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MOVEMENTS 
 
 IN 
 
 RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 
 
MOVEMENTS 
 
 IN 
 
 RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 I. ROMANISM. II. , PROTESTANTISM. 
 III. AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 THREE SERMONS, PREACHED BEFORE THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE IN THE 
 
 LENT TERM, 1879, 
 
 BY 
 
 E. H. PLUMPTRE, D.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON, 
 PREBENDARY OF ST PAUL'S, VICAR OF BICKLEY, KENT. 
 
 "RESPICE, ASPICE, 
 
 ITJHIVERSITY; 
 
 Uonfcon : 
 
 M ACM ILL AN AND COf 
 
 1879 
 
 [ The Right of Translation is reserved. ] 
 
(Eambrfoge : 
 
 PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. 
 AT THB UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
TO 
 
 THE RJEV. J. POWER, D.D., 
 
 MASTER OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, AND VICE-CHANCELLOR. 
 
 DEAR Mr VICE-CHANCELLOR, 
 
 I owe the opportunity of preaching 
 these sermons to the favour of the Syndicate 
 of which you are Chairman. I am indebted 
 to you for much personal kindness shewn to 
 one who was previously a stranger. I trust 
 you will allow me thus to connect your 
 name with the discourses, now that they are 
 published at your request, and that of other 
 Members of the University. 
 
 I am, 
 
 Yours very faithfully, 
 
 E. H. PLUMPTRE. 
 
 BICKLEY VICARAGE, 
 Feb. 19, 1879. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON I. ROMANISM. 
 
 ECCLES. VII. 10. 
 
 Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days- 
 were better than these? for thou dost not en- 
 quire wisely concerning this .... 
 
 SERMON II. PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 S. MATT. xn. 30. 
 
 He that is not with me is against me ; and he that 
 gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. 
 
 S. LUKE ix. 50. 
 
 Forbid him not : for he that is not against us is 
 
 for us . '39 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 SERMON III. AGNOSTICISM. 
 ACTS xvn. 23. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE 
 UNKNOWN GOD. 
 
 ROM. i. 19. 
 
 That which may be known of God is manifest in 
 
 them 78 
 
UNIVERSITY' 
 
 I. ROMANISM. 
 
 ECCLES. VII. 10. 
 
 Say not tJiou, What is the cause that the 
 former days were better than these? for 
 thou dost not enquire wisely concerning 
 this. 
 
 THERE is a strange modernness of thought 
 and feeling in these confessions of the Preacher. 
 That sense of the weariness of a confused and 
 disordered life ; that sentence of 'Vanity of 
 vanities' written on all man's pains and plea- 
 sures, pursuits and aims 1 ; that blase cynicism 
 as to the existence of any true disinterested 
 goodness in man or woman 2 ; that absence of 
 any clear faith in the future of Israel or of 
 mankind all this is divided by a whole 
 
 1 Eccles. passim. 2 Eccles. vii. 28. 
 
 P. S. I 
 
2 Romanism. 
 
 heaven from the life of patriarchs, prophets, 
 psalmists, with which, as by the seeming ac- 
 cident of history, it is now associated. We 
 seem carried into a time when men were drift- 
 ing away, under the pressure of new problems 
 and new thoughts, from the moorings of their 
 ancient faith, and had not yet found, in the 
 midst of the wild waves of doubts and diffi- 
 culties which were surging round them, a safe 
 anchorage or the desired haven. We need 
 not, for our present purpose, enquire into the 
 elate and authorship of the Book. Whether 
 it represents the conflict, in the mind of the 
 historical Son of David from whom it pur- 
 ports to proceed, between the traditional faith 
 which he had inherited from his fathers, and 
 the largeness of heart which came from con- 
 tact with other systems of belief and worship ; 
 or belongs, as some have thought, to a far 
 later period in the history of Semitic culture, 
 when the teachers of the Garden and the 
 Porch had brought before the mind of some 
 restless thinker other thoughts of God and 
 life, and the chief end of life, than those which 
 
Romanism. 3 
 
 had sustained the souls of an earlier genera- 
 tion 1 ; this, at any rate is clear, that the aim 
 and purpose of the book seems to be to por- 
 tray the shiftings and oscillations of a time 
 when the old order is passing away and the 
 new is not developed in its completeness ; 
 when men go to and fro in devious ways, in 
 many wanderings of thought. We hear the 
 "two voices" of Scepticism and Faith 2 ; the 
 latter heard in feeble protests, unwilling to let 
 slip the hope which yet it cannot firmly grasp ; 
 the former uttering itself in loud reiterated 
 murmurs, that the world is out of joint, that 
 man knows nothing, or but very little, of the 
 whence and whither of his being, that a 
 balanced scepticism and an upright life are 
 well-nigh all that he can aim at as a guide in 
 the tangled intricacies of the labyrinth of life ; 
 
 1 The dates that have been assigned to the Book take a 
 sufficiently wide range from circ. B.C. 992, on the assump- 
 tion of Salomonic authorship, still maintained by many critics, 
 to B.C. 200, as fixed on independent grounds by Hitzig and 
 Mr Tylor. 
 
 2 The words remind us of Tennyson's poem, " The Two 
 Voices," which, taken together with his "Palace of Art," is, 
 practically, though with no apparent consciousness of following 
 in the same track, the best commentary on Ecclesiastes. 
 
 I 2 
 
4 Romanism. 
 
 that, at the best, he can only fall back on 
 the belief that behind the surface disorders of 
 the world, there is working silently, slowly, 
 surely, an Eternal order, that will one day 
 bring to judgment every secret work, whether 
 it be good or evil. (Eccles. xii. 13, 14.) 
 
 It is almost a truism that there have been 
 periods in the history of human thought of 
 which this floating, transitional, unsettled state 
 of feeling has been eminently characteristic. 
 It was so when the old faiths of Greece or 
 Rome had yielded to the subtle and pervad- 
 ing influence of Stoic and Epicurean systems 
 and to the scepticism which was engendered 
 by the conflict of those systems. It was so in 
 the sixteenth century, when mediaeval theology 
 came into collision with the revived paganism, 
 and the critical questioning temper of the 
 Renaissance 1 . It was so, in our own country, 
 
 1 The scepticism of the Renaissance period had its chief 
 representatives in Italy among the circle of scholars gathered 
 round Lorenzo de Medici at Florence, and who, after watch- 
 ing the attempts of some of their number, like Mirandola and 
 Ficino, to Platonize Christianity, fell into the general license 
 of thought and life which was rebuked by Savonarola. In 
 Giordano Bruno it found a quasi-pantheistic development. It 
 
Romanism. 5 
 
 in the eighteenth century, when men were led, 
 through utter weariness of Calvinistic and 
 Arminian controversies, of questions about 
 vestments and positions, to the free thought 
 which transformed Anglicans into Latitudina- 
 rians, and Presbyterians into Socinians, and 
 led others to a cold and naked Deism 1 . It 
 will hardly be questioned that the times in 
 which we are now living present many analo- 
 gous phenomena. There is an uneasy feeling 
 
 was popularized by Montaigne in France, and has left traces 
 of its influence in England in the teaching as to the indiffer- 
 ence of Creeds against which the Eighteenth Article. of the 
 Church of England is a protest. 
 
 1 Chillingworth is memorable as the leader of the van- 
 guard in this progress to a wider range of thought than that 
 which had been dominant, in one phase under Whitgift and 
 Abbot, in another under Laud. Stillingfleet, Taylor, Burnet, 
 Tillotson, represent its later development within the Church 
 of England. Baxter, in his later years, cast off much of the 
 dogmatism of his earlier life, and became the forerunner of 
 the movement which culminated in the great Conference of 
 Presbyterians, Independents and Baptists at Salter's Hall in 
 1721, when the first of these three bodies for the first time 
 rejected the principle of subscription to Creeds and Articles, 
 and committed itself to the current of speculative thought 
 which ended in transforming nearly the whole body into 
 the modern Unitarians. Of the wide scepticism of the 
 time Mr Pattison's paper on the "Tendencies of Religious 
 Thought in England, 1688 1792," in Essays and Reviews, 
 gives the best accessible account. 
 
6 Romanism. 
 
 that we are living in a transition state and 
 that an unknown future is opening to us. 
 Two great religious movements, tending in 
 opposite directions, have run their course, and 
 seem, in part at least, to have lost their earlier 
 strength. Criticism has opened new fields of 
 enquiry as to the authority of the sacred 
 books, and the nature and measure of the 
 inspiration which men had hitherto ascribed 
 to all alike with an unquestioning reverence. 
 The science which deals with the organic 
 world has opened vistas of a boundless past 
 of almost illimitable aeons, during which man 
 and the dwelling-place of man have been alike 
 evolved from lower and more rudimentary 
 forms. The science which deals with the his- 
 tory of human thought has traced a like evo- 
 lution in the religious history of mankind, 
 and notes affinities between systems of faith 
 and worship where before we had only recog- 
 nised contrasts. We learn to talk of Semitic 
 tendencies where before we accepted a revela- 
 tion of the Lord. From many quarters and 
 in many different voices, some grave with the 
 
Romanism. 7 
 
 serenity of wisdom, some flippant with the 
 superficial levity of a half-knowledge, we are 
 told that we have ignorantly worshipped 
 dreaming of Him or It as even such an 
 One as ourselves that which after all must 
 remain for ever as the Unknown and Unknow- 
 able, and which there is now no Prophet or 
 Apostle to declare to us. Within the circle 
 of those who have not as yet listened to the 
 voice of the charmer, who would fain stop 
 their ears to the unwelcome words that rob 
 them of their vision of peace and seem to 
 lead them only to the blank darkness of the 
 abyss, there is yet a sense of disquietude and 
 distress. They ask, as they look back upon 
 the past, each school from its own standpoint, 
 contrasting it with the present, why the former 
 days were better than the latter. They sigh 
 for the golden age of faith in which their 
 fathers had rested, trusting in the guidance of 
 the Book that could not err, or in that of its 
 equally infallible interpreter 1 . 
 
 1 It is needless to give references for the verification of 
 phenomena which meet our eyes at every turn in the floating 
 literature of the day. It would be enough to give a broad- 
 
8 Romanism. 
 
 It is at once a necessity and a duty at such 
 a time, for those who take any higher view of 
 life than that of acquiescence in the routine 
 of the little world in which they live, to look 
 before and after, to choose their own path, 
 and endeavour to solve, or to recognise as 
 insoluble, the problems which they have to 
 face. The question, Who will shew us any 
 good ? is one which many hearts are asking. 
 The work of the preacher, now, as in the 
 days of Ecclesiastes, is to answer that ques- 
 tion as of the ability which God giveth, 
 reading, as far as he may, the lessons of the 
 past, recognising the facts of the present, 
 looking forward to that future which in its 
 dim uncertainties awaits alike communities 
 and individual souls. The Respice, Aspice, 
 Prospice of St Bernard may well be taken 
 as a watchword both for the speakers and 
 the hearers at such a time and in such a 
 
 cast passim over the whole ground occupied by the Nine- 
 teenth Century, the Westminster, Contemporary and Fort- 
 nightly Reviews, and the Pall Mall Gazette. The nobler 
 leaders of thought will be recognised as I may have occasion 
 to cite their actual words. 
 
Romanism. 9 
 
 place as this. And recognising what are, 
 at least, the dominant forces that are acting 
 upon you to whom I speak, and drawing 
 you in this or that direction, the survey 
 which those words imply will bring before 
 us in succession the systems which repre- 
 sent the two great divisions of Christian 
 thought, with which we are practically con- 
 cerned, and the forms of thought which lie 
 outside the range of Christendom and which 
 present themselves in the form either of 
 positive denial or of an Agnostic scepticism. 
 Romanism, Protestantism, Unbelief will come 
 before us, that we may ask what claims each 
 has on our regard, what lessons the history 
 of each teaches what course it is our wisdom 
 to take in regard to each of them. 
 
 One word, however, has to be said before 
 we enter on that enquiry, and it concerns us 
 all very nearly. The warning of the preacher, 
 " Thou dost not enquire wisely concerning 
 these things," though we may not accept it 
 blindly as shutting out all such trains of 
 thought as profitless, is not without signi- 
 
io Romanism. 
 
 ficance. It is wise to learn the lessons which 
 God has taught mankind through the ex- 
 perience of the past wise to remember that 
 even the systems of theology which men 
 have deduced from Scripture, or which have 
 been developed by influences apart from 
 Scripture, require to be tested and tried by 
 the teaching of the history of the Church 
 of Christ. It is not wise that we should 
 enter on that enquiry in the temper of a 
 regretful idolatry of the past, or forget that 
 we are called to live and act in the pre- 
 sent. Each one of us belongs to a nation, 
 a Church, a College, a neighbourhood, a 
 family, in which, however limited the range 
 of his influence, he may be a power for evil 
 or for good. Each one of us has an earthly 
 life which is capable of growth and discipline 
 till it ripens into life eternal or ends in the 
 shame and misery of an eternal failure. Each 
 has been called to inherit the blessing of 
 being a child of God, redeemed by the blood 
 of Christ from the vain and fruitless life 
 which would otherwise have been his por- 
 
Romanism. 1 1 
 
 tion. And if as yet, in the doubt and per- 
 plexity of these latter times, which we feel 
 to be not better but worse than the former, 
 we fail to grasp these higher thoughts, and 
 they, too, seem to float in the cloudland of 
 dreams and speculations, this, at least, you 
 know and feel, that there lies before every 
 one of you, at every moment of his life, the 
 power of speaking truth and falsehood, of 
 doing good or evil, of feeling love or hatred, 
 and there is a voice within your souls 
 speaking, as the Master spoke of old, "with 
 authority and not as the scribes 1 ," bidding 
 you to refrain from the evil and to seek the 
 good: at least, giving its warnings, even if 
 you do not see how they are to be fulfilled, 
 of a judgment which shall render to every 
 man according to his works, and bring to 
 
 1 The philosophy of Kant is, perhaps, less studied now 
 than it was some forty or fifty years ago. Yet it is well to 
 recall the stress laid by him on the 'categorical imperative,' 
 the authoritative command, Thou shalt or Thou shalt not, 
 heard in the depths of consciousness as the foundation of all 
 ethics, and to remember that his teaching on this point was 
 recognised by Dr Pusey (Historical Enquiry, p. 165) as 
 "an initiating instructor" (the ircuSayuyos of Gal. iii. 24) 
 "leading men to Christ." 
 
1 2 Romanism. 
 
 light the counsels of all hearts. The life of an 
 unwilling scepticism ought to be more than 
 most lives, one of honest labour, and self- 
 reverencing purity, and thoughtful care for 
 others for that such a life is true and noble 
 is the one gleam of light which it has to 
 guide it in the tangled labyrinth in which 
 its lot is cast. It is not without a deep 
 significance that the counsels of the preacher 
 who had, far back in the history of thought, 
 anticipated the doubt and weariness of these 
 later ages should be summed up in the rule 
 of life, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to 
 do, do it with thy might." " Fear God and 
 keep His commandments, for that is all that 
 man has to do 1 ." For those who cannot as 
 yet rise to the higher laws : " Do all to the 
 glory of God," " do all in the name of the 
 Lord Jesus 2 /' those twin precepts may well 
 be received as being, what indeed they are, 
 oracles of God. 
 
 I return to the main enquiry which now 
 lies before us. We ask, as we look back 
 
 1 Eccles. ix. 10, xii. 13. 2 i Cor. x. 31; Col. iii. 17. 
 
Romanism. 1 3 
 
 upon the past history of Christendom upon 
 the records of the last three hundred years of 
 our own branch of Christendom, upon the 
 currents of thought and feeling within the 
 horizon of our own lives, what is the secret 
 of the power exercised by that system which 
 seems from one standpoint to belong to the 
 former things that have passed away, and 
 from another to retain an unexhausted vitality 
 of existence ? What, we ask, is the spring 
 and source of this renewed energy? What 
 are the attractions and what the claims 
 of the Church of Rome on us who are not 
 her children with what convictions, sym- 
 pathies, hopes or fears, should we look on her 
 teaching and her policy? 
 
 We may enter on that enquiry without 
 bitterness and without prejudice. There is 
 no need for opening old wounds or reiterating 
 the phrases which belong to a time of con- 
 troversy when men wrote and spoke in the 
 heat of a passionate conflict. "Idolatry to 
 be abhorred of all faithful Christians," " blas- 
 phemous fables and dangerous deceits," the 
 
14 Romanism. 
 
 exclusion from the heavenly Jerusalem of 
 all who do not forsake what we look upon 
 as the mystical Babylon 1 these we may 
 well regard as involving more than we would 
 willingly say now in the light of a wider 
 experience and a larger charity. They keep 
 their place in our formularies, because it is 
 not easy to alter them without the risk of a 
 process which might be destructive of much 
 besides, and of which we cannot be sure that 
 it would be followed by a wise reconstruc- 
 tion. We may acknowledge freely, while we 
 protest against errors of doctrine, and corrupt 
 worship, and unfounded claims, and unscrupu- 
 lous intrigue, that Rome has yet been in 
 times past as "the light of the wide West 2 " 
 
 1 Art. XXXI. Riibric in Communion Office. Homily 
 against Peril of Idolatry, Part in. Hooker, in his contro- 
 versy with Travers, appears almost as the earliest champion 
 of wider and more charitable thoughts (Walton's Life, ed. 
 Keble, I. p. 56). There are, I imagine, few bishops or theo- 
 logians of repute who would willingly use such language now. 
 
 2 The words have the interest of coming from an early 
 poem of J. H. Newman's : 
 
 "And next a mingled throng besets the breast 
 
 Of bitter thoughts and sweet; 
 
 How shall I name thee, 'light of the wide West'; 
 Or 'heinous error-seat'?" Lyra Apostolica, CLXX. 
 
Romanism. 1 5 
 
 the home of saints leading many souls 
 to Christ. She, too, has had her martyrs 
 and confessors who did not count their lives 
 dear unto them so that they might finish 
 their course with joy ; her mission preachers 
 who have carried the cross of Christ into 
 far-off heathen lands; her witnesses to holi- 
 ness and purity and humility and love, who 
 have been as lights shining in the world. To 
 admit all this is to make no fatal or unwise 
 concession. For not even this, though it 
 may show that truth has not been altogether 
 lost nor the grace of God's Spirit forfeited, 
 can turn error into truth, or change the weight 
 of evidence, or be accepted as a set-off against 
 manifold corruptions. 
 
 There can be little doubt that, at least in 
 these latter times, the secret of the fascination 
 which Rome has exercised even on men of 
 widest culture and subtlest intellect, still more 
 on those who are weak and ignorant and un- 
 stable, is found in the prevalent scepticism 
 which marks a period of transition. It is not 
 a happy, hardly even a pleasant, state to be in 
 
1 6 Romanism. 
 
 for one who is conscious of a craving after 
 truth, who would fain have something certain 
 to rest on who yearns, it may be, for a greater 
 measure of assurance than is compatible with 
 the limits of our knowledge. To that appe- 
 tite sometimes healthy, sometimes morbid 
 Rome appeals. She assumes that it is the 
 purpose of God not only that each soul should 
 have sufficient light for its guidance, if it will 
 live by the light it has, through the chances 
 and changes, the duties and dangers of our 
 life, but that there should be for all the means 
 of attaining to an unerring judgment on all 
 questions which the speculative intellect may 
 raise as to the being of God and His dealings 
 with mankind. And she claims, almost as if 
 the very magnitude of the claim carried with 
 it its own attestation, to give that unerring 
 guidance. She points to the infinite variations 
 of creed among those who rest on Scripture 
 only as a proof that there is no adequate 
 certainty to be found there. In her latest 
 developments she abandons the appeal to an 
 unbroken tradition, and to the authority of 
 
Romanism. \ 7 
 
 the Church as represented in her councils, and 
 rests on the personal infallibility of the so- 
 called successors of St Peter, speaking ex 
 cat/iedrdy as the one rock on which our faith 
 can rest in the midst of the wild whirling sea 
 of conflicting theories and doubts. "Roma 
 locuta est; causa finita est" are her last words 
 to the nations and Churches of Christendom. 
 Beyond her limits, there is no safety; scarcely, 
 except on the plea of invincible ignorance 
 and uncovenanted mercies, the shadow of a 
 hope 1 . 
 
 We ask, unless we are fascinated by the 
 very magnitude of the claim, on what grounds 
 it rests, and we find that the evidence offered 
 is at every stage inadequate. There is the 
 promise made to Peter, and it is assumed that 
 he is the rock on which the Church was to be 
 
 1 The language, and perhaps the thoughts, of Romish 
 divines has of late shewn that the Zeil-Geist has penetrated 
 even where the doors and windows were most closely barred 
 against it, and in their hands, as in those of Anglicans, the 
 plea of " involuntary ignorance and invincible prejudice" is 
 tolerably elastic. It must not be forgotten, however, that the 
 dogma against which the whole of Chillingworth's Religion 
 of Protestants was directed was that "Protestantism unre- 
 pented of destroys salvation." 
 
 P.S. 2 
 
1 8 Romanism. 
 
 built, that he and not Christ is the foundation 
 and the chief corner-stone 1 . It is assumed 
 
 1 Matt. xvi. 1 8, 19. I may perhaps venture to quote the 
 substance of a note giving what seems to me the true mean- 
 ing of what has been for centuries the subject of endless 
 controversies. "What then is the rock (Trtrpa.) which is dis- 
 tinguished from the man (irtrpos) ? Was it Peter's faith 
 (subjective), or the truth (objective) which he confessed, or 
 lastly, Christ Himself? Taking all the facts of the case, the 
 balance seems to incline in favour of the last view : (r) Christ, 
 and not Peter, is the Rock in i Cor. x. 4, the Foundation in 
 i Cor. iii. n, the Corner-stone in Eph. ii. 10, and in 
 St Peter's own teaching (i Pet. ii. 6, 7). (2) The poetry of 
 the Old Testament associated the idea of the Rock with the 
 greatness and steadfastness of God, not with that of a man 
 (Deut. xxxiii. 4, 18; 2 Sam. xxii. 3, xxiii. 3; Ps. xviii. 2, 31, 
 46; Isai. xvii. 10). (3) As with the words which, in their 
 form, present a parallel to these, 'Destroy this temple' 
 (John ii. 19); so here, we may believe the meaning to have 
 been indicated by significant look or gesture. The Rock on 
 which the Church was to be built was Christ Himself, in the 
 mystery of that union of the Divine and the Human which 
 had been the subject of St Peter's confession. Had Peter 
 himself been meant, we may add, the simpler form, 'Thou 
 art Peter, and on thee will I build my Church,' would have 
 been clearer and more natural. As it is, the collocation 
 suggests an implied contrast; 'Thou art the Rock- Apostle, 
 and yet not the Rock on which the Church is to be built. It 
 is enough for thee to have found the Rock, and to have 
 built on the one Foundation.' What follows as to ' the keys 
 of the kingdom of Heaven,' and the power to bind and to loose, 
 is, as is shewn in the notes that follow, equivalent to the 
 recognition of the disciple's faith as qualifying him for the 
 office of a scribe ' instructed for the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 bringing out of his treasure things new and old' (Matt. xiii. 
 52), declaring, as Hillel and Shammai had declared, but 
 
that that promise conveyed to him a 
 infallibility, and that that infallibility was to 
 be transmitted to his successors, and that those 
 successors are to be found only in the Bishops 
 of Rome. The respect paid in the early ages 
 of the Church to the Bishop of the imperial 
 city is transformed into an admission of his 
 absolute authority. The influence exercised 
 by the higher culture and central position of 
 the Church of Rome over the half-barbarous 
 nations of mediaeval Christendom an in- 
 fluence strengthened by what we may freely 
 recognise as a true missionary activity and the 
 witness borne for a divine order against the 
 tyranny of brute force and secular domina- 
 tion is treated as if it could give the sanction 
 of the consensus of at least European Chris- 
 tianity to a fantastic interpretation of Scrip- 
 ture and a false reading of antiquity. The 
 claim resolves itself at last into the a priori 
 assumption that there must be an infallible 
 
 with a higher authority resting on divine gifts, what precepts 
 of the law or traditions of the elders were, or were not. of 
 permanent obligation." See Bishop Ellicott's New Testament 
 Commentary in loc. 
 
 2 2 
 
2O Romanism. 
 
 guide somewhere, and that the only church 
 which assumes to be such a guide must ipso 
 facto be warranted in its assumption. The 
 earth rests on the elephant, and the elephant 
 on the tortoise, and the tortoise rests not on 
 the eternal rock of fact, but on the cloudland 
 of a dream. 
 
 The counter argument from scripture or 
 from history shatters the edifice which has 
 been raised on this unsubstantial and shadowy 
 foundation 1 . Whatever prominence may be 
 given to Peter in the history of the Apostolic 
 Church, it is that gained by energy, activity, 
 great gifts and greater love, and not by any 
 freedom from error or supreme authority. No 
 trace of either is found in the primitive re- 
 
 1 His name stands, it is true, at the head of the list of the 
 Twelve in the Synoptic Gospels and the Acts, but that it is 
 but %& primus inter pares, and that the promise of Matt. xvi. 
 18 was not thought of as conferring more than this, is shewn 
 by the fact that it was after this that the two sons of 
 Zebedee came with their request to sit at their Lord's right 
 hand and His left in His kingdom (Matt. xx. 20, a i ; 
 Mark x. 35), and that there were two disputes which was 
 greatest (Luke ix. 47, xxii. 24). The emphatic words 
 ''Many that are first shall be last, and the last first" (Matt. 
 xix. 30), might well seem to rebuke any claim, to a personal 
 and permanent primacy of power. 
 
Romanism. 2 1 
 
 cords of the Church of Christ. The impulsive, 
 wayward disciple during our Lord's ministry 
 on earth, now venturing on the troubled sea, 
 and now sinking through his want of faith 1 , 
 uttering words which indicate an almost child- 
 like ignorance of the Lord's mind and pur- 
 pose 2 , denying, in the paroxysm of a coward 
 fear, Him whom he had acknowledged to be 
 the very Son of the living God, having the 
 words of eternal life this is surely not what 
 we should have pictured for ourselves as the 
 Apostle who was to present to men the type 
 of an unerring steadfastness. The Pentecostal 
 gift brought doubtless to him as to others, but 
 not to him more than others, wider thoughts 
 and a new illumination, but the old vacilla- 
 tion and infirmity remained, and the Apostle 
 by whom the door of faith had been opened 
 to the Gentiles, was condemned alike by the 
 feeling of the Church and by the mouth of 
 one to whom had been given a larger wisdom 
 than his own 3 . In his conferences with that 
 
 1 Matt. xiv. 28 31. 
 
 2 Matt. xv. 15, xvi. 22, xvii. 5, xviii. 21. 
 
 3 "I withstood him to the face, because he had been con- 
 demned (3n Ka.Ttyv<>)<T/ji.ti>os TIV)" Gal. ii. n. 
 
22 Romanism. 
 
 other Apostle he appears as receiving, not as 
 imparting, the full truth of the mystery of 
 God and the universality of His kingdom 1 . 
 In the first great controversy which threatened 
 to break up the unity of the Church there is no 
 appeal, as, on the Roman theory, there should 
 have been, to his decision as final and supreme. 
 He speaks, it is true, wisely and rightly, but it 
 is as one debater among many, and the decision 
 rests not with him, but with the Apostles and 
 elders and the lay members of the Church 2 . 
 
 It seems almost surplusage of argument 
 to go beyond this, but it may be added, that 
 even if the position of St Peter had been 
 other than it was, there is not one jot or tittle 
 of evidence in the writings of the New Testa- 
 ment or those of the age that followed it, to 
 connect him with the pastoral superintendence 
 of the Church of Rome. The foundation of 
 that Church is traceable not to him or to 
 St Paul but to obscurer and less honoured 
 
 1 Gal. ii. 2, 6. 
 
 3 Acts xv. 7, 14, 23. As Peter, according to the Romish 
 hypothesis, had already entered on the years of his Episco- 
 pate in the imperial city, this absence of any recognition of his 
 supreme authority is all the more striking. 
 
Romanism. 23 
 
 preachers of the truth, perhaps to Aquila or 
 Andronicus or Junias 1 , perhaps to workers of 
 whose very names not a record has come down 
 to us. Had he assumed a supreme authority 
 in that Church he would have been, to use his 
 own expressive term, as an dXXorpcoeTrla- 
 /coTTo? 2 , a bishop in a diocese not his own, even 
 as those who claim to be his successors have, 
 as in the strange irony of history, shewn 
 themselves to be d\\oTpioe7rl(rtcoTroi in every 
 Church in Christendom. The history of those 
 
 1 It is a natural inference from the absence of any records 
 of Aquila' s conversion, as well as from his immediate readi- 
 ness to fraternize with St Paul, that he already shared the 
 Apostle's faith, and this at least falls in with the hypothesis, 
 now generally received, that the expulsion of the Jews from 
 Rome was connected with tumults in which the name of 
 Christ (which we recognise in the " impulsore Chresto " of 
 Suetonius (Claud, c. 25) had been bandied to and fro 
 between opposing parties. Of Andronicus and Junias we 
 know that they were Roman Christians, and that their conver- 
 sion to the faith had preceded the conversion of St Paul, and 
 must therefore have been earlier than the persecution which 
 culminated in the death of Stephen (Rom. xvi. 7). The 
 chief opponents of Stephen, it will be remembered, were the 
 libertini, or emancipated Jews, and proselytes from Rome 
 who had a synagogue at Jerusalem (Acts vi. 9), and there are 
 some reasons for connecting the martyr himself with the 
 imperial city. See Bishop Ellicott's Commentary on Acts vi. 5. 
 
