6

that the Catholic doctrine is the only one which harmonizes with the Gospel record: all other theories require the Gospel history to be, in some point or another, mutilated or enfeebled. But to reject the miraculous, you must reject also the Resurrection,' and if the Resurrection be rejected, S. Paul's alternative cannot be escaped; a total and explicit rejection of Christianity ensues. The miraculous element cannot be eliminated from the Gospel narratives without impugning their morality, and without destroying 'the integrity of our Lord's moral character.' The miraculous is inextricably interwoven with the whole life of Christ. The ethical beauty, nay, the 'moral integrity of our Lord's character is dependent, whether we will it or not, upon the reality of His miracles.' How can Christ Jesus be the ideal, the pattern man, the worthy object of the enthusiasm of humanity, if the miracles which He claimed to work, which He appealed to as testifying of Himself, were either the crude performances of a vulgar thaumaturge,' or Himself the ignorant victim of a crude unreasoning superstition? And yet this must be the choice of a modern disbeliever in the miraculous element of our Lord's history. In answer to the other theory, which is sometimes called the Ideological,' wherein all individuality in the Incarnation is denied, as in the passage from Strauss already quoted, Mr. Liddon argues from the self-assertion' of Christ. Our Saviour declares repeatedly, plainly, and without compunction, His own personality. He preaches Himself. He Himself persistently asserts the real 'character of His position relatively to God and to man, and of His consequent claims upon the thought and heart of man'kind.' (Lect. iv. p. 256.) Nor is this self-assertion confined to the fourth Gospel, which is the battle-field of the New Testament, as the Book of Daniel is the battle-field of the Old Testament; but all through the sacred records the same decided declarations occur. And, as we have seen, in a passage quoted above from 'Ecce Homo,' this evidence cannot be passed over in any impartial survey of our Lord's character. We cannot here go through the evidence adduced with great fulness and power by Mr. Liddon in his fourth lecture, but the alternative with which he closes his review of the argument is worth our attention::

'Of a truth the alternative before us is terrible; but can a devout and earnest thought falter for a moment in the agony of its suspense? Surely it cannot. The moral character of Christ, viewed in connexion with the preternatural facts of His human life, will bear the strain which the argument puts upon it. It is easier for a good man to believe that, in a world where he is encompassed by mysteries, where his own being itself is a consummate mystery, the moral Author of the wonders around him should for great moral purposes have taken to Himself a creative form, than that the one human life which NO. CXXXIX.-N.S.

L

realizes the idea of humanity, the one man who is at once perfect strength and perfect tenderness, the one pattern of our race in whom its virtues are combined, and from whom its vices are eliminated, should have been guilty, when speaking about Himself, of an arrogance, of a self-seeking, and of an insincerity which, if admitted, must justly degrade Him far below the moral level of millions among His unhonoured worshippers. Yet the true alternative this frightful conclusion is in reality a fresh acceptance of the doctrine which is under consideration in these lectures. For Christianity, both as a creed and as a life, depends absolutely upon the personal character of its founder. Unless His virtue was only apparent, unless His miracles were nothing better than a popular delusion, we must admit that His self-assertion is justified, even in the full measure of its blessed and awful import. We must deny the antagonism which is said to exist between the doctrine of Christ's Divinity and the history of His human manifestation. We must believe and confess that the Christ of history is the Christ of the Catholic creed.'—Lect. iv. p. 307, 308.

Mr. Liddon, in arguing from the sincerity and the selfassertion of our Saviour, is led to traverse ground very similar to that which the author of 'Ecce Homo' has made so familiar to many. Not indeed that the works are similar in their method, excepting in the one point of traversing similar ground in arguing from our Lord's sincerity; but it is not the least valuable part of the Bampton Lectures, that they are calculated to attract and to influence that large class of readers to which the author of 'Ecce Homo' popularly appeals. The influence of the Bampton Lectures will be immeasurably higher, inasmuch as they not only enter with a breadth of view into the controversies of the day, but they do what 'Ecce Homo' fails in doing, they meet popular theories from a Catholic stand-point, without surrendering the dogmatic rule, without sacrificing one iota of the Church's authority and claim to decide in controversies of faith. Mr. Liddon allows for the variety of theories afloat, and meets, with a sympathy and consideration rarely found in theological discussions, the conflicting answers of modern schools to the solemn question of our Lord's Divinity. Now this we may be allowed to remark upon, not only as an honourable distinction in these lectures, but as the proper function and method of Church writers at the present time. It was enough for past defenders of the faith to point out that the assertions of their adversaries were heresy, and to disprove them by the authority of the Church, the consensus of antiquity, and the appeal to Holy Scripture. Such were the broad lines of the arguments of Bull and of Waterland: to the law and to the testimony they brought the controversy for decision. But this method is insufficient to meet the conflicts of modern speculation. Dogmas, as we have seen, are disdained, Catholic consent is not regarded as an authority, creeds and articles of faith are judged by what are called their moral aims' and their practical influence as

