenius. He was 
familiar with the whole subject of Protestant Polemics and Irenics. His cita- 
tions from the literature of the subject are richer and more extensive than I have 
found in any other writer. 

The phrase was known to Francus in 1628. The tract of Meldenius cannot 
have been later than 1627. 

There is a temptation to regard the name Rupertus Meldenius as a pseudonym, 
and to look for the author in one of the group of Frankfort theologians. We find 
that a similar pseudonym was used by Gregorius Francus in connection with 
some of his writings. We might think of Christopher Pelargus, the veteran pro- 
fessor of Frankfort, who was called the Irenaeus of his times on account of his 
irenic disposition and teachings. He was born August 3d, 1565, at Schweidnitz, 
in Silesia. He was professor in Frankfort from 1585 until June 10th, 1633, when 
he died in the rectorate. He was originally a Lutheran, but subsequently 
became a Calvinist without partisanship. His pupils were inspired with his 
irenic spirit. With the brothers Bergius and Gregorius Francus he gave the 
Calvinism of Prussia a milder type than that which prevailed at the time in 
Switzerland and Holland. It is also noteworthy that John Durie began his work 
of peace-making from Elbing, in Prussia, in this region, soon after this time. 
Christopher Pelargus would be just the man to have written such a tract as the 
Parcenesis Voliva. And yet we cannot think of him, for the reason that he was 
the teacher and friend of Conradus Bergius. Bergius quotes from him in his 
Praxis Catholica, Dissertation II., Section LXXIV., and calls him “ praeceplor 
promotor meus.” He could hardly have been ignorant of the fact, if he had 
been the author of the Parcenesis Votiva. Rupertus Meldenius seems to have 
belonged rather to the school of John Arndt. 

I had the privilege of examining a copy of the Parcenesis Votiva in the Royal 
Library of Berlin. The golden sentence is the climax of a paragraph, and it 
seems to have sprung out ol the author’s mind in the advance of his thought 
toward the climax. We give it exactly as it appears in its context, preserving 
the lines and italics of the original. 

“ Olim Christianismus 

constabat in demonstratione Spiritus et Virtutis : hodie in persuasibi 

libus humanae sapientiae verbis : olim plurima regna Christi jugo col- 
la subjiciebant : hodie pleraq ; a salutifera doctrina deficiunt, quid cau- 
sae putas sub esse ? Dicam: Ambilio Theologorum, fundi nostri est calamitas : 
Hinc imprudcns Zelus , hinc aemulationes, hinc odia, hinc certamina, hinc 
schismata , hinc Scandala, hinc Apostasiae. Scientia inflat , Charitas aedificat. 
Audis scientiae, vel certfe persuasioni Eruditionis Propriae opponi Cha- 
ritatem. Qui nimium emungit nares, sanguinem elicit, ait sapiens Hebrae- 
orum. Verbo dicam : si nos servaremus in necessatiis Unitatem, in non ne- 
cessariis Liberlatem, in utrisq ; Charitatem, optimo cerl'e loco es sent res nostrae.” 

The golden sentence seems to belong here, as the author sums up in it all that 

48 


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THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


has gone before. Bergius quotes it exactly, only he emphasizes Unitatem 
Libertatem, and Charitatem, and adds his own wish, “ itafiat Amen.” 
Baxter quotes from Bergius, but inexactly. He substitutes sit for servaremus, 
and then nominatives for accusatives of the three leading nouns. He follows 
Bergius in emphasizing these, but he goes further and also emphasizes neces- 
SARIIS, NON-NECESSARIIS, and UTRISQUE. 

It still remains undetermined who Rupertus Meldenius was. The words of 
Bergius are strongly against the view that the name is a pseudonym, and favors 
the view that we have the real name of the author. The first we know of the 
tract is in the extract of Gregorius Francus. The one who gave it the widest 
currency was Conradus Bergius. The theological school of Frankfort-on-the- 
Oder seems to have had the first knowledge of it. This urges us to look for the 
author in Eastern Europe. If the author’s name was Rupert of Melden, where 
is Melden ? There is a little village of that name on the borders of Bohemia and 
Silesia. It is possible that the author came from thence. This I have been 
unable to determine. But it matters little whether an obscure village gave birth 
to this golden sentence or not. The author does not belong among the men of 
fame. Like many other men of peace, he has been consigned to obscurity by 
the polemic and scholastic theologians, who gained the ear of the world and 
drowned the words of peace and reform in their partisan cries and loqd and 
bitter wrangling. I have been greatly impressed, in the study of the work of 
John Durie and his associates, and of the whole Frankfort school, which in his 
day played so important a part in the history of theology in Germany, how 
greatly they have been neglected by Reformed as well as by Lutheran writers. 
Here is a new chapter in theological history for any one who will venture upon 
it. Like a mountain stream that disappears at times under the rocks of its bed 
and reappears deeper down in the valley, so these long-buried principles of 
peace have reappeared after two centuries of oblivion, and these irenical theo- 
logians will be honored by those who live in a better age of the world, when 
Protestant Irenics have well-nigh displaced the old Protestant Polemics and 
Scholastics. 


New York. 


C. A. Briggs. 


VIII. 


REVIEWS OF 

RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 


I.— EXEGETICAL THEOLOGY. 

Word Studies in the New Testament. By Marvin R. Vincent, D.D. 
Vol. I. The Synoptic Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, Epistles of Peter, James, 
and Jude. New York : Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1887. 

This is a work by a scholar, for men who are not scholars, but only diligent 
students of the New Testament desirous to know as much of the original sense 
as is possible tor persons having little or no acquaintance with Greek. The 
nature and aim of the work are indicated very distinctly in this sentence from 
the preface : “ Taking a position midway between the exegetical commentary 
and the lexicon and grammar, it aims to put the reader ot the English Bible 
nearer to the standpoint ot the Greek scholar, by opening to him the native torce 
of the separate words of the New Testament in their lexical sense, their etymol- 
ogy, their history, their inflection, and the peculiarities of their usage by differ- 
ent evangelists and apostles.” The author pleads for the legitimacy and utility 
of such a study, as not rendered superfluous by the most successful translation, 
and as really fitted to convey a large amount of benefit to the merely English 
reader. Such a reader, he contends, may be made acquainted with the history 
of Greek words used in the New Testament, with Greek idioms, with the pictures 
hidden in Greek words, and lost in translation, with Greek synonyms ; he may 
be made to understand the reasons for many changes of rendering from an older 
version, which, on their face, seem to him arbitrary and useless, and may attain 
some knowledge of the styles characteristic of different writers, and some insight 
into the distinctions between Greek tenses and the force of the Greek article. 
These and other advantages specified in the preface show what ends the author 
has in view, and the value of the work must be judged by the extent to which he 
has succeeded in securing them. If they have been secured in any considerable 
measure the existence of the work is fully justified. 

In venturing to express an opinion on this point, we may say at once that it is 
evident at a glance that this book has not been hastily got up. The author states 
that he received the impulse to this line of study from Bengel, while translating 
his “ Gnomon” more than twenty-five years ago. We can well believe it. The 
idea has evidently been in his mind for a long time, and has been gathering 
around itself materials of very varied character from many different sources. 
The book before us embodies the carefully-collected results of a very extensive 


748 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


course of reading, as well as the original thoughts of a highly-cultivated mind. 
On every page it bears traces of good Greek scholarship, and of general literary 
culture. The writer is well acquainted with poetry and art. Dante is obviously 
a special favorite. Quotations from the best classic authors, as well as from 
modern writers abound, the result being that these “Word Studies” are any- 
thing but dry reading. Take as a sample the paragraph on the words, “ On his 
shoulders” (Luke xv. 5). First comes a note on the exact force of the Greek 
“ Lit. his own shoulders.” Then follows a quotation from Bengel, “ He might 
have employed a servant's aid, but love and joy make the labor sweet to him- 
self.” Then at more length the artistic side of the subject is taken up. “The 
‘Good Shepherd’ is a favorite subject in early Christian art then follows an 
illustrative quotation from Northcote and Brownlow’s “ Roma Sotteranea,” and 
a description of a specimen found in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, at Ra- 
venna. Similar acquaintance with the history of Christian art is displayed in 
connection with the topic of “the Prodigal Son.” While obviously partial to 
subjects affording scope for classical, literary, and artistic allusions, the author 
has not neglected those the treatment of which forms the proper raison d'etre of 
his work. He has made it his business where opportunity occurred to bring out 
the full force of a Greek word, to direct attention to Greek idiom, to indicate the 
exact effect of the Greek article (as in the parable of the Pharisee and the Pub- 
lican : “ God be merciful to me the sinner”), to take notice of the most impor- 
tant various readings, to indicate and vindicate many of the changes made in the 
Revised Version. So that the English reader, habitually using this work as a 
companion to the New Testament, cannot fail to learn much which will increase 
his understanding and enjoyment of the sacred text. 

While aiming chiefly at the benefit of the merely English reader, Dr. Vincent 
has furnished his work with features which will tend to make it acceptable to 
such as are more or less acquainted with Greek. The Greek words correspond- 
ing to the English ones commented on are in many instances given within 
brackets, at the end of each book of Scripture a list of the Greek words peculiar 
to the sacred author is supplied, and at the end of the volume full lists both of 
the English words commented on, and of their Greek equivalents, are furnished, 
which will much facilitate consultation. 

The preacher comes legitimately out in lengthy articles on topics which give 
scope for ethical or religious observations. The extended remarks on “ Blessed ” 

( uanapLoi ), “ The Meek” (oirpaelc;), “ The Kingdom of God,” “ Devils,” “ Hades,” 
“ Conscience,” “ Repent,” may be referred to as samples. 

On the whole, our verdict is that the task undertaken has been honestly, care- 
fully, gracefully, and usefully done. But of course not perfectly. Every human 
work has its defects, and this’one is no exception ; and we may mention one or 
two blemishes, it it were only to show that we are endeavoring to perform our 
part as critics with sincerity. One fault— not a very grave one in a popular book 
— is too frequent use of one or two authors, not always of the highest merit or 
authority. Thus Edersheim is frequently cited to illustrate Jewish or Rabbinical 
custom. Too little, again, has been said on some words ; for instance, on 
“ When he thought thereon, he wept” — Mark xiv. 72 tK/.aie). All that 

is said on this passage is : “ From ini, upon, and /3dA/L> to throw. When he 
threw his thought upon it." Of course the author knows that there has been 
much dispute about the meaning of eTri^a?Mv, and that the passage has been 
variously rendered : When he thought thereon he wept, or he wept abundantly, 
or he began to weep, or he covered his head and wept. Why not give the reader 
a short history of these various renderings ? The last, especially, should not have 
been deemed unworthy of notice when it has the powerful support of Dr. Field, 
of Norwich (vid. Otium Norvicense , Pars Tertia). It might be plead that no 


RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 


749 


benefit accrues to the general reader from details as to diverse renderings. But 
the author has not acted on this principle, for he goes into considerable detail 
on the meaning of the word etuovoiov in the Lord's Prayer. No remarks are 
made on the nature of the “ tongues” spoken of in Acts ii., but this omission 
may be supplied in the second volume in dealing with the spiritual gifts spoken 
of in r Cor. xlv. In some instances more might have been said to bring out the 
ethical significance of words. Thus the frequent use in the New Testament, as 
in the Septuagint, of the verb kKioKeirro/uat, and its derivatives, in the sense of 
gracious visitation. The remarks on ayaObs (good) — Acts xi. 24 — are in the right 
direction, but too meagre. We once read in a commentary on Acts this remark 
on this passage : “ He was a good man — would be able to discern between the 
genuine and the counterfeit” — as if good meant shrewd, smart. This is entirely 
beside the mark. Dr. Gloag, quoted by the author, is on the right track when 
he says : “ His benevolence effectually prevented him censuring anything that 
might be new or strange in these preachers to the Gentiles, and caused him to 
rejoice in their success.” Ayadbe means benignant, large-hearted, and the 
history of Barnabas supplies interesting material for determining the Bible idea 
of a good man. He sold his property for the benefit of the Church. He gave 
Saul at a critical moment the right hand. He threw himself sympathetically 
into the movement toward Christianity at Antioch. The word btpuviov (Luke iii. 
14), as it occurs again in Romans vi. 23, affords an opportunity of moralizing 
not to be lost. It means literally ” whatever is bought to be eaten with bread.” 
Scottice, kitchen. Hence, the kitchen of sin, the best thing sin has to give, is 
death. <f uXavOponia (Acts xxviii. 2, Titus iii. 4), offers another golden oppor- 
tunity. In the one text it is used of the kindness of the barbarians of Malta to 
Paul, and his shipwrecked companions ; in the other text of God’s kindness to sin- 
ful men in Christ Jesus. How significant this juxtaposition ! More attention 
might have been paid to characteristic diversities of style in the evangelists ; 
especially in contrasting Luke and Matthew, in their respective accounts of our 
Lord’s words. Let one instance suffice. In Matt, xviii. 6 Christ speaks of a 
millstone ( fi'vloq bvLKbq) to be suspended about the neck of one who makes the 
little ones stumble, that he may be drowned in the deepest part of the sea. Our 
author properly points out that it is the larger sort of millstone that is spoken 
of, one turned by an ass, not merely by the hand. In the corresponding passage 
in Luke he contents himself with a bare reference to the text in Matthew. But 
Luke does not use the same expression. He savs not uv\oq bvinoc, but /.Wo$ uvAiubs, 
which means simply a millstone, not a great millstone. And in accordance with 
this he says simply “ be cast into the sea,” not, as in Matthew, “ drowned in the 
depth of the sea.” In both cases Christ’s strong language is toned down ; and 
this instance raises the question whether throughout Luke there be not dis- 
cernible a tendency to soften down harsh expressions, as if in the interest of the 
amiable or gracious side of Christ’s character. Another example is : I came 
not to send peace, but a sword. Luke for sword has division. While corn- 
mendably attentive to the shades of meaning peculiar to Greek tenses, such as 
the imperfect and the aorist, some chance of making good points have been lost. 
Thus in Matthew xi. 19 : “ And wisdom was justified of her children.” An in- 
stance of the gnomic aorist, stating what belongs to the moral order of the world, 
as in James i. 11 we have again the use of aorists to state what belongs to the 
usual order of nature. And wisdom is justified of her children, of course. The 
praise of the wise is as much a matter of course as the blame of fools. 

But enough of fault-finding. We cordially commend this book to the class of 
readers for whom it is intended. It is excellent in substance, style, and spirit, 
and the publishers have done their part worthily ; the printing is beautiful and 
the get-up handsome. a. B. Bruce. 


750 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


Abraham, Joseph, and Moses in Egypt : Being a course of lectures delivered 
before the Theological Seminary, Princeton, N. J., by Rev. Alfred H. 
Kellogg, D.D., of Philadelphia, Member of Victoria Institute, etc. 8vo, 
pp. 160. New York and London, 1887. 

These very interesting lectures are an important contribution to the question 
discussed — viz. : the synchronism of three salient points of contact in the early 
history of Israel and Egypt, which it is proposed to settle definitively on the 
basis of recent monumental discoveries. The most striking and valuable portion 
of the discussion concerns the period of the Exodus. After long wavering 
between the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties there seems to have been of 
late a general disposition to acquiesce in Lepsius's conclusion that the Mineptah 
of the nineteenth dynasty was the Pharaoh of the Exodus. So far as the dynasty 
is concerned, this seems lo be settled beyond peradventure by the recent identi- 
fication of Pithom and the evidence gathered on the spot which connects it 
undeniably with Rameses II., who is thus shown to have been one of the oppress- 
ing Pharaohs. But vvas his son Mineptah the Pharaoh who hardened his heart 
and refused to let the people go at Jehovah’s bidding ? There are various cir- 
cumstances which combine to cast doubt upon the present current hypothesis. 
And to these Dr. Kellogg now adds a very remarkable passage from the famous 
Harris papyrus, which appears to point strongly in another direction. This 
contains a confession that the nineteenth dynasty ended in disaster and anarchy 
connected with a great emigration from Egypt, and that the disturbed state of 
affairs was terminated only by the strong hand of a successful usurper. If the 
ingenious application made of this passage to the exodus of the Israelites, which 
seems exceedingly plausible in itself and is corroborated in various ways, shall 
be confirmed by a thorough examination of the whole subject, it deserves to be 
classed as a discovery of the first order. The curious perplexity as to who the 
last Pharaoh of this dynasty really was, arising from a singular conflict of monu- 
mental evidence on the subject, is very skilfully disentangled and put upon as 
secure a basis as existing data will permit. 

The lucidity of the style of these lectures makes it a pleasure to follow them 
even through the perplexities of the Manetho lists and the vexed question of the 
shepherd domination, whose point of beginning is here precisely fixed by the 
Tanis tablet of the reign of Rameses II., and dating from the four hundredth 
year of the Set era. Upon the basis of this and of the four hundred and thirty 
years of Ex. xii. 40 all other identifications are made. The preponderating 
weight given in the discussion of this latter period to genealogical deductions 
above an explicit statement of the Hebrew text seems to us to he the one weak 
point in the general argument. 

The volume is provided with charts and tables for ready comparison ; and the 
admirable style of its execution is worthy of the character of its contents. 

W. Henry Green. 

The Parousia. A Critical Inquiry into the New Testament Doctrine of our 
Lord’s Second Coming. By J. Stuart Russell, M.A. A new edition. 
London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1887. 

The author of this valuable book is pastor of a Congregational Church in Lon- 
don. He published the first edition of his work anonymously, but has now 
yielded to the advice of his friends, and added his name to the title-page of the 
new edition. It was my privilege to know the author and to read his first edition 
in the light of personal acquaintance. It was then my opinion that he had 
made the first thorough study of New Testament Prophecy, with the use of cor- 
rect principles of exegesis. I have used the book constantly since that time, and 


RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 


751 


have just completed the reading of the new edition, and my first impressions 
have been confirmed. No student of New Testament Prophecy can afford to do 
without the wealth of knowledge that this book will give him. It is easily worth 
all others that have been written on the subject. I give this opinion notwith- 
standing the fact that I cannot accept the theory of the Parousia that dominates 
the book. I shall not take any further space in setting forth its merits, but 
devote my attention to a criticism of the theory. 

This new theory of the Parousia is that the second advent of our Lord and all 
the events connected with it in New Testament Prophecy took place at the de- 
struction of Jerusalem. This theory puts many of the passages of the New Tes- 
tament in a new light : it brings into consideration the historical circumstances 
of the prophecies, and their relation to the closing scenes of the great catas- 
trophe of the Jewish nation, and it makes it evident that a much larger portion 
of prophecy refers to these events than interpreters have usually supposed. But 
after all this has been conceded, the author maintains his theory by doing vio- 
lence to not a few passages and by wresting the structure of New Testament 
Prophecy from its Old Testament foundations. 

(1) This, then, is the first criticism that we make upon the theory, that it is at 
war with the Messianic Prophecy of the Old Testament. It is significant here 
that the author limits himself to the prophecy of Malachi, and seeks a basis here 
because that passage suits his purpose in representing John the Baptist as the 
herald of the advent to judgment ; he refers this judgment to the destruction of 
Jerusalem and the Jewish nation. If he had studied this judgment scene of 
Malachi in connection with the entire sweep of Old Testament Prophecy he 
might have come to a different conclusion. We cannot accept this isolated 
prophecy as the summation of Old Testament Prophecy, or a suitable introduc- 
tion to New Testament Prophecy, all the more that it does not contain any refer- 
ences to the events of the first advent of Christ ; Malachi connects the herald 
with the advent to judgment ; he does not see the historical Christ intervening. 
If this most important history escaped his attention, surely the destruction of 
Jerusalem would hardly arrest it. Malachi agrees with all the prophets in dis- 
regarding intervals of time and in looking at the great end of all prophecy in its 
connection with the herald that he predicts. 

(2) The second fault of the theory is its neglect of the Jewish apocalypses and 
the Jewish Messianic ideas of New Testament times. These cast an immense 
amount of side light upon New Testament Prophecy. These would have shown 
him that it was not in accordance with even Jewish ideas to limit prophecy so 
strictly to Jewish affairs. Mr. Russell’s interpretation of New Testament 
Prophecy is narrower than the elaboration of Prophecy that we find in these 
apocalypses. 

(3) There is an extreme literalness in Mr. Russell's interpretation of the word 
“ near” as used by Jesus, which fails to recognize that the term had acquired a 
technical sense in the Old Testament Prophets, implying that the events pre- 
dicted were impending, certain to come, and yet uncertain as to time. Mr. 
Russell's interpretation of eyyvc applied to the equivalent Old Testament 
would make a large number ot the Old Testament Prophets false prophets. It 
would also force us, in a correct interpretation of the New Testament, to the 
opinion that Jesus and his apostles were mistaken. Mr. Russell offers a very 
perilous dilemma when he asks us either to accept his theory, and believe that 
the second advent took place at the destruction of Jerusalem, or else that Jesus 
and his apostles were mistaken. 

(4) Mr. Russell in his interpretation of New Testament Prophecy fails to make 
such distinctions as are required by a careful exegesis. He praises Dr. Edward 
Robinson for founding so much on the eschatological discourse of Jesus refer- 


752 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


ring to the destruction of Jerusalem, and blames him for not referring everything 
to that event. He also praises Moses Stuart for his literalism, and blames him 
for not carrying it out to the end. In other words, Mr. Russell refuses to recog- 
nize the distinction between the judgment of Jerusalem and the judgment of the 
nations that these scholars, who were distinguished for their adherence to strict 
grammatical and historical exegesis, were obliged to make. In shutting his 
eyes to the prediction of the judgment of the nations, Mr Russell is guilty of 
great error. We agree with him that “ this generation” refers to the generation 
contemporary with Jesus, and that ow-efeia rov aitivoc means the completion of the 
age, but these admissions do not help his theory, for he cannot prove that Jesus 
predicts the judgment of the nations in his own generation, and it still remains 
to be decided whether the age was completed at the judgment of the Jews or at 
the judgment of the nations. We must protest, moreover, against the limited 
application of the term “ yfj" to the land of Israel, and of the “ nations” to the 
inhabitants of the land. We admit that yr/ is often used in the restricted sense, 
but claim that the context of the passages under consideration is against the 
restricted sense. We admit that “ nations" is used in poetical passages of the 
Old Testament for the tribes of Israel, and that it is also loosely used elsewhere 
for the mixed population of the land, but the context decides in every such 
instance, and the term is to be taken in its wider and more usual meaning, unless 
the context forces us to a narrower meaning. We claim that in all these passages 
of New Testament Prophecy the contexts force us to a wider meaning. The 
apostles were commissioned to all the nations of the world, and not merely to 
the tribes of Israel and the mixed population of Palestine. They preached the 
Gospel to the nations to prepare them for the judgment of the nations. 

Mr. Russell also fails to notice the difference between the advent to judgment 
and the setting up of the kingdom. The latter is predicted in the liletime of 
hearers of Jesus, but not the former. These are two different events. The 
parables of the kingdom teach us that the kingdom will be established, and that 
it will grow to maturity before the advent to judgment. These are specimens of 
the neglect of the author to make these distinctions, which were sufficiently evi- 
dent upon the face of the passages to those who interpret them without the prej- 
udice of a theory, and who do not expect to open all the doors of the mysteries 
of prophecy with a single key. 

(5) Another fault in the book is the neglect to estimate the different points of 
view of the authors of the New Testament. The principles of Biblical Theology 
have been ignored. The differences of the New Testament authors often greatly 
help to an understanding of their predictions. The author has observed the 
peculiarity of the Gospel of John in this respect. He notes that not one allusion 
to the Parousia in the synoptical gospels is found in the Gospel of John. He 
might also have noticed that the view of the Parousia in this gospel differs in 
many important respects. He fails to make the discrimination, and seeks to 
constrain the predictions of judgment in this gospel to correspond with the 
advent scenes of the synoptists. He does not apprehend the profound spiritual 
conception of the advent, that is such a notable feature of this gospel. 

(6) We have no space to enumerate all our objections to the new theory. We 
shall simply mention one more. The reader will be impressed with the singu- 
larity that the author represents so much of the fulfilment as taking place in the 
other world, invisible to the inhabitants of earth. He also presumes that many 
of the most startling events were fulfilled to the eyes of men without leaving any 
historical traces of the facts. 

If anything is clearly predicted as to Christ’s second advent, it is its visibility, not 
to a few, but to all, and that it is to be upoti the clouds of heaven in the same man- 
ner in which he ascended. Mr. Russell’s dealing with Acts i. u in a single page 


RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 


753 


and with Rev. i. 7 on half a page is hardly creditable to him. It is asking a 
great deal for us to believe that all that is said about the resurrection of the 
dead took place at the destruction of Jerusalem in the invisible world, that Christ 
was actually visible on the clouds at that time, and that Peter and James were 
the two witnesses of Rev. xi., and that they arose from the dead and ascended 
into heaven in the sight of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. This latter transcends 
the fable of the ascension of the Virgin Mary, as the former requests us to believe 
that the most stupendous events of all prophecy have actually been fulfilled with- 
out leaving the slightest trace in human history, and this merely on the ground 
that they were predicted by Jesus and his apostles ; and our author claims that 
they must have been fulfilled together with the other events, or Jesus was mis- 
taken. It can hardly be that the Christian Church has believed for so many cen- 
turies in the “ coming of Christ to judge the world and in the resurrection of 
the dead ” at that time, when these two greatest of all events have been fulfilled 
already. 

Notwithstanding these grave defects in the book, that are caused by the per- 
sistent adherence to the new theory and the disposition to ride it as a hobby 
through the entire New Testament, the exegesis, as a whole, especially in the 
gospels and the Apocalypse, is exceedingly creditable. The new theory is, after 
all, no worse than many others that have been proposed. And it is to my mind 
no more objectionable than the Premillenarian theory, which infatuates so many 
excellent men, and which works mischief in the whole system of Christian doc- 
trine, to which the new theory is the antipodes. We apprehend that the Chris- 
tian Church will reject both alike, and adhere to its faith in the second advent 
as it is set forth in the Sacred Scriptures and in the symbols of the Church. 

C. A. Briggs. 

We notice briefly the following : 

Genesis and Geology. The Harmony of the Scriptural and Geological 
Records. By Rev. N. Collin Hughes, D.D. Pp. viii., 142. Chocowinity, N. C. 
Published by the Author, 1887. The author attempts, with painstaking earnest- 
ness, to interpret Genesis i. in the light of geological discovery and theory. He 
has a strong belief in the necessity of such an interpretation, and he reaches 
conclusions which he is confident will tend to confirm faith in the Scriptures. 

The book has several illustrations, and abounds in italics. Bible Class Primers, 

edited by Professor Salmond, D.D., Aberdeen. The Period of the Judges, by 
James A. Patterson, M.A. Pp. 88. Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark. New York : 
Scribner & Welford. This is a carefully prepared little book, and gives the his- 
tory of the period under discussion, following the familiar lines, and not discuss- 
ing or raising many critical questions. It shows good judgment and a recog- 
nition of the qualities demanded in a “ Primer.” Francis Brown. 


II.— HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. 

The Reformed Church in Ireland (1537-1886). By the Right Hon. J. T. 
Ball, LL.D., D.C.L. Pp. xx., 355. London : Longmans, Green & Co., 
1886. 

The author of this treatise does not use the word Reformed in the classical 
sense as opposed to Lutheran, but in the popular sense as opposed to Roman 
Catholic. He divides the Protestants of Ireland into two sections, which he 
designates respectively, “ Protestant with Episcopacy, and Protestant without 
Episcopacy.” His work deals with the former of these sections only. It is, in 


754 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


fact, a history of the Irish Episcopal Church, in the legislative aspects of the sub- 
ject, from the reign of Henry VIII. down till the present time. The points which 
Dr. Ball dwells upon are not the spiritual or even the ecclesiastical details, but 
rather the modifications and alterations of administration to which the Church 
has been subjected during its connection with the State, and during the brief 
period which has elapsed since that connection was broken up. However much 
one might desire to know the opinions of so competent a writer as to the claims 
of the Church of which he is a member to derive its authority from St. Patrick, 
or the action of the Bishops on their treatment of Protestant dissenters for two 
centuries, or their complicity in the penal legislation of the eighteenth century, 
or as to the general policy of Disestablishment, there is nothing to gratify public 
curiosity in these matters. The writer scrupulously limits himself to the matters 
which from taste and habit he thoroughly understands, and which he is best able 
to expound. He sets before his readers the nature of those Acts of Parliament 
which for more than three hundred years have moulded the action of the late 
Established Church in Ireland ; he describes the changes which during that time 
have been made in its creed and its formularies ; he dwells with pleasure upon 
the most distinguished of its bishops from Ussher to Whately ; and he gives an 
account, full and reliable, of the working of the Representative Church Body 
since the Church’s right of self-government was restored. The treatise before 
us is distinguished by accuracy and impartiality. The writer is an eminent and 
highly respected lawyer, who once filled the position of Lord Chancellor of 
Ireland, and who has himself taken a not undistinguished part in the reorganiza- 
tion of the Church. He writes, therefore, about matters in regard to which he 
is perfectly informed. He is calm, intelligent, studiously moderate, and fair. 
His work is neither a criticism, nor a eulogium, nor even an apology. He looks 
at everything with a judicial mind— the rarest of all possessions in Ireland — and 
he describes what happened without dropping one offensive word. We do not, 
indeed, feel at liberty to estimate as highly as the respected writer does such 
bishops as Bramhall and King and Mant, who did not, as we believe, serve the 
true interests of the Irish Establishment ; though we can cordially join in with 
all he says in commendation of Ussher and Berkeley and Whately. The tolera- 
tion that Jeremy Taylor so eloquently advocated in Commonwealth times was 
toleration for himself and his brethren ; we are not aware that he said and wrote 
much for it after the Restoration, or that, when he and his parly regained power, 
he practised in regard to others that toleration which he claimed for himself. 
Apart from this, we have read with great satisfaction this book of calm and sober 
narrative, so clearly and tersely expressed. Thomas Witherow. 

A Light to the Blind. Historical Manuscripts Commission. Tenth Report. 

Appendix. Part V. 

This manuscript, which gives a contemporary account of the Revolutionary 
War in Ireland (1690-91), is repeatedly quoted by Lord Macaulay in dealing 
with that portion of the history of England. Hitherto it has reposed on the 
shelves of the Earl of Fingall’s library at Killeen Castle, and has been accessible 
only to favored writers, such as Sir James Mackintosh, Sir William Wilde, or 
Lord Macaulay. Now, by the kindness of its noble owner, it has been printed 
by the British Historical Manuscripts Commission, and has been published, 
strange to say, as a Parliamentary paper, “ presented to both Houses of Parlia- 
ment by command of her Majesty” ! 

The work entitled Light to the Blind is a manuscript of some size, bearing on 
its title the date 1711, but continued by the writer for some years after that time. 
The author’s name is not given, but tradition says he was one Nicholas Plunket, 


RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 


755 


an eminent lawyer in the reign of Queen Anne, and, judging from the name, 
perhaps a distant connection of the Fingall family. Two things are certain — the 
writer was a devoted Roman Catholic, and a warm partisan of the exiled Stuarts. 
His work is divided into three books ; the first treats of the oppression inflicted 
on Roman Catholics in England from Henry VIII. till the death of Charles II. ; 
and the third treats mainly of continental affairs down till the death of Queen 
Anne, or nearly so. It is the second book which is now considered of the 
greatest value. Its value is derived from the fact that it was written by a man 
who lived at the time, was well acquainted with the matters of which he speaks, 
and who looks at the transactions from the Roman Catholic side. It is only the 
most interesting portion of what by all accounts is a rather bulky work that is 
printed by the Historical Commission. 

The writer, after an elaborate defence of the government of James II. and the 
loyalty of the Irish, passes on to speak of the Irish campaign. He alludes but 
slightly to the siege of Londonderry and the defence of Enniskillen, or, indeed, 
to anything that occurred in the country prior to the landing of King William. 
But he describes in full detail the Battle of the Boyne, the Siege of Limerick, the 
Battle of Aghrim, and the subsequent Treaty of Peace. He says that the failure 
to capture Derry “ proceeded from the want of battering-pieces ; of which it the 
[Irish] army had a dozen, they might have well made themselves masters of that 
town in twelve days alter the trenches opened.” He says that at the Boyne 
William was able to bring into action 36,000 men against 26,000 on the side of 
James. He confirms the statement, which has been questioned by some, that 
Baldcarg O’Donnel was not true to the cause. His statement is that he “ made 
conditions for himself, and took the Prince of Orange his side at the end of the 
warr.” The general effect of Light to the Blind is, that its author confirms all 
the main facts of the story as given by Lord Macaulay, while differing on some 
minute particulars, and supplies some important facts not noticed by contem- 
porary writers. We feel sure that this interesting document will not long re- 
main a mere parliamentary paper, but that some enterprising publisher will give 
it to the public in whole or in part, with notes and illustrations attached, and in 
a more handsome and convenient form. Thomas Witherow. 

Nachrichten von den vereinigten Deutschen Evang. Lutherischen 
Gemeinen in Nord-America, absonderlich in Pennsylvanien. Halle, 
1787. Neu herausgegeben mit histor. Erlauterungen und Mittheilungen aus 
dem Archiv der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, von Dr. W. J. Mann und 
Dr. B. M. Schmucker. Allentown, Pa., 1886. 

The Life and Times of Heinrich Melchior Muhlenberg. By William J. 
Mann, D.D., Pastor Emeritus of St. Michael and Zion Congregation, and 
Professor in the 1 heol. Sem. of the Ev. Luth. Church at Philadelphia, Pa. 
Philadelphia : G. W. Frederick, 1887. 

Two important works, which must be ranked among the first sources for the 
history of the Lutheran Church in America, which is fast growing in numbers and 
influence. 

They are closely connected, and refer to the period of the founding of that 
Church in Pennsylvania. German emigration to America began at thb close of 
the seventeenth century. But the Germans were like a flock without a shepherd 
until Muhlenberg gathered the Lutherans and Schlatter the German Reformed 
into regular congregations under Synodical government. 

Muhlenberg is the patriarch of the American Lutheran Church and the founder 
of a distinguished family. He was born in 1711 at Hanover, and was sent by 


T56 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


Augustus Hermann Francke, the leader of the Pietistic movement and founder 
of the famous Orphan House at Halle, as a missionary to the German Lutherans 
in Pennsylvania. There he labored with great zeal and eminent success till his 
death, in 1787, leaving an imperishable memory. He sent from time to time Re- 
ports, which were published in one volume at Halle, in 1787, and are known as 
the Hallesche Nachrichten. Dr. Mann, Professor in the Lutheran Theological 
Seminary at Philadelphia, aided by Dr. Schmucker, of Pottstown, Pa. (son of 
the late Dr. Schmucker, of Gettysburg), has re-edited these Reports, with very 
numerous historical explanations and additions, which make it an authentic his- 
tory of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in this country, especially of Pennsylvania, 
during its first formative period. The labor bestowed upon this work is immense. 

In addition to this Dr. Mann has written the first full biography of that great 
and good man, with ample learning and in excellent spirit. The work has an 
interest far beyond the limits of the Lutheran denomination. The late Dr. Wil- 
liam Augustus Muhlenberg, so well known as the founder of St. Luke's Hospital 
in New York and of St. Johnland on Long Island, and the author of the popular 
hymn “ I would not live alway,” was a great grandson of Henry Melchior 
Muhlenberg. Philip Schaff. 

Die Selbstbiographie des Cardinals Bellarmin lateinisch und deutsch mit 
geschichtlichen Erlauterungen herausgegeben von Joh. Jos. Ign. von DciL- 
linger und Fr. Heinrich Reusch. Pp. 352. Bonn, 1887. 

Bellarmin is the greatest anti-Protestant controversialist of the Roman Catholic 
Church. His work is still an armory for all learned opponents of the doctrines 
of the Reformation. He left an autobiography which goes to the year 1613, and 
was first published in 1653, and again 1762. But it has never become extensively 
known. It was used as an argument against his canonization, inasmuch as an 
autobiography always implies a certain degree of vanity, although this is written 
with great simplicity and humility. The aged Dr. Dollinger and Professor 
Reusch, both Old Catholics, have done a good service in making it more gener- 
ally known. Dr. Dollinger has enriched it by numerous explanations of 
several topics treated in the biography, such as Bellarmin’s mission to France, 
his controversies, his connection with the famous editions of the Vulgate by 
Sixtus V. and Clement VIII., James I. and the Gunpowder Plot, the number of 
oecumenical Councils, the execution of heretics in Rome, canonization, the con- 
nection of Pius V. with the attempt to assassinate Queen Elizabeth, and the 
canonization of Ignatius Loyola. Philip Schaff. 


III.— SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. 

Popular Lectures on Theological Themes. By the Rev. Archibald 
Alexander Hodge, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theol- 
ogy in Princeton Theological Seminary. Philadelphia : Presbyterian Board 
of Publication, 1887. 

This work of Dr. Hodge is difficult to examine and estimate in a brief critical 
notice. It is very comprehensive, very full of particulars, and, notwithstanding 
its popular style, very concise and dense in statement. The treatise is remark- 
able among systems of divinity in these respects ; and the reason is that the 
positions, distinctions, and definitions lie perfectly clear in the author’s mind, 
and have been phrased so frequently and carefully before classes of students, 


RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 


757 


that he is able to express them with both precision and vivacity ; so that he is at 
once scientific and oratorical. 

That the volume as a whole is positive in the statement and defence of the 
Calvinistic type of doctrine it is needless to say. At the same time the attitude 
of the author toward those who hold the Arminian form of the evangelical truth 
is respectful and fraternal. 

Dr. Hodge makes the Trinity the foundation of theological science, following 
the generally received method in the ancient, mediaeval, and modern Church. 
He assumes the Divine existence as a self-evident truth, “ the most certain of all 
truths” (p. ii), and omits the discussion of the several arguments for it. God is 
defined as a causative personal Spirit. A brief, comprehensive, and eloquent 
analysis under these heads is given, in which it is shown that the half-truths of 
deism, pantheism, and heretical Christianity are all included in the complete 
view of orthodoxy — the inscrutability asserted by agnosticism, the transcendence 
by deism, and the immanence by pantheism, are all comprehended in the Biblical 
representation of the Infinite Being, not in isolation from each other, and in an 
exaggerated form, but balanced and complementary. ‘ The relation of God to the 
universe, under this head, is one of the best-reasoned parts of the volume. 

The doctrines of Providence and Miracles are enunciated in the common way 
in which the Church has held them ; and the author's familiarity with natural 
science enables him to elucidate them by illustrations that are felicitous and 
striking. The subject of the Canon and Inspiration follows ; the infallibility of 
Scripture being maintained, and the historical criticism defended in opposition 
to the rationalistic. The infidel objections to Prayer are then answered, and the 
error in the recent novelty of the Prayer-Cure exposed. 

The Nicene doctrine of the Trinity is adopted, and the author shows more 
inclination than do some modern Trinitarians to assert its rationality and to find 
illustrations of it. Predestination is taught in the Calvinistic form, and the Scrip- 
ture proof carefully cited \vith reference to the Arminian synergism and condi- 
tional election. The Creation of Man ex nihilo is maintained, and the difference 
between true and pseudo-evolution is carefully shown. The original holiness of 
man is presented, in the main, in the Augustinian form, though founding upon 
creationism, which is asserted to be “ the doctrine of the Church” (p. 169). In 
his discussion of the subject of Free Will Dr. Hodge adopts the narrow definition 
of the later Calvinism rather than the wide definition of the elder, in making the 
will the power of alternative choice, and placing the ” character” and moral 
affections outside of it. This explains his assertion : “ My will is not free ; it is 
myself that is free” (p. 185). By this he means that the volitions of the will are 
necessarily determined by the character and disposition, and cannot be morally 
different — which is certainly true. The character and disposition is the 
“ myself.” But how this *’ myself ” can be “ free,” unless, as immanent inclina- 
tion and moral desire and affection, it is brought into the will as a part of its 
content, is a question which the later psychology cannot answer. 

The doctrine of the Covenants of works and grace is handled with good judg- 
ment, and also that of the visible and invisible Church. The Person of Christ is 
described in the Chalcedon manner. On page 222 it is said that ” the Divine 
Word, which from eternity was the second Person of the Trinity, did eighteen 
hundred years ago take, not a human person, but a human nature, into His 
eternal personality, which ever continues, not a human person nor a Divine- 
human person, but the eternal second Person of the Trinity, with a human 
nature embraced in it as its personal organ.” The words which we have itali- 
cized are incorrect. When the second Trinitarian Person has united with a 
human nature He is certainly then a complex Divine-human Person, and no longer 
a simple Trinitarian Person as before. Incarnation is something more than the 


758 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


adoption by a Trinitarian Person of a “ finite personal organ.” It is such a union 
of the Divine with the human as to result in a new and unique person that is 
not Divine simply (as the Logos was before incarnation), nor human simply, but 
Divine-human. 

The discussion of the Offices of Christ is full and discriminating — the Kingly 
office receiving in particular a very careful examination. The Kingdom of Christ 
and the Law of the Kingdom are described with special reference to the past 
progress of Christianity and its future extension. Hopeful and inspiring views 
of missions are presented. 