 2 i Pet. iv. 15. 
 
24 Romanism. 
 
 successors, the work they have done for good 
 or evil, in the history of the Church is, I need 
 scarcely say, incompatible with the claim. 
 Popes have lapsed into what other Popes have 
 condemned as heresy. They have stultified 
 themselves by flagrant contradictions on facts 
 of criticism or history 1 . Personal vices or a 
 persistent policy of ambition and intrigue 
 may, perhaps, be theoretically compatible 
 with an official infallibility, assuming its exist- 
 ence to be proved, but they are but unsatis- 
 
 1 The more familiar cases are those of Liberius, who 
 subscribed the Arian Creed at the third Council of Sirmium 
 (A. D. 357), and Honorius, who was condemned as holding 
 the Monothelite heresy by the sixth General Council at 
 Constantinople (A.D. 680), and by his successor Leo II. 
 Other instances will be found in the volume on The Pope and 
 the Council by the writer who took the nom de phime of 
 Janus. The advocates of Rome have, of course, a case 
 which they maintain, with more or less ability, against the 
 verdict of history, but the one fact which emerges, even ad- 
 mitting the success of efforts to whitewash the individual 
 Popes, is that no one then dreamt of the office as identified 
 with infallibility. The well-known Belhim Papale of the 
 Sixtine and Clementine editions of the Vulgate, each stamped 
 with an ex cathedrd authority, and containing some 3000 
 variations in their texts, remains as a witness that the claim 
 which had by that time been made could not bear the test of 
 even superficial criticism. (See Dr Westcott's Article, 
 Vulgate, in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.} 
 
Romanism. 25 
 
 factory accompaniments of its possession, 
 and are poor credentials of the mission of one 
 who assumes to speak as the oracle of God. If 
 the test " by their fruits ye shall know them" is, 
 in any measure, a true test, there are, at least, 
 many in the long list of Pontiffs who must 
 take their place among the false prophets who 
 are as ravening wolves, and not among the 
 preachers of righteousness and the witnesses 
 for the truth. And it is a singular outcome 
 of the claim to be the one witness and keeper 
 of the Word of God, the one interpreter of 
 its mysteries, that no church in Christendom 
 has done so little for settling the Canon or 
 unfolding the meaning of Scripture as the 
 Church of Rome, that none in that Church 
 have done so little as its long line of Bishops 1 . 
 We might have expected the one pattern- 
 
 1 Chillingworth's answer to the argument drawn by 
 the advocates of Rome from the difficulties of Scripture, and 
 the consequent necessity for some authorized and unerring 
 interpreter, is pointed enough to deserve quotation. If the 
 Pope possesses this power, he asks, why does he not write a 
 Commentary? "Why not seat himself in cathedrd, and 
 fall to writing expositions upon the Bible for the direction of 
 Christians to the true sense of it?" Religion of Protestants, 
 I. n. 95- 
 
26 Romanism. 
 
 scribe instructed to the kingdom to have 
 brought forth from his treasure "things new 
 and old." As a matter of fact he has too often 
 closed the doors of the treasure-house against 
 those who were seeking to enter in ; he has 
 brought out, not the pearls and precious 
 stones of truth, but the rubbish of the false 
 Decretals and of wildly fantastic interpreta- 
 tions 1 . . The work of settling what books were 
 entitled to canonical authority, what text of 
 those books was authentic, was left in earlier, 
 as in later times, to private judgment, work- 
 ing on the data supplied by history and 
 criticism. Councils followed in the wake of 
 
 1 No thoughtful student of Scripture will take a low 
 estimate of the work done by many individual interpreters of 
 the Church of Rome. The names of Aquinas and de 
 Lyra, of Maldonatus and Estius, of Cornelius a Lapide 
 and Calmet, are worthy of all honour. But when we pass 
 from these " particular persons, " following Butler's method, 
 to the writings of the Bishops of Rome, we have to fall back 
 upon such expositions as we find, e.g. in the Bull " Unam 
 Sanctam" of Boniface VIII., in which the "two great lights" 
 of Gen. i. 16 are made to represent the spiritual and tem- 
 poral powers as impersonated in the Pope and the Emperor, 
 and the Magna Moralia of Gregory I., in which the seven 
 sons of Job represent the "ordo praedicantium^ and his 
 three daughters the "multitude audientium" 
 
Romanism. 27 
 
 scholars and confirmed their decisions 1 . The 
 work of interpretation has from the first been 
 carried on, as it will be to the end, not by 
 Popes or Councils, but by the exercise of the 
 individual intellect guided, in greater or less 
 measure, by the illumining grace of the 
 Eternal Spirit; dwelling on the meaning of the 
 words and the sequence of thoughts, on the 
 character, environment, and purpose of the 
 writer whom we interpret ; or, to use Butler's 
 words, " in the same way as natural knowledge 
 is come at, by the continuance and progress of 
 learning and of liberty; by particular persons 
 attending to, comparing and pursuing, intima- 
 tions scattered up and down it, which are over- 
 looked and disregarded by the generality of the 
 world. For this is the way in which all improve- 
 
 1 When it is said that we receive Scripture on the 
 authority of the Church, it should be remembered that the 
 work of Melito of Sardis, of Origen, of the author of the 
 Muratorian Fragment, of Eusebius of Caesarea preceded the 
 earliest authenticated lists drawn up by the Council of 
 Laodicea (circ. A. D. 363) and the third Council of Carthage 
 (A.D. 397). The actual order is in accordance with the 
 natural course of things, and not with that demanded by 
 a hypothesis : (r) general currency and acceptance, (2) indi- 
 vidual scrutiny, (3) authoritative determination. 
 
28 Romanism. 
 
 ments are made ; by thoughtful men tracing 
 on obscure hints, as it were, dropped us by 
 nature accidentally, or which seem to come 
 into our minds by chance." (Anal. II. 3.) 
 
 It cannot be doubted, however, that, as a 
 matter of fact, the Roman Communion has 
 exercised influences of another kind over 
 minds differently constituted from the en- 
 quirers who seek simply for intellectual cer- 
 tainty. The long history that stretches back 
 into the remote past the wide extent of her 
 sway and the apparent unity that rests on 
 her central authority the stately impressive- 
 ness of her ritual, affecting the imagination 
 through the senses and the emotions through 
 the imagination the provision which she 
 makes for sin-burdened consciences by her 
 system of confession and absolution the 
 hope which she offers to those who mourn 
 for their dead, of a remedial and purifying 
 discipline after death bringing to complete- 
 ness the holiness without which no man shall 
 see the Lord, and which, when their earthly 
 course was finished was but incomplete and. 
 
Romanism. 29 
 
 almost rudimentary the high ideal of saintly 
 and self-devoted life which has been aimed 
 at and not seldom realised, in her religious 
 communities of men and women all this, we 
 know but too well, has exercised its power 
 of fascination over weak and unstable natures ; 
 sometimes, we must admit, over those whom 
 we could not so describe without an arrogant 
 injustice. But to those who are, in greater 
 or less measure, under the influence of these 
 attractions, we may say that, so far as they 
 are legitimate in their action, they are not the 
 exclusive heritage of Rome, that it is to her 
 misuse of them that we may largely trace 
 the neglect of them which has, it may be, 
 too largely characterised the Churches that 
 have separated from her. It has been one, 
 at least, of the gains, balancing some serious 
 drawbacks, of the so-called Catholic revival 
 of the last fifty years that it has given a 
 brighter and more joyous character to our 
 worship ; that it has taught us that Art in all 
 its manifold applications to sight and hearing 
 may legitimately be employed to stir up the 
 
3O Romanism. 
 
 dull minds of men to soar heavenwards even 
 on the wings of sense, that we have learnt 
 from it that the highest act of Christian wor- 
 ship, that which is the witness of our com- 
 munion and fellowship with all who name 
 the name of Christ on earth, and with the 
 saints who have passed to their eternal home, 
 with angels and archangels and all the com- 
 pany of Heaven, need not be in its outward 
 accompaniments the most cold and lifeless 
 act of all 1 . It has led men, if not always 
 wisely, yet with an earnestness which deserves 
 all praise, to feel that the ministry of souls 
 involves something more than sermons how- 
 ever earnest, and calls for the personal con- 
 
 1 I am not, of course, defending any special form of 
 ritual, still less any which is at variance with the decisions 
 of the tribunal which, whether we admit the force of its 
 reasonings or not, is for us, as English Churchmen, at least 
 for the present, the authoritative exponent of the Rubrics of 
 the Prayer-Book. But it is impossible to compare the type 
 of worship which now prevails among us with that which was 
 all but universally dominant till within the last forty years, 
 without feeling that there has been a great change for the 
 better, and that this has been wrought out by those who at 
 nearly every stage have had to encounter the brunt of sus- 
 picion and distrust, sometimes even of mob violence and 
 irritating prosecutions. 
 
Romanism. 3 1 
 
 tact of mind with mind and heart with heart, 
 for the outpouring of the confession of the 
 sin-burdened soul and the words of comfort 
 and counsel that bring home to the penitent 
 the assurance of pardon and absolution 1 . It 
 
 1 I have stated elsewhere, in a Sermon on Confession and 
 Absolution, the reasons which lead me to look on this element 
 in the work of the ministry as belonging to its prophetical 
 rather than its priestly character. The "drawbacks" to 
 which I refer are, I need scarcely say, the tendency which 
 has shewed itself among those who adopt the practice to 
 follow the guidance of Romish casuists, like Dens or Liguori, 
 rather than that of the wiser masters of the School of Con- 
 science, and to dwell with a minuteness, prurient in its results, 
 if not in its intention, as in the too conspicuous instance of 
 the Priest in Absolution, on the "things done in secret," of 
 which "it is a shame to speak." That tendency one may 
 deplore and protest against, but in the popular outcry raised 
 on the strength of it against the practice of Confession, from 
 the journalism of the Clubs and the oratory of platforms to 
 the street-hawkers of pamphlets with suggestive extracts, I 
 find nothing that can deserve our sympathy, much that I 
 cannot regard as other than the product of the hypocrisy 
 which is content that the things in question should be done so 
 long as they are not spoken of. It is not an exaggeration to 
 say that there is a greater element of corruption in any one of 
 the thousand provincial newspapers which are published, 
 week by week, without let or hindrance, than in the work 
 which became a nine days' wonder. It is surely an unsatis- 
 factory outcome of Protestantism that it should prefer that 
 those who have fallen into sensuous sins should "open their 
 grief" to the counsellors who thus invite their confidence 
 rather than pour out their sorrow and shame to the ministers 
 of Christ. See an interesting Article on Confession by Dr 
 Cornell in the Contemporary Review for March, 1879. 
 
3 2 Romanism. 
 
 has in many ways revived the idea and the 
 practice of associated and consecrated labour 
 for God's glory and the good of men in 
 fraternities and sisterhoods and guilds, with- 
 out the snare of vows of perpetual obligation. 
 It has given a new impetus to the Church's 
 mission work, both as evangelising the heathen 
 in far-off lands and preaching Christ to those 
 who, though they live and die under the very 
 shadow of the Churches, have lapsed into a 
 practical heathenism and need to be taught 
 what are the first principles of the oracles of 
 God. Mingling with a current of thought, 
 which in its main drift, started from a differ- 
 ent quarter, and flows in an opposite direc- 
 tion, it has led us to look into the dim region 
 that lies behind the veil with a wider hope 
 than our fathers dared to cherish, and to be- 
 lieve that there also, wherever there is yet 
 the capacity for a higher life, the everlasting 
 Love is not willing that any should perish 
 but that all should come to repentance 1 . 
 
 1 I refer, of course, to the "wider hope" which cherishes 
 the thought that the education of the soul, that it may be fit 
 
Romanism. 
 
 No, we do ill, even looking at 
 her best and brightest side, to ask impatiently 
 and unwisely, why the former days were better 
 than the latter. And, on the other side of 
 the account, she comes before the tribunal of 
 History and of Truth heavily weighted with 
 many serious charges from which even the 
 subtlest eloquence of her advocates will find it 
 hard to clear her. She has darkened counsel 
 by words without knowledge, and in her en- 
 deavours to formulate the fact of Christ's 
 spiritual presence with His people, has over- 
 shadowed it with the cumbrous theories of 
 substance and accidents that belong to an 
 obsolete philosophy. She has pushed those 
 theories to their logical result in practice, and 
 has called men to acts of adoration, of which 
 it is hard to say, even while we shrink from 
 the harsh words of condemnation which our 
 
 for the mansions of its Father does not cease at the moment 
 of death, and that there may be behind the veil new stirrings 
 of repentance and apprehensions of the truth and growth 
 in holiness, of which Mr Maurice was, if one may so speak, 
 the proto-martyr, and which has since been advocated in 
 various forms by Mr Wilson, Mr Kingsley, Professor Grote, 
 and Dr Farrar. 
 
 P. S. 3 
 
34 Romanism. 
 
 fathers thought themselves justified in using 
 in the heat of conflict, that they do not bring 
 with them at least the peril of idolatry, i.e. of 
 the substitution of the symbol for the thing 
 symbolised, of a sensuous for a spiritual wor- 
 ship. She has taught men practically to trust 
 to the intercession, the patronage, the pro- 
 tection of created mediators who, in their 
 turn, have been presented as objects of de- 
 votion through outward forms, in painting or 
 in sculpture 1 . She has by her doctrine of 
 
 1 The "Monstra teesse Matrem" of the hymn in the Office 
 of the Blessed Virgin is strong enough as an illustration of 
 the tendency of which I speak, but it has been shewn that it 
 is but as the germ of a monstrous growth of Mariolatry which 
 is practically becoming more and more the religion of France 
 and Italy and Spain. Proofs enough and to spare may be 
 found in Dr Pusey's Eirenicon or an anonymous pam- 
 phlet, written, I believe, by the late Rev. W. E. Jelf, 
 A Review of Mariolatry (Rivingtons, 1869). It is not with- 
 out interest to note that the extracts given by Dr Pusey from 
 works published with more or less authority from Roman 
 Catholic Bishops, and in wide use throughout their flocks, are 
 enough to move even Dr Newman to language almost as 
 strong as any Protestant could desire: "I consider them cal- 
 culated to prejudice enquirers, to frighten the unlearned, to 
 unsettle consciences, to provoke blasphemies, to work the 
 loss of souls....! know not to what authority to go for them 
 to Scripture, or to the Holy Fathers, to the decrees of 
 Councils, or to the consent of Schools, or to the tradition of 
 the faithful, or to reason" (Letter to Dr Pusey, pp. 120, 121.) 
 
Romanism. 35 
 
 purgatory and her practice of indulgences 
 turned the Gospel message of pardon and 
 peace into a narcotic for the conscience not 
 seldom into a source of ill-gotten gain and 
 an instrument of spiritual oppression. She 
 has accustomed men to a worship in a speech 
 which they cannot understand, into which 
 they at least cannot enter with the fulness of 
 thought and speech which is found only when 
 men pray in the language in which they 
 think, and, as if reversing the Pentecostal 
 wonder, has decreed that they should not 
 hear, every man in his own tongue, wherein 
 they were born, the wonderful works of God. 
 If Protestant Churches and sects have shared 
 with her, as they have but too largely shared, 
 in the guilt of a persecuting intolerance, upon 
 her rests the blame of having led the way, of 
 having made men accept almost as an axiom, 
 from which it required centuries of freedom to 
 clear their ' long-abused vision/ that religious 
 error is a crime, to be punished like other 
 crimes, of having carried that principle age 
 after age to results by the side of which all 
 
 32 
 
36 Romanism. 
 
 other acts of persecution dwindle into in- 
 significance 1 . 
 
 1 The first blood shed in the name of religious truth was, 
 it may be noted, that of Priscillian, a Spanish Bishop, who 
 had embraced some form of Manichaean or Gnostic opinion, 
 and was put to death by the usurper Maximus (A.D. 385). 
 The employment of the civil sword was condemned in 
 strong and earnest terms by St Ambrose and St Martin of 
 Tours, the former of whom refused to communicate with the 
 Bishops who had been the advisers of the act or sharers in it. 
 The Bishop of Rome, however, Leo II., sanctioned the fatal 
 principle of recourse to the secular arm. The Church, 
 "quae, etsi sacerdotali contenta judicio, cruentas refugit 
 ultiones, severis tamen Christianorum principum constitu- 
 tionibus adjuvatur, dum ad spiritale nonnunquam recur- 
 runt remedium, qui timent corporale supplicium" (Milman's 
 Latin Christianity, B. II. c. 4). In that fatal "nonmtn- 
 quam" that sacrifice of the law of Christ for the chance of 
 an uncertain gain, we find the germ-cell (to return once 
 more to the metaphor naturally suggested by the Theory of 
 Development) out of which have come in terrible succession 
 the slaughter of the Albigenses, the Auto-da-fes of Spain, the 
 massacre of St Bartholomew, the fires of Smithfield, the 
 Dragonna.des under Louis XIV., the long torturing tyranny 
 of the Inquisition. How hard it was to throw off the incubus 
 of the irpwTov \f/evSos we find but too plainly in the action of 
 Anglican Reformers under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, of 
 Calvin in the execution of Servetus, of Scotch Presbyterians, 
 and the Courts of the Star Chamber and High Commission. 
 Perhaps, however, the crowning instance of the power of the 
 evil demon to return even to the house from which it had been 
 cast out is seen in Chillingworth. He, who in the Religion 
 of Protestants had claimed an almost unlimited freedom, and 
 written strongly against the persecuting policy of the Church 
 of Rome, came within a few short years to "count it a 
 greater happiness than God had granted to his chosen ser- 
 
Romanism. 37 
 
 I know not how far any of you may have 
 felt the power of that spell which has fasci- 
 nated not a few ardent and eager spirits, 
 which has led some to fear and some to hope 
 that the tide was turning, and that the wave 
 which we had watched in its slow retreat for 
 three hundred years, was creeping in again 
 in creeks and bays, and was about to sub- 
 merge once more many fair fields of thought 
 and action. I have not sought to speak in 
 accents of alarm still, less to urge the policy 
 of jealousy and suspicion, which originates 
 in panic and does but augment the danger. 
 But we cannot close our eyes to the fact that 
 the danger exists. The former days will, in 
 a time of bewilderment and controversy and 
 doubt, seem to some better than the latter. 
 And therefore, I trust I shall not seem to 
 have misused the opportunity which has been 
 given me, by urging those who have listened 
 to the voice of the charmer, to reconsider that 
 
 vants in the infancy of the Church that we now have the 
 sword of the civil magistrate, the power and enforcement of 
 laws and statutes, to maintain our precious faith against all 
 heretical and schismatical oppugners thereof" (Sermons >\i, 15). 
 
38 Romanism. 
 
 conclusion. There is a heavy onus probandi 
 
 \ 
 
 on all resolves to abandon the position in 
 which God has placed us before we have 
 made full proof of all the openings it presents 
 for the advancement of our own spiritual life, 
 and the welfare of those among whom we 
 are called to work. England, and the Church 
 which is identified with the life of England, 
 are, for us at least, the Sparta which God 
 has given us to beautify and set in order, 
 and it would be ill done to desert our post 
 and to take our flight on the wings of scep- 
 ticism into the abysmal depths of supersti- 
 tion. 
 
II. PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 S. MATT. xn. 30. 
 
 He that is not with me is against me ; and 
 he that gathereth not with me scattereth 
 abroad. 
 
 S. LUKE ix. 50. 
 
 Forbid him not : for he that is not against us 
 is for us. 
 
 IT is obvious that the two utterances which I 
 have read seem, at first sight, to tend in 
 opposite directions. The one might well 
 become the basis of a wider and more com- 
 prehensive Catholicity than any Church of 
 Christendom has as yet attained to. The other 
 might appear to sanction the most rigorous 
 measures to enforce uniformity, and to repress 
 every form of schism and dissent. We need, 
 
4 Protestantism. 
 
 in the enquiry on which we enter to-day, yet 
 more in the part which every one of us will 
 some day have to play in relation to parties 
 within the Church's pale or to sects outside it, 
 to interpret rightly what Bacon has well called 
 these "cross-clauses of the league of Chris- 
 tians 1 ." It is, for good or evil, the character- 
 istic feature of Protestantism that it has been 
 fruitful in these variations. It has been 
 marked, if one may so speak, by the hyper- 
 trophy of individualism, as the history of the 
 Church of Rome has been marked by its 
 suppression. 
 
 It will be noted as a help to a right under- 
 standing of our Lord's words that both the 
 passages which I have cited were spoken 
 primarily in connexion with the work of cast- 
 ing out demons. I need not now enter into 
 the vexed question of the nature of that 
 demoniac possession. It is enough for our 
 present purpose to recognise its phenomena 
 without involving ourselves in any disputable 
 theory of causation. Those phenomena are, 
 
 1 Bacon's Essays, ill. Of Unity in Religion. 
 
Protestantism. 41 
 
 beyond dispute, identical with many that we 
 now connect with the idea of morbid condi- 
 tions of brain or nerve, of spiritual states that 
 lie on the very verge of insanity. There is a 
 strange dualism in the nature which should 
 be at unity within itself. Alternate paroxysms 
 of fear and hate, and love and adoration a 
 preternatural insight and a reckless disregard 
 of the conventional restraints of life wild or 
 ceaseless cries, or persistent and sullen si- 
 lence these are the features that present 
 themselves even to the most superficial reader 
 of the Gospel records 1 . On these our Lord 
 looked as with an infinite compassion, and 
 made it one chief object of His work to heal 
 the evils which thus met His gaze. And it 
 was seen that His word was with power. The 
 disorder was, in the main, spiritual, and yield- 
 ed to spiritual and not to physical remedies. 
 The loving look the gracious welcome the 
 recognition of the true humanity which lay 
 beneath the wild conflict of the legion of 
 
 1 See Trench on the Miracles, v. The Demoniacs in the 
 country of the Gadarenes ; or Excursus on Matt. viii. 28 in 
 Bishop Ellicott's New Testament Commentary. 
 
42 Protestantism. 
 
 tempestuous passions these had power to 
 cast out the demon forces, and to change the 
 wild howling maniac into a disciple, sitting at 
 the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right 
 mind ; to bring to the fevered spirit the peace 
 and the sweet sleep which no poppies or man- 
 dragora could have ministered. And what 
 the Lord Jesus did Himself, that He taught 
 His disciples also to do. It was His first 
 commission to them, that, as they preached 
 the Gospel of the Kingdom, they were to heal 
 the sick and to cast out devils. Their chief 
 ground of joy when they returned was that 
 even the devils were subject to them through 
 His Name. Their exultation had its counter- 
 part in His joy. He saw in this the pledge 
 and earnest of His future victory over the 
 powers of evil He beheld as in vision Satan, 
 " as lightning, fall from heaven," cast out from 
 his usurped dominion in the "heavenly places" 
 of the mind and will of man 1 . 
 
 Those who saw or heard of this work 
 looked on it, the Gospel records tell us, with 
 
 1 Matt. x. i; Mark iii. 15; Luke x. 17, 18; Eph. vi. 12. 
 
Protestantism. 43 
 
 widely different feelings. The Scribes and 
 Pharisees felt no sympathy with it. It mat- 
 tered not to them whether the Gadarene 
 demoniac remained in chains and fetters, 
 howling in the tombs, or returned to his own 
 home as in the peace of God. What did 
 matter was that the power was exercised by 
 One who was not of their school and had 
 rebuked their hypocrisy. They stood aghast 
 at the proof thus given of the presence among 
 them of a spiritual power mightier than their 
 own. That it was a spiritual, preternatural 
 power they could not, even from their own 
 stand-point, deny, and they ventured on the 
 horrible paradox that the good work was 
 wrought by the Power of Evil, that the libera- 
 tion of the human spirit from its bondage had 
 its source in the subtlety of the great oppressor. 
 " He casteth out devils by Beelzebub," was 
 their solution of the problem which presented 
 itself. On the temper that thus judged there 
 was passed the sentence, " He that is not with 
 me is against me, and he that gathereth not 
 with me scattereth abroad." It approximated, 
 
44 Protestantism. 
 
 with an awful nearness, to the sin of intense 
 persistent antagonism to goodness as such, 
 slandering and resisting it, which, in its ulti- 
 mate development, excludes forgiveness be- 
 cause it excludes repentance 1 . In the great 
 warfare of Christ against the power of evil, 
 the end and aim of which was to rescue those 
 who had been held as captives, and gather 
 them into His Father's house, there could be 
 no real neutrality. He that did not help to 
 gather, whose heart beat with no yearning 
 sympathy for those who were wandering and 
 lost, was practically perpetuating the isolation 
 and the misery which Christ sought to over- 
 come. On others, however, what they heard 
 of the works of the Christ produced a differ- 
 ent impression. It stirred up dormant sym- 
 pathies and roused into energy powers that 
 had been latent. They too would use the 
 prayer of faith and the Name that was mighty 
 above all names, that so they might deliver 
 those who had, it may be, for long years of 
 their life, been subject unto bondage. They 
 
 1 Matt. xii. 24 32; Mark iii. 11 30; Luke xi. 14 20. 
 
Protestantism. 45 
 
 looked on the frenzied demon-haunted souls 
 whom they met, with a compassion like that 
 of Christ. And their words too were mighty 
 and prevailed. Peace and calmness took the 
 place of restless agitation 1 . The man was 
 gathered into the fold of that humanity from 
 which he had strayed into the howling wilder- 
 ness. Those who so worked had not as yet 
 we know not for what reason joined them- 
 selves to the company of the disciples that 
 followed Jesus, but they shewed by using 
 His name that they believed in Him, and by 
 the purpose for which they used it that their 
 mind was one with His. And therefore when 
 the disciples sought to make that outward 
 union an essential condition of any recogni- 
 
 1 Mark ix. 38; Luke ix. 50. It is obvious that whatever 
 we understand by "casting out devils" was actually accom- 
 plished by those whom the disciple (St John) sought to 
 restrain from working. This was true also, it would seem 
 from our Lord's reasoning in Matt. xii. 27; Luke xi. 19, of 
 the " children" or disciples of the Pharisees. To them also, 
 if they were single-minded in their purpose, and used the 
 name of the Most High God, not, like the vagabond exorcists 
 of Ephesus, as a spell or charm, but in humility and faith, 
 prayer brought a spiritual power to deliver which was 
 mighty to prevail against spiritual evil. 
 
46 Protestantism. 
 
 tion of those who were thus working, they 
 were met with words, which, under the form 
 of a paradox, presented the opposite pole of 
 the self-same truth. He that was not against 
 Christ in that warfare with evil who was 
 actually engaged in the conflict, though it 
 might be in skirmishes that lay outside the 
 plan of the regular campaign, was really an 
 ally and not an enemy to be welcomed, not 
 to be condemned. It was not among such as 
 these that one would be found who would 
 "lightly speak evil" of Him. 
 
 The "cross clauses" of the league of 
 Christians are thus seen to receive their prac- 
 tical interpretation, not, as Bacon suggests 1 , in 
 
 1 Bacon's Essays, m. "Both these extremes" (the zeal 
 of the persecutor and Laodicean lukewarmness) "are to be 
 avoided; which will be done, if the league of Christians 
 penned by our Saviour Himself were in the two cross-clauses 
 thereof soundly and plainly expounded, * he that is not with 
 us is against us,' and again, ' he that is not against us is with 
 us': that is, if the points fundamental, and of substance, in 
 religion, were truly discerned and distinguished from points 
 not merely of faith, but of opinion, order and good intention. 
 This is a thing may seem to many a matter trivial and done 
 already j but if it were done less partially, it would be em- 
 braced more generally." The concluding words form a me- 
 lancholy comment on many memorable passages in the con- 
 
Protestantism. 47 
 
 a company of divines sitting round a table 
 and examining which of the formulated after- 
 thoughts of theology are to be classed as 
 essential or non-essential, fundamentals or 
 things indifferent, but in looking to the tem- 
 per in which men are acting and the work 
 wh>eh they are doing. Are they casting out 
 devils, or slandering and thwarting those who 
 do cast them out ? Are they warring, to 
 extend the principle in a way which all will 
 surely recognise as legitimate, against the 
 demon passions that desolate and make havoc 
 of all that is best and noblest in man's nature 
 against lust and hate and falsehood, against 
 pride and injustice and oppression ? If so, 
 the word of command still goes forth from 
 the Lord of the Churches, " Forbid them not, 
 for he that is not against us is for us." Are 
 they among the upholders of traditional 
 prejudices, the sneerers at enthusiasm, the 
 
 troversies of Christendom. It would have been well for the 
 Church at large, for our own National Church in particular, 
 if this teaching had been more acted on, but there is after all 
 "a more excellent way" even than moderation in fixing 
 "fundamentals." 
 
