BRITISH AND FOREIGN

EVANGELICAL REVIEW.

JANUARY 1863.

ART. I.-Readjustment of Christianity.*

1. Recent Inquiries in Theology, by eminent English Clergymen; being "Essays and Reviews." Third American, from the second London edition. With an Appendix. Edited, with an Introduction, by Rev. FREDERICK II. HEDGE, D.D. Boston: Walker, Wise, & Co. 1861 ·· 2. Trac's for Priests and People. By various Writers. Boston: Walker, Wise, & Co. 1862.

3. Aids to Faith; a Series of Theological Essays. By several Writers. Being a Reply to "Essays and Reviews." Edited by WILLIAM THOMPSON, D.D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1862.

4. Replies to "Essays and Reviews." By the Rev. C. E. M. GOULBURN, D.D.; Rev. II. J. BOSE, B.D.; Rev. C. A. HEURTLEY, D.D.; Rev. W. J. IRONS, D.D.; Rev. G. RORISON, M.A.; Rev. A. W. HADDAN, B.D.; Rev. CHR. WORDSWORTH, D.D. With a Preface by the LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD, &c. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1862.

5. Bunsen's Biblical Researches.

6. The Westminster Review.

THERE has never been a period in the world when the men who, by talent, learning, or position, have it in their power to form public opinion on great questions of morals and religion, had a more important work to perform than now. The old opinions which have so long influenced mankind are to be adjusted to this age. Opinions and doctrines are of importance, not merely as they are in themselves, but as they are adjusted to an existing order of things; as they displace old customs, opinions, and laws, and introduce new ones; as they convulse

*This article, from the pen of the Rev. Albert Barnes, appeared in the July number (1862) of the Presbyterian Quarterly Review (American).-Ed. B. & F. E. R.

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an age by violence, or influence it in a gentle manner; as they retard the movements of society, or help it on in its developments. Opinions and doctrines are not lifeless things. Creeds in religion and philosophy, however abstract they may be, are not like well-arranged specimens, duly labelled, in a cabinet of minerals; or like stuffed birds and animals; or like fossil geological specimens in an academy of natural sciences. They are like the sunlight and the dew; the wind and the storm the vital forces moving through nature, and forming the living specimens of mosses and ferns, of animalcula and worms, of trees and fishes, of birds and men of any single generation.

In every new age there is some modification to be made of old opinions and doctrines on all subjects. New facts are discovered; new thoughts are stricken out by some mind of uncommon power; old opinions and doctrines are seen to be erroneous, in whole or in part, and are to be modified so as to be brought into conformity to truth, or to be suffered to pass away altogether. The world drops them in its progress, or reconstructs and readjusts them. There are few doctrines in the world now which are precisely like the opinions held by the sages of Greece; there are few which are precisely like those of the Hebrew prophets; there are few which could be expressed accurately in the formulas which would have been used by the schoolmen in the middle ages, or which were used by the leaders in the Protestant Reformation. The old books of geography, of philosophy, of medicine, of anatomy, of astronomy, of chemistry, have passed away, and are referred to only as marking historic periods, not as accurate statements of science; the present age, in its progress, an everflowing stream, is leaving multitudes of treatises in mental philosophy, and even in theology, where the works of Galen and Hippocrates are in respect to medicine; of Strabo and Mela in respect to geography; of Ptolemy in respect to astronomy.

The readjustment of opinions and doctrines may be accomplished silently, or it may be by violence. Most of the changes in nature are so silent as to be unobserved at the time, caused by the sunlight, by gentle seasons, by the dew, and by the mild falling rain; but deluges, earthquakes, and storms, are employed, also, in the adjustments of nature, and in the revolutions of things. Most of the changes in the old geological periods of the earth were made by violent convulsions; not a few such occur even amidst the movements of a more advanced and settled order of things.

In most changes, whether violent or mild, there is a shock, greater or less, to the existing order of things. A machine may be made to move with almost no jar or perceptible friction, but a change, introducing a new principle, can be introduced.

only by a readjustment, and not always without peril to the existing arrangements. In religion, great changes may be introduced by the quiet development of thought; in morals, by carefully adjusting new principles to the old system; in politics, by a change quite in accordance with constitutional principles, as changes in the world of nature are made by sunlight and dew; but changes on each of these subjects may be made by violent agitation of the public mind, as in the "Reformation" in religion, or by revolutions in politics, as changes are made in nature by earthquakes and storms. But even when most quietly made-when most entirely in accordance with settled laws and constitutional principles, they do not often occur without a shock, more or less severe, to the very constitution of things themselves. A few amendments to the Constitution of the United States have been made in a way entirely constitutional, and with no perceptible shock; not many more could be made now, even for the purpose of adjusting it to the existing state of things in our country, without peril to the Constitution itself, and to all the great interests which it was framed to protect. As if the framers of the Constitution foresaw that changes in future times must be made; as if they foresaw that they would be made by the violence of revolution, if provision was not made for a peaceful adjustment of our institutions to what might be the state of things in future years; as if they hoped that, by quiet and constitutional changes made from time to time, all such peril of revolution might be avoided, they incorporated into the instrument itself an arrangement for such a peaceful change, and up to a recent period our land has been a land of peace, while it has been eminently a land of development and progress, under these constitutional arrangements. Whether such changes could now be made, however, as are demanded in the progress of things, after the lapse of the greater part of a century in the most remarkable period of the world for progress, without convulsion, revolution, and ruin to the existing order of things, is THE great question which is to be settled at the present time.