The subject of Sanctification and Good Works is scripturally treated as a 
whole, but some statements are made respecting Regeneration and its relation 
to Justification which seem to us not to be marked by the usual discrimination 
of the writer. Dr. Hodge asserts that “ justification must precede regeneration” 
(p. 340) ; that ” regeneration follows immediately upon being received into the 
favor of God on the condition (ground ?) of Christ’s righteousness” (p. 341) ; and 
that ‘‘faith is the necessary source of regeneration” (p. 343). This is not the 
teaching of the Westminster standards, to say nothing of Scripture, respecting 
the order ot regeneration and justification. According to these, justification is 
preceded by effectual calling. ” Those whom God effectually calleth. He also 
freely justifieth” (Confess., XII. 1). But effectual calling includes regeneration, 
which constitutes a part of it. “ They who are effectually called and regenerated 
have a new heart and a new spirit created in them” (Confess., XIII. 1). Regen- 
eration is that part of effectual calling which is described as “ savingly enlighten- 
ing the mind and renewing and powerfully determining the will, so that the elect 
are thereby made willing and able freely to answer God’s call and embrace the 
grace offered therein” (L. C. 67). Prior to this imparting of Divine life to the 
soul dead in sin, neither faith nor repentance (the two converting acts) is possible. 
By it the elect have “ the grace of faith whereby they are enabled to believe to 
the saving of their souls” (Confess., XIV. 1). Regeneration is thus plainly 
taught to be prior to the act of faith in the order of salvation, and faith is unques- 
tionably prior to justification. An unbeliever cannot be justified. Justifying 
faith is a product of regeneration, and cannot therefore be the “source” of it, 
as Dr. Hodge asserts. There is nothing either in Scripture or the Westminster 
symbols to support the view that God first justifies the sinner and then regener- 
ates him ; or, as Dr. Hodge puts it, that God first “ changes the relation of the 
justified person to the law, and receives him into His favor on the condition of an 
imputed righteousness, and then regeneration follows immediately upon this” 
(p. 341). If this be so, it would follow either that God justifies a person prior to 
faith in Christ and without faith, or else that an unregenerate person can exercise 
saving faith — which latter position is denied over and over again in the West- 
minster standards. 

Regeneration, of course, supposes the plan and covenant of Redemption. It is 
founded on the fact that a Divine sacrifice for sin has satisfied the claims of 
justice and propitiated the Divine wrath against sin. But to call this objective 
satisfaction by the name of “justification” — which, perhaps, is all that Dr. 
Hodge intends * — is contrary to theological usage, and is incorrect. Justification 

* The following remark on page 340 suggests this explanation of the author’s mean- 
ing : “ The doctrine of the evangelical Church is that a man must first become recon- 
ciled to God. and be brought back into the sphere of Divine favor before he can receive 
the Holy Spirit and be brought into union with God and made spiritually good. That 
is, the favor of God is the essential precondition of grace and holiness. Now, this is 
expressed by saying that justification must precede regeneration.” 

If in this passage “satisfaction” were substituted for “justification,” and “God 
must first become reconciled to man” for “a man must first become reconciled to 


RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 


750 


is the application of the objective work of Christ to an individual, in remitting 
his sins and accepting him as righteous, because he has exercised faith in this 
work ; but this faith itself is “ the gift of God ” (Eph. ii. 8) in regeneration ; a 
consequence of the new birth, without which the individual is neither able nor 
willing to believe. “ The grace of faith whereby the elect are enabled to believe 
is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts” ( Cotifess ., XIV. i). To refer 
the sinner’s regeneration to his own act of faith as “ preceding” it and the 
“ source” of it, instead of referring it, as both Scripture and Calvinism do, to 
the sovereign creative act of God in election, reverses the true relations of these 
important doctrines, and leads to conclusions which the revered author of this 
work would have been the last to adopt. 

The subject of the Sacraments is admirably treated. The topics in Escha- 
tology conclude the series of Lectures. The author adopts the common view of 
the Reformed Church upon these — with the exception of that of the so-called 
Intermediate State. Dr. Hodge holds to the descent of Christ to Hades, and 
the deliverance of the Old Testament saints from it. He remarks that there are 
a “ few matters of detail, not settled in our Confession of Faith, upon which he 
is forced to differ from brethren whom he holds in great respect and affection” 
(p. 419). One of these is “ that the condition of the Old Testament saints before 
Christ’s death was in some essential respects different from that which all the 
redeemed dead share together since His death and resurrection” (p. 423), and 
that ‘‘on the evening of Friday the soul of the then dead Christ, personally 
united forever to His divinity, entered Paradise, irradiated it with a sudden light 
never seen there before, and consummated heaven, and revolutionized the con- 
dition of the redeemed forever” (p. 426). We do not see how this can be 
harmonized with the explicit statement of the Confession (XXXII. 1) that “ after 
death the souls of the righteous, being made perfect in holiness, are received 
into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory, 
waiting for the full redemption of their bodies ; and the souls of the wicked are 
cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness reserved to the 
judgment of the great day. Besides these two places for souls separated from 
their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none.” There can be no doubt that 
the authors of the Confession meant that this statement should apply to the Old 
Testament saints and sinners. 

The argument tor Endless Punishment is strong and conclusive, drawn from 
Scripture, and corroborated by ethics and reason. The author, however, under- 
estimates the truth of the dictum that ‘‘ sin against God is an infinite evil ” in 
saying that “ we are not required to assent to it” (p. 454). 

We have thus, within the brief limits allowed, given a sketch and general 
estimate of this learned, logical, and vigorous treatise in theology. The Cal- 
vinistic creed has had no abler advocates and defenders in this age than the two 
Hodges, father and son. Its prevalence in this country, and also in Great Britain, 
has been due in no small degree to the firm and steady advocacy which for more 
than a half century it has obtained from them, in their consistent, unswerving 
service of the Presbyterian Church, in the theological chair of one of its oldest 
and most influential institutions. William G. T. Shedd. 

We notice briefly : 

Wider die unfehlbare Wissenschaft, eine Schutzschrift fur conservatives 

God,” the meaning would be unambiguous and accurate. The regeneration of the sin- 
ner presupposes the satisfaction of Divine justice, but not the justification of the sinner. 

On page 238 Dr. Hodge adopts the usual order of the doctrines. “ The essential 
parts of our salvation are regeneration, justification, sanctification, resurrection, glori- 
fication.” 


760 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


theologisches Forschen und Leben. Von Dr. O. Zockler, Nordlingen. 1887, 
pp. 56. (New York : B. Westermann & Co.) This little pamphlet has a large 
personal element (perhaps even a commercial one), which need not concern us. 
As a protest against the attitude of infallibility as regards their own results, and 
of intolerance toward investigations the results of which do not jump with their 
assumptions, which the negative wing of Biblical critics have taken up, it is per- 
fectly timely and perfectly just. Professor Zockler’s own position is somewhat 
over liberal ; but he draws a very clear line of demarcation between it and that 
of the more negative school. The difference lies in the exact point where the 
line between criticism and hypercriticism is drawn. Dr. Zockler gives to exter- 
nal evidence its rights, and counts all criticism that ignores it hypercriticism. 
Negative criticism clears the path of external evidence -that the “ literary organ” 
may have full play. The so-called “ historical ” criticism begins by doing vio- 
lence to “ history the so-called “ scientific” investigation, by shaking itself 

free from “ knowledge,” that conjecture may the more freely act. In a word, 
while earnest men seek the true, the energies ot the self-designated scientific 
school too often expend themselves in seeking the new. And then they com- 
plain that sober writers are beginning to neglect their “ results ”! Why, how- 
ever, should earnest men play all their lives with the infinite combinations of 
even a beautiful Chinese puzzle ? Benjamin B. Warfield. 


IV.— PRACTICAL THEOLOGY. 

Katholicismus und Protestantismus gegenuber der Socialen Frage. 

Von Gerhard Uhlhorn, Doctor der Theologie. (Gottingen : Vanderhoeck 

& Ruprecht.) 

We have received from Westermann & Co. this new brochure from the inci- 
sive pen of the Abbot of Loccum. It is rigidly confined to the theme stated on 
the title-page, how Romanism and Protestantism stand related to the social ques- 
tion of the age. Dr. Uhlhorn admits, or rather insists, that religion does not 
directly solve any economical problems, but contains the moral forces which 
condition such a solution. But which form of it has these forces ? Romanism 
insists that Socialism is the child of the Reformation, and that the only remedy is 
a return to the principles and usages of the Middle Ages. The author allows 
that modern development, the subjection of nature, the growth of production, etc., 
are due to the impulse given by the religious revolution wrought through Luther. 
Rome opposes these, as he shows from Thomas Aquinas and Bishop Ketteler, on 
account ot its ethics, which makes poverty a virtue, w'hich denounces the enter- 
prise that seeks for more than the supply of necessary wants, and which holds the 
taking of interest (not usury) in any .form a deadly sin. Here he cites a card in 
common circulation, styled, “ A Ticket for the Journey to Paradise,” which con- 
tains a list of the classes for a railway trip to heaven : “ I. Class (express train) 
— Innocence, or Martyrdom, or the Counsels of Perfection (poverty, chastity, 
obedience). II. Class (direct train) — Penance, Faith, and the Doing of Good 
Works (Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving). III. Class (ordinary train) — Keeping the 
Commandments of God and of the Church, and fulfilling the duties of one’s 
station. IV. Class (very rare) — Conversion on a dying bed.” Here it is seen that 
the laborer does indeed reach heaven, but only in the third class. However con- 
scientiously he may work, the monk or nun is far before him, and so is the rich 
man who gives alms and has time to pray. This is the Romanist view of labor. 
One must have more or less of property to fulfil life's purposes, but still poverty is 


RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 


761 


“ the better good.” It is the certain way to perfection, while riches always has 
a suspicion of sin attached to it. The inconsistency of these notions with modern 
life is plain, so plain that, as the author shows, recent Romanist writers “ Luth- 
eranize” on the point, and flatly contradict the positions of Thomas, whom the 
present Pope has recommended as the peculiar teacher of the Church. That 
such things are allowed is due to the spirit by which Rome accommodates itself 
to contradictory situations, and to the prevalence of Jesuitism and its manipula- 
tions of the doctrine of sin. But while Rome is powerless to solve the social 
problem, it must be confessed that it has done and is doing much to relieve 
pressing evils. Its charities are abundant, its activity is great, and its organi- 
zation is effective. And there is a correspondence between it and Socialism. 
The summa angelica maintains that it is “ covetousness that has called into 
being thine and mine , against the law of nature which made all things com- 
mon.” So Ketteler denies that man can justly considerwhat he has gained from 
earthly things as private property ; he must regard it as a common good. This, 
he says, is “ the true Communism.” Indeed, the attempt was made to win the 
Socialists over on this ground, but the difference was that Rome wished the 
Church to control matters, but Lasalle and his friends wished the State, and 
this proved irreconcilable. Besides, the ideal of Rome stands in the way. This 
is to fly from the world and lead a contemplative lite. It thinks only of eternity, 
and considers absolute indifference to the present scene a mark of perfection. 
Hence the dualism, or twofold type, of disciples, consisting of the perfect Chris- 
tian and the ordinary. Luther utterly rejected this dualism. True Christianity 
does not lie in forsaking the ordinary pursuits of life, but in prosecuting those 
pursuits with a Christian spirit. Men are not to be angels, but genuine men, 
not renouncing the world, but subduing the world, showing in every field of 
activity, by their faith and love, that they are the children of God. 

Modern enterprise has made a huge advance of the race by its labor-saving in- 
ventions ; and the merchant, the manufacturer, and the banker acting as Chris- 
tians are as truly on the way to heaven as any monk in a convent. This does 
not mean that the whole system is good, and only good. There are those who 
so declare, holding the evils that exist to be unavoidable. But this is not the 
view of Protestants, for they hold that all earthly things are indeed imperfect be- 
cause of sin, but in the Gospel is the power to conquer sin and remedy imper- 
fections. The unequal distribution of property is partly divinely ordered, and is 
in so far a blessing ; but it is also, in part, a result of human institutions, and in 
so far is a curse. And there is a grain of truth in the extravagances of such 
men as Henry George, while it is heathenish to say, as Professor Treitschke 
does, that millions must toil with their hands that thousands may be scholars 
and artists ; that the tragedies of Sophocles and the Jupiter oi Pheidias were 
cheaply bought at the price of the miseries of slavery. If we thought and acted 
thus, new Goths and Vandals would lay waste our civilization, as their prede- 
cessors did that of the ancient world. Directly opposite to the Professor’s words 
stand those of Stocker, who says he sees in the social question an abyss gaping 
before the German people, and he springs in without measuring its depth, be- 
cause he cannot do otherwise. This is the feeling which all Christians, and espe- 
cially all clergymen, should cherish. There is sorrow and suffering ; what can 
I do, what have I done to relieve it ? Yet one cannot adopt Stocker’s conclu- 
sion. He says that the Church cannot rely upon preaching, pastoral care, mis- 
sions, etc. ; tor new circumstances demand new methods. This Dr. Uhlhorn 
denies, insisting that, unlike Rome, which is a theocratic State, and rules in all 
relations, the Church has only the Word and sacraments, and seeks by these to 
make men Christians. The two peculiarities of the present state of things are 
labor-saving machinery and freedom of contract. The workman, instead of 
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THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


