Miller proposed to give a course of lectures on “The Failure of Moses.” I suppose he sent in a syllabus with his application: but possibly the syllabus which he showed me was made merely for his own use.
The argument, briefly stated, was that in spite of the divine and miraculous assistance which it enjoyed; in spite of the purity and simplicity of its doctrines, the Mosaic system had never up to the time of the Captivity spread over even the little country of Palestine. Assuming the correctness of the popular chronology, there was an interval of 881 years between the Exodus and the Captivity, and at no time during that period was the country as a whole free from gross idolatry. But after the return from the Captivity idolatry seems to have disappeared in the course of years; at least there is no mention of it in the Gospels. To what was this change due? Clearly to the introduction from the East of the doctrine of a future life, with future rewards and punishments.
Moses and his followers (said the Canon) promised temporal prosperity to the righteous, and in the end ruin to the ungodly. This was not the common experience, and the people, seeming to gain little by virtue in this world, and having no hope for another, tried other forms of worship, which combined pleasure with religion.
Solomon, who was strong enough to enforce uniformity, became the founder of the doctrines of Religious Equality and Concurrent Endowment, and applied them to his own household. Then came the schism, and things became worse. Miller’s description of Jeroboam as the first Home Ruler, the parent of Free Churches, would have convulsed the undergraduate gallery. The lectures would have set Oxford in an uproar between the Torpids and the Eights, and when published in the following year would have filled the Guardian and the Spectator with correspondence. They would eventually have attracted the attention of Convocation, and odium theologicum would have blossomed into a gravamen, or even an articulus cleri.
But it was not to be. The committee chose another man, and an informal message was sent to Miller to the effect that the success or failure of Moses was not among the Bampton list of subjects. Moreover, his theory was opposed to Article VII. One Divinity Professor privately complained to Miller’s Bishop that he should have a Rural Dean holding such views “directly contravening the Articles.”
“Let us see the Article,” said the wary Bishop; and he opened a Prayer Book:
“Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises.”
“It seems to me, Professor, that the Article is satisfied. The Rural Dean will not be heard.”
“But, my dear Lord, he may preach the same doctrines from his own pulpit.”
The Bishop picked up Liddell and Scott, and turned to his favourite passage in that work: