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least by implication, its powers with respect to matter, and to underrate its powers in reference to mental science. So thoroughly, moreover, does he in one respect confound words and things, that he actually ascribes to peculiarities and deficiencies in language antitheses which, in truth, exist in rerum natura. It may be well to explain this last assertion at once, before entering more fully into other points.

The nature of the Eternal and Almighty One is, of course, consistency and harmony itself. If any of His attributes (such as, for instance, perfect justice and perfect mercy) appear to us to clash, this arises from our imperfect apprehension of what their real perfection consists in, not from any dissonance in the abstract qualities themselves. This harmony is, in an infinitely low and subordinate degree, shared by those among His creatures who are obedient to the end for which He made them. There is harmony in the nature of the holy angels, whose wills are ever one with the Divine will; there is harmony in the restored nature of those triumphant ones who cry, 'Just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints." Perhaps, too, though this assertion is more open to question, there is a kind of harmony in the life of the animal creation.

With nature never do they wage

A foolish strife; they see
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free,' 2

But it is far otherwise with fallen man. His nature, though in no part rendered substantively evil, has lost its harmony of action; and the restoration, even of the regenerate, is in this life incomplete. His weakness and vileness, and yet, at the same time, his capacity for nobleness and virtue, were perceived even by heathen philosophers, and were to them (unenlightened by revelation) a profound enigma.

'Chaos of thought and passion all confused,

Still by himself abused or disabused;

Created half to rise, and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

1 Apoc. xv. 3. 2 Wordsworth. His tone on this point is, we believe, that of all German poets, even the most religious, of whatever creed. They will not allow that either animals or the inanimate creation have shared in the fall. This has been observed by a very able French critic, M. Saint-René Taillandier, who remarks that S. Basil takes the opposite side, while the mystic founder of the Franciscans sympathises with the German view. Dr. Goulburn, in his concluding Bampton Lecture, discusses the text (Rom. viii. 19-23) on which the beautiful lines of the Christian Year, 'It was not then a poet's dream,' &c. (4th Sunday after Trinity,) appear to be based. It must be owned, as Dr. G. admits, that the use of the term KTIOIs, in Mark xvi. 15, is against the application of the passage in Rom. vii. to the animal creation or inanimate nature. Conclusions on such subjects can never, we imagine, rank higher than pious opinions.

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.' '

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And when, in the fulness of time, God sent forth His Son to redeem the world, the Second Person of the ever-blessed Trinity became, though in a different way from sinful man, one vast antithesis, if such language may be used without irreverence. Creator, and yet a creature; eternal, yet born in time; pure spirit allied with matter; true man, yet without sin; innocent, yet suffering punishment; dying, and yet by death the conqueror: this stupendous contrast, shadowed forth for long ages by type and prophecy, is uttered plainly by apostles and evangelists, and has become the subject of Christian art, and eloquence, and poetry. It is suggested by those wondrous strains of music which lend a new pathos even to the inspired words, Thy rebuke hath broken His heart;' 'Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow;' which proclaim the glory of that Nativity that was to earthly eyes so poor and humble, and burst forth, after notes of sorrow, into the rapture of the hallelujah chorus. It is, at least, attempted by those great masters of pictorial art, a Perugino, a Raphael, a Leonardo da Vinci, who in representations of the infancy, the actions, or even the agony of the Saviour, pourtray, so far as is possible in the human form and features, the light of hidden Godhead. It is the key-note of famous specimens of oratory, patristic, Gallican, Anglican, delivered upon the days kept in memory of the adorable Birth, or Passion, or Resurrection. Festivitatis hodiernæ, dilectissimi,' (begins a preacher, who is very great on such occasions,) verus venerator est et pius cultor, qui nec de Incarnatione Domini aliquid falsum, nec de Deitate aliquid sentit indignum. Paris enim periculi 'malum est, si illi aut naturæ nostræ veritas aut Paternæ gloriæ negatur æqualitas." The same truth is thus antithetically, too, announced in the verses of our extremely beautiful English hymn, Hark, the herald angels sing,' and in a thousand poems of other times and other lands. Thus, to take the first examples we chance to light upon, sing Peter the Venerable in the twelfth century, and Manzoni in our own day:

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'Matris alitur intactæ
Puer-Deus sacro lacte,

Res stupenda sæculis!
Esca vivit alienâ

Per quem cuncta manent plena;
Nullis par miraculis !

1 Essay on Man. Pope may possibly have obtained the ideas, directly or indirectly, from Pascal.

2 S.. Leo. Sermo vii. de Nativ. Domini.

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Moreover, the work of Christ on behalf of man, although intended ultimately to sanctify and harmonise the operations of body, soul, and spirit, yet, during the process, must frequently cause the contradictory principles to be more clearly perceived and acutely felt; for the presence of what is good brings out evil, as the sunlight the shadow. Satan sows the tares among the wheat, not in the barren field; he attempts to rival the workings of holiness by counterfeit imitations: for after the Prophets 'come the false prophets, and after the Apostles the false ' apostles, and after Christ the antichrist.' And this internal contradiction, so vividly painted by S. Paul, (if, with a majority of commentators, we may understand the well-known passage in Rom. vii. of his regenerate condition,) is repeated, though in a different way, if we regard the condition of the Apostles themselves. Their social position so humble, their spiritual one so lofty; the present so full of distress, the future beaming with such glorious promises; the contempt of the world, the stripes and dungeons, here; the certainty of the praise of Christ before men and angels, and the twelve thrones' hereafter: these make the first followers of our Lord, and many a one since who has walked in their footsteps, examples of this living contradiction.

