In passing from this doctrinal part of the book, we may ask why Mr. Brook represents David as being from early morning until noon in ascending the Mount of Olives, the summit of which may be easily reached from St. Stephen's Gate in half an hour?
The first sermon here printed, however, although the last preached, naturally challenges our chief attention. It discusses the question of 'Freedom in the [Established] Church' apropos of the bearing upon it of the judgment in Mr. Voysey's case. We note one or two points in it only. First Mr. Brook says 'that the restrictions upon liberty of thought, which he deprecates, would soon make the Church into a narrow and bigoted sect.' The phrase, omitting the adjectives, has become a kind of formula with Churchmen of Mr. Brook's school. We have frequently tried to apprehend this attempted distinction between a Church and a sect, but we are unable to do so; and we should unaffectedly feel that Mr. Brook had laid us under a great obligation if he had given us a distinct and intelligible definition. What is a Church, and what is a sect? and wherein lies the differentia of the two? In what sense is the Episcopal communion a Church and not a sect, that is not equally true of the Presbyterian and Congregational communions? Will Mr. Brook accept the definition of a Church given in the 19th Article? 'The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered,' &c.? If so, then he can deny the designation 'Church' to every congregational ecclesia—only by impugning its 'faithful' character, its preaching or its sacraments. Is it the criterion of a Church to be without formulated dogmas—or to have doctrinal standards from which her clergy have indefinite liberty to dissent? In the former case the Episcopal communion is not a Church—in the latter, Congregationalists or Presbyterians might easily become a Church, by according liberty of dissent from their standards. The only thing that hinders among them the laxity of subscription and interpretation which Mr. Brook claims for his own Church is that they really believe in their beliefs, and make fidelity to them a matter of conscience. We should be glad to know the exact variation of the theological compass that converts a sect into a Church. Or does Mr. Brook regard a National Establishment as the criterion of a Church? Then he unchurches the Church of Rome in England, the Episcopal Church in Ireland and Scotland, and prepares for the unchurching of Episcopacy in England ere long. If universality be the criterion, then Episcopacy cannot claim it. If to be the largest religious body in a country be the criterion, then what is Episcopacy in Scotland, Ireland, or Wales? If the criterion be catholicity of spirit towards those who differ from us, we fear that neither historically nor actually could his own Church make out a very unequivocal claim. We have really looked at this rhetorical distinction on all sides, and are unable to apprehend it; and yet it is perpetually flung at our poor Nonconformist heads as a missile that is as potent as David's sling and stone.
Is it worthy of intelligent and candid men, such as Mr. Brook, to use controversial terms, with a view, if possible, to affix a reproach, to which no intelligible meaning can be attached? In our view of it every Church is a sect, in the good sense,—in the sense of being but a section of the universal Church; and any Church, however large or however small, established or unestablished, with fixed dogmas, or with flexible ones, may be sectarian, in the bad sense, of being exclusive in its claims, intolerant in its recognitions, and exacting in its conduct. It is for members of the Established Church of England to ask themselves of which of the ecclesiastical communities of the kingdom these are the most characteristic features. We can scarcely believe our eyes, when we read, 'In the assent of all to these doctrines, and in the common love of all to God in Christ, and in the common love of the body to which they belong, co-existing with an almost endless variety of individual views about these doctrines, consists the unity of the Church of England.' Is it then, really so, that all the Church feuds and litigation from Tract 90 to the Purchas judgment—the Hampden and Gorham cases, the 'Essays and Reviews' warfare, the Ritualistic riots, the Liddel case, the Colenso controversy, the Machonochie, Voysey, and Purchas cases, with the pamphlets and sermons, the schisms and hatreds of the three great parties within the Establishment, which for the last forty years have kept the religious world in a state of intense excitement, that all these things are the phantasmagoria of a bad dream, or the amiable reciprocations of brotherly respect and Christian affection? Is there any Church in Christendom with such a polemical history or at the present moment so hopelessly and bitterly schismatic? How, in the face of the English people, such a sentence could be written by a man like Mr. Brook, is simply inscrutable; 'They do,' he says, 'work together remarkably well.' 'There is no body of men more united than the English clergy;' but he makes this fatal admission, 'Destroy the connection of the State with the Church, and all that vanishes at once. All the several parties begin quarrelling, and split up into sects.' Then where is the vaunted unity, and what is the moral worth of the legal bond that unites such discordant elements?