completing an article himself, merely serves a machine, and becomes almost as 
mechanical as that is. He can work where he chooses, but when work fails 
there is no guild or society to take care of him. Employers, too, depend upon 
the changes of the market, and labor to secure themselves. Hence an etfer- 
increasing strife after wealth. The evils of the time lead to a sort of Chiliasm 
as fantastic as that of the Anabaptists. Dr. Uhlhorn does not undertake to 
solve the economic questions that arise. The Church has no commission for 
such a purpose ; its message is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. 
Still it is not indifferent to men’s temporal condition, but exerts moral forces in 
their behalf. One of these is the honor put upon labor— all labor of whatever 
nature, faithfully performed ; for the Apostle (i Cor. vii. 20-23) deemed even 
slavery a divine calling. Another is the reminder to employers that though 
labor is bought, still the laborer is one made in the image ol God, and a soul 
that is worth more than the whole world. True religion hinders a man from 
feeling himself a part ol the machine he feeds, by lifting his thoughts outward 
and upward. See the effect of Sunday. The Church, indeed, has neglected its 
duty, so many thousands being left without pastoral care. But besides churches 
and pastors, operatives want fellowship. They find it in socialist circles ; they 
should find it in us. This Rome cannot furnish. It has sodalities and unions, 
but no common life. The distinction of perfect and imperfect Christians makes 
this impossible. Yet there are Protestants that envy Rome ! What is needed is 
not cathedrals nor evangelists, but pastors with a church the centre of a com- 
mon life. Alms are useful, but still only a part of love to our neighbor. Not 
so the Romanists. To them they are a work surpassing all others. See the 
“ Ticket” before referred to. Almsgiving is in the first class, and performance of 
one’s ordinary duties in the second. The Lutheran view is the reverse. This is 
to bring the whole society into such a condition that alms would not be re- 
quired. Infant schools, asylums, etc., are needed at present, but do not meet 
the case fully. Even the “ Inner Mission” needs to be watched, lest it lead 
frotn rather than to the Church. It needs to be guided, not harshly and by 
mere authority — that is Rome’s way — but tenderly and so as to respect the free 
movement of Love. The author gives wise counsels as to the pastoral office in 
connection with the inner mission, which latter he thinks should pass into a 
revived diaconate. There is, then, no need of new methods. The Gospel is 
enough. Rome boasts of its power, but Protestantism, despite its divisions, has 
the moral forces required. Luther’s Reformation aimed at the religious life, 
since he knew that moral renovation would follow, and he succeeded ; whereas 
previous efforts aiming first at moral reform failed. The Lutheran Church has 
not developed its moral forces. If now after surviving Rationalism it puts forth 
these powers, taking the impulse from Pietism, but, instead of fleeing like it 
from the world, exemplifying the genuine Lutheran idea of the freedom of a 
Christian and his dominion over the world, then neither will Rome convert the 
world into a cloister nor will Socialism turn it into a house of correction, where 
every one has enough to eat and drink, but there is no individual freedom, and 
therefore no true culture ; but there will be a new economical condition, not 
without its imperfections, indeed, yet free from the oppressive evils of to-day. The 
foregoing is a meagre outline of an admirable essay, which although written 
from a German point of view, still is so clear and candid and forcible that it 
would well repay the labor of translation. Few writers think so logically and 
write so perspicuously as the Abbot of Loccum. , 

T. W. Chambers. 

Books for Practical Edification : 

Hints on Early Education and Nursery Discipline. (Funk & Wagnalls.) 
This book has a curious history. It was first published in England sixty years 


PHILOSOPHY. 


763 


ago, went through eighteen editions, was reprinted in this country, and then 
disappeared from circulation, so that it was only after a long search in London 
bookstores that a copy could be obtained for this reissue. The modern advances 
of Pedagogy have in no respect rendered the book antiquated. It is as well 
suited now as ever to give useful suggestions to young parents and to all en- 
trusted with the care of children, and well deserves the hearty commendation 
given to it by Dr. John Hall. Its subject gives it unspeakable value. Of all 
earthly influences, the parental is the strongest, and nothing is of more moment 

to the Church or the State than that this influence should be wisely exerted. 

People and Pastor. By the Rev. Thomas Murphy, D.D. (Presbyterian Board 
of Publication.) This little volume, evidently the fruit of long experience and 
extensive observation, abounds with useful suggestions. It sets forth in a 
simple, sensible way the various methods by which a people can work most 
effectually with their pastor and get the largest benefit from his ministrations. 

Its wide circulation would be of very great service. The Duty of the Church 

in the Conflict between Capital and Labor. By the Rev. R. E. Thompson, 
D.D. (Ibid.) This discourse is appropriately founded on the text in Luke (xii. 
14), where our Lord says, “ Who made me a judge or a divider over you ?” 
After stating the changed circumstances which have brought about the existing 
conflict, Professor Thompson reverts to Christ’s example, who refused to interfere 
in specific cases, because his aim was to deal not with the branches of the 
world’s evil but with its roots. He sought to remove the evil tempers of heart 
and mind, which make such cases possible. And this is the divine pattern for 
the Church. She is not to seek machine methods, nor to labor at co-operation, 
arbitration, profit-sharing, or any other similar device, as the solution of all 
difficulties. No one of these, nor all together, nor any other that can be im- 
agined, will avail, unless there be right tempers and dispositions on both sides ; 
and these it is the province of the Church to seek and to labor for. Professor 
Thompson concludes his brief and earnest tractate with urging the stewardship 
of earthly possessions. “ All wealth is a trust for God,” and can be so regarded 
even when spent on the support of the family, the enlargement of business, the 
defence of the State. When men in general feel and act upon this view, the an- 
tagonisms of modern life will be done away, because human brotherhood will be 
confessed, and its claims cheerfully recognized. ' T. W. Chambers. 


V.— PHILOSOPHY. 

Elements of Physiological Psychology. A Treatise on the Nature and 
Activities of the Mind from the Physical and Experimental Point of View. By 
George T. Ladd, Professor of Philosophy in Yale University. Pp. 688. 
New York : Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1887. 

To compare Professor Ladd’s book with Professor Wurtdt’s great work bearing 
the same title is the greatest compliment we could pay it. But we must notice 
a distinction between them which Professor Ladd himself indicates in proposing 
the end of his book. He has no experimental investigation to offer us, but is 
dealing altogether with the results heretofore arrived at in the various depart- 
ments of the science. Professor Wundt, on the other hand, is one of the fore- 
most of living inquirers, and in nearly every chapter has results of his own which 
in many cases decide the question at issue in favor of the hypothesis he advo- 
cates. There may be originality, certainly, in interpretation and arrangement, 
and we are not disposed to deny this to the excellent treatment of the super- 
abundant materials at the hands of Professor Ladd. 


764 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


His introduction is to our mind peculiarly judicious and well-weighed. He 
holds the balance evenly between the ravings of the advanced “ new-psycholo- 
gists” — of whom Ribot is a shining example — and the extreme conservatism of 
the theological school. A successful theological writer himself, and a man of 
authority in religious philosophy, his attitude toward neuro-psychology shows 
him to be fully alive to the limitations of that science, and to the extravagances of 
some of its claims. And his position is abundantly justified by the discussions 
and conclusions of the chapters which follow. “ Physiological Psychology,” 
he says, “ can scarcely claim to be an independent science, or even a definite 
branch of the science of psychology in general. It is rather to be regarded sim- 
ply as psychology, approached and studied from a certain— the so-called physi- 
ological — side or point of view.” His definition of the science turns upon his 
attitude toward the doctrine of a substantial self. The demand that so-called 
scientific psychology is making, namely, that the entire question of the nature of 
the soul be relegated to metaphysics, and that psychology deal simply with phe- 
nomena which are psychic, he concedes at the outset, but with the distinct under- 
standing that the science is not complete until all those deductions which may be 
legitimately made lrom the discoveries and laws of physiological psychology be 
duly accredited to the account of rational psychology. “ In all the earlier part 
of the treatise,” he says, “ the word ‘ mind ’ will be employed simply as the 
equivalent of the subject of the phenomena of consciousness. . . . We wish to 
begin, as far as possible, upon purely scientific grounds. And when, subse- 
quently, these grounds are in part abandoned for certain fields of rational specu- 
lation, we wish to have the connection between the two kept open and unim- 
peded.” The wisdom of this concession we have already maintained,* and the 
legitimacy of the final development of physiological into rational psychology is 
readily vindicated. The highest end of such a science is its final report upon the 
mutual relation of mind and body, and the nature of each. But we have some 
doubts as to whether the particular conclusions of Professor Ladd, which are 
negative to the main body of data, belong within its sphere ; and when we are 
called upon to “ abandon purely scientific grounds for certain fields of rational 
speculation,” our hesitation, as we find below, is greater still. 

The main division of the book is simple and exhaustive, viz., ” The Nervous 
Mechanism,” “Correlations of the Nervous Mechanism and Mind,” and “ Na- 
ture of the Mind ;” the only question being how much and what shall be in- 
cluded under the third head. This is substantially Wundt's division, except that 
he makes separate sections of the various so-called correlations of nervous 
mechanisms and mind instead of grouping them under a general term. The 
trichotomous division, however, seems to give a basis of unity to the considera- 
tion of the points of interaction of body and mind, which is wanting in the earlier 
work. 

The successive chapters of the first section are devoted to a consecutive account 
of the development, nature, and functions of the entire nervous system. This is 
necessary to the understanding ol all “ correlations,” since it is along this system 
that the contact of body and mind occurs. A separate chapter devoted to the 
end organs is necessary also, since the question of the transformation of excita- 
tion to sensation-energy rests in each case upon these organs, and since the 
differentiation of the functions respectively of the central and terminal organs is 
often difficult. The questions most open to debate arise in the discussion of the 
” functions of the central organs.” Professor Ladd is very cautious here, and does 
not venture beyond his facts. He says very truly : “On passing from the spinal 
cord to the brain, the difficulties of defining the specific functions of the different 
central organs become greatly increased. The phenomena are vastly more 


* See article on “ Postulates of Phys. Psychology ” in this Review, July, 1S87. 


PHILOSOPHY. 


765 


complicated, and the methods of analyzing them experimentally much less readily 
applied.” This determination to cite only well-ascertained and admitted truths 
makes the treatment of some of the centres somewhat meagre, especially the 
corpora quadrigemina and optic thalimi. He has not noticed, for example, that 
Dr. Ferrier, in his last edition, positively reaffirms, as the result of new experi- 
ments, the direct excitability and consequent motor function of the caudate 
nucleus of the corpus striatum. 

In the second great division we have chapters on ” The Localization of Cere- 
bral Function,” ” Quantity and Quality of Sensation,” “ Presentations of Sense,” 
“ Time Relations of Mental Phenomena,” “ Physical Basis of the Higher 
Faculties,” etc. This is the open and debatable ground of physiological 
psychology proper. Two chapters are devoted to cerebral localization. The 
history of the controversy is brought down to the work of Exner and Luciani. 
The second chapter gives a detailed resumt of the present status of the question 
for the localization of each of the motor and sensory functions, and will be found 
instructive to those who wish such a general account. But it is by no means 
exhaustive, and one is often driven to consult his authorities for fuller statement. 
Thus, in the section devoted to the ” Relation of Motion to Sensibility,” a ques- 
tion whose settlement will affirm motor localization or transfer the controversy to 
the basis of the sensor centres in the cerebral cortex, the very important posi- 
tion is overlooked, namely, that, admitting the fact of motor paralysis arising 
from the destruction of a given centre, the accompanying impairment of sensibil- 
ity is due to the incapacity to give the necessary motor reaction and not to real 
anaesthesia.* 

The general conclusions of the subject of localization differ from those of 
Wundt, in the main, only in wording. There are five principles which seem to be 
established by legitimate inference from experiments upon the functional activities 
of the nervous system. One of these is the principle of functional indifference of 
the sensor and motor nerve courses, as opposed to the old doctrine of “ specific 
energies” held by J. Muller and others. This principle is recognized by Pro- 
fessor Ladd (pp. 54 and 55, also p. 307), and his use of the phrase “ law of 
specific energies” to indicate the principle of specific connection is misleading. 
The latter principle, as stated by himself, is this, “ the different elementary 
parts of the nervous system are all (together) capable of performing its (the sys- 
tem's) specific functions when and only when they have been brought into the 
properconnections.” This is another of Wundt's laws. It has nothing whatever 
to do with the question of the specific energy of the courses, except as illustrat- 
ing, under artificial experiment, the established principle of functional indiffer- 
ence ; and, even though we admit Professor Ladd’s demand for a specific energy 
of the special senses (p. 307) with a view to the explanation of the quality of sen- 
sation, this could not be called a general principle of nervous activity with re- 
spect to the localization of function. The author attributes the differentiation of 
sensations, in respect to quality, to the end organs conjointly with the centres, 
while experiment goes to show that this differentiation is complete, for some of 
the senses, after the ablation of the end organs. It may be possible that the law of 
habit, the third of our principles (p. 300), accounts for this phenomenon, on the 
supposition that the end organs have performed their functions in an earlier 
state, and that the central terminations are, as Ribot surmises,! functionally in- 
different ; but this can never be proved, and experiment goes to show, as Wundt 
maintains, that the centres — perhaps a single one — exercise the differentiating 
function. The two remaining principles, viz., localized function and substitution, 
are duly recognized by Professor Ladd. 


* See Schafer, Nature, March 17th, 1887. f German Psychology of To-day, p. 197. 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


7fi6 

The chapters on Psychophysics (“ Quantity of Sensations”) and Psychometry 
(‘‘Time Relations of Mental Phenomena”) give full and exact accounts of the 
latest work in these two promising branches of inquiry. The problems of 
quantity, however, while involved in difficulties enough, do not seem to us as 
incapable of approximate solution as Professor Ladd is inclined to represent. 
The question of the perceptible minimum is not worth its cost, except as an in- 
dispensable datum to the application of Fechner’s law. This minimum affords 
the zero point from which the ascending scale of sensation values is calculated, 
and as long as the physical modifications intervening between the external stim- 
ulus and the subjective sensation are constant, their magnitude is unimportant, 
and they may be entirely disregarded. The questions “ How do the end organs 
modify the quantities of the stimuli before they transmit their effects to the 
conducting nerve fibres ?” etc. (p. 360), are irrelevant to the point at issue, 
provided, as is the case, that these modifications are constant throughout the 
entire series of excitations. This consideration justifies, in so far, the advance 
of Fechner upon the law of Weber, a distinction which is hardly noticed by 
Professor Ladd, namely, that equal observed differences — a matter of perception 
— correspond to equal real differences — a matter of sensation. Granted this 
transition and the mathematical deductions of Fechner follow. We notice, also, 
an absence of reference to Delboeuf and Beaunis, the former being barely alluded 
to. M. Beaunis was the first to make careful experiments upon the reaction time 
for olfactory and gustatory sensations, and his results are as reliable as any yet 
obtained. The theory upon which Delbceuf’s work in psychophysics rests, 
namely, that sensation must be measured by an internal and not by an external 
standard, is not noticed by Professor Ladd, perhaps from economy of space, 
though as a criticism from the side of general philosophy (in the hands of Kant, 
Zeller, and Delboeuf) it is the severest assault which the advocates of Fechner’s 
law have had to withstand. 

