The doctrine of the atonement, according to this writer, is involved in perplexities whose growth is of more than a thousand years. Christ did not die to appease the divine wrath, and "sacrifice" and "atonement" were accommodated terms used by the apostles because they had been reared among the Jewish offerings and were familiar with them. The great advantage we derive from Christ is his life, in which we behold a perfect harmony of nature, absolute self-renunciation, pure love, and resignation. We know nothing of the objective act on God's part by which he reconciled the world to himself, the very description of it being a figure of speech. Conversion is not in accordance with the claims of orthodoxy, for while there were conversions in the early Church, there is no possibility of establishing a harmony between them and those which are now said to occur. The conversions of the first Christians were marked by ecstatic and unusual phenomena, whole multitudes were simultaneously affected, and the changes wrought were permanent; but the subjects were chiefly ignorant people, who no doubt did many things which would have been distasteful to us as men of education.[170]
The most noteworthy work of the Critical Rationalists is the Essays and Reviews (1861), a volume which consists of broad generalizations against the authority of the Bible as a standard of faith.
I. The Education of the World. By Frederic Temple, D. D. There is a radical difference between man and inanimate nature. The latter is passive, and subject to the workings of the vast physical machinery, but man is at no time stationary, for he develops from age to age, and concentrates in his history the results and achievements of all previous history. There is no real difference between the capacity of men now and that of the antediluvian world; the ground of disparity lies in the time of development afforded the present generation. Thus a child of twelve stands at present where once stood the full-grown man.
There are three stages in the world's development: Childhood, Youth, Maturity. Childhood requires positive rules, and is made subject to them; youth is governed by the force of example; and manhood, being free from external restraints, must be its own instructor. We have first rules, then examples, and last principles:—the Law, the Son of Man, and the Gift of the Spirit. The world was once a child, under tutors and governors until the time appointed by the Father. Afterwards, when the fit season had arrived, the Example, to which all ages should turn, was sent to teach men what they ought to be; and the human race was left to itself to be guided by the instruction of the Spirit within.[171] The world, before the time of Christ, was in its childhood, when commands were given without explanation. The pre-Christian world, being in its state of discipline and childhood, was divided into four classes: the Roman, the Greek, the Asiatic, and the Hebrew, each of which contributed something toward the world's improvement and its preparation for the age of Example. The Hebrew did the most, though his work was of the same class and aimed at the same result. The Roman gave an iron will; the Greek, a cultivated reason and taste; the Asiatic, the idea of immortality, and spiritual imagination; and the Hebrew, the trained conscience.
The whole period from the close of the old Testament to the termination of the New was the time of the world's youth, the age of examples.[172] Christ came just at the right time; if he had waited until the present age his incarnation would have been misplaced, and we could not recognize his divinity; for the faculty of faith has turned inwards, and cannot now accept any outward manifestations of the truth of God.[173]
The present age is that of independent reflection and the supremacy of conscience—the world's manhood. Laws and examples are absolute, and should be forgotten, just as we look lightly upon the things of our childhood. The world has arrived at its present exalted state through a severe ordeal, but the grandeur of its position is sufficient to make it forget its trials. "The spirit or conscience [which are terms for reason] comes to full strength and assumes the throne intended for him in the soul. As an accredited judge, invested with full powers, he sits in the tribunal of our inner kingdom, decides upon the past, and legislates upon the future, without appeal except to himself. He decides not by what is beautiful or noble, or soul-inspiring, but by what is right. Gradually he frames his code of laws, revising, adding, abrogating, as a wiser and deeper experience gives him clearer light. He is the third great teacher and the last."[174]
In some aspects this essay is the least objectionable in the volume. Yet it contains radical errors which many a reader would accept without suspicion. The agency of the Holy Spirit in revelation is ignored, and the development through which the world has passed is confounded with civilization. This development is alleged to have occurred in a purely natural way, the Hebrew type being no more a divine appointment than that of the Grecian or Roman. The doctrines of Christianity were not clearly stated in the early Church, and the flight of eighteen centuries has been required to lift the curtain from them.[175] Conscience is placed above the Bible, and if the statements of the Scriptures be in conflict with it, allowance must be made for occasional inaccuracies, interpolations, and forgeries.[176]
II. Bunsen's Biblical Researches. By Rowland Williams, D. D. We here find the same deference paid to conscience as in the preceding essay. If it differ from revelation, man's own notions of right and wrong must prevail over Scripture. Dr. Williams is contented with arraying Bunsen's skeptical theories before the British public without formally indorsing them himself; yet, as their reviewer, he is evidently in complete harmony with the German author. For he carefully collects the chevalier's extravagant speculations; brings them into juxtaposition; admires the spirit, boldness, and learning which had given birth to them; and in no case refutes, but looks with complacence upon nearly every one. The impression of a candid reader of the essay must be, that the writer indorses almost all of Bunsen's opinions without having the courage to avow his assent. Of his hero he says, "Bunsen's enduring glory is neither to have faltered with his conscience, nor shrunk from the difficulties of the problem, but to have brought a vast erudition, in the light of a Christian conscience, to unroll tangled records; tracing frankly the Spirit of God elsewhere, but borrowing chiefly the traditions of his Hebrew Sanctuary."[177]
The absence of that reverence to be expected in all whose vocation enjoins the frequent reading of the sublime liturgy of the Church of England, produces a depressing influence upon any one not in sympathy with the doctrines of Rationalism. The Evangelical theologians are termed "The despairing school, who forbid us to trust in God or in our own conscience, unless we kill our souls with literalism."[178] The inquiries and successes of the German Rationalists are worthy of hearty admiration, for they are so great that the world has seldom, if ever, seen their equal. Bishops Pearson and Butler, and Mr. Mansel are seriously at fault in their notions of prophecy, and even Jerome is guilty of gross puerilities. There is no reason why Bunsen may not be right when he holds that the world must be twenty thousand years old; there is no chronological element in revelation; the avenger who slew the first-born, may have been the Bedouin host; in the passage of the Red Sea, the description may be interpreted with the latitude of poetry; it is right to reject the perversions which make the cursing Psalms evangelically inspired; perhaps one passage in Zechariah and one in Isaiah may be direct prophecies of the Messiah, and possibly a chapter in Deuteronomy may foreshadow the final fall of Jerusalem; the Messianic prophecies are mere contemporaneous history; and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is only a description of the sufferings of Jeremiah. Inspiration is too loftily conceived by "the well-meaning crowd," for whom we should manifest "grave compassion."