We come now to the conclusion of the allegory; and Dr. Temple shall again speak for himself. "The age of reflection begins. From the storehouse of his youthful experience the Man begins to draw the principles of his life. The spirit or conscience 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 wider and deeper experience gives him clearer light. He is the third great teacher and the last." (p. 31.)
And now, it will reasonably be asked,—May not the head-master of Rugby write a weak and foolish Essay on a subject which he evidently does not understand, without incurring so much not only of public ridicule, but of public obloquy also? If his own sixth-form boys do not laugh at him, need the Church feel aggrieved at what he has written? Where is the special irreligion in all this?
I answer,—The offence is of the very gravest character; and in the course of what follows, it will appear with sufficient plainness wherein it consists. For the moment,—singly considered,—it is my painful duty to condemn Dr. Temple's Essay on the following grounds.
Whereas the Church inculcates the paramount necessity of an external authoritative Law to guide all her members;—Creeds to define the foundation of their Faith,—a Catechism to teach them the necessary elements of Christian Doctrine,—the several forms of Prayer contained in the Prayer Book to instruct them further in Religion, as well as to prescribe their exact mode of worshipping Almighty God: whereas too the Church requires of her ministers subscription to Articles "for the avoiding of Diversities of Opinions, and for the establishing of Consent concerning true Religion;"—above all, since all Christian men alike are taught to acknowledge the external guidance of the Divine Law itself contained in Holy Scripture,—and every Minister of the Church of England is further called upon to admit the authority of that Divine Law as it is by the Church systematized, explained, upheld, enforced:—notwithstanding all this, Dr. Temple, who has solemnly taken the vows of a minister of the Church of England, and writes after his name that he is Sacræ Theologiæ Professor, in his present Essay more than insinuates, he openly teaches that Man "draws the principles of his life," (not from Revelation, but) "from the storehouse of experience:" that we live in an age when "the spirit or conscience having come to full strength, assumes the throne intended for him in the soul." This "spirit or conscience" "legislates without appeal except to himself." "He is the third great teacher and the last." (p. 31.) The world, in the days of its youth, could not "walk by reason and conscience alone:" (p. 21:) but it is not so with us, in these, the days of the world's manhood. "The spiritual power within us ... must be the rightful monarch of our lives." (p. 14.) We, (he says,) "walk by reason and conscience alone." (p. 21.)
Now this is none other than a deliberate dethroning of God; and a setting up of Self in His place. "A revelation speaking from without and not from within, is an external Law, and not a spirit,"—(p. 36,) says Dr. Temple. But I answer,—A revelation speaking from within, and not from without, is no revelation at all. "The thought of building a tower high enough to escape God's wrath, could enter into no man's dreams," (p. 7,) says Dr. Temple in the beginning of his Essay, in derision of the Old World. But he has carried out into act the very self-same thought, himself; and his "dreams" occupy the foremost place in 'Essays and Reviews.' He teaches, openly, that henceforth Man must learn by "obedience to the rules of his own mind." (p. 34.) He is express in declaring that "an external law" is for the age which is past, (pp. 34-5.) Ours is "an internal law;" "which bids us yield,"—not to the revealed Will of God, "but,—to the majesty of truth and justice; a law which is not imposed upon us by another power, but by our own enlightened will." (p. 35.) In this, the last stage of the Colossal Man's progress, Dr. Temple gives him four avenues of learning: (1) Experience, (2) Reflection, (3) Mistakes, (4) Contradiction. By withholding from this enumeration the Revealed Will of God, and the known sanctions of the Divine Law, he thrusts out God from every part of his scheme; denies that He is even one of the present teachers of the Human Race,—explaining that the time has even gone by when Christ could teach by example[31],—"for the faculty of Faith has turned inwards, and cannot now accent any outer manifestations of the truth of God[32]." (p. 24.)—By this Essay, Dr. Temple comes forward as the open abettor of the most boundless scepticism. Whether or no his statements be such as Ecclesiastical Courts take cognizance of, is to me a matter of profound unimportance. In the estimation of the whole Church, it can be entitled to but one sentence. "We use the Bible," (he tells us,) "not to override, but to evoke the voice of conscience." (p. 44.) "The current is all one way,—it evidently points to the identification of the Bible with the voice of conscience. The Bible, in fact, is hindered by its form from exercising a despotism (!) over the human spirit; if it could do that, it would become an outer law at once." (p. 45.) Even if men "could appeal to a revelation from Heaven, they would still be under the Law (!!!); for a Revelation speaking from without, and not from within, is an external Law, and not a Spirit." (p. 36.) "The principle of private judgment puts conscience between us and the Bible; making conscience the supreme interpreter, whom it may be a duty to enlighten, but whom it can never be a duty to disobey." (Ibid.)—Even those who look upon the observance of Sunday "as enjoined by an absolutely binding decree," are reproached as "thus at once putting themselves under a law." (p. 44.) ... Dr. Temple has written an Essay which he calls "an argument," and for which he claims "a drift." (p. 31.) That argument is neither more nor less than a direct assault on the Faith of Christian men; and carried out to its lawful results, can lead to nothing but open Infidelity;—which makes it a very solemn consideration that the author, (whose private worth is known to all,) should be a teacher of the youth of Christian England. That drift I deplore and condemn; and no considerations of private friendship, no sincere regard for the writer's private worth, shall deter me from recording my deliberate conviction that it is wholly incompatible with his Ordination vows.