Mr. Brook propounds once more the old crippled fallacy, 'By right every Englishman is a member of the National Church. It is of his own free choice that he rejects that right.' But what if he conscientiously disbelieves in that Church—and holds that in establishing it and requiring national assent to it, both Church and State have gone beyond the domain of the things that are Cæsar's into that of the things that are God's? This, the real gist of the whole matter, is carefully avoided. The Jews used the same argument against the Christians; the Inquisition of the Romish Church against Protestants. The essential injustice lies in maintaining any established Church in a divided nation; and in the attempt to control a man's religious conscience by any civil law or institution whatsoever. Is it not simply childish to affirm, with England as it is, that the parochial clergy 'feel as representatives of a National Church, that all within the range of their several districts—no matter what and who those are—dissenters, non-church-goers, infidels, are their responsibility, and are given into their spiritual care by the nation.' No doubt they do; but does anybody else feel it? is not this the impertinence which one half the nation so resents? Mr. Brook is too candid not to see that all this is the theory of a by-gone state of things, and that the very mention of it now excites ridicule. Accordingly the word 'ought,' and its equivalents do yeoman's service throughout this sermon. It is indeed a discourse upon what a National Church ought to be, rather than upon what the National Church actually is. So far as we understand Mr. Brook, there ought to be almost every conceivable diversity of religious belief in the community, and the National Church ought to be so vague in its dogmas, or so flexible in their interpretation, as that its clergy ought to represent them all. And to this the argument must come.
With very many of Mr. Brook's subordinate remarks we cordially agree. He is thoughtful and catholic-hearted, and has a keen perception of much that is beautiful in Christian doctrine and life. But the task that he has set himself is simply an impossible one. He wishes contradictories, perfect freedom, and distinctive dogmas; a definite Church character, and an indiscriminate inclusiveness; the prerogatives of a supreme Church, while only the fragment of a nation; which itself again is only a small part of Christendom. There is in Mr. Brook's direction no possible way out of the embarrassments, unrealities, and self-contradictions of the English Episcopal Church.
Human Power in the Divine Life; or the Active Powers of the Mind in Relation to Religion. By Rev. Nicholas Bishop, M.A. Hodder and Stoughton.
The author of this book has attempted a difficult task, viz., to exhibit in philosophical language the synthesis of the divine and human in the new life. With profound reverence for God's revelation and with great insight into the life of God in the soul, he has discussed the function of the human will in Repentance, Faith, Conversion, Sanctification, Christian Perfection and its Limits, in Preaching and Prayer, and in relation to Divine Providence. The range of thought is very wide, the mode of treatment very stimulating and fresh. It would be difficult in a brief notice to convey an adequate idea of the book. Some of the most difficult problems are broached, and much light is thrown upon them. There are gems of thought scattered through the discussion which nevertheless form a distinct and integral part of the argument. Thus 'God's plan of instructing man seems to be from the lower to the higher forms of thought. The nearer the instruction can accommodate itself to the sense or to the simpler acts of the intelligence the more likely it is to succeed. It must begin with the concrete and rise by slow degrees, to abstract truth. Christ, as revealed in His gospel, is the nearest possible approach to this. He is to the weakest mind the simplest possible concrete truth, and He is also to the strongest mind the greatest possible abstraction.' Again, 'If man could repent without the Divine Spirit, his repentance could not be divine; and if the Spirit could produce repentance without man's co-operation, it could not be human; but upon God's plan it is perfectly human and perfectly divine—so perfect that it could not be more divine if man were completely passive in it, nor more human if the Spirit exercised no power in it.' With the fundamental principle that 'the divine life is a developed spiritual consciousness,' the writer has said much that is most refreshing, stimulating, and practical, and we strongly commend this volume to those who are seeking a higher life, and would find help and consolation by an approximate rationale of that life.
