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lieve that there was no God must not be charitably judged as somewhere radically defective. It is no disproof whatever, as we think, of this radical defect (so we charitably judge) to say that "Catholicism had worked him into that madness!" The inference from the falsehood of any one form of religion whatever to atheism is so complete a non sequitur, that we never could trust that intellect afterwards for any of its conclusions.

In this chapter we find ourselves at once launched out into the widest and most shoreless seas of controversy. In stating and commenting upon a few only of the more dangerous opinions, we hope to read an important lesson to others when we show the penalty which Mr. White paid for relinquishing the reins to reason alone, by exhibiting the awful conclusions he was thus necessarily led to embrace. We trust it may act upon many as the account of a fearful wreck, to which a daring captain had exposed his vessel, would act upon a sailor. Of course, Mr. White would soon find ample scope in the old field for doubts on miracles and inspiration, and he thus dogmatically puts forth his convictions -"The grace or favour of God, as manifested in his spiritual gifts, cannot but act in conformity with the laws of the human mind. It is impossible to distinguish the works of grace (as divines call them) from the works of our moral and intellectual nature." As this opinion lies at the root of Mr. White's discoveries we must briefly discuss it. Of course, we must admit the axiom-for such it must be called-that God does not act upon the human mind in violation of the laws which he himself assigned to it. The most thorough believers, like ourselves, in the miracles and inspiration of the Scriptures, do not suppose that, in the performance of miracles, any original law was violated. When Christ raised Lazarus from the dead, that act was actually agreeably to a published law; for the future resurrection of the dead is declared to be the work of Christ. Because the power of man over the machinery both of body and mind is limited by clear laws, it does not, therefore, follow that they are not susceptible of higher influences, of the same kind, from other sources. It may be as natural, i.e., agreeable, to fixed laws that the body should be raised again as that it should die; and hence the fact of the resurrection of Lazarus may be more defintely spoken of than by the vague word miracle. So the mind of man is susceptible to various influences having their origin in this globe: our fellow-men-the objects of creationthe works of art-its own thoughts-all can move the mind and produce effects that cannot be always reduced to definite rules. But the enquiry which Mr. White omitted is this-is the human mind influenced by no objects but those strictly connected

with visible creation? We have no wish to lose sight of the plain truth that when God designed the soul of man to abide in this part of his creation, he impressed upon it certain laws or ideas without which it would have been no more fitted to live in it than the body, if that had not been constructed in reference to the peculiarity of the atmosphere and other agents of this globe. It must, therefore, be bound by terrestrial laws. But, did he who created the human soul so break off all connection with it as to leave himself without access to it? Cannot God act upon it, according to its own laws under which he sent it forth, and so produce higher effects upon it, without transgressing those laws, than any of the other known agents? This is, we think, the simple question of inspiration-whether God has so constructed the human soul as to leave himself without access to it, unless by violating the laws under which he sent it forth to dwell in this globe. Of course such access is possible.

Some will admit it is probable-we think itis certain. We suppose Mr. White would deny the miracle of St. Paul's conversion, and deny his power of "distinguishing grace from the workings of nature:" and yet there was no violation of the laws of the human mind: there was a light-this St. Paul saw agreeably to the visual laws of his nature: there was a voice— this he heard according to the auricular laws of his nature: he fell to the earth, rose up, was blasted by excess of lightall natural actions: where then, in all this, was the miracle? The historian of the scene says the effects were produced by what he calls "a light from heaven," and a "voice" purporting to come from Jesus Christ. Admitting only that God has not shut up all access to man, there was no violation of any laws in all this: the senses were appealed to and through them the soul was reached. St. Paul felt the difference between all other movements of his soul and this: no influences by which he was surrounded had ever wrought thus upon him before: human language had but one word to describe the conscious influence that had been exercised over his soul-it is that word which we have translated by grace; and yet Mr. White denies that any miracle can be proved, and denies grace and inspiration-probably he would have denied this history, or called it a myth. We must then, after all, measure Mr. White's belief and unbelief in this and similar events by another standard than want of evidence. Mr. White affirms that his disbelief was in accordance with his own intellectual nature: we must, then, put in the counter reply-we could not refuse to believe the truth of these miracles and deny their influences without doing violence to our own intellectual nature. And

hence we must conclude that there was something in the structure of Mr. White's mind different from that of nearly the whole of the educated and intellectual portion of the world, with whom we agree in our conclusions, and with whom Mr. White does not agree: this, we believe, is the judgment of charity in the case before us.

We cannot enter into all the reasons by which he professes to have been convinced of the falsehood of all views of Christianity but his own-his own "mental Christianity:" one instance, however, must include their substance :

"When I became thoroughly convinced that revelation did not give mankind the means of infallible certainty in regard to its supposed disclosures, I had no more to do with the body of theological doctrines."

All this is, we conceive, founded upon false views of the moral and intellectual condition of our race; it belongs to what man may be, not what he is; for infallible certainty is neither found amongst us nor is required; for the most momentous affairs of life are conducted upon evidence far indeed removed from infallible; and it is probable that this apparent defect imparts vigor to the mind in its movements, according to its constitution, the disadvantages being thus counteracted by other advantages. It ought not, therefore, to be a stumbling-block to find that God, in planning and imparting his revelation, has acted "according to the laws of the human mind" in this its state of imperfection. The apostle says, "we walk by faith, not by sight"-this involves the Christian's wholesome discipline; but it is quite incompatible with infallible certainty, which would tend to the destruction of the habit of faith; and what should we be, or do, without faith, since it is imposed upon us daily to make provisions and plans for the future, as to all that is dearest to us, although we cannot command the destroying events of the next hour?

Such are the tyrannous demands of reason unbalanced by its kindred coadjutors. It forced Mr. White to admit reluctantly, after examination, that Christianity" in its substance must be divine." But what that substance was, or where it was to be found, reason claimed alone to determine. Hence he would select portions of the received Gospel histories as truly telling what Christianity was, and would reject the rest-that is to he virtually accuses St. John and the others of falsifying the words and deeds of Christ.

say,

See this illustrated in The Church of England Quarterly Review, No. XXXV., p. 75, "On the Natural Limits of Subscription."

As we watch the progress of his mind always, as we think, in a downward descent, other sentiments occur which tell but too plainly their own story. Thus, in abusing the English Prayer Book (because, as it elsewhere slips out, it reminded him of the hated breviary, his early tormentor), he talks of the "absolutely discordant traits in which the Deity is represented. At one moment he appears in the terrific aspect of a God of pure might-a Being whom there is no chance of propitiating but by the means which sometimes appease an eastern despot: the suppliant must stretch his neck and call himself most humiliating names," &c. Passing by the execrable taste of this mode of speaking of a book so dear to the hearts of thousands, it is liable to another charge-a false subjective interpretation; for to affirm that the compilers of the Prayer Book meant to give utterance to such sentiments is too gross to require contradiction. Mr. White put his own subjective interpretation upon words which admit of, and, in almost every other case, receive, another subjective interpretation; and this is the simple refutation of the libel. The sense of guilt, and therefore of provocations against the Deity, is stronger in some minds than in others, and thus the amount of import attached to certain phrases (e. g., "Have mercy upon us miserable sinners") will vary in different minds. But that the majority of minds find epithets of the Deity in the Prayer Book to which they do or can attach such servile meanness, is altogether untrue. Mr. White denied the doctrine of what is called "original sin," and could not, therefore, approve of a book written by those, and for those, who are so far from denying it that they believe it to be impossible to account for the universal facts of human nature without it, independently of their believing it to be a clear point of revelation. Mr. White's own intellect and sensibilities were, however, evidently set up as the standard of God's moral government of the world: hence he presumes to measure the truth of the Old Testament histories, not by legitimate criticism, but by his own keen sensibilities. Thus, he tells us"The massacre of the priests of Baal, and the horrible destruction of the last of the family of Saul, never failed to fill me with horror."* We may pity one who was so much the slave

A note is appended to this, asking what lessons such tales can teach people but the injustice of God's government? This deduction is too far-fetched to be true. The lessons which such accounts teach the simple hearer are the sure punishment of sin. Nor is the equity of God doubted, because the full history is not given. The treatment of King Adonibezek would seem harsh; yet we hear his own confession." Seventy kings, having their thumbs and their toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table. As I have done so hath God requited me."

of an useless compassion; but the following attack, resulting from it, is unjustifiable:-" Reason need not be too bold to suspect some foul play of the managers of the oracle with the monarch who had been set up by them to the exclusion of the family of Saul." Now, if there be any such thing in the world as true history, we believe it is found in the Old Testament. When we see this same King David's offences laid bare without mercy (as Mr. White has not laid bare his own offences) we are morally sure that, if the king had been infamous enough to corrupt God's priests for this purpose, his guilt would have been recorded. If this history is false we may disbelieve all history, even Mr. White's, and reject his own version of the deeds of his life for others more agreeable to the usual course of mankind. Surely the same sensibilities which Mr. White's reason set up for guaging the truth of history, the rectitude of God's moral administration, must have secretly condemned him for such evils as the earthquake at Lisbon and the great plagues which, at different times, have agonized the human race. goes on to say "I never heard the Old Testament lessons without pain." Well, and what then?-what does that prove? That the thousands, whose mental emotions during the same seasons are of a totally different kind, are wrong, and Mr. White's were right. We are astonished at such egotism. He immediately adds, elevating before us the same deified standard

He

"Let Christians be undeceived-let them listen to the voice of a man whose experience on these subjects must surpass whatever knowledge of faith and unbelief they themselves possess !" He then lets us into his disbelief of the Old Testament thus:"A commentary upon the Old Testament Sunday lessons may be easily written which, proceeding upon the common notions of the infallibility and equal inspiration of the whole Bible, would make the merest clown turn away from the whole book with as much disdain as any philosopher of the old French school." At once we reply, such comments-hundreds of them-may be written, but would they be true ones?—true, as explaining what the writers intended to convey, for there is no other true commentary. We do not suppose Mr. White was so ignorant of infidel and blasphemous literature as not to know that such commentaries have been written; and the basest of human vice-steeped souls, we know but too well, find in them their appropriate food; but this cannot be avoided. To the pure all things are pure, and vice versa. Tom Paine's imagination found the bestial carrion-food it craved for, and would have, in the first chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel; but was that a true commentary?

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