The chapter on the “ Physical Basis of the Higher Faculties” is a model of 
wise concession on the one hand and of determined protest on the other. We 
know of no American writer who is as fair toward the question of a physical 
basis of the higher faculties, except Dr. McCosh. And his conclusions are all 
that any reasonable advocate of the energizing activity of the mind could wish. 
We commend this chapter to all those who fear that physiological psychology is 
materialistic in its tendency or conclusions. 

As to the doctrine of a uniform psychophysical connection — a physical basis 
for all mental activity — Professor Ladd seems somewhat in doubt, and his state- 
ments are not consistent. On page 388, speaking of the constructive or synthetic 
activity of mind whereby presentations of sense arise from elementary sensations, 
he says : ” It may, indeed, have a physical basis in some central organic combi- 
nation. . . . On general grounds of our theory of the nervous mechanism, we 
conjecture that it is so.” Then (p. 594) : ” In investigating the correlations 
which undoubtedly exist between the nervous mechanism and the phenomena of 
consciousness, it is found that some of these phenomena imply activities of the 
mind which do not admit, in any sense of the word, of being thus correlated. 
For an example we may refer to what was said as to a mental synthesis being 
implied in the formation of all presentations of sense.” In the latter connection, 
also, speaking of consciousness : “ The same thing may be said of consciousness 
in itself considered,” while he has already admitted (p. 545) that consciousness 
is a state, and not a process, depending upon the general healthfulness and blood- 
supply of the cerebrum, and, consequently, incapable of having its own peculiar 
physical process or basis. The uniformity of the psychophysical connection is 
now very generally admitted from strong presumptive evidence, such as the dis- 
covery of such a connection in all the processes which admit of investigation, the 
perceptible duration of will, discernment, choice, as mental acts due probably 


PHILOSOPHY. 


767 


(so Ladd) to the time occupied by the corresponding physical processes, and the 
derangement of the purest forms of ideation in certain kinds of cerebral disease. 
The distinction, however, between the physical basis and the mental process to 
which it belongs, as in [the case of will, association of ideas, memory, etc., is 
strenuously and consistently maintained. 

Finally, we reach the third great division of the work, “ The Nature of the 
Mind,” and we revert to the question already raised, namely, how far is physi- 
ological psychology competent to give a deliverance on this subject ? Evidently 
only as far as this deliverance rests upon the ascertained laws of the science itself 
and upon the imperative demand of the philosophic reason for a unifying basis 
to phenomena. We are compelled to ask with Professor Ladd (p. 588) “ Which 
one of the two theories (‘ materialistic ’ or ‘ spiritualistic ’) best accords with all 
the facts ?” “ These facts,” he continues, “ which are to test the theory, are facts 
of the nervous mechanism, and of the correlations between this mechanism and the 
phenomena of consciousness.” And as for method, it is evident that we must 
go carefully through the facts of our earlier chapters and question them in turn as 
to their report, if they have such, upon the question. So we decidedly object when 
Professor Ladd goes on to say : “ The approach to this question must be through 
the introspective study of mind, for only such study can tell us what the phe- 
nomena of consciousness actually are.” It is not the phenomena of conscious- 
ness which are to be interpreted. That is the last department of rational 
psychology, and its results have been assumed in the section on “ correlations.” 
As has been quoted, we now deal with facts of the nervous system and its cor- 
relations, and it is not by introspective study that we have discovered these facts. 
On the contrary, neither the facts of the nervous system nor their correlations are 
facts of consciousness at all ; otherwise, there would be no justification for such a 
science as physiological psychology. 

And we also object to the “ metaphysical assumptions” which the author then 
makes. Not that they are not true ; we believe that they are true and funda- 
mental to a true philosophy of perception. But they are not derived from our 
tacts. The “ synthetic activity” of mind in the construction of presentations of 
sense is both unknown to consciousness and untouched by investigation. It may 
have a physical correlate ; but as yet it belongs to the large class of residual 
phenoniena which physiological psychology cannot reach. The difference be- 
tween this activity and memory, with reference to a known physical basis, in- 
dicates the distinction between the usable and the unusable in interpretation. 
Following this distinction throughout the series of correlations, the first of Pro- 
fessor Ladd’s conclusions, in which he follows Lotze, is indisputably established, 
viz., ” The subject of all the slates of consciousness is a real unit being called 
Mind, which is of non-?naterial nature, and acts and develops according to 
laws of its own, but is especially correlated with certain material molecules 
and masses forming the substance of the brain.” 

But the remaining chapters on ” The Development of Mind,” “ Real Connec- 
tion of Brain and Mind,” “ The Mind as Real Being,” with their avowedly (p. 
668) metaphysical treatment, fall outside the domain of the science, and should 
have been printed separately. In themselves, however, they are well-sustained 
and subtle, and are an excellent and original adaptation of Lotze’s defence of 
spiritualism. The work as a whole is a great contribution to the literature of 
philosophy in English, and should be mastered by every student of psychology. 

J. Mark Baldwin. 


768 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


VI.— GENERAL LITERATURE. 

The Sacred Books of the East. Vol. XXXI. The Zend-Avesta. Part 
III. The Yasna, Visparad, AfrlnaghaD, Gahs, and Miscellaneous Fragments. 
Translated by L. H. Mills. 8vo, pp. xlviii. , 404. Oxford : Clarendon 
Press, 1887. 

Dr. Fiihrer (Encycl. Brit., xviii., 326) estimates the present number of the 
adherents of Zoroastrianism as not more than 82,000. The character, wealth, 
and influence of the Parsis of India would, however, make the study of their faith 
a matter both of theoretical and of practical importance. If we take into account 
the 3000 years or more of their past history, as well as the internal characteristics 
of their religious system, we cannot hesitate to assign this faith a place among 
the world’s great religions. Mr. Mills concludes his thoughtful and learned 
Introduction to the volume before us with this expression of his own judgment : 
“ If the mental illumination and spiritual elevation of many millions of mankind, 
throughout long periods of time, are of any importance, it would require strong 
proof to deny that Zarathustrianism has had an influence of very positive power 
in determining the gravest results.” We must, moreover, bear in mind its influ- 
ence upon the Jews during and after the Exile, and upon early Gnosticism. 

Vols. I. and II. of the Zend-Avesta (including the Vendidad, witfi a portion of 
the hymns and prayers), edited by James Darmesteter, of Paris, appeared in this 
valuable series of translations in 1880 and 1883. The completion of the work, 
forced out of his hands by other duties, has fallen into the hands of a scholar 
whom many years of devotion to this special line of study qualified in an unusual 
degree to carry it through with independent judgment and manifest ability. 
While many parts of the work can be appreciated only by specialists, he has by 
the style of his translation, by his careful summaries, explaining each section 
analytically, and by his copious notes, done all that could be done within the 
space allowed him to make the work valuable to the comparative student of 
religions, and to all who may be drawn by any special attraction to the study of 
this system. The portion of the Avesta which is dealt with by Mr. Mills has this 
peculiar interest, that the five Gdthas (hymns), which make up about half of the 
volume, are regarded as specially valuable on account of their relative antiquity, 
their substantial genuineness, and their historical tone. They throw peculiar 
light upon the views and aims of Zoroaster, and the circumstances which in 
measure moulded his work. While Darmesteter treats Zoroaster as belonging 
mainly to the mythology of the Avesta, and speaks doubtfully on historical ques- 
tions, Mr. Mills is much more disposed to emphasize the historical reality of the 
man and the great and fruitful movement which he led in its most important 
juncture. Charles A. Aiken. 

An Arabic Manual. By J. G. Lansing, D.D., Gardner A. Sage Professor of 
Old Testament Languages and Exegesis in the Theological Seminary of the 
Reformed Church at New Brunswick, N. J. Chicago : American Publica- 
tion Society of Hebrew, 1886. 

This book is an almost perfect text-book. If properly supplemented, it would 
subserve completely the present needs of American students. Since the Manual 
is intended for beginners, we shall merely criticise it in so far as it fails to meet 
their requirements. Its faults are those of omission rather than those of com- 
mission. They arise chiefly from the failure of the author, who has been fed on 


GENERAL LITERATURE. 


769 


Arabic from his mother’s knee, to appreciate sufficiently the difficulties of those 
who must begin it late in life. In part, also, they arise from a certain lack of 
system, or of consistency in the carrying out of a system, which in certain direc- 
tions runs through the whole book. 

For example, the author starts out to give us “ exercises” from English into 
Arabic illustrative of the principles of grammar which he has just stated. 
After giving five exercises he stops suddenly at the end of the pronoun, and 
omits to give any exercises illustrative of the usage of the verb, or of the noun. 
The burden of supplementing this part of the work he has thrown upon the 
teacher ; and if the student be self-taught, he will be left without that drill on 
the forms of the irregular verbs and of the broken plurals which is so essential 
to thoroughness and readiness m the apprehension of the principles of Arabic 
grammar. A series of exercises like those in Harper’s ‘‘ Hebrew Manual” or 
like those to which we have been accustomed in the Latin and Greek Prose Com- 
positions would, in our opinion, be a most useful addition to the work. 

Again, the author has been too sparing in his illustrative examples. What is 
perfectly plain to him will often be misunderstood by the student, unless it be 
explained by example. We do not know but that the plan of giving but one 
illustration of any form or rule is a good one. Better for the student to learn 
one by heart than to be so confused by many as to learn none. But there 
should be one example, at least, under each form or rule. This is not the case 
in many instances in this grammar — e.g., in the illustration of the meaning of 
the forms of the verb, (S 37, and of the changes of the Tay of the eighth form in 
verbs whose first radical is Dal, Zal, or Zain, § 49 : 16. We think that the author 
should, if possible, have taken his examples from the Chrestomathy in his book. 
In all instances, moreover, he should give the translation of the examples, 
especially when he omits the word from his vocabulary. If not, he might better 
have given a list of ideal forms based on katala or fa ‘ala. 

In his vocabulary, also, the author presumes too much on the knowledge of 
the student, or on his perseverance. In every case but one he gives the first 
form only of the verb, leaving us to acquire the meaning of the other forms from 
his explanations of them on page 45 sq. Out of the many possible variations of 
sense for some of these forms, it might well confuse others than beginners to 
select the right meaning approximately, let alone accurately. For example, he 
leaves us to find out for ourselves the meaning of the participle active of the 
tenth form of the verb kama, “ to stand ” (Sura I., verse 5), and the perfects of 
the fifth form of wala, and of the tenth form of ghaniya (Sura Taghabun, verse 6). 
Again, he frequently omits to give the meaning of nouns either under their roots 
or elsewhere. P'or example, see in the second chapter of Genesis, verses 5-8, 
where we have five nouns not given anywhere in the vocabulary. We think 
this omission to be a mistake. The beginner ought not to be expected to learn 
everything at once. In no other dictionary with which we are acquainted is 
any such plan of forcing the student to learn the meaning of the forms resorted 
to. In most instances the students will merely fall back on the teacher, and 
entail on him the labor of supplying the knowledge which the text-book has 
failed to give. 

Again, in his analysis of Gen. i. 1-5, and of the Sura Taghabun, there are but 
twelve references in all to the sections of the grammar ; and for the rest of the 
Chrestomathy, there are neither notes nor references. Harper’s Manual, a book 
in the same series, has “ notes” and “ observations,” and frequent references to 
the “ Elements of Hebrew.” Here, where we’ have so few notes (none saving 
those in the six pages of “ analysis”), we might have the references at least. 
All these helps are thought necessary to enable beginners to read Caesar or 
Xenophon. Why should they be dispensed with in an Arabic Chrestomathy ? 

There is no syntax in the book. The author probably deemed this unneces- 


770 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


sary in view of the easy construction of the passages which he has selected for 
his Chrestomathy. 

In spite of the above deficiencies, the book is much in advance of anything 
accessible to students a few years ago. It is clear and accurate in its statements 
and definitions. With a competent teacher it could easily be made both prac- 
tical and efficient. R. D. Wilson. 

Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Edited by George Birkbeck Hill, D.C.L. 

6 vols. Macmillan & Co. 

Boswell’s Life of Johnson is one of the books which have claims on any age of 
readers, and a thorough knowledge of which is indispensable to any student of 
English literature. It may admit of question whether, after all the reading it 
has had, the criticism evoked, and the praise bestowed, the book is yet fully ap- 
preciated. That which makes the charm and power of the book in great part, 
its desultoriness, is one bar to its full recognition. For many who dip into it 
here and there come to feel that this piecemeal acquaintance gives the key to 
its fruitful meaning. That it is not so goes without saying. It is a book to be 
studied as well as browsed over, to use one of Dr. Johnson’s expressive epithets. 
Mr. Matthew Arnold has in recent years called attention to Dr. Johnson’s ad- 
mirable critical genius in the selections from th o Lives of the Poets, which he 
edited. The centenary of the great author’s death (1884), calling forth as it did 
in the Quarterlies fresh reviews of his work and character as a man of letters, may 
also have revived popular interest in the man and author. But Mr. Birkbeck 
Hill by this sumptuous edition of his Life by Boswell has done more than any- 
thing else to bring him before the minds of men. In doing this, he has ren- 
dered an invaluable service to our time and to times succeeding. It is safe to 
say that no other edition of Dr. Johnson’s Life is likely to be called for soon, if 
ever. 