48 Protestantism. 
 
 cavillers at details, among those who never 
 hear of any earnest work for the souls of 
 men without asking the Cuibono? of a cynical 
 suspicion ? For them, as for those who said 
 of Christ that He cast out devils by Beelzebub, 
 there is the condemnation, " He that is not 
 for us is against us." 
 
 The truth thus established is manifestly 
 not without its bearing on our thoughts and 
 feelings, even as to the system of the Church 
 of Rome. There also we find, and may give 
 God thanks that we do find, those who, not 
 without success, have given themselves, in 
 this form or in that, to the work of casting 
 out devils. There also, for the most part in 
 her high places of authority, we find those 
 who have condemned men who were doinq 1 
 
 o 
 
 that work, almost in the very words in which 
 the Pharisees condemned our Lord. We 
 need, as far as lies in our power, to recognize 
 the distinction between the two classes. 
 Where we find, as in such characters as St 
 Dominic, and Carlo Borromeo, and Francis 
 
Protestantism. 49 
 
 de Sales 1 , a strange blending of the two con- 
 trasted elements, a warm tender illumined love 
 of souls mingled with a zeal, not according to 
 knowledge, against the error or the truth which 
 they looked on as hateful heresy, we must be 
 content to leave the judgment which History 
 shrinks from pronouncing, to Him before 
 whom the secrets of all hearts are as an open 
 scroll from whom even the persecutor may 
 obtain the mercy which he has refused to 
 others, on the ground that he has acted igno- 
 rantly and in unbelief, not slighting conscience 
 but misled by an invincible prepossession. 
 
 We must feel, however, when we turn from 
 the one vast system with its centralised unity 
 to the manifold sects and parties which popu- 
 larly come under the common category of 
 
 1 I write the two names not without reluctance, but it 
 must be remembered that both were among the most ener- 
 getic leaders of the Anti-Reformation party in the sixteenth 
 century, that Borromeo was the main author of the Catechism- 
 which popularised the teaching of the Council of Trent, and 
 that he brought the Jesuits into Switzerland ; and that the 
 70,000 converts whom the Bishop of Geneva was said to have 
 brought back from the heresy of Calvin to the bosom of the 
 Church were not gained altogether without the use of the 
 secular arm of the Duke of Savoy. 
 
 P. S. A 
 
53 Protestantism. 
 
 Protestantism, that we need the balanced 
 teaching of the twin precepts more than ever 
 to direct our judgment and to guide our con- 
 duct. For you to whom I speak, that is the 
 one chief lesson to be learnt. There is pro- 
 bably not one of you who has felt, or ever 
 will feel, called on to discuss the question 
 whether it is his duty to become a Wesleyan 
 or a Congregationalist. How you are to 
 judge and act towards Wesleyans and Con- 
 gregationalists is a question which you can 
 scarcely ignore with safety at any stage on 
 your work, as laymen or as clergymen. 
 
 I do not care to dwell at length on the 
 question which has been raised, whether the 
 Church of which we are members is itself 
 rightly described as Protestant. Historically 
 it may be true that the epithet is not alto- 
 gether a happy one. In its origin it had little 
 or no dogmatic significance. In its next 
 stage it implied the acceptance of the Confes- 
 sion of Augsburg as distinct from those of 
 the Reformed Churches of France or Switzer- 
 land agreement with Luther and Melancthon 
 
Protestantism. 5 1 
 
 rather than with Calvin and Bcza. In the 
 wider range of connotation which it ulti- 
 mately acquired it expressed little more than 
 the negation of such errors as were distinctive 
 of the Roman Communion. It has never 
 been adopted by the Church of England in 
 any formal statement of her position. If, at 
 one time, it was accepted almost boastfully 
 by some of her most conspicuous teachers 
 by those even whom we regard as representa- 
 tives of her more Catholic aspects, by Laud 
 and Cosin no less than by Chillingworth and 
 Tillotson, the title has lost something of its 
 greatness by passing to viler uses 1 . It has 
 
 1 The Edict of Worms (A.D. 1521) had condemned 
 Luther in the strongest possible terms, and ordered rigorous 
 measures to be taken throughout the Empire against him and 
 his followers. At the Diet of Spires (A.D. 1526) the Reform- 
 ing party obtained an unanimous decree suspending the 
 operation of that Edict, and urging a general Council as 
 necessary for the peace and order of the Church. At the 
 Second Diet of Spires (A.D. 1529) the Anti-Reform party, bv 
 a majority, repealed the decree of the First and thus restored 
 the Edict of Worms to full activity. Against this decree six 
 Princes and the deputies of fourteen imperial cities protested, 
 partly on constitutional, partly on religious grounds. The 
 name Protestants, first applied to them as so acting, soon 
 spread to their followers. The earliest instance of its wider 
 use beyond the limits of Germany with which I am acquainted 
 
 42 
 
5 2 Protestantism. 
 
 been made the plea for the intolerance of 
 statesmen and the violence of mobs, and the 
 panic and prejudices of the ignorant 1 . Those 
 who were sunk in a life of worldliness, or who 
 looked on the Established Church from a 
 
 is in Ridley's speech on his trial: "Yea, I protest, call me 
 Protestant who will." It probably grew in popularity under 
 Elizabeth, and Bacon (Observations on a Libel} speaks of the 
 " protestantical Church of England" as though it were a recog- 
 nised phrase. The title of Chillingworth's book shews that 
 it was adopted by the high Anglican party whom he repre- 
 sented. Charles spoke of himself as a " Protestant king." 
 Laud claimed the title for himself and Andrewes (Speech on 
 his Trial}. Cosin, in his will, expressed his yearning after 
 outward communion, his actual heart-communion, with foreign 
 " Protestants." The term was struck out of an address pre- 
 sented to William III. by a vote of the Lower House of the 
 Convocation of Canterbury, but retains its place in the 
 Coronation Service in the promise of the Sovereign to main- 
 tain the "Protestant religion." 
 
 1 We look back with a half-sad, half-contemptuous won- 
 der at the time when English Protestantism turned to Lord 
 George Gordon, or Lord Eklon, or the Duke of Cumberland 
 as its leaders, when tl e Duke of York's "So help me God !" 
 speech was printed in letters of gold as if it had been an 
 oracle from heaven. Are we quite certain that we are better 
 than our fathers? The surplice riots at Exeter and St 
 George's in the East, the recent scenes at Hatcham, the 
 organised action of an Association which exists only for the 
 purpose of promoting prosecutions about the " mint, anise 
 and cummin" of obscure and obsolete rubrics, will not be 
 bright spots for the future historians of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury to dwell on. 
 
Protestantism. 
 
 political standpoint, simply as Established. 
 have sheltered themselves under the profession 
 of a zeal for its Protestant doctrines. At the 
 best, the word carries with it a simply nega- 
 tive aspect, and no mere negation can be 
 an adequate bond of unity. There may be 
 something to be said, however unattainable 
 the ideal may be, for the dream of a union of 
 religious societies on the basis of a common 
 Christianity, but the basis of a common 
 Protestantism is, of all things, the most 
 shadowy and unsubstantial. We may feel, as 
 indeed we ought to feel, respect and gratitude 
 for those who, in past times, bore the burden 
 and heat of a conflict in which we too were 
 sharers, but an alliance, offensive and defen- 
 sive, requires, as a condition of permanence, 
 something more than hostility to a common 
 foe. We may recognise, with no grudging 
 acceptance of the fact, that the tone of the 
 dogmatic formularies of the Church of Eng- 
 land is eminently protestant against the errors 
 of that of Rome. We do well to avoid all 
 supercilious scorn in our treatment of a word 
 
54 Protestantism. 
 
 which was once honourable, and stirred the 
 hearts of men like a trumpet, calling them to 
 battle, but we need to add another term to it 
 in order that it may define our position with 
 any adequacy. Catholic first, and then be- 
 cause Catholic, protestant against the coun- 
 terfeit of Catholicity, is the only legitimate 
 description of the position which our Church 
 occupies in its relation to this controversy. 
 
 Leaving this question of words and names, 
 we pass on to ask what have been the main 
 characteristics for good or evil, of those to 
 whom, as having these at least, in common, 
 the name of Protestant has been applied ; 
 how far it is in our power to refuse the evil 
 and to choose the good ; how we ought to deal 
 with those who seem to us to have chosen the 
 evil as well as the good, and perhaps in larger 
 measure. It seems a true statement of these 
 characteristics, true almost to the verge of 
 being a truism, that they are found in the 
 tendency to individualism, which in greater 
 or less measure, has been found in these 
 societies, or in extremest cases, in solitary 
 
Protestantism. 5 5 
 
 thinkers who take their stand outside all so- 
 cieties. The right of the individual intellect 
 to be the interpreter of Scripture, instead of 
 accepting an interpretation given as authori- 
 tative by Pope, or Council, or Fathers, to go 
 beyond this, and to judge of the evidence on 
 which the authority of Scripture, or any part 
 of Scripture, itself rests, of the grounds on 
 which we believe in the existence of God 
 and of a Divine order resting on His will ; 
 this has been the distinguishing feature of 
 the great movement which we recognise by 
 the name of Protestant. If it has been sup- 
 plemented, as in many cases it has been, by 
 including the work of the Spirit as guiding 
 and illumining the reason, which, left to itself, 
 was admitted to be inadequate to the task 
 of discerning the mysteries of God, it has still 
 been left to the individual intellect to deter- 
 mine how far it possesses that illumination. 
 
 It will hardly be questioned here that 
 this emancipation of the minds of men from 
 their long thraldom to an authority which 
 might, at least, be usurped, resting on no 
 
56 Protestantism. 
 
 legitimate foundation, was an immense step 
 forward in the right direction. It was to 
 theology what the recognition of the rights of 
 the people was in the political history of the 
 time. It stirred men to activity of thought 
 and earnest enquiry instead of a blind acqui- 
 escence in the order which they found ex- 
 isting, or in the traditions which they had 
 inherited from their fathers. It impressed 
 them with the sense of a new responsibility 
 as seekers after truth. If it brought new pro- 
 blems and doubts and difficulties before their 
 minds, it gave them at the same time courage 
 to face those difficulties, and led them into 
 the right path of investigation in the hope of 
 a solution. It recognised that God reveals 
 Himself to man through Reason, and Con- 
 science, and Experience, no less really, though 
 it might be less fully, than through Scripture 
 and the Church, and taught men that the 
 knowledge gained by that first Revelation 
 was the test by which they were to judge 
 of the meaning and credentials of the second. 
 Even those who still urged the claims of au- 
 
Protestantism. 57 
 
 thority as against the endless variations of 
 private judgment felt the power of the move- 
 ment, and were compelled to give a new cha- 
 racter to their arguments. Every plea for 
 the infallible authority of Pope, or Church, 
 or Scripture had to be submitted to the 
 Reason which men were seeking to persuade 
 to acknowledge its own impotence. Its free- 
 dom was recognised up to the point when, in 
 one supreme exercise of volition, it was to 
 determine that it would be no longer free, and 
 would thenceforth submit its judgment to the 
 self-imposed power of the tribunal which it 
 had learnt to look upon as final. 
 
 We, in this place, shall hardly question 
 that the gain of the movement which was 
 thus characterised has more than balanced 
 any incidental loss. Even if it had been 
 otherwise, if the loss of unity, of peace, of the 
 sense of certainty had been greater than 
 it has been, it would still remain true that 
 freedom is a nobler state than bondage, 
 that there is a truer unity than that 
 which rests on absolute uniformity in creed, 
 
5 8 Protestantism. 
 
 that it is wrong, and not right, for the indi- 
 vidual soul to disinherit itself of the gifts 
 which it has received from God in order to 
 avoid the responsibilities which those gifts 
 bring with them. But the test "By their 
 fruits ye shall know them" may be challenged 
 without fear, as applicable not less to systems 
 of thought and methods of enquiry than it is 
 to individual teachers. The whole body of 
 Apologetic literature in which the last three 
 centuries have been fruitful beyond all com- 
 parison with any past period of the history of 
 Christendom, and which has never been richer 
 and more effective than in our time, what is 
 it but the outcome of this recognition of what 
 has been rightly called the "verifying faculty 1 " 
 
 1 I borrow the phrase from Dr Rowland Williams'* paper 
 on Bunseris Biblical Researches in Essays and Reviews 
 ( p. 83). It was much attacked at the time by those who were 
 alarmed at the tendency of that volume, and Augustine's 
 maxim "A> corrigat aeger me.dicamenta sua" was quoted 
 against it. But it will be admitted that even the sick man 
 chooses his physician according to the best evidence he can 
 obtain, and that if he has not before him the prescription for 
 his own individual case, but an unclassified Pharmacopoeia, 
 he must exercise his discernment in deciding what medica- 
 inenta are suitable for his own maladies or those of others. 
 
Protestantism. 59 
 
 within us, of Reason as the lamp which God 
 has kindled in each man's soul, in order 
 that by following its light, and living by it, 
 we might attain to the perception of the 
 higher light which He has manifested in 
 Christ. If it had been from the first, the duty 
 of a Christian to give to every man who 
 asked him a " reason of the hope" that was in 
 him 1 , "an answer with meekness and fear," 
 a duty which implied the right of the ques- 
 tioner to ask that reason, we may say with- 
 out boasting overmuch, that, at least on the 
 intellectual side of the argument as distinct 
 from the living personal experience, which 
 translates arguments into realities and con- 
 firms outward evidence by that of the spirit 
 within us, no age has been so well furnished 
 as our own, with weapons, offensive and 
 defensive, from the armoury of God ; that it 
 is an inestimable gain, both as regards the 
 attainment of truth and the maintenance of 
 peace and goodwill in human societies, to 
 have substituted these weapons for those of 
 
 1 i Pet. iii. 15. 
 
60 Protestantism. 
 
 the older warfare, for the rack, the scaffold 
 and the stake, or, where men did not dare to 
 venture on these, for political and social dis- 
 qualifications. 
 
 Still greater, if possible, is the debt which 
 we owe to the essential principle of Pro- 
 testantism in its work on the interpretation 
 of the writings whose claim to be the 
 Oracles of God has thus been vindicated. 
 In proportion as it has been true to itself, 
 men have entered the house of the interpre- 
 ter, and have passed through its richly gar- 
 nished chambers and have brought out from 
 its treasures things new and old, as well 
 instructed scribes. It is not too much to say 
 that under this method, we have made dis- 
 coveries in the region of sacred literature no 
 less than in that of natural science. Scripture 
 has been seen to be a library and not a book 1 ; 
 each volume in that library has been studied, 
 
 1 The idea was indeed latent in the old title of the Vul- 
 gate, Biblia Sacra, the plural noun which came in mediaeval 
 Latinity to be taken as a feminine singular, and was expressed 
 by the term Bibliotheca, which Jerome himself applied to it, 
 and which was freely used by writers of the Anglo-Saxon 
 Church. 
 
Protestantism. 6 ( 
 
 as other books are studied, as having a his- 
 tory and meaning of its own, fashioned by the 
 mind of the writer, and the environment in 
 the midst of which he lived, and the teaching 
 which he had received from God. Each 
 sentence in every book has received a new 
 meaning, because it has been no longer treated 
 as one of a great collection of texts to be 
 used in controversy, or as rules of life, but as 
 part of an organic whole. The application 
 of the results of the accurate study of lan- 
 guage, of history, of character, of psychology, 
 has thrown light upon much that before was 
 dark, and it is almost a truism to say that 
 the life and words of Christ or of St Paul, 
 of Abraham or David or Isaiah, have been 
 brought before men in this age of ours with a 
 clearness and vividness which were unknown 
 to our fathers. You in this University may 
 well count it as one of your special titles to the 
 reverence of the English people that you, in 
 the nineteenth century as in the seventeenth, 
 have been foremost in this work, that you 
 can claim as your children, not a few of the 
 
6 2 P rote stan tism. 
 
 most eminent of those who have acted on the 
 principle of Protestantism in the temper* of 
 Catholicity, among whom I may perhaps 
 venture to-day to recognise as one of the 
 noblest of that goodly company, not of the 
 ' chief thirty ' only, but of the ' first three/ the 
 teacher whose loss you will soon deplore, 
 while the Church at large welcomes his entry 
 on a new region of activity for his well trained 
 powers 1 . 
 
 Evil has, however, it cannot be denied, 
 been mingled with the good. This assertion 
 of individualism, of the right of private 
 
 1 This sermon was preached on the Sunday after Dr 
 Lightfoot had been designated as Bishop Baring's successor 
 in the See of Durham. One who belongs to the sister 
 University may freely recognise, without detracting from its 
 special merits, the work which Cambridge has done from the 
 sixteenth century downwards in the criticism and interpre- 
 tation of Scripture. The list is a long one, and it will be 
 sufficient to name among those belonging to the past, Cran- 
 mer, Ridley, Latimer, Rogers (the translator of the Bible), 
 Davenant, Fulke, the elder Lightfoot, Poole (of the Critici 
 Sacri and Synopsis), Walton (of the Polyglot Bible), Bishop 
 Marsh ; and of those who come within our own times, Alford, 
 and Wordsworth, and Trench, and Ellicott, and Maurice 
 (though here Oxford may claim a share), and Scrivener, and 
 Perowne, and Farrar, and Howson, and Cook, and Lightfoot, 
 and Hort, and Westcott. 
 
Protestantism. 63 
 
 judgment as such, as distinct from its recog- 
 nition as a duty, for which we need, as for 
 other duties, a special preparation, and 
 which brings with it very solemn responsi- 
 bilities, has had in the region of man's 
 religious life, somewhat of the same disinte- 
 grating effect as the assertion of the abstract 
 rights of men has had in political society. 
 The right so asserted has been exercised in 
 the spirit of self-will, without the deference 
 which is due, in this, as in all regions of in- 
 quiry, from those who do not think and study 
 to those who do, from the scholars of the 
 lowest form to the masters of those who know, 
 from the solitary dreamer to the consensus of 
 those who look before and after. Men have 
 claimed a direct illumination, as giving them 
 not only a sufficient light by which to live, 
 and so leading them to holiness, but as ena- 
 bling them to understand all mysteries and all 
 knowledge. They have inverted Augustine's 
 ingenuous confession, Errare possum; hcereti- 
 cus esse nolo, and taking for granted that they 
 could not err, they have assumed a position of 
 
64 Protestantism. 
 
 aloofness from the Church which marked 
 them out, as in the true sense of the word, 
 heretical. The results of this spirit are seen, 
 I need not say, in the history of those varia- 
 tions over which Romish controversialists 
 have raised their song of triumph in schisms 
 and disputes about the infinitely little, which 
 should lie below man's care, or the infinitely 
 great, which lies above his ken in the loss of 
 all, or nearly all, sense that Christ came not 
 only to redeem this soul and that from the 
 penalty of sin, but to gather the souls so 
 redeemed into a great society with a corporate 
 and perpetual life, with memories stretching 
 back into the past, and hopes reaching for- 
 ward to the future. The " dissidence of Dis- 
 sent 1 " has taken in men's thoughts the place 
 of the Communion of Saints, and the one 
 question which each one has been taught to 
 ask himself has been " Am / saved from ever- 
 
 1 The characteristic watchword, for many years, of the 
 Nonconformist newspaper. It has now, however, been with- 
 drawn. Giitta cavat lapidem, and the sa-pe cadcndo of Mr 
 Matthew Arnold's gentle iteration would seem to have 
 achieved its victory. 
 
Protestantism. 65 
 
 lasting torments" rather than "am I living as 
 a child of the Kingdom, a citizen of the 
 heavenly City?" 
 
 Not seldom, also, in the history of Protest- 
 antism, has it proved untrue to itself. It had 
 rejected the authority of an infallible Pope or 
 an infallible Church, but the spirit which it 
 had cast out returned, and instead of believ- 
 ing, in the quietness and confidence of faith, 
 that the Word of God would prove itself to 
 be true to those who tried it rightly, it assum- 
 ed that the books that contained that Word 
 were infallible in all things. It condemned 
 in advance, as impious and unbelieving, all 
 conclusions in history or science which seemed 
 at variance with any part of its teaching all 
 expansions in doctrine, or discipline or ritual 
 which could not be found in some definite 
 form within its pages. Lavishing what Hooker 
 has well called "incredible praises" 1 on Holy 
 
 1 Hooker, Eccl. Polity, II. VIII. 7. " And as incredible 
 praises given unto men do often abate and impair the credit 
 of their deserved commendation; so we must likewise take 
 great heed, lest in attributing unto Scripture more than it 
 can have, the incredibility of that do cause even those things 
 which indeed it hath most abundantly, to be less generally 
 esteemed. 
 
 p. s. 5 
 
66 Protestantism. 
 
 Scripture, they turned it into an idol to which 
 they paid a blind and unreasoning homage, 
 ascribing to it a character which it does not 
 claim for itself, and using it for purposes for 
 which it was not needed, for which also its 
 very form or fashion might have shewn that 
 it was never intended. 
 
 The history of the relations between the 
 Church of England and these latter aspects 
 of Protestantism has not been a very happy 
 or creditable history. We cannot study the 
 bearing of the great Puritan party, to which 
 we may look as the parent of all later forms 
 of Dissent, without seeing that there were 
 in it many elements of nobleness. Its very 
 name in itself a far grander name than Pro- 
 testant bore its witness, though given, it 
 might be, in derision, of a high ideal of purity 
 in doctrine, in worship and in morals \ The 
 
 1 It would be interesting here also, as in the case of 
 Protestant, to trace \h& genesis of the name, who first used it, 
 when it first appeared, and the like. Historians, however, 
 even Neal, are vague on these points, and we learn little 
 more than that the party that desired a further reformation of 
 the doctrine, discipline, and ritual, of the Church of England, 
 began about A.D. 1564 to be known as Puritans. In Shake- 
 
Protestantism. 67 
 
 men who were so described were marked by 
 an intensity of faith which has seldom been 
 seen working on so large a scale since the 
 first ages of the Church. Sin and holiness, 
 and pardon and peace, and heaven and hell, 
 were to them intense realities. They were 
 as the salt of the nation, preserving it from 
 the putrescence with which it was threatened 
 by the revived paganism and sensualism of 
 the Renaissance. They fought for the civil 
 as well as the religious liberties of English- 
 men against a tyranny that was at once eccle- 
 siastical and Erastian \ Even their Sab- 
 
 speare's T^ivelfth Night (written between 1590-1602) in which 
 Malvolio is described as "a kind of Puritan" (Act II. 3), it 
 appears as a current-term of reproach. The title-page of a 
 Ltfe of Joseph Alleyne by C. Stanford (1873) gives, as a 
 quotation from Erasmus, the words: Sit anima mea cum 
 Puritanis Anglicanis. No reference is given, and I have 
 been unable to verify the passage. Assuming its genuine- 
 ness it would seem to imply that the term had been ap- 
 plied, perhaps, even then, with something of a sneer, to 
 the Oxford Reformers, and that More and Colet were the 
 first bearers of the name. 
 
 1 It will hardly be contended, even by the warmest ad- 
 mirers of the Anglican party under the Stuart regime, that 
 the Starchamber and High Commission Courts, dominant as 
 was Laud's influence in them, were true Church tribunals in 
 their constitution. Even " His Majesty's Declaration " pre- 
 
 52 
 
68 Protestantism. 
 
 batarianism, overstrained and Judaising as it 
 was, stands out in honourable contrast with 
 the coarse comedies and the brutal bear- 
 baitings which were then the recognised re- 
 creation of an English Sunday. But with this 
 there w r as all the narrowness that grows out 
 of ignorance and panic. They sought to ob- 
 literate all traces of the continuity of the 
 Church's life, and took fright at things that 
 were absolutely indifferent because they had 
 belonged to its pre-reformation period 1 . 
 They acted too often in the very spirit of 
 
 fixed to the Thirty-nine Articles, though interesting as the 
 first example of a * Broad Church ' comprehensiveness in the 
 interpretation of dogmatic formulae, assumes, in "prohibiting 
 the least difference from the said Articles, not suffering 
 unnecessary disputations, altercations, or questions to be 
 raised," and decreeing that "all further curious search be 
 laid aside," an authority more in harmony with the theory 
 of the Swiss physician whom we know as Erastus (Thomas 
 Liebler, of the Swiss Baden) than with either the Episcopal or 
 Presbyterian ' platform ' of Church polity. 
 
 1 The vestments, the surplice, the sign of the cross, the 
 position of the Lord's Table, the use of chanting and instru- 
 mental music, the ring in marriage, were among the most 
 prominent of the adiaphora, round which the battle of con- 
 troversy raged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
 Here, too, it would seem that the prejudices and passions of 
 the past have a potent vitality. 
 
Protestantism. 69 
 
 sectarianism. When they had their brief hour 
 of triumph, they used it without pity, and 
 shewed that the spirit of intolerance survived 
 even in the champions of freedom. And the 
 rulers of the Church on the other hand Can 
 we hold them blameless ? Where it would 
 have been their wisdom to conciliate the pre- 
 judices of the weak, and to utilise the reserve 
 force of spiritual energies, and to concede a 
 little for the sake of gaining much, we find 
 them bent on a froward retention of customs 
 and formulae which had not even the prestige 
 of antiquity insisting on a rigorous uni- 
 formity and enforcing it by severest penalties. 
 Both sides alike act and speak as though they 
 had never heard the words "We that are 
 strong ought to bear the infirmities of the 
 weak, and not to please ourselves 1 ." If we 
 
 1 The oppressive measures recorded in Walker's " Suffer- 
 ings of the Clergy," the expulsion of many hundreds of that 
 order from their cures and homes under the Long Parliament 
 and Cromwell must be borne in mind when we censure, as 
 we are compelled to censure, the over-bearing harshness 
 which was shewn at the Savoy Conference, and which issued 
 in the "black Bartholomew" fixed by the Act of Uniformity 
 of 1662, for the deprivation of the 2000 Presbyterian Minis- 
 
/o Protestantism. 
 
 may believe of many on both sides that they 
 were casting out devils in the name of Christ, 
 even though they followed not with those 
 whom we follow, we must fear that many also 
 came under the condemnation passed on those 
 who do not gather, and are therefore as he that 
 scattered! abroad. Golden opportunities were 
 wasted of which we cannot hope that their 
 like will ever again be given to us, and we arc 
 compelled to look the fait accompli in the 
 face, and to acknowledge that the sentence 
 * Too late ' is written on all schemes for the 
 union and reconciliation of the dissenting 
 communities which we see around us, with 
 each other or with the Church. 
 
 But accepting, as we must, that lamentable 
 
 ters, many of whom were as the salt of the earth in the 
 holiness of their lives, and most of whom were yearning for 
 Communion with the Established Church, if but a few con- 
 cessions had been made to them in things indifferent. A 
 few leading minds like Stillingfleet, Tillotson, Burnet, Crofts, 
 Baxter, sought in the forty years that followed, for terms of 
 comprehension, and the Revolution of 1688 seemed at one 
 time to hold out a hope that the contending parties might be 
 drawn together by the sense of a common danger. On the 
 Country party in the House of Commons, the country Clergy 
 in the Lower House of Convocation, rests the responsibility 
 of having frustrated all such well-intentioned efforts. 
 
Protestantism. 7 1 
 
 heritage, are we simply to content ourselves 
 with the proverb of despair and to let the 
 children's teeth be set on edge for ever by the 
 sour grapes of which the fathers have eaten ? 
 Are we still to look on those who are our 
 bone and our flesh, who have fought the same 
 battles against the same foes, with a super- 
 cilious and discourteous scorn 1 ? Are we to 
 condemn as schismatics those who have been 
 alienated from us at least as much by the fro- 
 wardness of our fathers, as by the perverse- 
 ness of theirs ? Are we to confine our sympa- 
 thies and efforts at re-union to the far-off 
 Churches of the East, or the corrupt com- 
 munion of the Latin Church, while we shrink 
 from contact and co-operation with the more 
 energetic and evangelic life of the Reformed 
 Churches of Western Europe, or with the 
 communities to which it would be hard, on 
 any New Testament principles, to deny the 
 name of Churches, that exist among our- 
 
 1 The existence of this feeling as dominant in the upper 
 classes of English Society in the past, and not extinct in the 
 present, will, I suppose, hardly be questioned. It shews 
 itself even now in the most opposite quarters, in the Bishop 
 
72 Protestantism. 
 
 selves 1 ? We as Churchmen need not shrink 
 from following Cosin 2 in holding communion 
 with "the Protestant and best Reformed 
 Churches" of France and Germany and re- 
 cognising the validity of their ordinations, in 
 declaring that " in what part of the world so 
 
 of Lincoln and Mr Matthew Arnold, as a survival of the old 
 leaven. When we sneer at Dissenters as "Philistines," or 
 deny to their teachers the conventional title of respect which 
 indicates nothing more than that they are recognised by the 
 body to which they belong, as qualified instructors, we are 
 reproducing the old arrogance and the old bitterness of our 
 fathers. 
 