I forbear to dive into the depth of irreligion and unbelief implied in what is contained from p. 37 to p. 40, and other parts of the present Essay: but I cannot abstain from asking why does this author,—who, in all the intercourse of private life, is so manly a character,—fall into the unmanly trick of his brother-Essayists, of insinuating what they dare not openly avow? The great master of this cloudy shuffling art is Mr. Jowett. Even where he and his associates in "free handling," are express and definite in their statements, yet, as their rule is prudently to abstain from adducing a single example of their meaning, it is only by their disingenuous reticence that they escape punishment or exposure. Thus, Dr. Temple speaks of "many of the doctrinal statements of the early Church" being "plainly unfitted for permanent use;" (p. 41;) but he prudently abstains from explaining which of those "doctrinal statements" he means. He goes on to remark:—"In fact, the Church of the Fathers claimed to do what not even the Apostles had claimed,—namely, not only to teach the Truth, but to clothe it in logical statements ... for all succeeding time." He is evidently alluding to "the forms in which the first ages of the Church defined the Truth;" [i.e. to the Creeds;] of which he says, we "yet refuse to be bound by them." (p. 44.) He goes on,—"It belongs to a later epoch to see 'the law within the law' which absorbs such statements into something higher than themselves." (p. 41.) But the writer of that sentence ought to have had the manliness to explain what that "higher something" is.
Dr. Temple's estimate of the corruptions of the Papacy is of a piece with the rest of what I must be excused for calling a most unworthy performance. "Purgatory," &c. (he says) "was in fact, neither more nor less than the old schoolmaster come back to bring some new scholars to Christ." (p. 42.) (Is the Romish fable of Purgatory then to be put on the same footing as the Divine Revelation to Moses on Sinai?) It follows,—"When the work was done, men began to discover that the Law was no longer necessary." (Ibid.) (Is it thus that the head-master of Rugby accounts for, and explains the Reformation?) "The time was come when it was fit to trust to the conscience as the supreme guide." (Ibid.) "At the Reformation, it might have seemed at first as if the study of theology were about to return. But in reality an entirely new lesson commenced,—the lesson of toleration. Toleration is the very opposite of dogmatism." (p. 43.) "Its tendency is to modify the early dogmatism by substituting the spirit for the letter, and practical religion for precise definitions of truth." (Ibid.) "The mature mind of our race is beginning to modify and soften the hardness and severity of the principles which its early manhood had elevated into immutable statements of truth. Men are beginning to take a wider view than they did. Physical science, researches into history, a more thorough knowledge of the world they inhabit, have enlarged our philosophy beyond the limits which bounded that of the Church of the Fathers. And all these have an influence, whether we will or no, on our determinations of religious truth. There are found to be more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in patristic theology. God's creation is a new book to be read by the side of His revelation, and to be interpreted as coming from Him. We can acknowledge the great value of the forms in which the first ages of the Church defined the truth, and yet refuse to be bound by them." (p. 43-4.) ... Who so unacquainted with the method of a certain school as not to understand the fatal meaning of generalities, false and foul as these?
It may occur to some persons to inquire whether St. Paul, in a well-known place, does not affirm, (somewhat as it is affirmed in this Essay,) that "the heir, as long as he is a child, ... is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father?" And that, "Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: but when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son ... to redeem them that were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption of sons?" Does not St. Paul also go on to reproach men for "turning again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto they desired to be again in bondage?" saying, "ye observe[33] days, and months, and times, and years[34]." It is quite true that St. Paul says all this: and I would fain believe that a puerile misconception of the Apostle's meaning has betrayed the misguided author of the present Essay into a notion that he enjoys a species of Divine sanction for what he has written concerning "the Education of the World." I may add that St. Paul also declares, (in the same Epistle,) that "the Law was our pædagogus to bring us to Christ.... But after faith is come, we are no longer under a pædagogus[35]." He further adds an exhortation to the Galatians, (for it is still them whom he is addressing,)—"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage[36]."—St. John moreover, in many places, insists upon the spiritual powers and privileges of believers, in a very remarkable manner,—the same St. John, the same 'Apostle of Love,' who says of a certain Doctrine which 'Essayists and Reviewers' write as if they disbelieved,—"If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds[37]."
But it does not require much knowledge of Divinity to make a man aware that St. Paul's meaning and intention is as widely removed from Dr. Temple's, as Truth is removed from falsehood: or rather, that the Apostle is flatly against him. St. Paul is not bent on explaining what has been the Education of the World, but on pointing out in what relation the Gospel of Christ stands to the Law of Moses. He is reproving men who, having been converted to Christianity, were for lapsing into Judaism. Certain of the Circumcision had been striving, in St. Paul's absence, to bring his Galatian converts under the bondage of the Levitical Law; assuring them that the Gospel would avail them nothing unless they were circumcised and obedient to the Jewish ritual. Hence the Apostle's vehemence, and the peculiar form which his instruction assumes.