We owe an apology to the reader for so prolix a statement of positions, which to many will appear the merest truisms. But strange errors demand, as has been already remarked, the reassertion of the most obvious truths. And we are anxious to insist upon the consideration that in all these cases-human nature, unregenerate and regenerate, the person of Christ our 1 Trench's Sacred Latin Poetry, p. 97.

2 Parnaso Italiano (Parigi, 1847), p. 356.

3 Καὶ γὰρ μετὰ τοὺς προφήτας, οἱ ψευδοπροφῆται· καὶ μετὰ τοὺς ἀποστόλους, οἱ ψευδαπόστολοι καὶ μετὰ τὸν Χριστὸν, ὁ ἀντίχριστος. S. Chrys. Homil. xlvi. in Matt.

Lord, and the condition of his Apostles-the antithesis is one of fact. When this is once called to mind, there will be a due appreciation of the exceeding erroneousness of a thinker, who can see, in the descriptions of these phenomena, little more than ingenuities of language, and a proof of its insufficiency for dogma. Because, forsooth, poets and orators have often imparted life and vigour to their expressions by some bold contradiction, which is after all but a figure of speech, therefore the description of things, which are in their very nature contradictory, is to be regarded in the same light. Such is the teaching of Dr. Bushnell. That we may not wrong him, we subjoin the passage:

'We never come so near to a truly well-rounded view of any truth as when it is offered paradoxically; that is, under contradictions; that is, under two or more dictions, which, taken as dictions, are contrary one to

the other.

'Hence [!] the marvellous vivacity and power of that famous representation of Pascal: "What a chimera, then, is man! What a novelty! What a chaos! What a subject of contradiction! A judge of everything, and yet a feeble worm of the earth; the depositary of truth, and yet a mere heap of uncertainty; the glory and the outcast of the universe; if he boasts, I humble him; if he humbles himself, I boast of him; and always contradict him, till he is brought to comprehend that he is an incomprehensible monster."

'Scarcely inferior in vivacity and power is the familiar passage of Paul-"As deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.'

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Probably, the most contradictory book in the world is the Gospel of John; and that for the very reason that it contains more and loftier truths than any other.'-Pp. 46, 47.

We submit that a writer, who exhibits such a confusion of rhetorical and poetical forms of speech with matters of fact, can hardly be considered a safe guide in the very profound and difficult questions which beset the connexion of thought and language. Indeed, he appears to us like a man who has got hold of many valuable truths, but is not successful in marshalling them together. Thus, for example, Dr. Bushnell is quite right in maintaining that our ideas of things immaterial can only be expressed in terms derived from our sensible experiences of material things, nor are we aware that the position has ever been denied. 'We speak of a 'We speak of a "great" mind, of "elevated" strength, of "low" desires, of a "hardened" conscience, of a "clear" understanding, of a "brilliant" imagination, of a "black" heart, of " foul" passions. All these are metaphors '-metaphors taken from the material world.' This quotation is from a writer of a school the most opposite to Dr. Bushnell :

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1 Mr. Sewell, Christian Politics, p. 12. Cf. A Lecture on Symbolism, by Chas. Browne, Esq., M.A., p. 6. (London: Masters, 1855.)

but he proceeds to add, with great justice, what the American author before us either ignores, or admits at best but very grudgingly and imperfectly; namely, 'that they are metaphors taken not by compact and convention, as words intrinsically 'inapplicable, and requiring to be stamped by art with other new significations, but offering themselves by an internal fitness and similitude to express unseen and spiritual ideas.'

That dogma is impossible by reason of the defects of language must mean, either that theological science cannot be constructed upon a basis of words, or else that words are inadequate to express the results of such science, when they have been obtained by other means. Let us look at each position separately.

If it be meant that theological science cannot be constructed on a base of words, the assertion is probably true; but then it must not be confined to theology. It may with equal probability be asserted of all science, philology, and perhaps (in some sense) pure mathematics alone excepted. We do not mean to assert that erroneous views upon this head have never prevailed; but they must be allowed to have prevailed at least as fully in the domain of physical as of mental science. To have overthrown this error in respect of the investigation of external nature, is the great triumph which is claimed for Bacon. So far as the error has prevailed in divinity, it has been exhibited in some of the early heresies, or in that extreme and undue love for completeness of system, explanation of scriptural terms, and deductive theology, which, with all their high and noble gifts, must, we think, be admitted to have distinguished tho schoolmen. It was exhibited by Arius, who was well versed, the historian tells us, in logical discussion, and who thus argued from the earthly meaning of the terms Father and Son, that such relationship involved priority of time upon the part of the Father, and disproved the eternity of the Son. It has been exhibited by those supporters of Sabellianism, who have attempted to give illustrations of the force of the word Person by analogies drawn from the union of offices in one man (such as those, e. g. of the same man being at once a bishop and a temporal peer or prince), or Cicero's tres personas unus suscipio. And if a similar charge be brought in some degree against the scholastic divinity, we shall not be thereby supposed to rank its constructors with heresiarchs or apologists for heresy, or to apply to their labours that tone of contempt which was so common in the earlier part of the present century. That contempt, indeed,

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1 Οὐκ ἄμοιρος τῆς διαλεκτικῆς λέσχης. Socrates, Hist. Eccles. i. 5.

2 Φησὶν, εἰ ὁ πατὴρ ἐγέννησε τὸν υἱὸν, ἀρχὴν ὑπάρξεως ἔχει ὁ γεννηθείς· καὶ ἐκ τούτου δῆλον, ὅτι ἦν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν ὁ υἱός.—Ibid.

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