 1 It will be acknowledged that the Non-conformist 
 Societies are congregations of baptised persons, confessing 
 the name of Christ, taking scripture as their rule of faith. It 
 would be hard to prove that St Paul would not have recog- 
 nised such a congregation as an Ecdesia, though he might 
 have deplored, as we deplore, the imperfect knowledge, or 
 the inherited conviction, which separates them from com- 
 munion with the wider Ecclesia of the nation. 
 
 2 The extract that follows is from Cosin's Will ( Works in 
 Anglo- Catholic Library, I. p. xxxil.) After his expulsion 
 from the Mastership of Peterhouse, he took refuge in France 
 and lived at Charenton, not fa.r from Paris. He communi- 
 cated with the Protestant (more strictly, of course, we should 
 say, the Reformed] Churches there, and they allowed him to 
 officiate in their congregations, using the Liturgy of the 
 Church of England. When consulted as to the lawfulness of 
 such communion he wrote, "To speak my mind freely to you 
 I would not wish any of ours absolutely to refuse communi- 
 cating in their Church, or determine^ it to be unlawful, for 
 fear of a greater scandal that may thereupon arise, than we 
 can tell how to answer or excuse." Ibid. p. xxx. 
 
Protestantism. 73 
 
 ever any Churches are extant, bearing the 
 name of Christ and professing the true Catho- 
 lic Faith, and worshipping and calling upon 
 God the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost, 
 with one heart and voice, if anywhere we be 
 now hindered actually to be joined with them, 
 either by distance of countries or variance 
 amongst men or by any hindrance whatso- 
 ever, yet always in our mind and affection we 
 should join and unite with them." We may 
 well be content to walk in the steps of San- 
 croft in urging on the Clergy " that they have 
 a very tender regard to our brethren, the Pro- 
 testant Dissenters . . . persuading them, 
 if it may be, to a full compliance with our 
 Church, or, at least, that * whereto we have 
 already attained, we may all walk by the 
 same rule, and mind the same thing;' pray- 
 ing for the universal blessed union of all Re- 
 formed Churches, both at home and abroad, 
 against our common enemies 1 ." We may ac- 
 knowledge with thankfulness that many steps 
 have been taken to the right application in 
 
 1 D'Oyly, Life of Bancroft, p. 196. 
 
74 Protestantism. 
 
 mcliorem partein, of the " cross clauses of the 
 league of Christians." One by one the sta- 
 tutes which embodied the vindictive intole- 
 rance of the seventeenth century have been 
 swept away. The operation of the Conscience 
 Clause in our National Schools no longer 
 throws us into an hysterical alarm. The ad- 
 mission of Dissenters to our Colleges no 
 longer rouses the fierce passions of contro- 
 versy, as it did when the Master mind of this 
 your University was forced to resign his tu- 
 torship because he pleaded for the cause of 
 justice and of charity 1 . Bishops and Pro- 
 fessors of the Church are seen working side 
 by side with Nonconformist scholars in the 
 great task of translating and interpreting the 
 sacred books which are the common heritage 
 of all. They have recognised that it was 
 right to inaugurate that work by participation 
 in the act which witnesses of a higher unity 
 
 1 I refer, of course, in this to Bishop Thirlwall's pamph- 
 let on the Admission of Dissenters, and the proceedings that 
 followed on it. (See Edinburgh Review, Vol. CXLlli). For 
 the now almost forgotten controversy of the Conscience 
 Clauses I may refer to the Bishop's Charge for 1866, in the 
 second volume of Dean Perowne's Edition of his Remains. 
 
Protestantism. 75 
 
 than that which is limited by outward uni- 
 formity in dogma or in ritual that the true 
 Elevation of the Host was that which raised 
 it above our manifold divisions l . It remains 
 
 1 I owe the expression and the thought to the late F. D. 
 Maurice. It may freely be admitted that the Communions in 
 Westminster Abbey, in June 1870, to which all members of 
 the two Revision Companies were invited, bore an entirely 
 exceptional character, and that the Rubric which directs that 
 none should be admitted to communion but ' ' such persons as 
 have been confirmed, or are ready and desirous to be con- 
 firmed " was, pro hac vice, disregarded. But the rubric itself 
 is, on the other hand, a dead letter in its prohibitive, though 
 happily a living ordinance in its directive, aspects. The 
 English Church has never adopted the Scotch plan of 
 " fencing" the Lord's Table, and in the public administration 
 of Holy Communion, M T e, for the most part, are entirely igno- 
 rant whether the condition has been complied with, or 
 whether those who present themselves for Communicants 
 have previously been trained in her Communion. We take 
 for granted that they are "worthy" because they seek for 
 fellowship with Christ and His Church in His ordinance, that 
 their consciences find nothing in our Order for Holy 
 Communion to repel them from it. On this occasion men 
 were on the point of starting on a great work which was 
 planned for the good of English-speaking Christendom. 
 Both Houses of Convocation had deliberately invited Non- 
 conformist Scholars of many different denominations to take 
 part in that work. Was it supposed that they could not 
 possibly join in prayer for the Divine blessing on their 
 labours, that they were to be students of the Divine Book with 
 no sense of a Divine unity binding them together? And if they 
 could thus draw near to the Father through the Son, was 
 there not a cause for suspending, for the time, the restrictions 
 
76 Protestantism. 
 
 for you, who are rising to take your place in 
 the ranks of the clergy or laity of the Church 
 of England, to carry on the good work to its 
 completeness; to meet any grievances that 
 yet remain in the temper, not of a jealous 
 exclusiveness, but of an equitable charity l ; 
 
 which excluded them from the highest Act of that access ? 
 Did not each Communicant, with whatever sacramental 
 theories he might approach the Table, confess that there was 
 in that Memorial Feast something which was wider than all 
 theories, and that there was nothing in the liturgy in which 
 he joined, though there might be that in it which he would 
 wish otherwise, to hinder his participation in it ? Was it not 
 wise and charitable to leave it to the conscience of each to 
 say whether he could make that confession ? 
 
 1 I have no wish to enter here into a discussion of the 
 vexed question of which we see the outcome in the endless 
 Dissenters' Burials Bills of the last few years ; but no language 
 can well be too strong in deprecation of the tone and temper 
 in which that discussion is commonly approached by those 
 who claim to represent Church interests in Parliament or the 
 press. There is the old bearing of the Cavaliers to the 
 Roundheads, of the Country party of the Restoration to the 
 Presbyterian. There are the old cries of the " Church in 
 danger" and "the thin end of the wedge," the old incapacity 
 to enter into the feelings of those from whom we differ, and 
 to understand that a grievance may be very real even though 
 it be only " sentimental," the old Non possumus of an 
 irrational resistance. The history of the Conscience Clause 
 is not in this matter without its lessons. Men nail their 
 colours to the mast and raise the cry of " no surrender." At 
 last a change comes, more thorough and sweeping than that 
 which they had resisted, and they find that what they dreaded 
 
Protestantism. 77 
 
 to recognise that those who are not against 
 us in the great battle against ignorance and 
 evil are on our side and so to inherit the 
 blessing which belongs to "the repairers of 
 the breach and the restorers of paths to 
 dwell in." (Isai. Iviii. 12.) 
 
 takes its place in the normal order of the nation's life, with- 
 out the convulsive and catastrophic changes which their fears 
 had prognosticated. 
 
III. AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 ACTS xvii. 23. 
 
 / found an altar with this inscription, TO 
 THE UNKNOWN GOD. 
 
 ROM. i. 19. 
 
 That which may be known of God is manifest 
 in them. 
 
 WE can, without much difficulty or risk of 
 error, picture to ourselves the thoughts and 
 feelings of the Apostle as he walked through 
 the streets of Athens, or stood talking to such 
 as would listen to him in its agora. The 
 stately temples that move the world's wonder, 
 the statues of Athene, or Poseidon, or Apollo 
 in every courtyard, the Hermes busts at the 
 corner of every street, these were for him not, 
 as they have been to many, a " thing of 
 
Agnosticism. 79 
 
 beauty, and a joy for ever," but the witness of 
 a fatal degradation. He had seen many 
 Greek cities Tarsus, Antioch, Lystra, but 
 none had so stirred his spirit into a paroxysm 
 of indignant grief. ' That feeling was but 
 intensified by the fact that the Wisdom no 
 less than the Art of the Greek world was 
 here presented to his mind in its highest and 
 most perfect form. Those brave words of 
 Epicureans and Stoics as to the Supreme 
 Good and the chief end of life, that super- 
 cilious disdain of the popular worship which 
 the philosopher knew to be radically wrong, 
 yet had not courage to abandon, that high 
 ideal of conformity to the Eternal Order on 
 the one hand, or of a serene equilibrium and 
 maximum of enjoyment on the other what 
 had they done to raise the mass of mankind 
 to clearer thoughts of God, or greater purity 
 of life ? 
 
 His eye had, however, rested on words 
 which seemed to him of profound significance, 
 and gave a new direction to his thoughts. 
 We need not now discuss what was the mean- 
 
8o Agnosticism. 
 
 ing of the words TO THE UNKNOWN GOD, to 
 him who had dedicated the altar. Was it the 
 extreme result of Polytheism, unable to 
 identify its benefactor among the gods many 
 and lords many of Greek mythology, and 
 thinking of one more to be added to the list 
 who as yet was without a name ? Was it, as 
 seems more probable, like the SlGNUM INDE- 
 PREHENSIBILIS DEI on the Mithraic group 
 from Ostia 1 , the utterance of a yearning cry 
 
 1 The inscription may be found in Orelli, II. p. 1000; the 
 altar on which it appears is in the Vatican Museum. It 
 represents, like most of those dedicated to the worship of 
 Mithras, a youthful figure sacrificing a bull. The inscription 
 runs: 
 
 SIGNUM INDEPREHENSIBILIS DEI 
 
 G. VALERIUS HERCULES. SACERDOS. 
 
 P. P. 
 
 De Rossi thinks that it belongs to the last half of the third 
 century, when the worship of Mithras (of which the con- 
 tinued observance of the Dies Soils is perhaps a survival) 
 came to be fashionable as a rival to the claims of that of 
 Christ. It had, however, been introduced at Ostia as far 
 back as the time of Pompeius (Plutarch, Pomp.}, and Ter- 
 tullian (De Prascr. c. XL. ) bears witness to its wide-spread 
 prevalence in his own time, and speaks of it as presenting 
 many points of resemblance to the cultus of Christians. 
 There is, therefore, no anachronism in supposing that an 
 altar of this type may have existed in Athens in the first 
 century. It may be added that the absence of any reference 
 to such an inscription in Greek writers is against the assump- 
 tion of a much earlier date." 
 
Agnosticism. 
 
 for the Undiscovered One, Supreme 
 Gods worshipped in many lands and under 
 many names but as yet revealed to none, 
 and wrapt in the impenetrable darkness of an 
 eternal mystery? The latter was, at all events, 
 the interpretation which the Apostle put upon 
 the words when he made it the text of that 
 memorable discourse before the court, or 
 within the precincts, of the Areopagus. I 
 dare not venture now, great as the temptation 
 is, to follow that discourse step by step, and 
 to trace its bearing on those who listened, the 
 devout worshippers the gossiping idlers 
 the philosophic disputants. It will be enough 
 to note that he sees in the inscription a token 
 of that awe of the unseen and unknown 
 forces that lie round us, which is at once the 
 germ of all true religion, and the source of 
 the basest superstitions ; that in contrast with 
 the false idea of God of which the latter were 
 developments, he proclaims the true philo- 
 sophy of worship, almost, as far as its nega- 
 tive aspect is concerned, in the very words of 
 P. S. 6 
 
82 Agnosticism. 
 
 Lucretius 1 , as resting on the thought that God 
 needs nothing at our hands, but gives all 
 things ; that he adds to this the outline of a 
 new philosophy of History as being, in all its 
 complexity, in "the times before appointed, 
 and the bounds of men's habitations," the 
 school in which God educates mankind, 
 waking longings which remain unsatisfied, 
 leading them through devious ways, as men 
 feeling their way and groping in the twilight 
 dusk, after the Eternal and Invisible. To 
 that outward witness there is, he adds, an 
 answering voice within us. The Stoics were 
 right in their belief that every man is a 
 Temple to himself, and that in that temple 
 he may find God. " He is not far from every 
 one of us." More truly than in the witness 
 of creation, than in the records of experience, 
 
 1 Lucret. De Nat. Rer. n. 645650: 
 " Omnis enim per se divom natura necesse est 
 Immortal! aevo summa cum pace fruatur, 
 Semota ab nostris rebus sejunctaque longe ; 
 Nam privata dolore omni, privata periclis, 
 Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nil indiga nostri, 
 Nee bene promeritis capitur, neque tangitur ira." 
 Acts xvii. 25 "Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as 
 though He needed anything." 
 
Agnosticism. 83 
 
 he may find in the depths of consciousness, 
 in the law written in his heart, in the thoughts 
 that accuse each other, the token that every 
 child of man is a child of God. "We also are 
 His offspring 1 ." 
 
 The speech came to an end, but not so the 
 train of thought of which it was, as it were, the 
 firstfruits. The Apostle's mind worked on in 
 that groove, and sought to solve the problems 
 which had thus presented themselves. How 
 was it that, though God had not left Himself 
 without witness, giving showers from heaven 
 
 1 Dr Lightfoot has given some striking illustrations in his 
 Excursus on .5? Paul and Seneca (Philippians, p. 288): 
 
 "Temples are not to be built to God of stones piled on 
 high: He must be consecrated in the heart of each man" 
 (Fragm. 123).. ."God is near thee; He is with thee: He is 
 within" (Ep. Mor. XLI. i)..." Thou shalt not form Him of 
 silver or gold. A true likeness of God cannot be moulded 
 of this material" (Ep. Mor. xxxi.). 
 
 Another may be given from a contemporary poet, the 
 nephew of Seneca and the namesake of the writer of the 
 Acts: 
 
 " Estne dei sedes nisi terra, et pontus et aer, 
 Et coelum et virtus? Superos quid petimus ultra? 
 Jupiter est quodcumque vides, quocunque moveris." 
 
 Lucan, Phars. IX. 578 580. 
 
 Many other illustrations will, of course, be found in most 
 Commentaries on the Acts. 
 
 62 
 
84 Agnosticism. 
 
 and fruitful seasons, filling men's hearts with 
 food and gladness 1 , men either shewed by 
 their worship, as in the popular ritual, that 
 they knew Him not, even by the hearing of the 
 ear, or as in the altar to the Unknown God, 
 confessed their ignorance ? What adequate 
 explanation could be given of those times of 
 ignorance during which God had overlooked, 
 and, as it were, connived at the world's evils, 
 tolerating the sins of men, while as yet there 
 were no signs of the repentance which is the 
 one condition of forgiveness ? If the history 
 of the world was the education of mankind, 
 what was the goal to which that education 
 was directed ? 
 
 The whole argument of the Epistle to the 
 Romans is the outcome of the thoughts which 
 were working in St Paul's mind in that 
 speech at Athens. It is not reading too 
 much between the lines to find in the very 
 words which open the argument an echo of 
 the inscription which had been the origin of 
 those thoughts. The despairing confession 
 
 1 Acts xiv. 17. 
 
Agnosticism. 85 
 
 of the altar to the Unknown and Unknowa- 
 ble God is met by the assertion that " That 
 which may be known, the knowable, of God 
 is manifest in them 1 ," that the ignorance into 
 which men have fallen is the result wrought 
 out by their unwillingness to face the thought 
 of God that this led, in its turn, to a baser 
 view of. their own nature and of the end of 
 life 2 . As in the entail of curses on which the 
 Greek poets loved to dwell, one sin became 
 the parent of another, which was at once its 
 natural consequence and its divinely ordained 
 penalty 8 . With unshrinking hand he tears 
 aside the veil of a flimsy optimism which 
 boasted of the triumphs of wisdom and art, 
 and culture, and in words that make us shud- 
 der, lays bear the putrid and leprous cancers 
 
 Qey, Acts xvii. 23. T6 yvwrbv rou 0eou, 
 Rom. i. 19. 
 
 2 Rom. i. 11 32. 
 
 3 JEsch. Agam. 757, 
 
 rb yap Svffffefits Zpyov 
 ir\dova. rkret, ffQtrtpq. 
 
 riKreiv "Tppis ptv TraXeua 
 a.v ev KO.KOIS 
 
86 Agnosticism. 
 
 that were eating into the life of the Greek 
 and Roman world and plunging it into a 
 fathomless corruption. 
 
 That dark and terrible picture might well 
 have crushed out all hope. No older Mani- 
 chean, no modern Pessimist, could have con- 
 structed, it might have seemed, a stronger 
 indictment against the divine attributes of 
 wisdom, and love, and power. Did not the 
 history of the world seem a colossal failure, 
 the education of mankind one that ended in 
 ever-deepening ignorance and guilt ? St Paul 
 could not rest in that thought any more than 
 he could satisfy his questioning intellect with 
 the phrases of a Stoic apathy or Epicurean 
 tranquillity. He found what helped to sus- 
 tain him and give him guidance in the record 
 of another failure that more nearly concerned 
 himself and the race of which he was a member. 
 Israel had not been left to the twofold wit- 
 ness of creation and of conscience, but had 
 been chosen for a higher knowledge and a 
 special revelation. Law and Psalm and 
 Ritual and Prophecy had preserved them 
 
Agnosticism. 87 
 
 from the darkness that had brooded over the 
 heathen. Were they after all better than the 
 heathen ? Had they been truer to the Law 
 written on the Tables of Stone than the 
 Gentiles had been to the law written in their 
 hearts ? The answer to those questions was 
 a sad stern negative. Both Jew and Gentile 
 had alike come short of the glory of God 
 were alike guilty before Him shut up under 
 sin and condemnation. Each had had suffi- 
 cient knowledge to be "without excuse;" 
 neither had so used his knowledge as to attain 
 to holiness and peace 1 . The darkness on 
 this view might have seemed blacker and 
 more abysmal than before. If Israel was 
 rejected, with all its special prerogatives as a 
 chosen and peculiar people, what hope was 
 there for the Gentile world ? It was given to 
 St Paul to see the gleams of a Divine light 
 breaking through the darkness. We cannot 
 say that he solves the whole problem, and 
 
 1 Comp. the whole argument of Rom. i. 18 iii. 19. We 
 note the terrible reiteration of the dva.Tro\6yr)ros in Rom. 
 i. 20, ii. i, as addressed alike to idolater, philosopher, and 
 Jew. 
 
88 Agnosticism. 
 
 removes all difficulties. The varying inter- 
 pretations that have been put upon his words 
 hinder us from saying that his Theodicy, his 
 vindication of the ways of God, is specu- 
 latively complete 1 . He himself is the first to 
 confess that those ways are " past finding 
 out." But he has seen, at least, what we may 
 call the drift of things the purpose which is 
 working out a result for good and not for evil. 
 Men had been led and were being led 
 
 1 It will hardly be questioned that logically the argument 
 falls short of completeness, unless we carry on the train of 
 thought of Rom. v. and xi. to the conclusions adopted by 
 Origen and later teachers, who have cherished the wider 
 hope of a universal restoration. The " much more " of Rom. 
 v. 1 8 20 is hardly satisfied by the "salvation" of a pre- 
 destined few out of the millions of mankind. When we read 
 that " all Israel shall be saved " (Rom. xi. 26), the words 
 suggest something more than the perdition of a hundred 
 generations and the pardon of a remnant of the hundred and 
 first. And yet it is clear that the Apostle shrinks, as most 
 of the Masters of those who know have shrunk, from dog- 
 matically affirming that universal restoration. He is content 
 to rest in the belief that that is God's purpose, that He is 
 leading men through ways that baffle our investigation to 
 that far-off result, but he cannot exclude the thought that it 
 is possible that the fatal gift of freedom which frustrates the 
 loving purpose of God now on earth may frustrate it for ever. 
 It is not without significance that Rom. xi. should have been 
 the favourite chapter alike of ultra-Calvinists and of Thomas 
 Erskine of Linlathen. 
 
Agnosticism. 89 
 
 Jew and Gentile alike, by a terrible experience 
 to feel their impotence apart from God, to 
 welcome the revelation of God in Christ by 
 which they have access to the Father. The 
 mercies of God were manifested even in the 
 sentence of condemnation. He had concluded 
 all in unbelief that He might have pity upon 
 all 1 . 
 
 I have dwelt at this length on the main 
 line of St Paul's treatment of this great 
 question the ever-recurring question which 
 has haunted the souls of men in the former 
 times as well as in the latter because I am 
 persuaded that it is on these lines of thought 
 that we must travel if we would meet, with 
 any adequacy, the special forms of scepticism 
 or unbelief that seem to us characteristic of 
 our own time. Those forms present, it is 
 obvious, many features analogous to those 
 with which he had to deal. It seems a strange 
 outcome of the eighteen centuries which have 
 passed since he thus thought and spoke, that 
 men should still be thinking of God as the 
 
 1 Rom. xi. 32. 
 
Qo Agnosticism. 
 
 Unknown and the Unknowable yet so we 
 know it is 1 . The prophets of Science tell us 
 that we can know the phenomena of the uni- 
 verse, but that we cannot know their cause, 
 and that it is our wisdom to keep within the 
 limits of the knowable. The prophets of 
 culture, with the savour of an earlier and 
 better training still lingering in their souls, go 
 a step beyond this, and tell us not untruly, 
 however incompletely, that there are signs all 
 around us and within us of "a power not 
 ourselves, a stream of tendency, that makes 
 for righteousness 2 ,'' and that therefore it is our 
 
 1 Huxley's Lay Sermons, p. 20, "The theology of the 
 present has become more scientific than that of the past, 
 because it has not only renounced idols of wood and idols of 
 stone, but begins to see the necessity of breaking in pieces the 
 idols built up of books and traditions and fine-spun ecclesias- 
 tical cobwebs, and of cherishing the noblest and most human 
 of man's emotions by worship, ' for the most part of the silent 
 sort,' at the altar of the Unknown and Unknowable." 
 
 2 Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma, p. 41. "For 
 Science God is simply the stream of tendency by which all 
 things fulfil the law of their being." One cannot read this 
 and other writings of Mr Arnold's without hearing in them 
 the two voices whose dissonant notes have not yet been 
 brought into accord. On the one hand there is a manifest 
 capacity for almost mystical emotion. He sympathises with, 
 and half shares, the love which Israel felt for the Eternal, 
 
Agnosticism. 9 1 
 
 wisdom to be righteous that this is all that 
 we can know of what we call God, and that 
 when we ascribe to Him a Will, and Purpose 
 and Character, still more when we venture 
 to interpret His dealings with mankind or to 
 accept a revelation from Him, we are simply 
 falling back into the anthropomorphic con- 
 ceptions which have been the source of all 
 
 the Father. He confesses truly enough that the " Power in 
 us and around us is best described by the name of this 
 authoritative, but yet tender and protecting relation" (p. 35), 
 that "the more we experience its shelter, the more we feel 
 that it is protecting even to tenderness" (p. 65). On the 
 other he is repelled by the introduction of a scholastic term 
 like "personality" into popular rhetoric, and by what seem 
 to him platform phrases about "a moral and intelligent 
 Governor of the Universe" (p. 26), and will not ask himself 
 whether these phrases are not after all identical in meaning 
 with those which he adopts himself. Is there, we may ask, 
 any great gulf of thought between a " Power not ourselves 
 that makes for righteousness" and "a moral Governor of the 
 Universe"? Are we thinking of God only as "a magnified 
 and non-natural man," because we ascribe to Him a Wisdom 
 and Love and Righteousness, the ideas of which have been 
 gathered indeed from our own conscious experience, but 
 which we recognise as being free in Him from the imper- 
 fections that cloud all manifestations of them which we have 
 seen in men? In his protests against the "insane license of 
 affirmation" which characterises our theological systems, 
 most controversialists will recognise a rebuke deserved by 
 their opponents, most impartial students of controversy a 
 warning by which all may profit. 
 
92 Agnosticism. 
 
 perversions and falsehoods, in the religious 
 history of mankind. The prophets of art 
 follow up the lesson by proclaiming that its 
 province and that of ethics are unconnected 
 with each other and that the end of the 
 former is but to depict faithfully whatever it 
 finds to its hand that may minister to our 
 sense of beauty and bring about a maximum 
 of enjoyment. The more sensuous, realistic 
 . forms of art, in poetry, and painting, and 
 sculpture, fulfil this purpose more than the 
 ideal, or mystic, or ascetic forms that presup- 
 pose a standard of holiness, and those who 
 follow them are therefore truer to their voca- 
 tion. All alike take up their taunting proverb 
 against what seems to them the shadowy 
 projection of our hopes and fears into the 
 dim future that lies beyond the veil. Epicu- 
 reans and Stoics may listen to the preacher 
 as he speaks in their own terms, of righteous- 
 ness and temperance, but when he proclaims 
 a judgment to come and tells them that God 
 has appointed Jesus who was crucified to be 
 Judge of quick and dead, the result is now as 
 
Agnosticism. 93 
 
 it was of old. Some mock, in various tones 
 of brutal or refined derision. Some, let us 
 hope, there may be, who will say " We will 
 hear thee again of this matter." 
 
 What kind of worship, in act or word, is 
 to be the expression of the thoughts of those 
 who, while they undermine the groundwork 
 of all devotion, still recognise the religious 
 instincts of mankind, as an essential element 
 of their nature, that must have a legitimate 
 outflow, or, at least, a safety valve, lest they 
 should explode and shatter the edifice of 
 theory, it is not easy to say. The worship to 
 be paid at the altar of the Unknown and 
 Unknowable is, we are told, to be "for the 
 most part of the silent sort," and it must be 
 admitted that it would be a hard task to con- 
 struct a liturgy on the basis of an absolute nes- 
 cience of Him whom we ignorantly worship. 
 The worship of humanity, of its saints and 
 heroes as having an immortality in the 
 memory of mankind, and the after harvest of 
 the seeds which they have sown, may end, as 
 it seems likely to end, in an unlimited 
 
94 Agnosticism. 
 
 apotheosis of the discoverers and benefactors 
 of the race, but of each god so created it will 
 be true that he is shadowy, impersonal, un- 
 substantial, and that after all prayer and 
 praise, there will be neither voice nor answer 
 nor any that regardeth 1 . The Christian of the 
 nineteenth century will find it as hard to turn 
 from the worship of a personal Father to that 
 of an impersonal "drift of things" as the 
 Athenian did to think of a Vortex as seated 
 
 1 What we may call the positive, or constructive, side of 
 Positivism has been described by Mr Huxley as "Catholicism 
 minus Christianity." It meets man's cravings for a cultus of 
 some kind, with a calendar of heroes and saints and sages 
 almost as multitudinous as that of the Church of Rome, with a 
 hierarchy whose ideal task is to dominate, as she has done, over 
 the intellect and will of men. It has been easier, however, for 
 those who call themselves disciples of Comte to follow him in 
 the task of pulling down than of building up; and while 
 thousands take up the phrases that shut out the question, Can 
 we know God ? as belonging only to the first stage of human 
 progress, the priests and the worshippers of the ' ' religion of 
 humanity" may be counted on one's fingers. And yet it has 
 been said with truth that the thoughts which underlie that 
 religion are not the weakest, but the noblest elements in 
 Comte's teaching, are " not only reconcileable with Christia- 
 nity, but are essentially Christian." The Positivist theory 
 "so far from advancing anything novel in such teaching, simply 
 places us once again in the original Christian point of view 
 of the Cosmos" (Westcott, Aspects of Positivism in relation 
 to Christianity in Contemporary Review, vol. vin. p. 383). 
 
Agnosticism. 95 
 
 on the throne of Zeus 1 . The worship of the 
 beautiful in art is likely to issue, as it did of 
 old, in hymns to Aphrodite and a sensuous 
 ritual of measureless impurities 2 . We turn 
 from these dreams and mirage phantoms of 
 an impossible devotion, as with a sense of 
 relief and reality, to the truer utterances of 
 those who though they confessed that they 
 had not found God were yet in earnest seek- 
 ing after Him, to the traditional death-prayer 
 which some mediaeval sceptic passed upon 
 the world as coming from the lips of Aris- 
 
 1 Strepsiades, "6/>s otv, us dyadov rb 
 
 O&K to-riv, w <ei5i7T7r/5i7, Zefls, d\Xa rts 
 AtVos fiaffiXevei, rov At' e^eX^Xa/ccos." 
 
 Aristoph. Nub. 805. 
 
 2 I am not over-conversant with the literature of the 
 higher criticism of art, and do not care to quote illustrative 
 extracts, but the verses and popular essays which meet one in 
 the current journalism of the day tend, it will scarcely be denied, 
 to a glorification, almost, one might say, an apotheosis, 
 of Nakedness, which presents but too obvious points of pa- 
 rallelism to the St Simonian "rehabilitation of the flesh." 
 Not once or twice in the history of mankind have we seen 
 the outcome of this gilded putrescence, and have learnt how it 
 eats into a nation's life, and ends as in the poetry of Catullus, 
 the novels of Petronius, and the art of Capreae. The " Pa- 
 lace of Art" which an earlier generation was taught to admire, 
 had no galleries of lupanarian tableaux. 
 
f)6 Agnosticism. 
 
 totle, Causa causarum, miserere met 1 , to the 
 touching, sad, yet not hopeless, words which 
 we read at Westminster on the tomb of the 
 statesman-poet, and which embody the same 
 prayer addressed to the God whom he knew 
 only as the Ens Entium, for in that Miserere 
 we read the faith which from the beginning of 
 the world has justified, the sinner's conscious- 
 ness that he needs forgiveness and that there 
 is One ready to forgive 2 . 
 
