Macphail's Edinburgh ecclesiastical journal and literary review

ΤΑΥΡΟΖ φαγοῦντες ἐς μελάνδετον σάκος
καὶ θιγγάνοντες χερσὶ ΤΑΥΡΕΙΟΥ φόνου,
*Αρη τ', Ενυώ, καὶ φιλαίματον Φόβον
ὡρκωμότησαν ἢ πόλει κατασκαφὰς
θέντες λαπάξειν "ΑΣΤΥ ΚΑΔΜΕΙΩΝ βία,
ἢ γῆν θανόντες τήνδε φυράσειν φόνῳ.

σιδηρόφρων γὰρ θυμὸς ἀνδρείᾳ φλέγων
ἔπνει, λεόντων ὡς "Αρη δεδορκότων.
καὶ τῶνδε πίστις οὐκ ἔκνῳ χρονίζεται.

κληρουμένους δ ̓ ἔλειπον, ὡς πάλῳ λαχών

ἕκαστος αὐτῶν πρὸς πύλας ἄγοι λόχον. κ. τ. λ.

ÆSCHYLUS: "Seven Against Thebes."-ap. Dind.

"O Master, we are Seven."-WORDSWORTH.

§ I.

WE neither claim as a merit, nor apologise as for a fault, that we have delayed reading and reviewing this volume of "Essays and Reviews” until the present time; when, although not many months have

* 1. The Education of the World. By Frederick Temple, D.D., Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen; Head Master of Rugby School; Chaplain to the Earl of Denbigh.

2. Bunsen's Biblical Researches. By Rowland Williams, D.D., Vice-Principal and Professor of Hebrew, St David's College, Lampeter; Vicar of Broad-Chalke, Wilts.

3. On the Study of the Evidences of Christianity. By Baden Powell, M.A., F.R.S., Savilian Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford.

VOL. XXXII.

elapsed since its first appearance, it has already reached its eighth edition. Circumstances caused postponement, but we now attempt to give a fair statement regarding a book which is influencing opinion to an extent that could have been anticipated by few even of the authors themselves. The examination is, in several respects, a painful one; chiefly because we regret the fact of clergymen wantonly desecrating the temple, which they profess to serve, by utterance of sentiments that are injurious to the cause of true religion, and which sentiments would have possessed comparatively little power of extension beyond themselves, had it not been for the clerical station of the utterers. The Christian Church has been thereby insulted, and also its Divine founder again "wounded in the house of his friends," or those who had been regarded as his friends, and were avowedly his servants, the proclaimers of his gospel.

"With my own Power my majesty they wound,

In the king's name the King himself's discrowned;
So doth the dust destroy the diamond."

At first sight it appears doubtful how far we are to limit the liability of The Seven of this joint-stock company; the Seven fabulists who have united in this Medley to "forge a seven-fold story." Their own few lines of Preface "to the Reader" offer contradictory evidence, like the two voices from under the seal-skin, which alarmed Stephano in "the Tempest." The first paragraph pleads for independence of one another; the second asserts the unity of a common purpose to attain a common result :

"TO THE READER.

"It will readily be understood that the Authors of the ensuing Essays are responsible for their respective articles only. They have written in entire independence of each other, and without concert or comparison.

"The Volume, it is hoped, will be received as an attempt to illustrate the advantage derivable to the cause of religious and moral truth; from a free handling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly liable to suffer by the repetition of conventional language, and from traditional methods of treatment."

Taking the statement of their second paragraph in connection with a few striking coincidences of design, (to speak plainly, a common Unchristianity of sentiment,) a looseness of doctrine, and a willingness to instal human Reason as sole judge of all questions in religion, we feel compelled in absence of farther and more convincing disclaimer of partnership than the neutralised advertisement to the Reader, to regard the Essayists as bound together, in such wise that men like Dr Temple and Mark Pattison (against whom we have small cause of 4. Séances Historiques de Genève. The National Church. By Henry Bristow Wilson, B.D., Vicar of Great Staughton, Hunts.

5. On the Mosaic Cosmogony. By C. W. Goodwin, M.A.

6. Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750. By Mark Pattison, B.D., Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.

7. On the Interpretation of Scripture. By Benjamin Jowett, M.A., Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford.

The eighth edition. London: Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts. 1861. -Pp. 434.

complaint)* must be held answerable for the offences of Dr Rowland Williams, H. B. Wilson, and Benjamin Jowett. They issue their writings together, and afford countenance to one another, and-like many persons in more mercantile transactions-appear to have permitted themselves to be drawn into dangerous speculations, if not with personal rashness, at least with blameable laxity; and they have no legal right to disclaim liability for the offences of their partners. Yet we shall endeavour to bear in mind the different degrees of moral culpability of the Seven. Meanwhile, we have the spectacle of these clerical children, sitting on barrels of gunpowder and playing with lighted lucifer-matches, in bland unconsciousness of responsibility, if not of danger. Perhaps they consider it to be merely philosophical recreation, but the practical sense of the nation interprets it more justly.

§ II.

A mild preludium, or overture to the opera prepared by the other Essayists, is furnished by the Rev. Dr Frederick Temple, Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen; Head-master of Rugby School; and Chaplain to the Earl of Denbigh. There is a tenderness, a melody, a plaintiveness, and sometimes a solemnity, which has a soothing charm in his Essay, "On the Education of the World," and it may be accidentally, it may be designedly, it has a tendency to lull to sleep the critical activities of many a reader, who is led on, step by step, into admissions which would leave him at the close of the volume with a very scanty covering of belief. Such a syren strain of music has not often been employed to tempt poor mariners on a murderous coast, where nought but misery, spoliation, and unavailing remorse await those who fall victims to the destroyer. But the music, as music, is sweet, and we may safely listen to the strains of beauty, if we have taken precaution, like Ulysses, to be bound tightly to the mast of our venturous barque, by our fellow-voyagers, the

"Souls that have toil'd and wrought, and thought, with us,
That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine."

This essay, which, if divorced from its companions might be innocent, and certainly advantaged, attempts to develop that "the power whereby the present ever gathers into itself the results of the past, transforms the human race into a colossal man, whose life reaches from the creation to the day of judgment."-(P. 3.) But as the idea is again expressed (at pp. 387-9) by the seventh Essayist, we reserve consideration of it to a later page of the present notice.

The historical sketch on "the Tendencies of Religious Thought in

Sufficient time has elapsed to enable the two Essayists who appear least infected with the extreme Rationalism of their sceptical comrades, to protest their own dissent. Any one of the successive editions might have contained such a disclaimer. Even the original publishers (J. H. & J. Parker, Oxford and London), relinquished the odium of continuing to let their name appear attached to the "Essays and Reviews," which, accordingly, has since been transferred to Longmans & Co.

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Macphail's Edinburgh ecclesiastical journal and literary review, Volumes 31-32