There are two reasons, at least, why Dr. Johnson’s Life should be kept prom- 
inently before all students of English literature. First because Boswell has pre- 
served in the Life the literary life of the time as nothing else has done. Dr. 
Johnson was the centre of London literary life, and London was then, as now, the 
literary centre of England. In the course of Boswell’s narrative, nearly every 
man of mark in any department of thought, nearly every book, passes under 
notice. We hear the talk of the noted club of which Goldsmith, and Burke, and 
Reynolds, and Johnson were members. Side lights flash on nearly every subject 
then discussed by learned scholars. What authorship was in the days when 
Johnson wrote the pregnant line 

“ Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail,” — 

if Pope gives us one picture of Grub Street in his vindictive Dunciad, we get 
another and juster one from Boswell’s Life of foh?ison. Hence it is simply in- 
valuable as a picture of the literary history of the time. This very fact makes 
careful editing a necessity, and the editing of Mr. Hill seems to leave nothing to 
be desired. 

There is a second reason why Boswell’s Life of Jqhnson should be given to the 
world in the best shape possible. It is well worth the while of every scholarly 
man to study Dr. Johnson as the best type of the literary man. Garrick never 
said a truer word than when he said of him that “ there was nothing of the bear 
about him but the skin.” Under that rough exterior there was nothing of the 
dilettante, that bane of the literary spirit. His interest in literature was born of 
a deep central conviction that literature in all its forms is of the highest worth to 
men. That is the soul of his literary life. It is not simply as an author that he 
claims our homage. His authorship is not, indeed, fully appreciated. There 


GENERAL LITERATURE. 


771 


are papers in the Rambler which equal anything in the line of the periodical 
essay. There are some of his Lives of the Poets which as criticism will never'be 
surpassed. But if every line of his writings had perished and we had only Bos- 
well’s Life, we should ha' e a record of a literary life full of nobleness and full 
of import for all generations. We owe Thomas Carlyle a great debt for his 
review of this book, in reply to Macaulay’s shallow estimate. Read'Carlyle’s 
paper, and you can see the inner sources of Johnson’s literary greatness. 

There have not been wanting editions of this book. Croker’s has long been 
before the public. But the work of editing had not been fully done till Mr. 
Birkbeck Hill took it in hand. His edition, he tells us in his preface, has been 
in hand for “ many years.” He has not only given the most minute exami- 
nation to Boswell’s narrative ; “ I have sought to follow him [Dr. Johnson] 
wherein a remark of his required illustration, and have read through many a 
book that 1 might trace to its source a reference or an allusion.” That remark 
of the editor will show the endless pains bestowed on his work. A valuable 
Index on an alphabetical plan has been added and a Concordance of Dr. John- 
son’s sayings. The text is that of Boswell’s third edition. The result is before 
us in this admirably printed edition of a great English classic. American 
scholars will not be slow in uttering their appreciation of what Mr. Hill has 
done so laboriously and so well. James O. Murray. 

Naukratis. Part I., 1884-85. By W. M. Flanders Petrie. With chapters 
by Cecil Smith, Ernest Gardner, and Bai clay V. Head. London: Messrs. 
Triibner & Co., 1886. 

In this third memoir of the Egyptian Exploration Fund we have an excellent 
example of the value of scientific method in excavation. It is not so many years 
ago that the material which has been uncovered in Naukratis would not have 
elicited much enthusiasm. It consists of faint traces of streets and buildings, a 
few rude statuettes, some architectural fragments, quantities of broken pottery, 
inscriptions, and coins ; all of little or no aesthetic value. But the methods of 
scientific archaeology enable us not only to fix with certainty the site of the long- 
forgotten city of Naukratis, but to determine the position and character of its 
principal buildings, and even to trace the general outline of its history. 

Here, as we learn from literary evidence, was a temple of Aphrodite as early 
as 688 b.c., and of Apollo in 608 B.c. In the following century, Herodotus tells 
us, there were at Naukratis temples of Zeus, Hera, Apollo, and the sacred te- 
menos of the Pan-Hellenion. With the exception of the temple of Zeus, the sites 
of these structures have all been determined. The Pan-Hellenion, which served 
as the civil centre, the common sanctuary and the rallying point in time of 
danger, is specially interesting from its gigantic walls and peculiar structure, as 
also from the foundation deposits discovered beneath each corner of the build- 
ing. The determination of the sites of the temples did not present great diffi- 
culty, as their presence was evident from the large number of inscribed votive 
offerings. Far more difficult is the arrangement of the material in chronologi- 
cal sequence. In this direction Mr. Petrie shows great ingenuity and scientific 
imagination. Thus a rough chronological classification of archaic pottery cor- 
responds in general with the differences of level at which they were found in the 
rubbish heap of the temenos of Apollo. Again, the sizes of brick furnish a cri- 
terion of age, as from the twenty-sixth dynasty down to late Roman times the 
sizes of bricks in Egypt decreased about an inch in length per century. It ap- 
pears to be a characteristic of Mr. Petrie’s mind to trust to such modes of 
determination as involve exact measurement, rather than to the more usual 
method of inference from variation of style. In cases where such evidence as he 


772 


THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. 


prefers is wanting he is not always so happy in his inferences, as, for example, 
when he assigns the architectural fragments illustrated on Plate III. to the 
seventh century ; whereas a comparison with the Ionic architecture of Asia 
Minor would lead us to put them almost certainly a century later. 

The study of the painted pottery ot Naukratis by Cecil H. Smith shows the 
important bearing of these discoveries upon the early history of Greek vase- 
painting. Not only must the so-called Rhodian class of vases be modified by 
the discovery of similar vases at Naukratis, but a new and peculiar type has 
been found, which henceforth will be known as Naukratian. The inscriptions, 
which have been studied by Ernest A. Gardner, are even more important, and 
throw new light upon the early history of the Ionian alphabet. Viewed in the 
light of these new discoveries, the well-known inscriptions of Abu Simbel may 
no longer be considered the earliest or most characteristic example of the Ionian 
alphabet. The philologist will also find in ’A-rd/Uu a vocative form hitherto 
unknown, and involving an early form of nominative in ug, accusative in u, etc. 
The coins, which are separately treated by Mr. Head, are interesting not so much 
tor their novelty as for the light they throw upon the material prosperity of the 
place. They range in date from 520 B.c. to 340 A.D., the greater number 
belonging to the period from 30 B.c. to 190 a.d. 

One 6f the most thoroughgoing examples of the application of exact methods 
in archaeology is given in the treatment of the weights of Naukratis by Mr. 
Petrie. These he has not only tabulated according to torm and material and 
country, but with scruplous exactness has calculated their present and original 
weights, and even adds a diagram with curves to represent the frequency ot the 
occurrence ot weights of any particular variety of each standard. How quickly 
the new science of archaeology seems to be reaching the mathematical stage ! 

Allan Marquand. 


We add brief notices of 

Principles of Hygie 7 ie for the School and the Home , etc. By Ezra M. Hunt, 
A.M., M.D., Sc. D., etc. i2mo, pp. 382. (New York and Chicago: Ivison, 
Blakeman, Taylor & Co., 1886). Dr. Hunt’s established reputation not only in 
his profession, but as an authority in sanitary and hygienic matters, settles 
the presumptive value of a book like this from his pen, designed for popular 
use. He has also experience as a lecturer and instructor, and puts things well. 
He has drawn upon the best sources in his department, but does not burden his 
book with references to them. The illustrations are well chosen and handsomely 
executed. Dr. Hunt's positions in regard to stimulants and narcotics are very 
emphatically taken, and pressed with scientific and moral earnestness. Some of 
them are contested by men equally scientific and equally in earnest in behalf of 

the moral welfare of society. American Commonwealths — Connecticut : A 

Study of a Commonwealth-Democracy. By Alexander Johnston, etc. i6mo, 
pp. 409. (Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1887.) This is the 
ninth of the valuable historical and political studies which have thus far appeared 
in the series to which it belongs. The general facts are mainly familiar ; it is 
their presentation and interpretation that give Professor Johnston’s work special 
value and significance. The peculiarities of the town system of Connecticut were 
in themselves strongly marked, and had great influence on the type of this poten- 
tial little State, which, in turn, made contributions ot a most importa-nt character 
to the national Constitution. The peculiar relation existing between Church and 
State, especially in the New Haven Colony, makes this well-told story one of 
unusual interest to the student of our American religious life and history. This 
volume will extend the author’s reputation already so well established. 

Charles A. Aiken. 


INDEX. 


A. designates an Article ; C. a Critical Note; E. an Editorial Note; H. an 
Historical Note ; R. a Review ; S. a Selection. 


Adams (B.), Emancipation of Massachu- 
setts R. 551 

Aiken (C. A.) R. 175, 185,190, 191, 

357, 369, 384, 544, 557, 564, 5&5, 5&8, 
768, 772. 

Alexander (A.), Some Problems of Phi- 
losophy R. 560 

Amiel’s Journal R. 190 

Armstrong (A. C., Jr.) R. 181 

Bacon (L. W ), Simplicity that is in Christ. 

R. 179 

Baird (H. M.) R. 157, 185, 548 

Huguenots and Henry of N&varre. 

R. 158 

Baldwin (J. M.) A. 427; R. 763 

Ball (J. T.), Reformed Chh. in Ireland 

(1537-1886) R. 753 

Barriers (The) to Christian Union.. A. 441 
Baur (W.), Beicht- und Kommunionbuch. 

R. 372 

Beattie (F R.), Methods of Theism. R. 555 

Becker (B.), Zinzendorf R. 162 

Beecher (VV. J.) R. 149 

Behrends (A. J. F.), Socialism and Christi- 
anity R. 175 

Bezold (C.), Babyl. Assyr. Literatur. . R. 187 
Biblical (The) Doctrine of Divine Judg- 
ment E. 519 

Bigg (C.), Christian Platonists of Alexan- 
dria R. 547 

Blaikie (W. G.). .E. 526, 719 ; R. 171, 176 

Briggs (C. A.) A. 441; H. 297, 491, 

496 ; E. 316. 743 ; R. 148, 161, 162, 167, 
339, 359, 360, 361, 533, 549- 55©, 55U 
750. 

Messianic Prophecy R. 347 

Broderick (G. C.), History of University of 

Oxford R. 550 

Brooks (A.), Life of Christ in the World. 

R. 371 

Brown (F.) R. 151, 152, 153, 187, 336, 

342, 35U 352, 353, 537, 540, 542, 543, 
544, 753- 

Bruce (A. B.) R. 747 

Miraculous Element in Gospels. R. 163 

Bruno, Giordano A. 626 

Burr (E. F.), Universal Beliefs.. .R. 555 

Candlish (J. S.) A. 224 

Caven (W.) E. 728, 736 

Chambers (T. W.).. .C. 102; E. 519, 714; 


R. 177, 178, 179, 371, 372, 373, 374, 548, 


558, 559, 76o, 762, 763. 

Chester (J.), Earthly Watchers. ...R. 372 
Cheyne (T. K.), Job and Solomon.. R. 533 

Church (The) of Ethiopia A. 16 

Clarke (I. E.), Industrial and Fine Art 

Education R. 186 

Classifications of the Parables C. 102 

Collections of Huguenot Soc. of America, 
I - R. 550 


College Confederation in Ontario. ,E. 116 
Collins (J. C.), Bolingbroke and Voltaire. 

R. 191 

Congress of Churches, Proceedings. R. 373 


Constitution (The) of the Presb. Chh. in 

the U. S. A A. 85 

A. 282 

Cook (J.), Orient R. 372 

Cooper (J.), Conflict Ended R. 169 

Cornill (C. H.), Ezechiel R. 342 

Cox (S.), The Bird’s Nest and other Ser- 
mons R. 558 

Crane (O. T.), Targums R. 191 

Craven (E. R.) A. 85 

Croskery, Thomas E. 354 

Current Discussions in Theology, IV. 

R. 544 

Curtis (E. L.) R. 535 

Davidson (J. T.), Forewarned-Forearmed. 

R. 178 

The City Youth R. 558 


Dawson (E. C.), James Hannington.R. 556 
Delaborde (J.), Henri de Coligny..R. 548 
Delitzsch (Fr.), Assyr. Lesestiicke. R. 187 
Prolegomena eines Heb. Aram. Wort- 


erbuchs zum A. T R. 187 

DeWitt (John) R. 183 

Dictionary of the Holy Bible ....R. 368 


Dietel (R. W.), Missionsstunden, III. 

R- 373 

Dillmann (A.), Num., Deut. und Josua. 

R- 339 

Dodge (D. S.), Memorials of W. E. Dodge. 

R. 556 

Dollinger (J. J. I.) und Reusch (F. H.), 


Selbstbiog. des Card. Bellarmin. . R. 756 

Dorling (W.), Dora Greenwell R. 176 

Dorner, Isaac August A. 569 

Driver (S. R.), Critical Notes on S. S. Les- 
sons on Pentateuch R. 536 


774 


INDEX. 


Du Bose (H. C.), Dragon, Image and 

Demon R. 363 

Durie (John), The Work of, in Behalf of 

Christian Union H. 297 

Diisterdieck (F.), Revelation of John. R. 543 
Dyer (H.), Records of an Active Life. 

R. 191 


Ebrard(J. H. A.), Apologetics, I..R. 551 
Elemental Emblems of the Spirit... .A. 653 

Evangelische Trostvvorte R. 371 

Evans (H. E.), St. Paul and the Second 

Gospel R. 15* 

Evans (L. J.) E. 325 ; R. 345 

Faber (W. F.), Thoughts for Thought. 

R. 178 

Falckenberg (R.), Geschichte der neueren 
Philosophic R. 181 


Fischer (K.), History of Modern Philosophy. 

R . 563 

Fish (Simon) and his ‘‘Supplication. ”A. 412 
Franke (A. H.), Philippians, Colossians 
and Philemon R. 153 

Gardiner (H. N.) R. 374 

Gates (M. E.) ...A. 669 

General Assembly Presb. Chh. U. S. A. 

E. 711 

Chh. Scotland E. 715 

Free Chh. Scotland E. 719 

Presb. Chh. in Canada. ..E. 728 

Presb. Chh. Ireland E. 724 

General Synod, Ref. Chh. Amer. . . .E. 714 
Gesenius (W.), Hebr. and Aram. Hand- 

worterbuch iiber das A. T R. 537 

Gibson (J. M.) A. 653 

Gillett (C. R.) C. 310 

Gladden (W.), Applied Christianity . R. 374 
Gladstone (W. E.), Irish Question.. R. 191 

Godet (F.), Gospel of John, II R. 152 

Commentary on 1 Corinthians. R. 532 

Gratacap (L. P.), Philosophy of Ritual. 