 It is not enough, however, to point out 
 
 1 The prayer is referred to by Fiddes in his defence of 
 Sheffield's epitaph (p. 40) as found in Coelius Rhodigenius 
 (II. 17, 34), and it runs thus : "Fade hanc vitam intravi; 
 anxizts vixij trepidus egredior ; Causa Causarum, Miserere 
 met." That writer, however, does not give the words, and I 
 write them from my recollection of an Oxford Lecture by the 
 present Dean of Wells, in 1842. 
 
 2 The whole of this part of the epitaph (on the tomb 
 of Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire) is worth giving : 
 
 "Dubius, sed non improbus, vixi; 
 Incertus morior, non perturbatus. 
 Humanum est nescire et errare. 
 
 Deo confido 
 
 Omnipotenti benevolentissimo : 
 Ens Entium, miserere mei." 
 
 The vacant space in the fourth line was to have been filled 
 up with "Christum adveneror," but this was rejected by 
 Atterbury as not sufficiently orthodox. Stanley 's Westminster 
 Abbey, p. 247. 
 
Agnosticism. 97 
 
 the inadequacy of these substitutes for the 
 faith and the worship of Christendom. We 
 may learn something even from those who 
 appear, as in some sense, its enemies. There 
 is an element of truth in the protests which 
 they utter against the anthropomorphic ten- 
 dency that shews itself too often in our 
 thoughts of the Divine Nature. While we 
 rightly contend that no conception of that 
 Nature is thinkable which is not moulded in 
 the forms of human thought that we must 
 take our idea of the righteousness and love of 
 God from what we know of the righteousness 
 and love of Man, and that it introduces an 
 inextricable and intolerable confusion, if we 
 reason, as some of the defenders of our faith 
 have reasoned, as if the two were generically 
 different, so that the one cannot be measured 
 by the standard of the other ', the history of 
 
 1 The argument that we cannot reason from the ideas 
 which we connect with human righteousness, truth, love, 
 wisdom to what would or would not be consistent with 
 those attributes in the Divine Nature, is but too familiar to the 
 student of Calvinistic and other controversies. We find it in 
 its most philosophic form in Dean Hansel's Bampton Lectures. 
 
 p. s. 7 
 
98 Agnosticism. 
 
 theological speculations, often, alas, of that 
 speculation as translated into action, shews us 
 that men have in too large a measure trans- 
 ferred their own imperfections, their own nar- 
 rowness and want of love, to Him in whom all 
 is perfect. We cannot ask ourselves what 
 were the thoughts of God underlying the 
 creed of a Philip II. or a Dominic (may we 
 not add, in some measure, of a Tertullian and 
 an Augustine, of a Dante and a Calvin ?) with- 
 out feeling that they were clouding the divine 
 light with their own darkness, making sad 
 the hearts that God had not made sad, that 
 they reasoned, as Caliban may have reasoned 
 out his system of theology as to the nature 
 of his " dam's God Setebos," from what they 
 would have done had they been in the place 
 
 We have no "right to assume that there is, if not a perfect 
 identity, at least an exact resemblance between the moral 
 nature of man and that of God ; that the laws and principles 
 of infinite justice are but magnified images of those which 
 are manifested on a finite scale " (2nd ed. p. 212). In words 
 which seem almost as if it came from the camp of the enemy 
 and not of an ally, we are told that " we find ourselves baffled 
 in every attempt to conceive an infinite moral nature, or its 
 condition, an infinite personality." 
 
Agnosticism. 99 
 
 of God 1 ; that to the worshipper of the eiddla 
 of the Market-place and the Den, no less 
 than to those of the idols of wood or stone, 
 the psalmist's words, spoken as from the 
 mouth of God, were but too justly applicable, 
 "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a 
 one as thyself 2 ." The true safeguard against 
 an unworthy anthropomorphism is found, not 
 in taking refuge in the thought that God is 
 unknowable and unthinkable, but for those 
 who are without the revelation of God in 
 Christ, in reasoning upwards from all that 
 the consensus of mankind has most reverenced 
 
 1 Most readers will recognise the reference to Mr Brown- 
 ing's poem, Caliban upon Setebos, or Natural Theology in the 
 Island, in his Dramatis Persona. As a psychological study 
 the poem stands in manifestly designed correspondence and 
 contrast with the higher form of anthropomorphic thought in 
 the Death in the Desert in the same volume. I quote the 
 following from the latter poem. 
 "Before the point was mooted 'What is God?' 
 No savage man inquired ' What am myself? ' 
 Much less replied 'First, last, and best of things." 
 Man takes that title now, if he believes 
 Might can exist with neither will nor love 
 In God's case what he names now ' Nature's Law ' 
 While in himself he recognises love 
 No less than might or will : and rightly takes." 
 3 Ps. 1. 21. 
 
 72 
 
IOO Agnosticism. 
 
 and loved in man ; for those who walk in the 
 light of that revelation, in looking on the 
 human character of Jesus as the standard by 
 which to measure all our conceptions of the 
 Eternal Will and Purpose. What God is, is 
 made known to us, as far as the Finite can 
 apprehend the Infinite, by what Jesus was. 
 " He that hath seen Him hath seen the Fa- 
 ther 1 ." In the light of that revelation we 
 need not fear the reproach of holding an an- 
 thropomorphic creed. Too often, we may 
 fear, the reproach comes from those who 
 shrink from any distinct thought of the Per- 
 sonality of God, because they shrink from the 
 burden even of their own personal being as 
 being brought face to face with His. It is 
 not without significance that one of the lead- 
 ers of scientific thought should have hinted at 
 the seeming paradox, that it may be ques- 
 tioned whether " there is anything really an- 
 thropomorphic even in man's nature 2 /' whe- 
 
 1 John xiv. 9. 
 
 2 Huxley, Lay Sermons, p. 180. "As the ages lengthen 
 the borders of Physicism increase. The territories of the 
 bastards are all annexed to Science, and even Theology, in 
 
Agnosticism. 101 
 
 ther, i. e., all that we think of as most distinc- 
 tive of man, the thought that looks before 
 and after the consciousness of sin the 
 yearning after holiness the enduring faith of 
 the martyr the foul crime of the murderer 
 and the adulterer, are not all alike on the 
 same level, as "automatic functions" of the 
 " cunningest of Nature's clocks." 
 
 If we ask, as we survey these and other 
 movements of thought around us, as we trace 
 their action on ourselves, in what they have 
 originated, and what constitutes their strength, 
 we shall find, if I mistake not, that they have 
 a twofold birth. There is first, what we may 
 describe, in the language of one who has 
 given to the world his confessions of the way 
 in which they acted on himself, as the Neme- 
 
 her purer forms, has ceased to be anthropomorphic, however 
 she may talk. Anthropomorphism has taken stand in its 
 last fortress, man himself. But Science closely invests the 
 walls; and Philosophers gird themselves to battle upon the 
 last and greatest of all speculative problems. Does human 
 Nature present any free, volitional, and truly anthropo- 
 morphic element, or is it only the cunningest amongst all 
 Nature's clocks? Some, among whom I count myself, think 
 that the battle will for ever remain a drawn one." 
 
IO2 Agnosticism. 
 
 sis of Faith 1 . The blind acceptance of dogmas 
 that rested only on human authority, that had 
 never been tested by, and could not bear the 
 test of, Scripture, of Reason and of Consci- 
 ence, has been followed by a natural reaction. 
 The imperious command "Believe all that 
 the Church tells you to believe, or believe 
 nothing," has led sometimes, as we see in the 
 prevalent unbelief of Spain and Italy and 
 France, to a simulated faith, as when the 
 priest turns atheist ; or to open and defiant 
 resistance 2 . The bitterness and narrowness of 
 Christian controversialists, each anathema- 
 tising the other, each insisting on his own 
 definitions of the faith as essential conditions 
 
 1 The Nemesis of Faith, published by Mr J. A. Froude 
 in 1848, is now, I believe, out of print, and is probably not 
 likely to be republished by its author. Taken together with 
 the " Remains" of his brother R. H. Froude, it forms a com- 
 ment almost as suggestive as the history of the two Newmans 
 or the two Arnolds, on the history of religious thought in the 
 last half century. 
 
 2 Here again the general state of things in the countries 
 where Rome exercises, or did exercise till lately, her most 
 direct influence without the counter-check of an active and 
 living Protestantism, finds a representative instance in the 
 " Life of Blanco White." 
 
Agnosticism. 103 
 
 of its having any power to save from sin 
 or the penalties of sin, have deterred men 
 from any thorough examination of the grounds 
 of faith. They have not cared to under- 
 take the preliminary enquiry where the path 
 by which they travelled was to lead them, not 
 into the fair field of truth, but into a laby- 
 rinth of thorns and briars \ You have known, 
 I cannot doubt, as I have done, some who 
 
 1 The state of feeling produced by the reciprocal de- 
 nunciations of controversalists has found expression in 
 Pope's familiar lines : 
 
 " For modes of faith let senseless bigots fight, 
 
 His can't be wrong whose life is in the right." 
 It is suggestive that like lines in Dryden's Religio Laid, 
 
 "Faith is not built on disquisitions vain; 
 
 The things we must believe are few and plain," 
 were followed by his conversion to Rome, and the poem of 
 The Hind and the Panther. Taylor's " Dedication" to his 
 Liberty of Prophesying represents the same tendency to a 
 Latitudinarianism like that which has become characteristic 
 of modern thought. " Where then," he asks, after a survey 
 of the Churches and sects of his time, "shall we fix our 
 confidence or join communion ? To pitch upon any one of 
 these is to throw the dice, if salvation be to be had only in 
 one of them, and that every error that by chance hath made a 
 sect and is distinguished by a name is damnable." The 
 whole treatise is given to working out the ideal of a Church 
 which should impose no other term of communion than the 
 Apostles' Creed. Baxter, in the closing years of his life, 
 drew very near to a like wide comprehensiveness. 
 
IO4 Agnosticism. 
 
 have thus made shipwreck of their faith, who, 
 with great power and brilliant genius, have 
 begun their career among you as the highest 
 of high Churchmen, talking glibly of the notes 
 of Catholicity, asserting the authority of the 
 Church as against private judgment, quoting 
 the Vincentian Canon of the "Quod semper t quod 
 ubique, quod ab omnibus" as though it were ap- 
 plicable to the most disputable formulae ; and 
 you have seen after a year or two, it may be of 
 great success in the regions of science or of 
 culture, a strange and sad transformation. 
 They appear as the destroyers of the faith 
 which once they preached, and turn, almost 
 as if with a personal vindictiveness, upon the 
 Creed which had held them in bondage and 
 trammelled the free exercise of their thought, 
 as the enemy of civilisation and of science. 
 
 And then, secondly, there is yet another 
 source of unbelief which I name, not that you 
 may condemn others, but that you may judge 
 yourselves. What St Paul noted as explain- 
 ing the degradation of the race is true also 
 fatally true of the degradation of the indivi- 
 
. ,.. 
 
 Agnosticism. 
 
 VL ~f M jf ^V 
 
 dual soul. Men do not care to 
 their knowledge because they have ceased to 
 honour Him as a Father and shrink from 
 regarding Him as a judge 1 . They will not 
 come to the light lest their deeds should be 
 reproved. They hear the preacher reasoning 
 of righteousness, temperance and judgment to 
 come and they, at first, put off the unwel- 
 come task of acting on his words to the more 
 convenient season which never comes and 
 then the wish is father to the thought and 
 they say in their hearts that there is no judg- 
 ment and no God. Have you not felt that it 
 is so ? Have you not known, as you look 
 back upon a year of selfishness and sen- 
 suality upon some lavish act of sin which 
 " lets in contagion to the inward parts," and 
 leaves on the soul the indelible stain of a lost 
 purity, that not your Reason, but your Will, 
 rose up in rebellion against the Truth which 
 you reject that you looked round for argu- 
 ments which might confirm you in your de- 
 nial or your doubt that having ceased to 
 
 1 Rom. i. 19 29. 
 
io6 Agnosticism. 
 
 pray, you sought to convince yourselves that 
 prayer was a delusive unreality. Conscience 
 is not yet dead, and therefore you seek for 
 the narcotic of speculative unbelief that it 
 may drug you into at least a partial insensi- 
 bility. If any of you have trodden that 
 downward path you will do well to remember 
 that it is not thus that the victories of Truth 
 are won that you enter on the enquiry with 
 a mind set upon a foregone conclusion. The 
 Masters of those who know who, even if 
 they are not for us, are yet not against us, 
 will tell you that "self-reverence, self-know- 
 ledge, self-control" are the conditions of 
 which your own poet speaks 1 , as of " sove- 
 reign power " so of all clearness of spiritual 
 perception. " Into a soul skilled in evil Wis- 
 
 1 "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
 These three alone lead life to sovereign power, 
 Yet not for power power of herself 
 Would come uncalled for, but to live by law, 
 Acting the law we live by without fear; 
 And because right is right, to follow right 
 Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence." 
 
 Tennyson's (Enone. 
 
Agnosticism. 107 
 
 dom will not enter, nor dwell in the body that 
 is subject unto sin V 
 
 The attacks on the faith thus weakened, 
 or the spiritual perception thus obscured, come 
 from many different quarters, if not with the 
 concert of an organised campaign, yet with a 
 common aim. Criticism questions the date, or 
 the authorship, or the accuracy of the Sacred 
 Books ; tells us that the records which pur- 
 port to give the Origines of the faith of Israel 
 or of Christendom are the product of a later 
 age, marked, each of them, by human tenden- 
 cies, or even party purposes, and that the 
 Origines themselves are to be found in the 
 cloudland of mythical tradition, with or with- 
 out a nucleus of historical fact. Marks of 
 compilation or editorship are found where 
 before we had recognised only the work of 
 a single hand. The diversities which present 
 themselves in the presentation of our Lord's 
 teaching in the Synoptic Gospels and St 
 John's are urged as shewing that the last 
 
 1 Wisd. of Sol. i. 4. The Greek word rendered in the 
 English version as "malicious" is 
 
1 08 Agnosticism . 
 
 is not the work of the beloved disciple, but 
 of some unknown speculative thinker of the 
 second century. Not a few of St Paul's 
 Epistles are noted as being manifestly spu- 
 rious, standing on the same footing as the 
 Clementine Homilies. You, in this place, 
 have materials ready at hand for giving in 
 these matters a reason of the hope that is in 
 you. You have been taught how the Bible 
 took its place in the Church 1 , after what sift- 
 ings and searchings of evidence after what 
 test and trial of its spiritual power as the 
 channel through which the Word of God was 
 brought to the souls of men. You have seen 
 how the parade of an enormous erudition, 
 summing up what were alleged to be the 
 results of an impartial criticism of the claims 
 of a Supernatural Religion, has collapsed, like 
 the shadowy phantom who poured into the 
 ear of the sleeping mother of mankind 
 
 distempered, discontented thoughts, 
 Blown up with high conceits, engendering pride, 
 
 before the touch of an Ithuriel spear of more 
 1 See Dr Westcott's Bible in the Church. 
 
Agnosticism. 109 
 
 celestial temper l . You have been taught that 
 in the midst of all the diversities of thought, 
 temperament, tendencies, which mark the 
 writings of the New Testament, there is a 
 central unity that no historical error has 
 been proved against its records sufficient to 
 invalidate their claim to our respect. And 
 above all, you have learnt to examine these 
 questions without panic and without passion, 
 to admit the right of men to ask them, and 
 not to judge them hastily if they seem to you 
 to have answered the questions wrongly. You 
 would not think that the foundations of the 
 earth were out of course if the book of Eccle- 
 siastes were shewn to be a dramatic persona- 
 tion of the character of the Son of David, 
 like that which we recognise as such in the 
 Wisdom of Solomon, or if the second Epistle 
 of St Peter were proved to stand on a less 
 firm basis of authority than the first. 
 
 Those who press the incompatibility of 
 the results of scientific research with the re- 
 
 1 See Dr Lightfoot's series of Papers on ' ' Supernatural 
 Religion " in the Contemporary Review for 1876-77. 
 
no Agnosticism. 
 
 cord of the creative work with which the book 
 of Genesis opens, dwell in part on facts which 
 are all but universally recognised, in part on 
 theories which, whatever claim they may pos- 
 sess as approximate solutions of phenomena, 
 stand, as yet, at best on the footing of inge- 
 nious, but unproved, hypotheses. No sane 
 person would now quote texts against the con- 
 clusions which we identify with the names of 
 Copernicus and Galileo and Newton. Few 
 would venture to raise the cry of impiety 
 against the geological theories that demand 
 an almost limitless period for the preparation 
 of the earth as the dwellingplace of man. We 
 look with a pitying astonishment on the chrono- 
 logical tables which barely half a century ago 
 fixed the creation of the world, sun, moon and 
 stars, as well as earth, in the autumn of B. c. 
 4OO4 1 . The more recent theories of the evo- 
 lution of all forms of life from some proto- 
 plasmic germs, of the origin of species, not by 
 successive creative acts, but by the accumula- 
 tion, through long ages, of variations singly 
 
 1 Greswell's Fasti Catholid, i. 
 
Agnosticism. 1 1 I 
 
 imperceptible, of the descent of man from 
 some anthropoid ape, can scarcely claim as 
 yet to be invested with the same authority. 
 The history of the past has here, also, how- 
 ever, its lessons for the present. The zeal, 
 "not according to knowledge," which con- 
 demned Galileo 1 and asserted in the early 
 days of the British Association that the geo- 
 logical theories which we connect with the 
 honoured name of Sedgwick were "incom- 
 patible with Christianity," and bore on them 
 "the taint of infidelity 2 ,'' may repeat the 
 blunders of the former days, which in this 
 respect were neither better nor worse than 
 the latter. We need to examine these specu- 
 
 1 Galileo's enforced recantation has been regarded by 
 Roman Catholic theologians from very different standpoints. 
 On the one hand some have found comfort in the thought 
 that he was condemned by the Congregation of the Holy 
 Office and not by the Pope personally, and that thus the In- 
 fallibility of the successor of St Peter was not compro- 
 mised (Celeste's Galileo, c. XII.)- On the other he has been 
 praised as having made a sincere recantation (the " E pur 
 si muove " being dismissed as a Protestant mythos), and so set 
 a noble example of the submission of intellect to faith 
 (Wetzer and Welter, Kirchen-Lexikon, Art. Galilei}. 
 
 2 Dean Cockburn, The Bible defended against the British 
 Association, 1844. 
 
1 1 2 Agnosticism. 
 
 lations also without prejudice and without 
 passion, without the bitterness of condemna- 
 tion, which has its source in panic while it 
 simulates the confidence of faith. " Day unto 
 day uttereth speech, night unto night de- 
 clareth knowledge," and, should they also 
 come to take their place, with missing links 
 of evidence supplied, as demonstrable con- 
 clusions, we may welcome them as a true 
 interpretation of the facts of God's universe, 
 reconcilable, not, it may be, with the outward 
 form and symbols of the truth which were 
 adapted to an earlier stage in the history of 
 mankind, but with the essential truth that 
 underlies those symbols. Artificial schemes 
 of reconciliation detail by detail, the laissez 
 faire assumption that the works of God can- 
 not contradict even the letter which we have 
 identified with His word 1 , these we may 
 
 1 The failure of such attempts, even in the hands of men 
 like Buckland or Hugh Miller, is a warning against the hasty 
 reproduction of these or like schemes in the future. It is 
 doubtless a wiser course that the students of Theology and of 
 Science should accept a partition treaty and work on in 
 parallel lines independently of each other with mutual respect 
 
Agnosticism. 113 
 
 leave to those who are wanting in the wider 
 faith. Knowledge may grow from more to 
 more, but the faith which rests on the eternal 
 rock will keep pace with her advance. There 
 was a creative energy manifested in every 
 variation of type which worked out the Divine 
 idea. When the anthropoid ape if we were 
 to admit the possibility of the transforma- 
 tion first became a " being of large discourse 
 looking before and after," a man endowed 
 with reason, speech, conscience, will, there 
 was that which answers to the record, veiled, 
 it may be, in the symbols of the world's in- 
 fancy, that God made man : Adam, the pro- 
 
 and sympathy. But to assume that the conclusions of science 
 will ultimately be found to coincide with a natural and 
 honest interpretation of the letter of Gen. i. vi. rests on the 
 further assumption, incapable of proof, that that record was 
 intended to be an unerring scientific statement of the true his- 
 tory of the phenomena of the Universe ; and a time may come, 
 is indeed sure to come, when the students in the two regions 
 will compare results and ask whether they agree. It is, 
 I believe, a wiser and braver course to admit the possibility 
 of disagreement, and to limit our thoughts of the Genesis 
 records to the great central ideas which were in the mind of 
 the human writer, ideas coming from the Eternal Spirit but 
 clothing themselves in the symbols of a time of imperfect 
 knowledge and the generalisations as of an infant Newton. 
 
 P. S. c ) 
 
H4 Agnosticism. 
 
 totype of humanity, out of the dust of the 
 ground, yet in His own image, and breathed 
 into his nostrils the breath of life 1 . 
 
 The attack advances from the outworks 
 to the citadel, and Science or those who pro- 
 phesy in the name of Science proclaim that 
 there can be no revelation of the mind of 
 God, because the idea of a revelation pre- 
 supposes a miraculous interposition, and the 
 order of Nature testifies against the possi- 
 bility of miracles. That objection may be 
 
 1 I find that I have almost reproduced unconsciously the 
 very words in which the great Apostle of Evolution states 
 the view which he, as might be expected, rejects. (Haeckel, 
 The Evolution of Man, n. 458.) "These same dualistic 
 philosophers must of course, if they are consistent, also 
 assume that there will be a moment in the Phylogeny of 
 the human mind at which this mind first entered the ver- 
 tebrate body of man. Accordingly, at the time when the 
 human body developed from the body of the Anthropoid 
 Ape (thus probably in the latter part of the Tertiary Period) 
 a specific human mind-element, or, as it is usually expressed, 
 a "divine spark," must have suddenly entered, or been 
 breathed into, the brain of the Anthropoid Ape and there 
 have associated itself with the already existing Ape-mind. 
 I need not point out the theoretic difficulties involved in this 
 
 conception Comparative Psychology, however, teaches 
 
 that this frontier-post (Reason) between man and beast is 
 altogether untenable. " 
 
Agnosticism. 115 
 
 urged, as you know, either on the ground of 
 a scepticism pure and simple, contending that 
 there can be no evidence adequate to prove a 
 miracle against the overwhelming presump- 
 tion from the uniformity of Nature, or from 
 the higher ground of an ideal theism resting 
 on the assumption that the maintenance of 
 law, and not interference with it, is more wor- 
 thy of our highest conceptions of the Divine 
 Nature, and that, therefore, there is, from that 
 standpoint also, a presumption against phe- 
 nomena claiming to be miraculous 1 . Answers 
 have been given to both those presumptions 
 with a completeness which lies beyond my 
 reach 2 . It has been urged as against the first 
 
 1 Hume's Essay on Miracles may be taken as the repre- 
 sentative of the one school, Goethe's assertion that the idea of 
 a miracle was a blasphemy against the majesty of God, of the 
 other. 
 
 2 No thoughtful reader can study Dr Mozley's Bampton 
 Lectures on Miracles without profound interest. But it may 
 be questioned whether he too does not, like his predecessor 
 Dean Mansel, tend to drift into a scepticism in the interests 
 of orthodoxy when he maintains that a uniform succession of 
 phenomena in the past gives no grounds for anticipating 
 a like succession in the future. On the whole I fall back 
 upon Butler's discussion of the Miraculous Element of 
 
 82 
 
n6 Agnosticism. 
 
 presumption, that there are phenomena in the 
 natural world, exceptional and rare in their 
 occurrence, which yet we receive, when they 
 are attested by evidence that we should con- 
 sider trustworthy in other cases, as coming 
 within the range of law ; that in order that the 
 presumption might rest on an adequate basis, 
 we need an induction from the history of 
 other worlds like our own, and passing through 
 similar stages of development. It has been 
 contended, as against the second, that it intro- 
 duces into our conception of God, the very 
 anthropomorphism against which we have 
 heard such indignant protests that it juggles 
 with ambiguous terms when it identifies the 
 Law which conscience recognises as binding, 
 with that which is but a convenient expres- 
 sion of the manner in which material pheno- 
 mena succeed each other that even from its 
 own standpoint it would be true that, as man 
 rises to his highest dignity when Will obeying 
 Law, in its true sense, asserts its supremacy 
 
 Revelation (Anal. II. 2) as being less subtle but more satis- 
 
Agnosticism. nj 
 
 over merely automatic actions, so there is no 
 dishonour done to our ideal of God when we 
 think of Him, also, as putting forth His Will, 
 in accordance with the wisdom and with the 
 love which, with Hooker, we may recognise 
 as the true eternal Law of His being 1 , even 
 though in so doing He should break through 
 what, in the other sense of the word, are the 
 Laws which He has imposed on the world of 
 Nature, which without that exercise of sove- 
 reignty, would be but an eternally automatic 
 mechanism. 
 
 We are thus carried on one step further to 
 the great question of all. Can we know that 
 God is ? Can we know what He is ? Is He 
 a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him ? 
 Does He govern the world in righteousness ? 
 Is He such that we should serve Him, love 
 
 1 It may rightly be urged that on this view the Miracle 
 itself (assuming adequate evidence of the fact) presupposes 
 the law of uniform succession which it interrupts, and is itself 
 the expression of the higher Law working now through that 
 lower law, and now through its suspension. Of that higher 
 Law itself it is true that it includes love, life, and will, and 
 therefore that "her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the 
 harmony of the world." (Hooker, . P. T. ad fin.} 
 
1 1 8 Agnosticism. 
 
 Him, yearn after His presence now, that to 
 see and know Him as He is shall be hereafter 
 the beatific vision of the Saints of God ? Here 
 also, as we know but too well, some of the 
 keenest intellects and noblest natures of our 
 time have made shipwreck of their faith. 
 The words that " that which is knowable of 
 God" is manifest in them, being intellectually 
 apprehended from the things that are made, 
 even His eternal power and Godhead, have 
 come to seem to them as a voice heard in 
 a dream and not audible to the waking ear. 
 The laws of evidence or the constitution 
 of men's minds have, it would seem, under- 
 gone a catastrophic change within the last 
 hundred years. Paley's argument from de- 
 sign is out of date. "We cannot infer from 
 the watch the existence of its maker. The 
 very ' cunningest of Nature's clocks' may 
 have been developed out of a ruder and 
 rougher timepiece, and that, in its turn, may 
 have originated in the spontaneous activity 
 of some germ-cell more sensitive than its fel- 
 lows, to the motion of the heavens which it 
 
Agnosticism. 119 
 
 measures. We, at all events, cannot even 
 guess at the purpose and character of the 
 maker. We must content ourselves with ob- 
 serving its movements, and taking its wheels 
 and springs to pieces 1 . In that positive know- 
 ledge there is wisdom and safety. In the 
 
 1 I have but summed up the very words of Huxley's Lay 
 Sermons, p. 330. He is answering Paley's argument from 
 the watch and the inferences of teleology generally, " Imagine 
 that it had been possible to shew that all these changes had 
 resulted first from a tendency in the structure to vary indefi- 
 nitely, and secondly from something in the surrounding 
 world which helped all variations in the direction of an 
 accurate timekeeper and checked all those in other directions, 
 then it is obvious that the force of Paley's argument would be 
 gone, for it would be demonstrated that an apparatus tho- 
 roughly well adapted to a particular purpose might be the 
 result of a method of trial and ends worked by unintelligent 
 agents, as well as of the direct application of the means 
 appropriate to that end by an intelligent agent." I confess, 
 in spite of the undue depreciation which now rests on Paley's 
 name (a natural reaction, it may be, from a period of undue 
 honour), that I could wish for one hour of his robust common 
 sense in answer to this "It is obvious," "it would be demon- 
 strated." Does the inference that there is a Will that designs 
 vary in the inverse ratio of the magnitude and complexity of 
 the design ? Assuming the theory of evolution to be carried 
 backward and forward to the remotest periods of duration of 
 which we can conceive, is it more philosophical to believe 
 that it speaks of a Will that is, and was, and is to come, or 
 to find in it no object of faith but a "tendency" and a "some- 
 thing " ? 
 