Ten Great Religions; an Essay in Comparative Theology. By James Freeman Clarke. Trübner and Co.
Mr. Clarke has made an interesting and earnest endeavour to establish some of the principles of a science which is likely before long to occupy a high place in human thought. He has, moreover, shown decided skill and considerable learning in his view of the salient features of Brahmanism and Buddhism, in his summary of Confucianism and Tæpingism, in his sketch of Persic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, and Græco-Roman religions, and in his estimate of Judaism and Mahometanism. The materials were ready to his hand in rich abundance, and he has set forth the leading ideas of each of these great forms of faith with commendable modesty and fine critical tact. The strong point he makes, and in which we entirely agree with him, is—that Christ and Christianity recognise the age-long witness to certain great truths embodied in these ethnic faiths, that Christ is the fulfilment of the prophetic visions which the founders of these varied religions beheld;—that Christianity is the answer to the problem of Brahmanism, the pleroma of the faith of Sakya-muni, and the complement to all the speculations of Egypt, Athens, and Scandinavia;—that Christianity contains all that is living, all that is true to God and nature and man, in any or all of these religious systems, and a great deal more;—that it has absorbed many of them, and will eventually solve the continuity, and embrace the devotees of them all in its catholic fulness. He claims to find the highest evidence for the truth of Christianity in this,—that while all other forms of faith have been more or less one-sided, ethnic in their range, and local in their influence, Christianity meets the need of every kind of race and generation of mankind. The 'symphony of religions' is to him the pledge of the eternal excellency, the indisputable supremacy, and the absolute truth of Christianity. He will not admit that other religions are 'natural' and that this alone is 'supernatural;' that other religions are excogitated by the human intelligence, this alone 'revealed' from heaven; others the work of lying impostors, this alone preserved from human frailty; others 'human religions,' and this alone a 'divine' religion. All truth is divine with him, and all such truth as has been intuitively perceived by great ethnic religious teachers has been 'revealed' to them by God, the one God. But he maintains the great position that all other religions are limited in their range of thought, and in their adaptability to man; while Christianity includes within itself the sum of all religious truth, the nexus of all justifiable religious tendencies, the correction of all extravagances, the answer and solvent to all human inquiry. As we have said, Mr. Clarke holds here positions with which we sympathize and which we have often advocated. But while we admit with him, the significance of the ethnic religions, the truth uttered by Sakya-muni and found in the Vedas, there is to our ear an exceeding bitter cry for help and teaching and deliverance, coming out of the very constitution of the heathen culture, and revealing itself in the religious rites and in the literature of the East, to which he seems comparatively indifferent. He is afraid of compromising the dignity and majesty of human nature, or of saying anything offensive to its unaided and unregenerated powers. To our view, human nature is in a much more diseased and miserable condition than he admits; and we hold that there was a specialty in the vision and faculty given to Hebrew prophets, and possessed by the Great Master, which make them differ in kind from those of the sages of India, Persia, or Greece. Though he furnishes the facts with great fairness and skill, he seems strangely unwilling to admit the grand difference between Hebraism and Ethnicism, viz.: that in the one case, God is represented as seeking and finding his people, pleading with their unwillingness and disloyalty, unveiling to them his own glorious name, and in the other cases men are 'feeling after God if haply they might find him, though he is not far from any one of them.' The argument of Mr. Clarke, moreover, is in our opinion, truncated and paralyzed by the extremely low view that he entertains of the person of our Lord, and of the essence of that very monotheism which has won the victories to which he points with Christian exultation. There is no disrespect cast upon the faith of nineteen-twentieths of Christendom, it is simply ignored; and his Christianity is, after all, little more than 'the morality touched by emotion,' of which we have heard a good deal lately. We believe that a sounder and larger view of Christianity itself would supply wards to the key here used by Mr. Clarke, which would enable him to unlock many more of the mysteries of human life. We thank him for the work he has done, so far as it goes, and can agree with him that the philosophy of missions will lie very much in the direction of comparative theology.
Sermons for my Curates. By the late Rev. Thomas T. Lynch, Minister of Mornington Church, London. Edited by Samuel Cox. Strahan and Co.