R. 559 

Green (W. H.) R. 137, 750 

Gwynn(J.), Syriac MS. belonging to Archb. 
Ussher R. 544 


Hall (G. S.) and Mansfield (J. M.), Bibli- 
ography of Education R. 383 

(John) R. 357 

Hamilton (K. W.), Wood, Hay and Stub- 
ble R. 179 

(S. M.) R. 370 

(T.), Irish Presb. Church R. 357 

Harris (S.), Self-Revelation of God.R. 361 
Harrison (J. B.), Studies on Indian Reser- 
vations R. 568 

Hastings (T. S.) R. 371 

Henry (B. C.), Ling-Nam R. 185 

Herminjard (A. L.), Correspondance des 

Reformateurs, VII R. 157 

Herrmann (W.), Der Verkehr des Christen 

mit Gott R. 555 

Hill (G. B.), Boswell’s Life of Johnson. 

* R. 770 


Hinton (J.), Mystery of Pain R. 178 

Hints on Early Education, etc R. 762 

Hodder (E.), Earl of Shaftesbury .. R. 171 

Hodge, Archibald Alexander E. 125 

A. 1 ; R. 161 

Popular Lectures on Theological 

Themes R.' 7^6 

(C. W.) R. 54 ! 


Holland (H. S.), Creed and Character. 

R. 558 

Hommel (F.), Gesch,, Babyl. Assyriens. 

R. 187 

Howard (N.), Beitrage R. 352 

Hudson’s Concordance R. 152 

Hughes (N. C.), Genesis and Geology. 

R. 753 

Hulbert (H. W.) A. 71 

Hummelauer (F. de), Comm, in Libros 

Samuelis R. 542 

Hunt (E. M.), Principles of Hygiene. R. 772 

(T. W.), Representative English Prose. 

R. 566 

Intermediate State, Biblical Doctrine of 

the E. 325 

History of the Doctrine. E. 509 

Jackson (S. M.) R. 186, 545 

Johns Hopkins University Studies, 1 V„ 2, 

3 - • R . 361 

Johnson (Herrick) R. 169 

Johnston (A.), Connecticut R. 772 

Karpeles (G.), Gesch. der Jiidischen Liter- 

atur R. 338 

Kayser (A.), Theologie des A. T...R. 148 

Kedzie (J. H.), Speculations R. 191 

Keller (L.), Die Waldenser und d. deut- 

schen Bibeliibersetzungen R. 355 

Kellogg (A. H.), Abraham, Joseph and 

Moses in Egypt R. 750 

Kelly (T.), Pulpit Themes R. 558 

Ker (J.), Psalms in History and Biog- 
raphy R. 557 

Kierkegaard (S.), St adieu auf d. Lebens- 

wege R. 372 

Killen (W. D.), Ignatian Epistles. . R. 162 

Kingsley (C.), Aus der Tiefe, u. s. w. 

R. 37i 

True Words for Brave Men...R. 372 

Kirkus(W.), Religion, A Revelation, etc. 

R- 555 

Kliefoth (T.), Christliche Eschatologie. 

R. 167 

Kuenen (A.), Hexateuch R. 137 


Ladd (G. T.), Elements of Physiol. Psy- 


chology R. 763 

Laidlaw (W.) A. 626 

Lanier, Sidney A. 669 

Lansing (J. G.), Arabic Manual.... R. 768 
Lechler (C. V.), Urkundenfunde: . ..R. 162 
Lehman (E.), Scenes from Life of Jesus. 

R. 178 

Leonhardi (G.), Leben der Mutter. ..R. 191 

Lewis (C. T.) R. 380 

Light (A) to the Blind R. 754 


INDEX. 


• 775 


Lindsay (T. M.), St. Luke’s Gospel, i.-xii. 

R- 543 

Lord’s Supper (The) A. 193 

, Necessity and Administration of 

A. 492 

Lotze (H.), Outlines of ^Esthetics. . . R. 564 
Lowe (W. H.), A Hebrew Grammar. R. 565 
Lowell (J. R.), Democracy and other Ad- 


dresses R. 377 

Luthardt (E. C.) and Zockler (O.) Johannes 

und Apostelgeschichte R. 345 

Lyon (D. G.), Assyrian Manual.... R. 187 


Maasz (G.), Einfluss der Religion.. R. 175 
Macduff (J. R.), Morning Family Prayers. 

R- 374 

Maciay (A. C.), Letters from Japan. R. 185 

Macloskie (G.) A. 617 

MacVicar (D. H.) A. 262 

Mahler (E.), Biblische Chronologie. R. 151 
Mann (YV. J.), Life and Times of H. M. 

Muhlenberg R. 755 

— — and Schmucker (B. M.), Nachrichten 
von der verein. Deutsch. Evang. Luth. 

Gemeinen in N. A R. 755 

Marquand (A.) R. 771 

Martineau (J.), Types of Ethical Theory. 

R. 180 

Matheson (G.), Moments on the Mount. 

R. 177 

McClune (J.), Brandywine Manor Church. 

R. 161 

McCosh (J.), Realistic Philosophy .. R. 562 

Miller (J. R.), Silent Times R. 178 

(L. W.), Essentials of Perspective. 

R. 568 

Mitchell (A. F.), Catechisms of the Second 

Reformation R. 549 

(J. M.), Hinduism — Past and Present. 

R. 362 

Moberly (C. E.), Early Tudors R. 550 

Moffat (J. C.). . . R. 158, 161 

Momerie (A. W.), Belief in God. ... R. 168 
Mommsen (T.), The Provinces from Caesar 

to Diocletian R. 360 

Moody (D. L.) at Home R. 373 

Moore (E. C.) R. 153 

(W. E.), Presbyterian Digest of 1886. 

R. 369 

Moule (H. C. G.), Ephesians R. 152 

Murphy (T.), People and Pastor. . . .R. 763 
Murray (J. O.) R. 377, 770 


Newton (R.), Bible Warnings R. 372 

Norton (C. E.), Correspondence between 

Goethe and Carlyle R. 564 

Nosgen (C. F.), Matthaus, Markus und 
Lukas R. 345 

Orelli (C. von), Die Propheten Jesaja 

und Jeremia R. 535 

Origin (The) of the Phrase “ In necessariis 

unitas ” H. 496 

Our Teachers A. 219 

Overton (J. H.), Evangelical Revival. ..R. 

360 

Parker (Joseph), People’s Bible R. IV., V. 

R- 373. 558 


Patterson (J. A.), Period of the Judges 

R- 753 

Patton (F. L.), A. 282; E. 122, 125, 711 ; 
R. 168, 169, 180, 182, 183, 365, 368, 369, 
554. 555. 560, 562, 563, 564, 566 
Payne (W. H.), Contributions to Science 

of Education R. 383 

Pending (The) Overtures E. 122 

Petrie (W. M. F.), Naukratis, I R. 771 

Pfeiffer (F. X.), Goldene Schnitt. . . . R. 186 
Pfleiderer (O.), Philosophy of Religion, 1. * 

R- 563 

Phelps (A.), My Study R. 169 

Physiological Psychology, The Postulates 

of. A. 427 

Elements of (G. T. Ladd) R. 763 

Pictet (B.), Letter of S. 132 

Pierson (A. T.), Crisis of Missions. R. 370 

Many Infallible Proofs R. 373 

Platform and Pulpit Aids R. 177 

Plato’s Theory of Education A. 385 

Prentiss (G. L.) R. 362, 363, 556 

Proposed School (The) of Biblical Arcliae- 

ology and Philology in the East A. 

71 

Piinjer (C. G. B.), Grundr. der Religions- 
Philosophie R. 183 


Ragozin (Z. A.), Story of Chaldea. R. 187 
Rationalistic Criticism of the Life of Christ. 

A. 37 

Raymond (G. L.), Poetry as a Representa- 
tive Art R. 183 

Reformation Theology in the Light of 

Modern Knowledge A. 224 

Relation (The) of God to the World. . . A. 1 
Relations of Presbyterians and Episcopa- 
lians of England, 1708 (Pictet)... .S. 132 
Rice (E. W.), People’s Comm, on Mat- 
thew. ... R. 543 

Riggs (J. S.) R. 532 

Robinson (C. S.), Pharaohs of the Bondage 

and the Exodus R. 542 

Rohnert (W.), Die Gnadenmittel.. . .R. 372 

Rosenkranz (J. K. F.), Philosophy of Edu- 
cation..-. R. 383 

Rothe (R.), Still Hours R. 369 

Row (C. A.), Manual of Christian Evi- 
dences R. 554 

Royce (J.), California R. 191 

Rupertus Meldenius and his Word of 

Peace E. 743 

Russell (J. S.), The Parousia R. 750 

Salmond (S. D. F.) R. 551 

Saltus (E.), Anatomy of Negation.. R. 563 

Salvation of Infants, Westminster Doctrine 

of the E. 325 

Grounds for Believing in the. 

E. 526 

How are Infants Saved ?.E. 736 

Sankey (C.), Spartan and Theban Suprem- 
acies R. 185 

Schaff (P.) R. 355, 755. 756 

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 

I. II R- 155, 353 

and Jackson (S. M.), Encyclopaedia 

of Living Divines R. 548 


776 


INDEX. 


Schmid (C. F.), Bibl. Theol. des N. T. 

R. 352 

Schodde (G. H.) A. 16 

Schiirer (E.), History of the Jewish People, 

II., 3 R - 359 

Scientific Speculation A. 617 

Seiffert (F.), Galatians R. 153 

Shedd (W. G. T.) R. 163, 361, 756 

Shur and the Egyptian Wall C. 310 

t Simon (D. W.) A. 569 

Smith (H. P.) R. 150, 338, 347, 536 

Smyth (N.), Old Faiths in New Light. . . R. 

368 

Social Discontent A. 262 

Socin (A.), Arabic Grammar R. 567 

Spurgeon (C. H.), First Healing. ... R. 178 

Pleading for Prayer R. 559 

Stanton (V. H.), Jewish and Christian Mes- 
siah R. 161 

Steinmeyer (F. L.), Hohepriesterliche Ge- 

bet R. 345 

Stellhorn (F. W.), Kurzgef. Worterb. zum 

Griechischen N. T R. 543 

Stephen (L.), Diet. Nat. Biog., VII. .R. 360 
Stinde(J.), Buchholz Family, II.. ..R. 568 
Storer (F. H.), Agriculture, its Relations 

with Chemistry R. 568 

Strack (H. L.), Paradigms to Hebrew 

Grammar R. 565 

und Zockler (O.), Kurzgef. Kommen- 

tar N. T., I. II. R. 345, IV R. 535 

(M.), Aus Sud und Ost R. 550 

Story ( A. H.), Systematic Theology. R. 365 

Synod, Presb. Chh. England E. 733 

Szold (B.), Book of Job R. 150 

Talmage(T. DeW.), Marriage Ring. R. 178 
Taylor (J. W.), Scotland’s Strength and 

Hope R. 161 

(M. C.) E. 715 

(R.) E- 733 

(W. J. R.) A. 395 

Tchernuishevsky (N. G.), Vital Question. 

R. 191 

Thayer (J. H.), Greek-English Lexicon of 

N. T R. 380 

Thompson (R. E.I, Duty of Church in Con- 
flict between Capital and Labor. . . R. 753 
Tiele (C. P.), Babyl. Assyrische Ge- 

schichte, I R. 187 

Timothy, I., Exegetical Notes on..C. 500, 

702 

Tuck (R.), Bible Difficulties R. 149 

Tymms (T. V.), Mystery of God. . . R. 368 


Uhlhorn (G.), Katholicismus u. Protes- 
tantismus gegeniiber d. soc. Frage...R. 

760 

Union and Co-operation in Foreign Mis- 
sions A. 395 

Upton (G. P.), Standard Oratorios.. R. 384 

Van Dyke (H. J.) A. 193, 472 

(J. C.), Principles of Art R. 564 

(Paul) A. 37 

Vass (L. C.), Presb. Chh. in New Bern. 

R. 360 

Vesey(Was) a Puritan Minister ?... H. 491 
Vincent (M. R.), Christ as a Teacher. . . R. 

178 

Word Studies in the N. T., I..R. 747 

Warfield (B. B.).C. 500, 702 ; R. 345, 759 

Introd. to Textual Criticism of N. T. 

R. 541 

Warren (I. P.), Book of Revelation R. 353 


Watson (John) A. 385 

Weidner (R. F.), Bibl. Theol. of O. T...R. 

352 

Weiss (B.), John’s Gospel R. 152 

Einleitung in das N. T R. 336 


Weizsacker (C.), Apostolische Zeitalter.R. 


153 

Welch (R. B.) . . A. 219 ; E. 509 ; R. 155, 

353 

Wells (N. W.) A. 412 

Wentworth (J. B.), Logic of Introspection. 

R. 182 

Were the Apostles Prelates? A. 238 

West (A. F.) R. 186, 383 

Westminster Question Book, 1887.. R. 152 
Wilson (R. D.) R. 567, 768 


Witherow (T.) A. 238 ; E. 334, 724 ; R. 753, 

754 

Witte (L.), Leben Tholuck’s, II R. 357 

Wordsworth (J.), Sanday (W.) and White 
(H. J.), Old Latin Biblical Texts, II . . . R. 


540 

Wright (W. B.), Ancient Cities R. 542 ' 

Wundt (W.), Ethik R. 374 

Zend-Avesta, Part III. (transl. in ‘' Sacred 
Books of the East,” Vol. XXXI.). R. 768 
Zimmels (B.), Leo Hebrsus R. 545 


Zimmern (H.), Babyl. Busspsalmen. R. 187 
Zippel (F.), Populariiat in der Predigt. .R. 

177 

Zockler (0.), Wider d. unfehlb. Wissen- 
schaft R. 759 











































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