1 20 Agnosticism. 
 
 attempt to go beyond it we are going back to 
 the childhood of the race, when it peopled 
 earth and heaven with Unseen Powers, and 
 bowed in blind terror or gratitude, before the 
 presence of the supernatural. The consensus 
 of mankind in the times of ignorance cannot 
 be allowed to weigh against the illumination 
 of the present." That conclusion of Atheism 
 or Agnosticism has been contemplated with 
 very different thoughts. There are those who 
 see in it, like Lucretius *, the last triumph of 
 
 1 "Humana ante oculos foede cum vita jaceret 
 In terris oppressa gravi sub religione 
 Quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat, 
 Horribili super aspectu mortaljbus instans, 
 Primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra 
 Est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra, 
 Quem nee fama deum nee fulmina nee minitanti 
 Murmure compressit caelum, sed eo magis acrem 
 Inritat animi virtutem, effringere ut arta 
 Naturae primus portarum claustra cupiret. 
 Ergo vivida vis animi pervicit, et extra 
 Processit longe flammantia moenia mundi, 
 Atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque, 
 Unde refert nobis victor quod possit oriri 
 Quid nequeat, finita potestas denique cuique 
 Quanam sit ratione atque alte terminus haerens, 
 Quare religio pedibus subjeeta vicissim 
 Opteritur, nos exaequat victoria caelo," 
 
 Lucret. De Nat, i. 6279. 
 
Agnosticism. 12 1 
 
 the " vivida vis animi" which neither the 
 "fama deum nee fulmina" can terrify, over 
 the Religion which has been the curse of the 
 world's history. There are others whom it 
 plunges, as in the vision of the German 
 thinker 1 , into the blackness of darkness. They 
 "gaze on the immeasurable world for the Di- 
 vine Eye, and it glares on them with an 
 empty black bottomless .eye-socket. They 
 have laid them down to sleep, and they 
 awaken in a stormy chaos, in the Everlasting 
 Midnight, and there comes no morning, and 
 no soft healing hand and no infinite Father." 
 " Our little life is the sigh of Nature or only 
 its echo. Mists fall and worlds reek up from 
 
 1 Jean Paul Richter, Siebenkiis. I quote from Carlyle's 
 Miscellanies, vol. II., p. 371 375 (ed. 1840). It adds to the 
 almost terrific power of this vision of a world without God, 
 that it is the Christ as the ideal representative of Humanity 
 who is thus made to utter the blank despair of finding that 
 His trust in the Father had been a delusive dream. Richter's 
 own comment on what he had thus imagined is worth adding: 
 "If ever my heart were to grow so wretched and so dead 
 that all feelings in it which announce the being of a God 
 were extinct there, I would terrify myself with this sketch of 
 mine. It would heal me, and give me my feelings back" 
 (P- 370)- 
 
1 2 2 Agnosticism. 
 
 the Sea of Death : the Future is a mounting 
 mist, and the Present is a falling one." You 
 and I, my friends, have to look on this pic- 
 ture and on that, and to ask the question, 
 Have we indeed no Father ? Is there indeed 
 no God ? If you deal honestly with your 
 own spirits, if you do not close your eyes 
 against the light, or narcotise the thoughts 
 that accuse or else excuse each other, if you 
 live by the light you have, even though it be 
 but as the rays of a flickering torch shining 
 through the mist and darkness, I have no fear 
 for the result. I hold to the old belief that 
 " The heavens declare the glory of God, and 
 the firmament sheweth His handywork" 
 that the order of the universe testifies to a 
 Divine purpose working through the ages to 
 a result which shall testify, not of limited 
 Power or imperfect Goodness, but of a Su- 
 preme Wisdom and Love victorious even over 
 the freedom which seems to thwart them, that 
 deep within the consciousness of each human 
 soul there lies the capacity for knowing God, 
 the promise and the potency of a higher and 
 
Agnosticism. 1 2 3 
 
 Eternal Life. " He is not far from every one 
 of us," and in the contrite heart and pure 
 which He prefers above all temples, makes 
 Himself manifest to those who diligently seek 
 Him. Even from the scientific standpoint 
 the phenomena of Theopathy 1 which thus 
 
 1 I use the word as a comprehensive expression of the 
 whole cycle of emotions which connect themselves with the 
 belief that men are in contact and communion with the 
 Eternal, that they have found God, and that He is the 
 Father of their spirits. They are found, it will be acknow- 
 ledged, in every age, in every race, under all conditions of 
 knowledge and creed and culture. In Moses and David 
 and Job and Paul and John, in Socrates and Plato, in 
 Augustine and Bernard and Tauler and a Kempis, in Hooker 
 and Leighton and Herbert and Keble and Maurice and 
 Erskine, in Mahometan Mystics and English Quakers, in 
 millions of men and women of whom the world was not 
 worthy, but whom it has not known, they have been as the 
 very central passion of their being. They have been found 
 historically with greater purity and intensity within the range 
 of the influences of Christendom, and in proportion as those 
 influences have been allowed to act, than in those who saw 
 the Light that lighteth every man through more refracting 
 nudia. They have been united, in the vast majority of cases, 
 with a greater purity and holiness than was found in their 
 absence, with a manifest power alike to strengthen and to 
 soothe. Humanity has appeared in its noblest ideal of ex- 
 cellence where they have most characterised it. What expla- 
 nation has a merely materialistic science to offer of these 
 phenomena? Are they all, from first to last, a delusion, & 
 mockery and a snare ? Are these also automatic functions of 
 the grey matter of the brain, or abnormal developments of 
 
1 24 Agnosticism. 
 
 present themselves, and which have been 
 verified throughout the ages by experimental 
 
 hysteria ? Or are they witnesses that this is indeed the goal 
 and consummation to which man's nature tends and in which 
 it finds its completeness ? 
 
 It is obvious that it is on the reality of the grounds of 
 these emotions that the whole question of the efficacy of 
 prayer turns, and not on its power to produce changes in the 
 outward phenomena of nature round us or in our material 
 condition. We may ask for many things, and receive not, 
 because we ask amiss. We may ask for health and pros- 
 perity, for rain and sunshine and plenteous harvests, and 
 receive not, because it is better for us in the sum and total of 
 things that we should be without that which we have asked 
 for. We may ask and receive not, because we ask for that 
 which comes under the dominion of a law which it is not the 
 will of the Father to suspend or change, which, as soon as we 
 know its existence, we recognise as wiser and better than any 
 choice or wish of ours. But if we seek, not, as the Heathen 
 seek, as Christians have too often sought, what we shall 
 eat or what we shall drink or wherewithal we shall be 
 clothed, but for the kingdom of God and His righteousness, 
 there is surely a chorus of attestation that such prayers are 
 answered. The crucial test of prayer would be found, not as 
 suggested in the well-known letter to Dr Tyndall in the Con- 
 temporary Review (xx. p. 305), in a comparison of results as 
 regards material success in one Hospital Ward, for the patients 
 in which people were praying outside, with those in another 
 Hospital for which people were not praying (can we ima- 
 gine, by the way, any one with a mind after the mind of 
 Christ, praying that the sufferers in the latter might not 
 recover, or leaving them, by an act .of volition, unprayed 
 for ?) but in two Wards, in one of which the patients prayed 
 for themselves and for each other as they have been taught 
 by Christ to pray, while in the other, men had "nourished 
 
Agnosticism. 125 
 
 tests, crave for an explanation and a theory 
 as much as those of the material universe or 
 of our physical life. To those who go be- 
 yond that standpoint they will prepare the 
 way for the fuller Apocalypse of all that may 
 be known of God. To the worship of the 
 Unknown and the Unknowable, leaving the 
 
 a blind life within the brain," and never known what it was 
 to lift their hands in prayer. We need not fear the result of 
 such an experiment. Phthisis and cancer might do their 
 work in each, but in the one there would be, what physicians 
 see too often, the picture of a lazar-house such as Milton has 
 drawn : 
 
 "Dire was the tossing, deep the groans: Despair 
 Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch; 
 And over them triumphant Death his dart 
 Shook, but delayed to strike, though oft invoked 
 With vows as their chief good and final hope." 
 
 Par. Lost, xi. 
 
 In the other there would be what also they, at least, sometimes 
 see, patience, and joy, and hope, and the faith that all is well, 
 and trust in the Father who scourgeth every son whom He 
 receiveth, and th.e calm surrender of their own wills to His, 
 and the readiness for death, or the willingness to remain. 
 Are these lesser or greater goods than a rapid or slow re- 
 covery, than the healing of the burning fever or the fractured 
 limb ? Would not even the most dispassionate and sceptical 
 practitioner admit that these presented, not by the violation 
 of law, but by its natural working, at least more favourable 
 conditions than the other for the action of his best chosen 
 remedies, or the vis medicatrix Natura ? 
 
1 26 
 
 Agnosticism. 
 
 world to itself, we oppose, in the full as- 
 surance of Faith, the worship of the Father 
 and the Son and the Eternal Spirit of God 
 manifested in Christ and reconciling the world 
 unto Himself. 
 
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 fection of life.'' 1 Westminster Review. 
 
 Campbell (Lewis). SOME ASPECTS OF THE CHRIS- 
 TIAN IDEAL. Sermons by the Rev. L. CAMPBELL, M.A., 
 LL.D., Professor of Greek in the University of Glasgow. Crown 
 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Canterbury. Works by ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL, Archbishop 
 
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 THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE CHURCH OF 
 ENGLAND. Seven Addresses delivered to the Clergy and Church- 
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 SOME THOUGHTS ON THE DUTIES OF THE ES- 
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 CHURCH. Seven Addresses delivered at his Second Visitation. 
 8vo. 4^. 6d. 
 
 Cheyne. Works by T. K. CHEYNE, M.A., Fellow of Balliol 
 
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 RANGED. An Amended Version, with Historical and Critical 
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 ment writing." 
 
 NOTES AND CRITICISMS on the HEBREW TEXT 
 OF ISAIAH. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Choice Notes on the Four Gospels, drawn from 
 
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 ON SOME INFLUENCES OF CHRISTIANITY UPON 
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 CHURCH (Very Rev. R. W.) continued. 
 
 ' ' Feio books that we have met with have given us keener pleasure than 
 
 this It would be a real pleasure to quote extensively, so wise and so 
 
 true, so tender and so discriminating are Dean Churches judgments, but 
 the limits of our space are inexorable. ' We hope the book will be bought." 
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 THE SACRED POETRY OF EARLY RELIGIONS. 
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 ST. ANSELM. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
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 HUMAN LIFE AND ITS CONDITIONS. Sermons 
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 Clergyman's Self-Examination concerning the 
 
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 Colenso. THE COMMUNION SERVICE FROM THE 
 BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER; with Select Readings from 
 the Writings of the Rev. F. D. MAURICE, M.A. Edited by the 
 Right Rev. J. W. COLENSO, D.D., Lord Bishop of Natal. New 
 Edition. i6mo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Collects of the Church of England. With a beauti- 
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 Cover. Crown 8vo. I2s. Also kept in various styles of morocco. 
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 and gardens wit/i the course of the Christian year." 
 
 Congreve. HIGH HOPES, AND PLEADINGS FOR A REA- 
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 Sermons preached in the Parish Church of Tooting Graveney, Surrey. 
 By J. CONGREVE, M. A., Rector. Cheaper Issue. Crown 8vo. 5^. 
 
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 COTTON, D.D., Bishop of Calcutta : 
 
8 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 COTTON (Bishop) continued. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED TO ENGLISH CONGREGA- 
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 EXPOSITORY SERMONS ON THE EPISTLES FOR 
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 Curteis. DISSENT in its RELATION to the CHURCH 
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 Lichfield Cathedral; Rector of Turweston, Bucks. New Edition. 
 Crown 8vo. Js. 6d. 
 
 "Mr. Curteis has done good service by maintaining in an eloquent, 
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 Davies. Works by the Rev. J. LLEWELYN DAVIES, M.A., 
 Rector of Christ Church, St. Marylebone, etc. : 
 
 THE GOSPEL AND MODERN LIFE ; with a Preface 
 on a Recent Phase of Deism. Second Edition. To which is 
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 WARNINGS AGAINST SUPERSTITION, IN FOUR 
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 "We have seldom read a wiser little book. The Sermons are short, 
 terse, and full of true spiritual wisdom, expressed with a lucidity and a 
 moderation that must give them weight even with those who agi-ee least 
 
 with their author Of the volume as a whole it is hardly possible to 
 
 speak with too cordial an appreciation." Spectator. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. Sermons. Extra fcap. 
 8vo. 6*. 
 
 Donaldson THE APOSTOLICAL FATHERS: a Critical 
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 JAMES DONALDSON, LL.D. Crown 8vo. 7.5-. 6d. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 DONALDSON (J., LL.D.) continued. 
 
 This book was published in 1 864 as the first volume of a ' Critical 
 History of Christian Literature and Doctrine from the death of the 
 Apostles to the Nicene Council.' The intention was to carry down the 
 history continuously to the time of Eusebius, and this intention has not 
 been abandoned. But as the writers can be sometimes grouped more easily 
 according to subject or locality than according to time, it is deemed ad- 
 visable to publish the history of each groiip separately. The Introduction 
 to the present volume serves as an introduction to the whole period. 
 
 Drake. THE TEACHING OF THE CHURCH DURING 
 THE FIRST THREE CENTURIES ON THE DOCTRINES 
 OF THE CHRISTIAN PRIESTHOOD AND SACRIFICE. 
 By the Rev. C. B. DRAKE, M.A., Warden of the Church of Eng- 
 land Hall, Manchester. Crown 8vo. 4^. 6d. 
 
 Eadie. Works by JOHN EADIE, D.D., LL.D., Professor of 
 Biblical Literature and Exegesis, United Presbyterian Church : 
 
 THE ENGLISH BIBLE. An External and Critical History 
 of the various English Translations of Scripture, with Remarks on 
 the Need of Revising the English New Testament. Two vols. 
 8vo. 28.?. 
 
 ' ' 'Accurate, scholarly, full of completest sympathy with the translators 
 and their work, and marvellously interesting. "Literary Churchman. 
 
 ' ' The work is a very valuable one. It is the result of vast labour, 
 sound scholarship, and large erudition." British Quarterly Review. 
 
 ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES TO THE THESSALONIANS. 
 A Commentary on the Greek Text. Edited by the Rev. W. 
 YOUNG, M.A., with a Preface by the Rev. Professor CAIRNS, 
 D.D. 8vo. 12s. 
 
 Ecce Homo. A SURVEY OF THE LIFE AND WORK OF 
 JESUS CHRIST. Fourteenth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 ( 'A very original and remarkable book, full of striking thought and 
 delicate perception ; a book which has realised with wonderful vigour and 
 freshness the historical magnitude of Christ 's work, and which here and 
 there gives us readings of the finest kind of the probable motive of His indi- 
 vidual words and actions." Spectator. " The best and most established 
 believer will find it adding some fresh buttresses to his faith." Literary 
 Churchman. "If we have not mistinder stood him, we have before us a 
 writer who has a right to claim, deference from those who think deepest 
 and know most." Guardian. 
 
io THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Faber. SERMONS AT A NEW SCHOOL. By the Rev. 
 
 ARTHUR FABER, M.A., Head Master of Malvern College. Cr. 
 
 8vo. 6s. 
 
 " These are high-toned, earnest Sermons, orthodox and scholarlike, and 
 laden with encouragement and warning, wisely adapted to the needs of 
 school-life. " Literary Churchman. 
 
 Farrar. Works by the Rev. F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S., 
 Canon of Westminster, late Head Master of Maiiborough College: 
 
 THE FALL OF MAN, AND OTHER SERMONS. 
 Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 The Nonconformist says of these Sermons, " Mr. Farrar's Sermons 
 are almost perfect specimens of one type of Sermons, which we may con- 
 cisely call beautiful. The style of expression is beautiful there is beauty 
 in the thoughts, the illustrations, the allusions they are expressive of 
 genuinely beautiful perceptions and feelings. " The British Quarterly says, 
 " 'Ability, eloquence, scholarship, and practical tisefulness, are in these 
 Sei'mons combined in a very unusual degree. " 
 
 THE WITNESS OF HISTORY TO CHRIST. Being 
 the Hulsean Lectures for 1870. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. $s. 
 
 The following are the. subjects of the Five Lectures : /. " The Ante- 
 cedent Credibility of the Miraculous." II. " The Adequacy of the Gospel 
 Records." III. " The Victories of Christianity." IV. " Christianity and 
 the Individual. " V. " Christianity and the Race. " The subjects of the 
 four Appendices are: A. " The Diversity of Christian Evidences." 
 B. "Confucius." C. "Buddha." D. " Comte." 
 
 SEEKERS AFTER GOD. The Lives of Seneca, Epictetus, 
 
 and Marcus Aurelius. New Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 "A very interesting and valuable book." Saturday Review. 
 
 THE SILENCE AND VOICES OF GOD : University 
 and other Sermons. Third Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 l( We can most cordially recommend Dr. Farrar's singularly beautiful 
 
 volume of Sermons For beauty of diction, felicity of style, aptness of 
 
 illustration and earnest loving exhortation, the vohime is without its 
 parallel." John Bull. " They are marked by great ability, by an honesty 
 which does not hesitate to acknowledge difficulties and by an earnestness 
 which commands respect" Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 "IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH." Sermons on Prac- 
 tical Subjects, preached at Marlborough College from 1871 76. 
 Third Edition. Crown Svo. gs. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. n 
 
 FARRAR (Rev. F. W.) continued. 
 
 "All Dr. Farrar's peculiar charm of style is apparent here, all that 
 care and subtleness of analysis, and an even-added distinctness and clear- 
 ness of moral teaching, which is what every kind of sermon wants, and 
 especially a sermon to boys." Literary Churchman. 
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. Five Sermons preached in Westminster 
 Abbey, in 1876. With Preface, Notes, etc. Contents : What 
 Heaven is. Is Life Worth Living? ' Hell,' What it is not. 
 Are there few that be saved ? Earthly and Future Consequences 
 of Sin. Sixteenth Thousand. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 SAINTLY WORKERS. Lenten Lectures delivered in St. 
 Andrew's, Holborn, March and April, 1878. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 Fellowship : LETTERS ADDRESSED TO MY SISTER 
 MOURNERS. Fcap. Svo. cloth gilt. 3-r. 6d. 
 
 Ferrar. A COLLECTION OF FOUR IMPORTANT 
 
 MSS. OF THE GOSPELS, viz., 13, 69, 124, 346, with a view 
 to prove their common origin, and to restore the Text of their 
 Archetype. By the late W. H. FERRAR, M.A., Professor of Latin 
 in the 'University of Dublin. Edited by T. K. ABBOTT, M.A., 
 Professor of Biblical Greek, Dublin. 4to., half morocco. lew. 6d. 
 
 Forbes. Works by GRANVILLE H. FORBES, Rector of 
 
 Broughton : 
 THE VOICE OF GOD IN THE PSALMS. Cr. Svo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 VILLAGE SERMONS. By a Northamptonshire Rector. 
 Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 " Such a vohime as the present . . . is as great an accession to the cause 
 of a deep theology as the most refined exposition of its fundamental prin- 
 ciples . . . We heartily accept his actual teaching as a true picture of what 
 revelation teaches us, and thank him for it as one of the most profound 
 that was ever made perfectly simple and popular . ... It is part of the 
 beauty of these sermons that while they apply the old truth to the new 
 modes of feeling they seem to preserve the whiteness of its simplicity .... 
 There will be plenty of critics to accuse this volume of inadequacy of 
 doctrine because it says no more than Scripture about vicarious sitjfering 
 and external retribution. For ourselves we welcome it most cordially as 
 expressing adequately ^vhat we believe to be the true burden of the Gospel in 
 a manner which may lake hold either of the least or the most cultivated 
 intellect. " Spectator. 
 
12 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Hardwick. Works by the Ven. ARCHDEACON HARDWICK : 
 CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS. A Historical Inquiry 
 into some of the Chief Parallelisms and Contrasts between Christ- 
 ianity and the Religious Systems of the Ancient World. New 
 Edition, revised, and a Prefatory Memoir by the Rev. FRANCIS 
 PROCTER, M.A. New Edition. Cr. 8vo. IDS. 6d. 
 The plan of the work is boldly and almost nobly conceived. . . . We com- 
 mend it to the perusal of all those who take interest in the study of ancient 
 mythology, without losing their reverence for the siipreme authority of the 
 oracles of the living God" Christian Observer. 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Middle 
 Age. From Gregory the Great to the Excommunication of Luther, 
 Edited by WILLIAM STUBBS, M.A., Regius Professor of Modern 
 History in the University of Oxford. With Four Maps constructed 
 for this work by A. KEITH JOHNSTON. New Edition. Crown 
 8vo. ioj. 6<^. 
 
 "As a Mamial for the student of ecclesiastical history in the Middle 
 Ages, we know no English work which can be compared to Mr. Hardwictis 
 book. " Guardian. 
 
 A HISTORY of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH DURING 
 THE REFORMATION. New Edition, revised by Professor 
 STUBBS. Crown Svo. \QS. 6d. 
 
 This volume is intended as a sequel and companion to the " History 
 of the Christian Church during the Middle Age. " 
 
 Hare. Works by the late ARCHDEACON HARE : 
 
 THE VICTORY OF FAITH. By JULIUS CHARLES 
 HARE, M.A., Archdeacon of Lewes. Edited by Prof. PLUMPTRE. 
 With Introductory Notices by the late Prof. MAURICE and Dean 
 STANLEY. Third Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER. With Notes. 
 New Edition, edited by Prof. E. H. PLUMPTRE. Cm. Svo. 7-r. 6d. 
 
 Harris. SERMONS. By the late GEORGE COLLYER 
 HARRIS, Prebendary of Exeter, and Vicar of St. Luke's, Torquay. 
 With Memoir by CHARLOTTE M. YONGE, and Portrait. Extra 
 fcap. Svo. 6s. 
 
 Hervey. THE GENEALOGIES OF OUR LORD AND 
 SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST, as contained in the Gospels of 
 St. Matthew and St. Luke, reconciled with each other, and shown 
 to be in harmony with the true Chronology of the Times. By Lord 
 ARTHUR HERVEY, Bishop of Bath and Wells. Svo. los. 6d. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 13 
 
 Hort. TWO DISSERTATIONS. I. On MONOFENH2 0EO2 
 
 in Scripture and Tradition. II. On the " Constantinopolitan" 
 Creed and other Eastern Creeds of the Fourth Century. By F. J. A. 
 HORT, D.D., Fellow and Divinity Lecturer of Emmanuel Col- 
 lege, Cambridge. 8vo. Is. 6d. 
 
 Hows on (Dean) Works by : 
 
 BEFORE THE TABLE. An Inquiry, Historical and Theo- 
 logical, into the True Meaning of the Consecration Rubric in the 
 Communion Service of the Church of England. By the Very Rev. 
 J. S. HOVVSON, D.D., Dean of Chester. With an Appendix and 
 Supplement containing Papers by the Right Rev. the Bishop of 
 St. Andrew's and the Rev. R. W. KENNION, M.A. 8vo. TS. 6d. 
 
 THE POSITION OF THE PRIEST DURING CON- 
 SECRATION IN THE ENGLISH COMMUNION SERVICE. A 
 Supplement and a Reply. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Hymni Ecclesise. Fcap. 8vo. js. 6d. 
 
 This collection was edited by Dr. Newman while he lived at Oxford. 
 
 Hyacinthe. CATHOLIC REFORM. By FATHER 
 HYACINTHS. Letters, Fragments, Discourses. Translated by 
 Madame HYACINTHE-LOYSON. With a Preface by the Very Rev. 
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 "A valuable contribution to the religious literature of the day, and is 
 especially opportune at a time when a controvei-sy of no ordinary import- 
 ance upon the very subject it deals with is engaged in all over Europe. " 
 Daily Telegraph. 
 
 Imitation of Christ. FOUR BOOKS. Translated from the 
 Latin, with Preface by the Rev. W. BENHAM, B.D., Vicar of 
 Margate. Printed with Borders in the Ancient Style after Holbein, 
 Diirer, and other Old Masters. Containing Dances of Death, Acts 
 of Mercy, Emblems, and a variety of curious ornamentation. Cr. 
 8vo. gilt edges. "js. 6d. 
 
 Jacob. BUILDING IN SCIENCE, AND OTHER SER- 
 MONS. By J. A. JACOB, M.A., Minister of St. Thomas's, Pad- 
 dington. Extra fcap. 8vo. &y. 
 
 Jellett THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER : being the Don- 
 nellan Lectures for 1877. By J. H. JELLETT, B.D., Senior 
 Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, formerly President of the Royal 
 Irish Academy. Second Edition. 8vo. $s. 
 
14 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Jennings and Lowe. THE PSALMS, with Introduc- 
 tions and Critical Notes. By A. C. JENNINGS, B.A., Jesus Col- 
 lege, Cambridge, Tyrwhitt Scholar, Crosse Scholar, Hebrew 
 University Scholar, and Fry Scholar of St. John's College; helped 
 in parts by W. H. LOWE, M. A., Hebrew Lecturer and late Scholar 
 of Christ's College, Cambridge, and Tyrwhitt Scholar. Complete 
 in two vols. crown Svo. los. 6d. each. Vol. I, Psalms i. lxxii.,with 
 Prolegomena ; Vol. 2, Psalms Ixxiii. cl. 
 
 Killen. THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF IRE- 
 LAND from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. By W. D. 
 KILLEN, D.D., President of Assembly's College, Belfast, and 
 Professor of Ecclesiastical History. Two vols. 8vo. 25^. 
 
 " Those who have the leisure will do well to read these two volumes. 
 They are full of interest, and are the result of great research" Spec- 
 tator. 
 
 Kingsley. Works by the late Rev. CHARLES KINGSLEY, 
 M. A. , Rector of Eversley, and Canon of Westminster : 
 
 THE WATER OF LIFE, AND OTHER SERMONS. 
 
 New Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE PENTATEUCH ; AND DAVJD. 
 New Edition. Crown. Svo. 6s. 
 
 GOOD NEWS OF GOD. Eighth Edition. Crown Svo. 
 6s. 
 
 SERMONS FOR THE TIMES. New Edition. Crown 
 Svo. 6s. 
 
 VILLAGE AND TOWN AND COUNTRY SERMONS. 
 
 New Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 SERMONS on NATIONAL SUBJECTS. Second Edition. 
 Fcap. Svo. 3-r. 6d. 
 
 THE KING OF THE EARTH, and other Sermons, 
 a Second Series of Sermons on National Subjects. Second 
 Edition. Fcap. Svo. $s. 6d. 
 
 DISCIPLINE, AND OTHER SERMONS. Second Edition. 
 Fcap. Svo. 3^. 6d. 
 
 WESTMINSTER SERMONS. With Preface. New 
 Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 15 
 
 Kynaston. SERMONS PREACHED IN THE COL- 
 LEGE CHAPEL, CHELTENHAM, during the First Year 
 of his Office. By the Rev. HERBERT KYNASTON, M.A., Princi- 
 pal of Cheltenham College. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Lightfoot. Works by J. B. LIGHTFOOT, D.D., Bishop of 
 Durham. 
 
 S. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. A Re- 
 vised Text, with Introduction, Notes, and Dissertations. Fifth 
 Edition, revised. 8vo. cloth. 12s. 
 
 While the Author's object has been to make this commentary generally 
 complete, he has paid special attention to everything relating to St. Paul's 
 personal history and his intercourse with the Apostles and Church of the 
 Circumcision, as it is this feature in the Epistle to the Galatians which 
 has given it an overwhelming interest in recent theological controvei-sy . 
 The Spectator says, " There is no commentator at once of sounder judg- 
 ment and more libei'al than Dr. Lightfoot." 
 
 ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS. A 
 Revised Text, with Introduction, Notes, and Dissertations. Fourth 
 Edition, revised. 8vo. 12s. 
 
 tt JVo commentary in the English language can be compared with it in 
 regard to fulness of information, exact scholarship, and laboured attempts 
 to settle everything about the epistle on a solid foundation. " Athenseum. 
 
 ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND 
 TO PHILEMON. A Revised Text with Introduction, Notes, etc. 
 Third Edition, revised. 8vo. 12s. 
 
 ' ' // bears marks of continued and extended reading and research, and 
 of ampler materials at command. Indeed, it leaves nothing to be desired 
 by those who seek to study thoroughly the epistles contained in it, and to do 
 so with all known advantages presented in sufficient detail and in conve- 
 nient form. " Guardian. 
 
 S. CLEMENT OF ROME. An Appendix containing the 
 newly discovered portions of the two Epistles to the Corinthians 
 with Introductions and Notes, and a Translation of the whole. 
 8vo. 8s. 6d. 
 
 ON A FRESH REVISION OF THE ENGLISH NEW 
 TESTAMENT. Second Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 The Author shews in detail the necessity for a fresh revision of the 
 authorized version on the folloiving grounds: I. False Readings. 2. 
 Artificial distinctions created. 3. Real distinctions obliterated. 4. Fatdts 
 
16 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 of Grammar. 5. Faults of Lexicography. 6. Treatment of Proper 
 Names, official titles, etc. 7. Archaisms, defects in the English, errors 
 of the press, etc. " The book is marked by careful scholarship, familiarity 
 with the subject, sobriety, and circumspection. " Athenseum. 
 
 Lome. THE PSALMS LITERALLY RENDERED IN 
 
 VERSE. By the MARQUIS OF LORNE. With three Illustrations. 
 New Edition. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d. 
 
 Luckock. THE TABLES OF STONE. A Course of 
 Sermons preached in All Saints' Church, Cambridge, by H. M. 
 LUCKOCK, M.A., Canon of Ely. Fcap. 8vo. 3^.6^. 
 