benefiting mankind. This is of course a specious proposition. It would separate religion from theology, as if one were a barren science and the other alone of practical use and virtue. Now this specious proposition is not only definitely put forward as an argument against definite theology, but, by its plausibility, it influences very many who have no sympathy with speculative opinions at all, but rather have a horror at being entangled in them; who desire to believe, as their forefathers did, without controversy, but who, nevertheless, when discussion upon sacred verities does arise, shrink from dogmatic theology, as something wrong, or intolerant, or unspiritual, or savouring of 'man's logic,' whatever that term may imply. Perhaps we have scarcely represented this floating mass of indistinct, but sincere and unquestioning belief, with adequate care; but to this large and undefined class Mr. Liddon's book will be a most valuable assistance. It is not meant by this that his arguments are not sufficient to have weight with the champions of heresy and unbelief. He shows them, on their own grounds, that their Christology is a failure; but as an address to the wider circle of general readers, the value of these Lectures is paramount.

Now the true method, we conceive, of dealing with modern unbelief, is to show that Catholic truth, as defined and carefully assorted, does satisfy the moral wants of mankind, far more thoroughly than any of the plausible substitutes which an impatient speculation may originate; that the omission or the abandonment of any fundamental verity involves a corresponding abandonment and loss of moral power and moral benefit to the believer. And thus the 'consequences of the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity,'-how it protects, on the one hand, 'the true idea of God,' and on the other, 'secures the true dignity of man;' while 'it has propagated virtues, unattainable either by paganism or naturalism,'-are not the least important parts of the discussion, if the discussion is to be of use against modern unbelief. Now by this method of addressing himself, not only to the proof of what Christendom has believed, but to the consideration of what speculation morally puts forward as its pretext and aim, Mr. Liddon meets the adversaries of orthodoxy upon their own ground, and shows that orthodoxy after all satisfies these moral requirements far better and far more completely than do its modern substitutes. He shows that theology is not at variance with, or even separable from religion; but that religion, to support itself, must rest consciously on its object; the intellectual apprehension of that object as true, is an integral 'element of religion. In short, religion cannot exist without

Lecture viii.

'some view of its object-namely God; but no sooner do you 'introduce any intellectual aspect whatever of God—nay, the 'bare idea that such a Being exists, than you have before you 'not merely a religion, but at least in some sense a theology. (Lect. i. p. 6.)

And this we conceive to be the great work for Church writers in the present day to fulfil. Not only with respect to doctrine, but with respect also to the Church system and practice, it should be their aim to show that it does meet, as no other system can, the permanent wants, moral, and indeed social, of man: that the vast and imposing system of theological truth, of creeds and articles of faith, of ordinances and practices which have come down to us, are, in a sense which can be applied to no other system, what the Greek historian desired his work to be, a Kтnμа eis deí, a possession and a heritage which, amid all that is changeable, has a fixedness, and yet a capability of supplying the changing wants of human society and intellectual cravings. And for his labours in this respect, we heartily commend Mr. Liddon's Bampton Lectures to the perusal of general readers, as well as of theological students. And we con

clude this imperfect survey of the ground over which the Lectures travel, with tendering again our respectful thanks to Mr. Liddon for his valuable contribution to theological literature.

149

ART. VII.-1. The People's Hymnal. London: Masters. 2. The Year of Praise: being Hymns with Tunes for the Sundays and Holidays of the Year, intended for use in Canterbury Cathedral, and adapted for Parish Churches generally. Edited by HENRY ALFORD, D.D. Dean of Canterbury. London: Alexander Strahan.

ONE of the happy results of the Church revival of the last thirty years has been an improved Hymnody, and this may be said to have progressed, pari passu, with the advance of Catholic truth amongst us. Some of our readers may recall the days when in not a few churches Sternhold and Hopkins met all the aspirations of the congregation, and the majority of us were probably educated to look on Tate and Brady as the only authorized channel in which a Churchman could sing the praises of God. Both of these versions were suited to their times; they were cold, dull, heavy, guiltless of the smallest spark of poetic feeling or spiritual warmth.

True, there were even in those days persons who yearned after something warmer and heartier, but the hymns thus introduced, gathered almost exclusively from Dissenting sources, were valuable only as being the forerunners of better things. One of the earliest Church hymn-books, known as the 'Mitre Book,' which, we believe, still exists in some somnolent congregations, could hardly be regarded, in itself, as an improvement on Tate and Brady in doctrinal teaching it was positively inferior; the way in which Doddridge's

was

'Rich banquet of His flesh and blood,'

improved (?) by the compiler into

'Memorial of His flesh and blood,'

was sufficient to stamp the theology of the book for ever. Other works, scarcely superior to this, appeared from time to time; but it was not until the appearance of the 'Hymnal Noted' that any real advance was made, nor any collection of hymns put forth corresponding to the awakened life and daily increasing spirituality of the Church in England. This was the first attempt, at least the first successful attempt, to put into the hands of Churchmen what should not only be tolerable rhymes, but words of praise built upon Catholic doctrine, and imbued with those truths which were beginning to be understood and