No provisions for amendments and readjustment, applicable to all cases it would seem, could be made in the operations of nature; none, it would seem, could be introduced into the church -into Christianity. Nature could not be made to work so quietly and calmly, that storms and tempests, earthquakes and wars, could be dispensed with; and the Church could not be so framed that the great changes which might be demanded, to adjust it to an existing state of things in future times, could be accomplished without such convulsions as occurred in the transition from Judaism to Christianity-from paganism, in the Roman empire, to the establishment of the gospel-from

the dominion of the papacy, in later times, to the prevalence of the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation.

The men who are the authors of the first work whose title we have placed at the head of this article—a work published in England, under the very general title of "Essays and Reviews,' and in our country, under the title of "Recent Inquiries in Theology," have addressed themselves, each one in his own sphere, without a previous understanding of the designs of the others, to the work of readjusting of Christianity, and of adapting it to the wants of this age. Their work is of the more importance, as it is the production of seven independent minds, without having associated together avowedly for the purpose; and since it happens that, when the results of their separate and independent thinking are brought together, they seem to form parts of one plan. The seven writers aim at one end; they pursue one mode of investigation; they see the same things to be accomplished; they have the same views of what is to be done, and they would reach the same result. The system which they would substitute in the place of that which has been received in the Church, and to which, as members of the Established Church of England, they have all expressed their assent, would be a system in itself, quite distinct from the existing system, and as homogeneous as if it had been the production of one mind. The volume, therefore, has this incidental importance, that it indicates an undercurrent of thought and feeling extensively pervading the public mind in the Established Church in England, if not in the religious mind of England generally, of which this book, or this collection of independent essays, is the exponent. There might be, from anything in the book itself, but slight cause of alarm, and it might have but a slight claim to public attention, if it were the production of one mind; its principal claim to attention is the fact that it is an indication of a wide-spread state of feeling and mode of reasoning which has found a simultaneous expression in this form.

The authors of the Essays are seven in number, all English "Churchmen," and most of them occupying conspicuous stations. Two of them are professors in the University of Oxford; one is a professor in St David's College in Wales; one is a successor of the late Dr Arnold, in the headship of Rugby School. The names of two others, Messrs Jowett and Rowland Williams, are known to not a few American readers in connection with a volume of "Theological Essays," edited, four years since, by Professor Noyes of Cambridge University. the author of the first Essay in the book, the Rev. Frederick Temple, D.D., occupies the important position of Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen, as well as being Head Master

One,

of Rugby School. And another, Baden Powell, Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford, who has died since the "Essays" were first published, had secured a wide reputation, both as a man of science and of sacred learning. It is claimed of these men, in the edition of the work republished in this country, that these Essays "represent a new era in Anglican Theology. The topics here discussed are handled with a frankness, a breadth, and a spiritual heroism long unknown to ecclesiastical England. The sincerity which speaks in them recalls the better days of a church which, in catholic ages, and as a branch of catholic Christendom, could boast such names as John Scotus, Anselm, Duns, Alexander of Hales, and Roger Bacon, and which numbers a More and a Cudworth among her Protestant divines."*

The spirit and tendency of the Essays, and the importance to be attached to the labours of the "Essayists," in the estimation of the American editor, are expressed in the following language, in commending the work to the patronage and attention of the Christian public in this country:

"The life of Anglican theology is now represented by such men as Powell, and Williams, and Maurice, and Jowett, and Stanley. Its strain and promise are apparent in these Essays.

"The term Broad Church' has been used to designate the new phase of ecclesiastical life, whose characteristics are breadth and freedom of view, an earnest spirit of inquiry and resolute criticism, joined to a reverent regard for ecclesiastical tradition and the common faith of mankind. The spirit of this theology is at once progressive and conservative; careful of all essential sanctities, careful also of the rights of the mind, of the interests of science and the 'liberty of prophesying;' carefully adjusting old views with new discoveries, transient forms with everlasting verities; regarding symbols and 'Articles' as servants of thought, not as laws of thought; as imperfect attempts to articulate truth, not as the measure and guage of truth.

"Rationalistic it is, inasmuch as it is protestant; for of Rationalism, the only alternative is Rationalism. Yet assuming in Christianity itself the perfection of reason, and believing that the truest insight in spiritual things is where the human intellect, freely inquiring, encounters the Holy Ghost, and that such encounter is afforded by the gospel, it goes about to analyse and interpret, not to gainsay or destroy; reverently listening, if here and there it may catch some accents of the Eternal Voice amid the confused dialects of Scripture, yet not confounding the latter with the former; expecting to find in criticism, guided by a true philosophy, the key to revelation; in revelation, the sanction and condign expression of philosophic truth."-Pp. xiii. xiv.

* Introduction to the American Edition, p. x.