 Maclaren. SERMONS PREACHED at MANCHESTER. 
 
 By ALEXANDER MACLAREN. Sixth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. ^s. 6d. 
 
 These Sermons represent no special school, but deal with the broad prin- 
 ciples of Christian truth, especially in their bearing on practical, every day 
 life. A few of the titles are: "The Stone of Stumbling," "Love and 
 Forgiveness," "The Living Dead," "Memory in Another World" 
 Faith in Christ," " Love and Fear " "The Choice of Wisdom " "The 
 Food of the World." 
 
 A SECOND SERIES OF SERMONS. Fourth Edition. 
 Fcap. 8vo. 4-y. 6d. 
 
 The Spectator characterises them as "vigorous in style, full of thought, 
 rich in illustration, and in an unusual degree interesting :" 
 
 A THIRD SERIES OF SERMONS. Third Edition. 
 
 Fcap. 8vo. 4^-. 6d. 
 
 " Sermons more sober and yet more forcible, and with a certain wise and 
 practical spirituality about them it would not be easy to find." Spectator. 
 
 WEEK-DAY EVENING ADDRESSES. Delivered in 
 Manchester. Extra Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Maclear. Works by the Rev. G. F. MACLEAR, D.D., Head 
 Master of King's College School : 
 
 A CLASS-BOOK OF OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. 
 
 With Four Maps. New Edition. i8mo. 4^. 6d. 
 " The present volume," says the Preface, "forms a Class-Book of Old 
 Testament History from the Earliest Times to those of Ezra and Nehe- 
 miah. In its preparation the most recent authorities have been consulted, 
 and wherever it has appeared useful, Notes have been subjoined illustra- 
 tive of the Text, and, for the sake of more advanced students, references 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 17 
 
 MACLEAR (Dr. G. F '.) continued. 
 
 added to larger -works. The Index has been so arranged as to form a 
 concise Dictionary of the Persons and Places mentioned in the course of the 
 Narrative. " The Maps, prepared by Stanford, materially add to the 
 value and usefulness of the book. The British Quarterly Review calls it 
 ' ' A careful and elaborate, though brief compendium of all that modern 
 research has done for the illustration of the Old Testament. We know of 
 no work which contains so much important information in so small a 
 compass" 
 
 A CLASS-BOOK OF NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 
 
 Including the Connexion of the Old and New Testament. New 
 Edition. i8mo. $s. 6d. 
 
 The present volume forms a sequel to the Author's Class- Book of Old 
 Testament History, and continues the narrative to the close of S. Paul's 
 second imprisonment at Rome. The work is divided into three Books 
 /. The Connection between the Old and Ne%v Testament. II. The 
 Gospel History. III. The Apostolic History. In the Appendix are given 
 Chronological Tables. The Clerical Journal says, "If is not often that 
 such an amount of useful and interesting matter on biblical subjects, is 
 foimd in so convenient and small a compass, as in this well-arranged 
 volume. " 
 
 A CLASS-BOOK OF THE CATECHISM OF THE 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND. New and Cheaper Edition. i8mo. 
 is. 6d. 
 
 The present work is intended as a sequel to the two preceding books. 
 "Like them, it is furnished with notes and references to larger works, 
 and it is hoped that it may be found, especially in the higher forms of our 
 Public Schools, to supply a suitable manual of instruction in the chief 
 doctrines of our Church, and a useful help in the preparation of Can- 
 didates for Confirmation." The Literary Churchman says, " It is indeed 
 the work of a scholar and divine, and as such, thoztgh extremely simple, it 
 is also extremely instructive. There are few clergy who would not find 
 it useful in preparing Candidates for Confirmation ; and there are not a 
 few who would find it tiseful to themselves as well. " 
 
 A FIRST CLASS-BOOK OF THE CATECHISM OF 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, with Scripture Proofs for 
 Junior Classes and Schools. New Edition. i8mo. 6d. 
 
 This is an epitome of the larger Class-book, meant for junior students 
 and elementary classes. The book has been carefully condensed, so as to 
 contain clearly and fully, the most important part of the contents of the 
 larger book. 
 
i8 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 MACLEAR (Dr. G. Y .^continued. 
 
 A SHILLING-BOOK of OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. 
 
 New Edition. i8mo. cloth limp. is. 
 
 77iis Manual bears the same relation to the larger Old Testament His- 
 tory ', that the book just mentioned does to the larger work on the Catechism. 
 It consists of Ten Books, divided into short chapters, and subdivided into 
 sections, each section treating of a single episode in the history, the title of 
 which is given in bold type. 
 
 A SHILLING-BOOK of NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 
 New Edition. i8mo. cloth limp. is. 
 
 A MANUAL OF INSTRUCTION FOR CONFIRMA- 
 TION AND FIRST COMMUNION, with Prayers and Devo- 
 tions. 32mo. cloth extra, red edges. 2s. 
 
 This is an enlarged and improved edition of ' The Order of Confirma- 
 tion.' To it have been added the Communion Office, with Notes and 
 Explanations, together with a brief form of Self Examination and De- 
 votions selected Jrom the works of Cosin, Ken, Wilson, and others. 
 
 THE ORDER OF CONFIRMATION, with Prayers and 
 Devotions. 32mo. cloth. 6d. 
 
 THE FIRST COMMUNION, with Prayers and Devotions 
 for the Newly Confirmed. 32mo. 6d. 
 
 THE HOUR OF SORROW ; or, The Order for the Burial 
 of the Dead. With Prayers and Hymns. 32mo. cloth extra. 2s. 
 
 APOSTLES OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE. Cr. 8vo. ^s.6d. 
 
 In t^vo Introductory Chapters the author notices some of the chief cha- 
 racteristics of the mediceval period itself; gives a graphic sketch of the de- 
 vastated state of Europe at the beginning of that period, and an interesting 
 account of the religions of the three great groups of vigorous barbarians 
 the Celts, the Teutons, and the Sclaves who had, wave after wave, over- 
 flowed its surface. He then proceeds to sketch the lives and work of the 
 chief of the courageous men who devoted themselves to the stupendous task 
 of their conversion and civilization, during a period extending from the 
 $th to the i^th century j such as St. Patrick, St. Columba, St. Coluui- 
 banus, St. Augustine of Canterbury, St. Boniface, St. Olaf, St. Cyril, 
 Raymond Sull, and others. ' ' Mr. Maclear will have done a great work 
 if his admirable little volume shall help to break up the dense ignorance 
 which is still prevailing among people at large.'" Literary Churchman. 
 
 Macmillan. Works by the Rev. HUGH MACMILLAN, LL.D., 
 F. R. S. E. (For other Works by the same Author, see CATALOGUE 
 OF TRAVELS and SCIENTIFIC CATALOGUE). 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 19 
 
 MACMILLAN (Rev. H., LL.D.) continued. 
 
 THE TRUE VINE; or, the Analogies of our Lord's 
 Allegory. Third Edition. Globe 8vo. 6s. 
 
 The Nonconformist says, ' ' It abounds in exquisite bits of description, 
 and in striking facts clearly stated. " The British Quarterly says, ' ' Readers 
 and preachers who are unscientific will find many of his illustrations as 
 valuable as they are beautiful. " 
 
 BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE. Twelfth Edition. 
 Globe 8vo. 6s. 
 
 In this volume the author has endeavoured to shew that the teaching of 
 Nature and tJie teaching of the Bible are directed to the same great end ; 
 that the Bible contains the spiritual truths which are necessary to make us 
 wise unto salvation, and the objects and scenes of Nature are the pictures 
 by vuJiich these truths are illustrated. "He has made the world more 
 bcautijul to us, and unsealed our ears to voices of praise and messages of 
 love that might otherwise have been unheard." British Quarterly Review. 
 " Dr. Macmillan has produced a book which may be fitly described as one 
 of the happiest efforts for enlisting physical science in the direct service of 
 religion. " Guardian. 
 
 THE SABBATH OF THE FIELDS. A Sequel to " Bible 
 Teachings in Nature. " Second Edition. Globe 8vo. 6s. 
 
 " This volume, like all Dr. Macmillan' 's productions, is very delight- 
 ful reading, and of a special kind. Imagination, natural science, and 
 religious instruction are blended together in a very charming way" 
 British Quarterly Review. 
 
 THE MINISTRY OF NATURE. Fourth Edition. Globe 
 8vo. 6s. 
 
 " Whether the reader agree or not with his conclusions, he will ac- 
 kncnvledge he is in the presence of an original and thoughtful writer." 
 Pall Mall Gazette. " There is no class of educated men and women that 
 will not profit by these essays." Standard. 
 
 OUR LORD'S THREE RAISINGS FROM THE DEAD. 
 
 Globe 8vo. 6s. 
 
 M'Clellan. THE NEW TESTAMENT. A New Trans- 
 lation on the Basis of the Authorised Version, from a Critically re- 
 vised Greek Text, with Analyses, copious References and Illus- 
 trations from original authorities, New Chronological and Ana- 
 lytical Harmony of the Four Gospels, Notes and Dissertations. 
 A contribution to Christian Evidence. By JOHN BROWN M'CLEL- 
 LAN, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In Two 
 
20 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 M'CLELLAN (J. B.) continued. 
 
 Vols. Vol. I. The Four Gospels with the Chronological and 
 Analytical Harmony. 8vo. 30^. 
 
 " One of the most remarkable productions of recent times" says the 
 Theological Review, '''in this department of sacred literature;" and the 
 British Quarterly Review terms it "a thesaurus of first-hand investiga- 
 tions." "Of singtilar excellence, and sure to make its mark on the 
 criticism of the New Testament.' 1 '' John Bull. 
 
 Maurice. Works by the late Rev. F. DENISON MAURICE, 
 M.A., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Cam- 
 bridge : 
 The Spectator says, "fetV of those of our own generation whose names 
 
 will live in English history or literature have exerted so profound and so 
 
 permanent an influence as Mr. Maurice" 
 
 THE PATRIARCHS AND LAWGIVERS OF THE 
 OLD TESTAMENT. Third and Cheaper Edition. Crown 
 8vo. 5-r. 
 
 The Nineteen Discourses contained in this volume were preached in the 
 chapel of Lincoln 's Inn during the year 1851. The texts are taken from 
 the books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy ', Joshua, Judges, 
 and Samuel, and involve some of the most interesting biblical topics dis- 
 c^^ssed in recent times. 
 
 THE PROPHETS AND KINGS OF THE OLD TES- 
 TAMENT. Third Edition, with new Preface. Crown 8vo. 
 i cxr. 6d. 
 
 Mr. Maurice, in the spirit which animated the compilers of the Church 
 Lessons, has in these Sermons regarded the Prophets more as preachers of 
 righteousness than as mere predictors an aspect of their lives which, he 
 thinks, has been greatly overlooked in our day, and than which, there is 
 none we have more need to contemplate. He has found that the Old 
 Testament Prophets, taken in their simple natural sense, clear up many 
 of the difficulties which beset us in the daily work of life ; make the past 
 intelligible, the present endurable, and the future real and hopeful. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 
 A Series of Lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke. Crown 8vo. gs. 
 
 Mr. Maurice, in his Preface to these Twenty-eight Lectures, says, 
 11 In these Lectures I have endeavoured to ascertain what is told us respect- 
 ing the life of Jesus by one of those Evangelists who proclaim Him to be 
 the Christ, who says that He did come from a Father, that He did baptize 
 with the Holv Spirit, that He did rise from the dead. I have chosen, the 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 21 
 
 MAURICE (Rev. F. D.) continued, 
 
 one who is most directly connected with the later history of the Church, 
 who was not an Apostle, who professedly wrote for the use of a man 
 already instructed in the faith of the Apostles. I have followed the course 
 of the writer's narrative, not changing it under any pretext. I have 
 adhered to his phraseology, striving to avoid the substitution of any other 
 for his: 1 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. A Series of Discourses. 
 
 Third and Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 The Literary Churchman thus speaks of this volume: "Thorough 
 honesty, reverence, and deep thought pervade the work, which is every 
 way solid and philosophical, as well as theological, and abounding with 
 suggestions which the patient student may draw out more at length for 
 himself." 
 
 THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. A Series of Lectures 
 on Christian Ethics. Second and Cheaper Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s. 
 
 These Lectures on Christian Ethics were delivered to the students of the 
 Working Men's College, Great Ormond Street, London, on a series of 
 Sunday mornings. Mr. Maurice believes that the question in which we 
 are most interested, the question which most affects our studies and our daily 
 lives, is the question, whether there is a foundation for human morality, 
 or whether it is dependent upon the opinions and fashions of different ages 
 and countries. This important question will be found amply and fairly 
 discussed in this volume, which the National Review calls "Mr. 
 Maurice's most effective and instructive work. He is peculiarly fitted 
 by the constitution of his mind, to throw light on St. John's writings." 
 Appended is a note on "Positivism and its Teacher." 
 
 EXPOSITORY SERMONS ON THE PRAYER-BOOK. 
 
 The Prayer-book considered especially in reference to the Romish 
 System. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 5-r. 6d. 
 
 After an Introductory Sermon, Mr. Maurice goes over the various parts 
 of the Church Service, expounds in eighteen Sermons, their intention and 
 significance, and shews how appropriate they are as expressions of the 
 deepest longings and wants of all classes of men. 
 
 WHAT IS REVELATION ? A Series of Sermons on the 
 Epiphany; to which are added, Letters to a Theological Student 
 on the Bampton Lectures of Mr. Mansel. Crown 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 Both Sermons and Letters were called forth by the doctrine maintained 
 by Mr. Mansel in his Bampton Lectures, that Revelation cannot be a direct 
 Manifestation of the Infinite Nature of God. Mr. Maurice maintains 
 
22 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 MAURICE (Rev. F. D.) continued. 
 
 the opposite doctrine, and in his Sermons explains why, in spite of the high 
 authorities on the other side, he must still assert the principle which he 
 discovers in the Services of the Church and throughout the Bible. 
 
 SEQUEL TO THE INQUIRY, "WHAT IS REVELA- 
 TION?" Letters in Reply to Mr. Mansel's Examination of 
 "Strictures on the Bampton Lectures." Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 This, as the title indicates, was called forth by Mr. ManseVs examina- 
 tion of Mr. Maurice's Strictures on his doctrine of the Infinite. 
 
 THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 
 \QS. 6d. 
 
 " The book," says Mr. Maurice, ''''expresses thoughts which have been 
 working in my mind for years ; the method of it has not been adopted 
 carelessly ; even the composition has undergone frequent revision." There 
 are seventeen Essays in all, and although meant primarily for Unitarians, 
 to quote the words of the Clerical Journal, "zV leaves untouched scarcely 
 any topic which is in agitation in the religious world ; scarcely a moot 
 point betiveen our various sects ; scarcely a plot oj debateable ground be- 
 tween Christians and Infidels, between Romanists and Protestants, between 
 Socinians and other Christians, between English Churchmen and Dis- 
 senters on both sides. Scarce is there a misgiving, a difficulty, an aspira- 
 tion stirring amongst us now ncnv, when men seem in earnest as hardly 
 ever before about religion, and ask and demand satisfaction with a fear- 
 lessness which seems almost awful when one thinks what is at stake which 
 is not recognised and grappled with by Air. Maurice." 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE DEDUCED FROM 
 
 THE SCRIPTURES. Crown 8vo. -]s. 6<t. 
 
 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD, AND THEIR 
 RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. Fifth Edition. Crown 
 8vo. $j. 
 
 ON THE LORD'S PRAYER. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 
 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 ON THE SABBATH DAY ; the Character of the Warrior, 
 and on the Interpretation of History. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 THE LORD'S PRAYER, THE CREED, AND THE 
 COMMANDMENTS. A Manual for Parents and Schoolmasters. 
 To which is added the Order of the Scriptures. i8mo. cloth 
 limp. is. 
 
 DIALOGUES ON FAMILY WORSHIP. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 23 
 
 MAURICE (Rev. F. D .) continued. 
 
 SOCIAL MORALITY. Twenty-one Lectures delivered in 
 the University of Cambridge. New and Cheaper Edition. Cr. 
 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 " Whilst reading it we are charmed by^ the freedom from exclusiveness 
 and prejudice, the large charity, the loftiness of thought, the eagerness to 
 recognise and appreciate whatever there is of real worth extant in the 
 world, which animates it from one end to the other. We gain new 
 thoughts and new ways ofvieiving things, even more, perhaps, from bei.ng 
 brought for a time under the influence of so noble and spiritual a mind" 
 Athenaeum. 
 
 THE CONSCIENCE : Lectures on Casuistry, delivered in 
 the University of Cambridge. Second and Cheaper Edition. 
 Crown 8vo. $s. 
 
 The Saturday Review says: " We rise from the perusal of these lec- 
 tures with a detestation of all that is selfish and mean, and with a living 
 impression that there is such a thing as goodness after all. " 
 
 LECTURES ON THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 
 OF THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES. 8vo. ioj. 6d. 
 
 LEARNING AND WORKING. Six Lectures delivered 
 in Willis's Rooms, London, in June and July, 1854. THE 
 RELIGION OF ROME, and its Influence on Modern Civilisa- 
 tion. Four Lectures delivered in the Philosophical Institution of 
 Edinburgh, in December, 1854. Crown 8vo. $s. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED IN COUNTRY CHURCHES. 
 Crown Svo. los. 6d. 
 
 "Earnest, practical, and extremely simple." Literary Churchman. 
 " Good specimens of his simple and earnest eloquence. The Gospel inci- 
 dents are realized with a vividness which we can well believe made the 
 common people hear him gladly. Moreover they are sermons which must 
 have done the hearers good. " John Bull. 
 
 Moorhouse. Works by JAMES MOORHOUSE, M.A., Bishop 
 
 of Melbourne : 
 
 SOME MODERN DIFFICULTIES RESPECTING the 
 FACTS OF NATURE AND REVELATION. Fcap. Svo. 
 
 2S. 6d. 
 
 JACOB. Three Sermons preached before the University of 
 Cambridge in Lent 1870. Extra fcap. Svo. 3^. 6d. 
 
24 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 O'Brien. PRAYER. Five Sermons preached in the Chapel 
 of Trinity College, Dublin. By JAMES THOMAS O'BRIEN, D.D., 
 Bishop of Ossory and Ferns. 8vo. 6s. 
 " It is with much pleasure and satisfaction that we render our humble 
 
 tribute to the value of a publication whose author deserves to be remembered 
 
 with such deep respect. ." Church Quarterly Review. 
 
 Palgrave. HYMNS. By FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE. 
 
 Third Edition, enlarged. i8mo. is. 6d. 
 
 This is a collection of twenty original Hymns, which the Literary 
 Churchman speaks of as "so choice, so perfect, and so refined, so tender 
 in feeling, and so scholarly in expression." 
 
 Paul of Tarsus. An Inquiry into the Times and the Gospel 
 
 of the Apostle of the Gentiles. ,By a GRADUATE. 8vo. IQJ. 6d. 
 
 " Turn where we will throughout the volume, we find the best fruit 
 
 of patient inquiry, sound scholarship, logical argiiment, and fairness of 
 
 conclusion. No thoughtful reader will rise from its perusal without a 
 
 real and lasting profit to himself, and a sense of permanent addition to 
 
 the cause of truth" Standard. 
 
 Philochristus. MEMOIRS OF A DISCIPLE OF THE 
 
 LORD. Second Edition. 8vo. 12s. 
 
 "The winning beauty of this book and the fascinating pcnver with 
 which the subject of it appeals to all English minds will secure for it 
 many readers" Contemporary Review. 
 
 Picton. THE MYSTERY OF MATTER ; and other Essays. 
 
 By J. ALLANSON PICTON, Author of "New Theories and the 
 
 Old Faith." Cheaper Edition. With New Preface. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Contents The Mystery of Matter : The Philosophy of Ignorance : The 
 
 Antithesis of Faith and Sight: The Essential Nature of Religion: 
 
 Christian Pantheism. 
 
 Plumptre MOVEMENTS IN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 
 
 Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge, Lent Term, 
 1879. By E. H. PLUMPTRE, D.D., Professor of Divinity, King's 
 College, London, Prebendary of St. Paul's, etc. Fcap. 8vo. y. 6d. 
 
 Prescott THE THREEFOLD CORD. Sermons preached 
 before the University of Cambridge. By J. E. PRESCOTT, B.D. 
 Fcap. 8vo. 3-r. 6d. 
 
 Procter. A HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON 
 PRAYER : With a Rationale of its Offices. By FRANCIS PROCTER, 
 M.A. Thirteenth Edition, revised and enlarged. Cr. 8vo. los. 6d. 
 The Athenaeum says: "The origin of every part of the Prayer-book 
 has been diligently investigated, and there are fei.v questions or facts con- 
 nected with it which are not either sufficiently explained, or so referred to 
 that persons interested may work out the truth for themselves." 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 25 
 
 Procter and Maclear. AN ELEMENTARY INTRO- 
 DUCTION TO THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 
 Re-arranged and Supplemented by an Explanation of the Morning 
 and Evening Prayer and the Litany. By F. PROCTER, M.A., and 
 G. F. MACLEAR, D.D. New Edition. Enlarged by the addition 
 of the Communion Service and the Baptismal and Confirmation 
 Offices. i8mo. is. 6d. 
 
 The Literary Churchman characterizes it as " by far the completest 
 and most satisfactory book of its kind we know. We "wish it were in 
 the hands of every schoolboy and every schoolmaster in the kingdom" 
 
 Psalms of David CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED. 
 
 An Amended Version, with Historical Introductions and Ex- 
 planatory Notes. By FOUR FRIENDS. Second and Cheaper 
 Edition, much enlarged. Crown 8vo. Ss. 6d. 
 
 One of the chief designs of the Editors, in preparing this volume, was 
 to restore the Psalter as far as possible to the order in which the Psalms 
 were written. They give the division of each Psalm into strophes, and 
 of each strophe into the lines which composed it, and amend the errors of 
 translation. The Spectator calls it '''one of the most instructive and 
 valuable books that have been published for many years. " 
 
 Psalter (Golden Treasury). THE STUDENT'S EDITION. 
 
 Being an Edition of the above with briefer Notes. i8mo. $s. 6d. 
 
 The aim of this edition is simply to put the reader as far as possible in 
 possession of the plain meaning of the writer. " It is a gem," the Non- 
 conformist says. 
 
 Pulsford. SERMONS PREACHED IN TRINITY 
 CHURCH, GLASGOW. By WILLIAM PULSFORD, D.D. 
 Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. qs. 6d. 
 
 Ramsay. THE CATECHISER'S MANUAL; or, the 
 Church Catechism Illustrated and Explained, for the Use of 
 Clergymen, Schoolmasters, and Teachers. By ARTHUR RAMSAY, 
 M.A. Second Edition. i8mo. is. 6d. 
 
 Rays of Sunlight for Dark Days. A Book of Selec- 
 tions for the Suffering. With a Preface by C. J. VAUGHAN, D.D. 
 i8mo. Eighth Edition. 3^. 6d. Also in morocco, old style. 
 
 Dr. Vaughan says in the Preface, after speaking of the general run of 
 Books of Comfort for Mourners, "It is because I think that the little 
 volume nozu offered to the Christian sufferer is one of greater wisdom and 
 
26 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 of deeper experience, that I have readily consented to the request that I 
 ivould introduce it by a few words of Preface." The book consists of a 
 series of very brief extracts from a great variety of author ~s, in prose and 
 poetry, suited to the many moods of a mourning or suffering mind. 
 "Mostly gems of the first water." Clerical Journal. 
 
 Reynolds. NOTES OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. A 
 Selection of Sermons by HENRY ROBERT REYNOLDS, B.A., 
 President of Cheshunt College, and Fellow of University College, 
 London. Crown 8vo. 7-r. 6d. 
 
 Roberts. DISCUSSIONS ON THE GOSPELS. By the 
 Rev. ALEXANDER ROBERTS, D.D. Second Edition, revised and 
 enlarged. 8vo. i6s. 
 
 Robinson. MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD ; and other 
 
 Sermons preached in the Chapel of the Magdalen, Streatham, 
 1874 76. By H. G. ROBINSON, M.A., Prebendary of York. 
 Crown 8vo. 7^- ^. 
 
 Romanes. CHRISTIAN PRAYER AND GENERAL 
 LAWS, being the Burney Prize Essay for 1873. With an Ap- 
 pendix, examining the views of Messrs. Knight, Robertson, Brooke, 
 Tyndall, and Galton. By GEORGE J. ROMANES, M.A. Crown 
 8vo. 5-y. 
 
 Salmon. THE REIGN OF LAW, and other Sermons, 
 preached in the Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin. By the Rev. 
 GEORGE SALMON, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity in the 
 University of Dublin. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 "Well considered, learned, and powerful discotirses." Spectator. 
 
 Sanday. THE GOSPELS IN THE SECOND CEN- 
 TURY. An Examination of the Critical part of a Work entitled 
 "Supernatural Religion." By WILLIAM SANDAY, M.A., late 
 Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. 
 
 ' 'A very important book for the critical side of the question as to the 
 authenticity of the New Testament, and it is hardly possible to conceive a 
 writer of greater fairness, candour, and scrupuloiisness. " Spectator. 
 
 Selborne. THE BOOK OF PRAISE : From the Best 
 English Hymn Writers. Selected and arranged by Lord SELBORNE. 
 With Vignette by WOOLNER. i8mo. 4-5-. 6d. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 27 
 
 SELBORNE (Lord) continued. 
 
 It has been the Editor" 1 s desire and aim to adhere strictly, in all cases in 
 10 'hick it could be ascertained, to the genuine uncorrupted text of the authors 
 themselves. The names of the authors and date of composition of the 
 hymns, when kncnvn, are affixed, while notes are added to the volume, 
 giving further details. The Hymns are arranged according to subjects. 
 ' ' There is not room for two opinions as to the value of the i Book of Praise. ' " 
 Guardian. '"''Approaches as nearly as one can conceive to perfection." 
 Nonconformist. 
 
 BOOK OF PRAISE HYMNAL. See end of this Catalogue. 
 
 Service. SALVATION HERE AND HEREAFTER. 
 
 Sermons and Essays. By the Rev. JOHN SERVICE, D.D., Minister 
 of Inch. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 ' ' We have enjoyed to-day a rare pleasure, having just closed a volume 
 of sermons which rings true metal from title page to finis, and proves that 
 another and very powerftil recruit has been added to that small band of 
 ministers of the Gospel who are not only abreast of the religious thought 
 of their time, but have faith enough and courage enough to handle the 
 questions which are the most critical, and stir men's minds most deeply, 
 with frankness and thoroughness." Spectator. 
 
 Shipley. A THEORY ABOUT SIN, in relation to some 
 Facts of Daily Life. Lent Lectures on the Seven Deadly Sins. 
 By the Rev. ORBY SHIPLEY, M.A. Crown 8vo. js. 6d. 
 
 " 'Two things Mr. Shipley has done, and each of them is of considerable 
 
 worth. He has grouped these sins afresh on a philosophic principle 
 
 and he has applied the touchstone to the facts of our moral life. . . so wisely 
 and so searchingly as to constitute his treatise a powerful antidote to self- 
 deception. " Literary Churchman. 
 
 Smith. PROPHECY A PREPARATION FOR CHRIST. 
 
 Eight Lectures preached before the University of Oxford, being the 
 Bampton Lectures for 1869. By R. PAYNE SMITH, D.D., Dean 
 of Canterbury. Second and Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 The author's object in these Lectures is to shew that there exists in the 
 Old Testament an element, which no criticism on naturalistic principles 
 can either account for or explain away: that element is Prophecy. The 
 author endeavours to prove that its force does not consist merely in its 
 predictions. " 'These Lectures overflow with solid learning." Record. 
 
 Smith. CHRISTIAN FAITH. Sermons preached before 
 the University of Cambridge. By W. SAUMAREZ SMITH, M.A., 
 Principal of St. Aidan's College, Birkenhead. Fcap. 8vo. $s. 6d. 
 
28 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Stanley. Works by the Very Rev. A. P. STANLEY, D.D., 
 Dean of Westminster : 
 
 THE ATHANASIAN CREED, with a Preface on the 
 General Recommendations of the RITUAL COMMISSION. Cr. 
 8vo. 2s. 
 
 "Dr. Stanley puts with, admirable force the objections "which maybe 
 made to the Creed ; equally admirable, we think, in his statement of its 
 advantages. " Spectator. 
 
 THE NATIONAL THANKSGIVING. Sermons preached 
 in Westminster Abbey. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 ADDRESSES AND SERMONS AT ST. ANDREW'S 
 
 in 1872, 1875 and 1876. Crown 8vo. 5*. 
 
 Stewart and Tait. THE UNSEEN {iNIVERSE ; or, 
 
 Physical Speculations on a Future State. By Professors BALFOUR 
 STEWART and P. G. TAIT. Sixth Edition, Revised and Enlarged. 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 "A most remarkable and most interesting volume, which, probably 
 more than any that has appeared in modern times, will affect religiozis 
 thought on many momentous questions insensibly it may be, but very 
 largely and very beneficially" Church Quarterly. " This book is one 
 
 which well deserves the attention of thoughtful and religious readers 
 
 // is a perfectly safe enquiry, on scientific grounds, into the possibilities of 
 a future existence. " Guardian. 
 
 Swainson. Works by C. A. SWAINSON, D.D., Canon of 
 
 Chichester : 
 
 THE CREEDS OF THE CHURCH in their Relations to 
 Holy Scripture and the Conscience of the Christian 8vo. cloth. 9^-. 
 
 THE AUTHORITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, 
 and other LECTURES, delivered before the University of Cam- 
 bridge. 8vo. cloth. I2s. 
 
 Taylor. THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. New and 
 Revised Edition. By ISAAC TAYLOR, Esq. Crown 8vo. &s. 6d. 
 
 Temple. SERMONS PREACHED IN THE CHAPEL 
 of RUGBY SCHOOL. ByF. TEMPLE, D.D., Bishop of Exeter. 
 New and Cheaper Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4^. 6d. 
 
 This volume contains Thirty-five Sermons on topics more or less intt- 
 mately connected with every-day life. The folloiving are a few of the 
 subjects discoursed tipon : "Love and Duty?' "Coming to Christ;" 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 29 
 
 TEMPLE (Dr. ) continued. 
 
 "Great Men;" "Faith;" "Doubts;" " Scruples ;" " Original Sin ;" 
 "Friendship;" "Helping Others;" "The Discipline of Temptation;" 
 "Strength a Duty;" " Worldliness ;" "III Temper;" "The Burial of 
 the Past." 
 
 A SECOND SERIES OF SERMONS PREACHED IN 
 THE CHAPEL OF RUGBY SCHOOL. Second Edition. 
 Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. 
 
 This Second Series of Forty-two brief, pointed, practical Sermons, on 
 topics intimately connected with the every-day life of young and old, will be 
 acceptable to all who are acquainted with the First Series. The following 
 are a few of the subjects treated of: "Disobedience" "Almsgiving" 
 " The Unknown Guidance of God," ''''Apathy one of our Trials," ''High 
 Aims in Leaders," "Doing our Best," " The Use of Knowledge," "Use 
 of Observances," "Martha and Mary," "John the Baptist," "Severity 
 before Mercy," "Even Mistakes Punished," " Morality and Religion," 
 "Children," " Action the Test of Spiritual Life," "Self -Respect," "Too 
 Late," " The Tercentenary." 
 
 A THIRD SERIES OF SERMONS PREACHED IN 
 RUGBY SCHOOL CHAPEL IN 18671869. Extra fcap. 
 8vo. 6s. 
 
 This Third Series of Bishop Temple's Rugby Sermons, contains thirty-six 
 brief discourses, including the " Good-bye" sermon preached on his leaving 
 Rugby to enter on the office he now holds. 
 
 Thring. Works by Rev. EDWARD THRING, M.A. : 
 SERMONS DELIVERED AT UPPINGHAM SCHOOL. 
 
 Crown 8vo. 5-r. 
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE-SCIENCE. New Edition, en- 
 larged and revised. Crown 8vo. 7^. 6d. 
 
 Trench. Works by R. CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D., Arch- 
 bishop of Dublin : 
 
 NOTES ON THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Thirteenth Edition. 8vo. I2s. 
 
 This work has taken its place as a standard exposition and interpreta- 
 tion of Chrisf s Parables. 7^he book is prefaced by an Introductory Essay 
 in four chapters : /. On the definition of the Parable. II. On Teach- 
 ing by Parables. III. On the Interpretation of the Parables. IV. On 
 other Parables besides those in the Scriptures. The author then proceeds 
 to take up the Parables one by one, and by the aid of philology, history, 
 antiquities, and the researches of travellers, shews forth the significance, 
 
30 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 TRENCH (Archbishop) continued. 
 
 beauty, and applicability of each, concluding with what he deems its true 
 moral interpretation. In tJie numerous Notes are many valuable references, 
 illustrative quotations, critical and philological annotations, etc., and ap- 
 pended to the volume is a classified list of fifty-six works on the Parables. 
 
 NOTES ON THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Eleventh Edition, revised. 8vo. 12s. 
 
 In the 'Preliminary Essay" 1 to this work, all the momentous and in- 
 teresting questions that have been raised in connection with Miracles, are 
 discussed with considerable fulness. The Essay consists of six chapters : 
 /. On the Names of Miracles, i. e. the Greek words by which they are 
 designated in the New Testament. II. The Miracles and Nature What 
 is the difference between a Miracle and any event in the ordinary cotirse 
 of Nature? III. The Authority of Miracles Is the Miracle to command 
 absolute obedience? IV. The Evangelical, compared with the other cycles 
 of Miracles. V. The Assaults on the Miracles i. The Jewish. 2. The 
 Heathen ( Celsus etc.). 3. The Pantheistic (Spinosa etc.). 4. The 
 Sceptical (Hume). 5 . The Miracles only relatively miraculous ( Schleier- 
 macher). 6. The Rationalistic (Paulus). 7. The Historico- Critical 
 (Woolston, Strauss). VI. The Apologetic Worth of the Miracles. The 
 author then treats the separate Miracles as he does the Parables. 
 
 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Eighth 
 Edition, enlarged. 8vo. cloth. I2s. 
 
 This Edition has been carefully revised, and a considerable number of 
 new Synonyms added. Appended is an Index to the Synonyms, and an 
 Index to many other words alluded to or explained throughout the work. 
 " 'He is," the Athenseum says, " a guide in this department of knowledge 
 to whom his readers may intrust themselves with confidence. His sober 
 judgment and sound sense are ban'iers against the misleading ^nfl^tence of 
 arbitrary hypotheses. " 
 
 ON THE AUTHORIZED VERSION OF THE NEW 
 TESTAMENT. Second Edition. 8vo. 'js. 
 
 After some Introductory Remarks, in which the propriety of a revision 
 is briefly discussed, the whole question of the merits of the present version 
 is gone into in detail, in eleven chapters. Appended is a chronological list 
 of works bearing on the subject, an Index of the principal Texts con- 
 sidered, an Index of Greek Words, and an Index of other Words re- 
 ferred to throughout the book. 
 
 STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS. Fourth Edition, revised. 
 
 8vo. loj. 6d. 
 
 This book is published under the conviction that the assertion often 
 made is untrue, viz. that the Gospels are in the main plain and easy, 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 31 
 
 TRENCH (Archbishop) continued. 
 
 and that all the chief difficulties of the Neiv Testament are to be found 
 in the Epistles. These " "Studies," sixteen in number, are the fruit of a 
 much larger scheme, and each Study deals with some important episode 
 mentioned in the Gospels, in a critical, philosophical, and practical man- 
 ner. Many references and quotations are added to the Notes. Among 
 the subjects treated are: The Temptation; Christ and the Samaritan 
 Woman; The Three Aspirants ; The Transfiguration; Zacchceus ; The 
 True Vine; The Penitent Malefactor; Christ and the Two Disciples on 
 the way to Emmaus. 
 
 COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLES to the SEVEN 
 CHURCHES IN ASIA. Third Edition, revised. 8vo. 8s. 6d. 
 
 The present work consists of an Introduction, being a commentary on 
 Rev. i. 420, a detailed examination oj each of the Seven Epistles, in all 
 its bearings, and an Excursus on the Historico- Prophetical Interpreta- 
 tion of the Epistles. 
 
 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. An Exposition 
 drawn from the writings of St. Augustine, with an Essay on his 
 merits as an Interpreter of Holy Scripture. Third Edition, en- 
 larged. 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 The first half of the present work consists of a dissertation in eight 
 chapters on "Augustine as an Interpreter of Scripture," the titles of the 
 several chapters being as follow : /. Augustine's General Vieivs of Scrip- 
 ture and its Interpretation. II. The External Helps for the Interpreta- 
 tion of Scripture possessed by Augustine. III. Augustine's Principles 
 and Canons of Interpretation. IV. Augustine* s Allegorical Interpretation 
 of Scripture. V. Illustrations of Augustine's Skill as an Interpreter of 
 Scripture. VI. Augustine on John the Baptist and on St. Stephen. 
 VII. Augustine on the Epistle to the Romans. VIII. Miscellaneous 
 Examples of Augustine' 's Interpretation of Scripture. The latter half of 
 the work consists of Augustine's Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, 
 not however a mere series of quotations from Augustine, but a connected 
 of count of his sentiments on the various passages of that Sermon, inter- 
 spersed with criticisms by Archbishop Trench. 
 
 SHIPWRECKS OF FAITH. Three Sermons preached 
 before the University of Cambridge in May, 1867. Fcap. 8vo. 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 These Sermons are especially addressed to young mm. Tfie subjects 
 are "Balaam" "Saul" and "Jtidas Iscariot," These lives are set 
 forth as beacon-lights, ' ' to warn tts off from perilous reefs and quick- 
 sands, which have been the destruction of many, and which might only too 
 easily be ours" The John Bull says, " they are, like all he writes, af- 
 fectionate and earnest discourses. " 
 
32 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 TRENCH (Archbishop) continued. 
 
 SERMONS Preached for the most part in Ireland. 8vo. 
 los. 6d. 
 
 This volume consists of Thirty-two Sermons, the greater part of which 
 were preached in Ireland; the subjects are as follow : Jacob, a Prince 
 with God and with Men Agrippa The Woman that was a Sinner 
 Secret Faults The Seven Worse Spirits Freedom in the Truth Joseph 
 and his Brethren Bearing one another's Burdens Christ's Challenge to 
 the World The Love of Money The Salt of the Earth The Armour of 
 God Light in the Lord The Jailer ofPhilippi The Thorn in the Flesh 
 Isaiah's Vision Selfishness Abraham interceding for Sodom Vain 
 Thoughts Pontius Pilate The Brazen Serpent J^he Death and Burial 
 of Moses A Word from the Cross The Church's Worship in the 
 Beauty of Holiness Every Good Gift from Above On the Hearing of 
 Prayer The Kingdom which cometh not with Observation Pressing 
 towards the Mark Saul The Good Shepherd The Valley of Dry Bones 
 All Saints. 
 
 LECTURES ON MEDIEVAL CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 Being the Substance of Lectures delivered in Queen's College, 
 
 London. Second Edition, revised. 8vo. 12s. 
 Contents: The Middle Ages Beginning The Conversion of Eng- 
 land Islam The Conversion of Ger?nany 7*he Iconoclasts The 
 Crusades The Papacy at its Height The Sects of the Middle Ages 
 The Mendicant Orders The Waldenses The Revival of Learning 
 Christian Art in the Middle Ages, &c., &c. 
 
 Tulloch. THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS AND 
 THE CHRIST OF MODERN CRITICISM. Lectures on 
 M. RENAN'S "Vie de Jesus." By JOHN TULLOCH, D.D., 
 Principal of the College of St. Mary, in the University of St. 
 Andrew's. Extra fcap. Svo. 4^. 6d. 
 
 Vaughan Works by thievery Rev. CHARLES JOHN VAUGHAN, 
 D.D., Dean of Llandaff and Master of the Temple : 
 
 CHRIST SATISFYING THE INSTINCTS OF HU- 
 MANITY. Eight Lectures delivered in the Temple Church. 
 Second Edition. Extra fcap. Svo. 3>r. 6d. 
 
 ' ' We are convinced that there are congregations, in number unmistakably 
 increasing, to whom such Essays as these, full of thought and learning, 
 are infinitely more beneficial, for they are more acceptable, than the recog- 
 nised type of sermons " John Bull. 
 
 THE BOOK AND THE LIFE, and other Sermons, 
 preached before the University of Cambridge. Third Edition. 
 Fcap. Svo. 4J. 6^. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 33 
 
 VAUGHAN (Dr. C. J.) continued. 
 
 TWELVE DISCOURSES on SUBJECTS CONNECTED 
 WITH THE LITURGY and WORSHIP of the CHURCH 
 OF ENGLAND. Fcap. 8vo. 6s. 
 
 LESSONS OF LIFE AND GODLINESS. A Selection 
 of Sermons preached in the Parish Church of Doncaster. Fourth 
 and Cheaper Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3-r. 6d. 
 
 This volume consists of Nineteen Sermons, mostly on subjects connected 
 with the every-day -walk and conversation of Christians. The Spectator 
 styles them "earnest and human. They are adapted to every class and 
 order in the social system, and will be read with wakeful interest by all 
 who seek to amend whatever may be amiss in their natural disposition 
 or in their acquired habits. " 
 
 WORDS FROM THE GOSPELS. A Second Selection 
 of Sermons preached in the Parish Church of Doncaster. Third 
 Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 4^. 6d. 
 
 The Nonconformist characterises these Sermons as ' ' of practical earnest- 
 ness, of a thoughtfulness that penetrates the common conditions and ex- 
 periences of life, and brings the truths and examples of Scripture to bear 
 on them with singular force, and of a style that owes its real elegance to 
 the simplicity and directness which have fine culture for their roots. " 
 
 LIFE'S WORK AND GOD'S DISCIPLINE. Three 
 Sermons. Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 THE WHOLESOME WORDS OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 Four Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge in 
 
 November 1866. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6d. 
 
 Dr. Vaughan uses the word "Wholesome" here in its literal and 
 
 original sense, the sense in which St. Paul uses it, as meaning healthy, 
 
 sound, conducing to right living ; and in these Sermons he points out 
 
 and illustrates several of the "wholesome" characteristics of the Gospel, 
 
 the Words of Christ. The John Bull says this volume is "replete with 
 
 all the author's well-known vigour of thought and richness of expression. " 
 
 FOES OF FAITH. Sermons preached before the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge in November 1868. Second Edition. Fcap. 
 8vo. y.6d. 
 
 The "Foes of Faith" preached against in these Four Sermons are: 
 I. "Unreality." II. "Indolence." III. "Irreverence." IV. "Incon- 
 sistency." 
 
 LECTURES ON THE EPISTLE to the PHILIPPIANS. 
 
 Third and Cheaper Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. $s. 
 Each Lecture is prefaced by a literal translation from the Greek of 
 the paragraph which forms its subject, contains first a minute explanation 
 
34 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 VAUGHAN (Dr. C. J.) continued. 
 
 of the passage on which it is based, and then a practical application of 
 the verse or clause selected as its text. 
 
 LECTURES ON THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN. 
 
 Fourth Edition. Two Vols. Extra fcap. 8vo. 9-r. 
 In this Edition of these Lectures, the literal translations of the passages 
 expounded will be found interwoven in the body of the Lectures themselves. 
 " Dr. Vaugharis Sermons," the Spectator says, ll are the most prac- 
 tical discourses on the Apocalypse with which we are acquainted. " Pre- 
 fixed is a Synopsis of the Book of Revelation, and appended is an Index 
 of passages ilhtstrating the language of the Book. 
 
 EPIPHANY, LENT, AND EASTER. A Selection of 
 Expository Sermons. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. IGJ-. 6d. 
 
 THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. For English Readers. 
 PART I., containing the FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 
 Second Edition. 8vo. is. 6d. 
 
 It is tJie object of this work to enable English readers, unacquainted 
 with Greek, to enter %vith intelligence into the meaning, connection, and 
 phraseology of the writings of the great Apostle. 
 
 ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. The Greek 
 Text, with English Notes. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d. 
 
 The Guardian says of the work, "For educated young men his com- 
 mentary seems to fill a gap hitherto unfilled. . . . As a whole, Dr. Vaughan 
 appears to us to have given to the world a valuable book of original and 
 careful and earnest thought bestowed on the accomplishment of a work 
 which will be of much service and which is much needed." 
 
 THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST DAYS. 
 Series I. The Church of Jerusalem. Third Edition. 
 " II. The Church of the Gentiles. Third Edition. 
 " III. The Church of the World. Third Edition. 
 Fcap. 8vo. 4-r. 6d. each. 
 
 7^i e British Quarterly says, " These Sermons are worthy of all praise, 
 and are models of pulpit teaching." 
 
 COUNSELS for YOUNG STUDENTS. Three Sermons 
 preached before the University of Cambridge at the Opening of 
 the Academical Year 1870-71. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 The titles of the Three Sermons contained in this volume are: /. 
 " The Great Decision." II. "The House and the Builder." III. "The 
 Prayer and the Counter- Prayer. " They all bear pointedly, earnestly, and 
 sympathisingly upon the conduct and pursuits of young students and 
 young men generally. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 35 
 
 VAUGHAN (Dr. C. I.} continued. 
 
 NOTES FOR LECTURES ON CONFIRMATION, 
 
 with suitable Prayers. Tenth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. is. 6d. 
 
 THE TWO GREAT TEMPTATIONS. The Tempta- 
 tion of Man, and the Temptation of Christ. Lectures delivered in 
 the Temple Church, Lent 1872. Second Edition. Extra fcap. 
 8vo. 3-y. 6d. 
 
 WORDS FROM THE CROSS : Lent Lectures, 1875 ; and 
 Thoughts for these Times : University Sermons, 1874. Extra fcap. 
 8vo. 4*. 6d. 
 
 ADDRESSES TO YOUNG CLERGYMEN, delivered at 
 Salisbury in September and October, 1875. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4^. 6d. 
 
 HEROES OF FAITH : Lectures on Hebrews xi. Extra 
 fcap. 8vo. 6s. 
 
 THE YOUNG LIFE EQUIPPING ITSELF FOR GOD'S 
 SERVICE : Sermons before the University of Cambridge. Sixth 
 Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. T,S. 6d. 
 
 THE SOLIDITY OF TRUE RELIGION ; and other 
 Sermons. Second Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6d. 
 
 SERMONS IN HARROW SCHOOL CHAPEL (1847). 
 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 NINE SERMONS IN HARROW SCHOOL CHAPEL 
 (1849). Fcap. 8vo. 5-y. 
 
 "MY SON, GIVE ME THINE HEART," SERMONS 
 
 Preached before the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 1876 
 78. Fcap. 8vo. $s. 
 
 Vaughan (E. T.) SOME REASONS OF OUR CHRIS- 
 TIAN HOPE. Hulsean Lectures for 1875. By E. T. VAUGHAN, 
 M.A., Rector of Harpenden. Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d. 
 ' ' His words are those of a well-tried scholar and a sound theologian^ 
 
 and they will be read widely and valued deeply by an audience far beyond 
 
 the range of that which listened to their masterly pleading at Cambridge.'''' 
 
 Standard. 
 
 Vaughan (D. J.) Works by CANON VAUGHAN, of Leicester: 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED IN ST. JOHN'S CHURCH 
 LEICESTER, during the Years 1855 and 1856. Cr. 8vo. 5.$-. 6d. 
 
36 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 VAUGHAN (D. J.) continued. 
 
 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES AND THE BIBLE. New 
 
 Edition, revised and enlarged. Fcap. 8vo. cloth. 5-r. 6^/. 
 
 THE PRESENT TRIAL OF FAITH. Sermons preached 
 in St. Martin's Church, Leicester. Crown 8vo. gs. 
 
 Venn. ON SOME OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 BELIEF, Scientific and Religious. Being the Hulsean Lectures 
 for 1869. By the Rev. J. VENN, M. A. 8vo. 6s. 6d. 
 These discourses are intended to illustrate, explain, and work out into 
 
 some of their consequences, certain characteristics by "which the attainment of 
 
 religious belief is prominently distinguished from the attainment of belief 
 
 upon most other subjects. 
 
 Warington. THE WEEK OF CREATION ; or, The 
 
 Cosmogony of Genesis considered in its Relation to Modern Sci- 
 ence. By GEORGE WARINGTON, Author of "The Historic 
 Character of the Pentateuch vindicated." Crown 8vo. 4^. 6d. 
 "A very able vindication of the Mosaic Cosmogony by a writer who 
 
 unites the advantages of a critical knoivledge of the Hebrew text and of 
 
 distinguished scientific attainments." Spectator. 
 
 Westcott. Works by BROOKE Foss WESTCOTT, D.D., 
 Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge ; 
 Canon of Peterborough : 
 
 The London Quarterly, speaking of Mr. Westcott, says, " To a learn- 
 ing and accuracy which command respect and confidence, he unites what 
 are not always to be found in tinion with these qtialities, the no less valuable 
 faculties of lucid arrangement and graceful and facile expression." 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE 
 GOSPELS. Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 The author's chief object in this work has been to shew that there is 
 a true mean between the idea of a formal harmonization of the Gospels 
 and the abandonment of their absolute truth. After an Introduction on 
 the General Effects of the course of Modern Philosophy on the popular 
 views of Christianity, he proceeds to determine in what way the principles 
 therein indicated may be applied to the study of the Gospels. 
 
 A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT during the First Four 
 Centuries. Fourth Edition, revised, with a Preface on "Super- 
 natural Religion." Crown 8vo. ios. 6d. 
 
 The object of this treatise is to deal with the New Testament as a whole, 
 and that on purely historical grounds. The separate books of which it is 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 37 
 
 WESTCOTT (Dr.) continued. 
 
 composed are considered not individually, but as claiming to be parts of the 
 apostolic heritage of Christians. The Author has thus endeavoured to con- 
 nect the history of the New Testament Canon with the growth and con- 
 solidation of the Catholic Church, and to point out the relation existing 
 between the amount of evidence for the authenticity of its component parts 
 and the whole mass of Christian literature. "The treatise," says the 
 British Quarterly, "is a scholarly performance, learned, dispassionate, 
 discriminating, worthy of his subject and of the present state of Christian 
 literature in relation to it." 
 
 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. A Popular Account 
 of the Collection and Reception of the Holy Scriptures in the 
 Christian Churches. Sixth Edition. i8mo. 4^. 6d. 
 
 A GENERAL VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ENGLISH BIBLE. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. IQS. 6d. 
 The Pall Mall Gazette calls the work "A brief, scholarly, and, to a 
 great extent, an original contribution to theological literature. " 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE, MANIFOLD AND ONE. 
 
 Six Sermons preached in Peterborough Cathedral. Crown 8vo. 
 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 The Six Sermons contained in this volume are the first preached by 
 the author as a Canon of Peterborough Cathedral. The subjects are: 
 I. "Life consecrated by the Ascension." II. '''Many Gifts, One Spirit" 
 III. " The Gospel of the Resurrection." IV. "Sufficiency of God." V. 
 ' 'Action the Test of Faith. " VL ' 'Progress from the Confession of God. " 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. Thoughts 
 on its Relation to Reason and History. Third Edition, enlarged. 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 The present Essay is an endeavour to consider some of the elementary 
 truths of Christianity, as a miraculous Revelation, from the side of History 
 and Reason. The author endeavours to shew that a devout belief in the 
 Life of Christ is quite compatible with a broad view of the course of human 
 progress and a frank trust in the laws of our own minds. In the third 
 edition the author has carefully reconsidered the whole argument, and by 
 the help of several kind critics has been enabled to correct some faults and 
 to remove some ambiguities, which had been overlooked before. 
 
 ON THE RELIGIOUS OFFICE OF THE UNIVER- 
 SITIES. Crown 8vo. 4*. 6d. 
 
 " There is certainly no man of our time no man at least who has ob- 
 tained the command of the public ear whose utterances can compare with 
 those of Professor Wcstcottfor largeness of views and comprehensiveness of 
 
38 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 grasp There is wisdom, and truth, and thought enough, and a 
 
 harmony and mtitual connection running through them all, which makes 
 the collection of more real value than many an ambitious treatise.' 1 ' 1 
 Literary Churchman. 
 
 Wilkins. THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. An Essay, 
 by A.S. WILKINS, M.A., Professor of Latin in Owens College, 
 Manchester. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 3-r. 6d. 
 1 ' It would be difficult to praise too highly the spirit, the burden, the 
 conchisions, or the scholarly finish of this beautiful Essay." British Quar- 
 terly Review. 
 
 Wilson. THE BIBLE STUDENT'S GUIDE TO THE 
 MORE CORRECT UNDERSTANDING of the ENGLISH 
 TRANSLATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, by Reference 
 to the Original Hebrew. By WILLIAM WILSON, D.D., Canon of 
 
 Winchester. Second Edition, carefully revised. 4to. 2$s. 
 " The a^lthor believes that the present work is the nearest approach to 
 a complete Concordance of every word in the original that has yet been 
 made: and as a Concordance, it may be found of great use to the Bible 
 student, while at the same time it serves the important object of furnishing 
 the means of comparing synonymous words, and of eliciting their precise 
 and distinctive meaning. The knowledge of the Hebrew language is not 
 absolutely necessary to the profitable use of the work. The plan of the 
 work is simple : every word occtirring in the English Version is arranged 
 alphabetically, and under it is given the Hebrnv word or words, with a 
 full explanation of their meaning, of which it is meant to be a translation, 
 and a complete list of the passages where it occurs. Following the general 
 work is a complete Hebrew and English Index, which is, in effect, a 
 Hebrew- English Dictionary. 
 
 Worship (The) of God and Fellowship among 
 
 Men. Sermons on Public Worship. By Professor MAURICE, 
 and others. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6d. 
 
 Yonge (Charlotte M.) Works by CHARLOTTE M. YONGE, 
 
 Author of "The Heir of Redclyffe :" 
 
 SCRIPTURE READINGS FOR SCHOOLS AND FA- 
 MILIES. 5 vols. Globe 8vo. is. 6d. With Comments, 3J. 6d. each. 
 FIRST SERIES. Genesis to Deuteronomy. 
 SECOND SERIES. From Joshua to Solomon. 
 THIRD SERIES. The Kings and Prophets. 
 FOURTH SERIES. The Gospel Times. 
 FIFTH SERIES. Apostolic Times. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, 39 
 
 YONGE (Charlotte M.) continued. 
 
 Actual need has led the author to endeavour to prepare a reading book 
 convenient for study with children, containing the very words of the 
 Bible, with only a few expedient omissions, and arranged in Lessons of 
 such length as by experience she has found to suit with children's ordinary 
 power of accitrate attentive interest. The verse form has been retained be- 
 cause of its convenience for children reading in class, and as more re- 
 sembling their Bibles ; but the poetical portions have been given in their 
 lines. Professor Huxley at a meeting of the London School-board, par- 
 ticularly mentioned the Selection made by Miss Yonge, as an example of 
 how selections might be made for School reading. ''''Her Comments are 
 models of their kind. " Literary Churchman. 
 
 THE PUPILS OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE. New 
 Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 " Voting and old will be equally refreshed and taught by these pages, 
 in which nothing is dtill, and nothing is far-fetched." Churchman. 
 
 PIONEERS AND FOUNDERS ; or, Recent Workers in 
 the Mission Field. With Frontispiece and Vignette Portrait of 
 Bishop HEBER. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 The missionaries whose biographies are here given, are John Eliot, 
 the Apostle of the Red Indians; David Brainei'd, the Enthusiast; Chris- 
 tian F. Schwartz, the Councillor of Tanjore; Henry Martyn, the Scholar- 
 Missionary ; William Carey and Joshua J\Iarshinan, the Serampore Mis- 
 sionaries ; the Judson Family; the Bishops of Calcutta Thomas 
 Middleton, Reginald Heber, Daniel Wilson; Saviuel Marsden, the Aus- 
 tralian Chaplain and Friend of the Maori ; John Williams, the Martyr 
 of Erromango; Allen Gardener, the Sailor Martyr; Charles Frederick 
 Mackenzie, the Martyr of Zambesi. 
 
THE 'BOOK OF PRAISE" HYMNAL, 
 
 COMPILED AND ARRANGED BY 
 
 LORD SELBORNE. 
 
 In the following four forms : 
 
 A. Beautifully printed in Royal 32mo., limp cloth, price 6d. 
 
 B. ,, ,, Small 18mo., larger type, cloth limp, Is. 
 
 C. Same edition on fine paper, cloth, Is. 6d. 
 
 Also an edition -with Music, selected, harmonized, and composed 
 
 by JOHN HULL AH, in square 18mo., cloth, 3s. 6d. 
 The large acceptance which has been given to " The Book of Praise" 
 by all classes of Christian people encourages the Publishers in entertaining 
 the hope that this Hymnal, which is mainly selected from it, may be ex- 
 tensively used in Congregations, and in some degree at least meet the 
 desires of those who seek uniformity in common worship as a means 
 towards that unity which pious souls yearn after, and which our Lord 
 prayed for in behalf of his Church. t(l The office of a hymn is not to 
 teach controversial Theology, but to give the voice of song to practical 
 religion. No doubt, to do this, it must embody sound doctrine ; but it 
 ought to do so, not after the manner of the schools, but with the breadth, 
 freedom, and simplicity of the Fountain-head. " On this principle has 
 Sir R. Palmer proceeded in the preparation of this book. 
 
 The arrangement adopted is the following : 
 
 PART I. consists of Hymns arranged according to the subjects of the 
 Creed "God the Creator," "Christ Incarnate" "Christ Crucified," 
 "Christ Risen," "Christ Ascended," "Christ's Kingdom and Judg- 
 ment," etc. 
 
 PART II. comprises Hymns arranged according to the subjects of the 
 Lord's Prayer. 
 
 PART III. Hymns for natural and sacred seasons. 
 There are 320 Hymns in all. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY j. PALMER. 
 

 1 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY