received by our fathers, and accounted can- | volume, for that it signally lacks every one onical, as immovably true and most certain, of these qualities, but that it has owed its and to be preferred in all things to all other notoriety to the one fact that the authors of books, as sacred books ought to be preferred its sceptical lucubrations were not avowed to profane, and divine books to human; and to be believed with sincerity and simplicity unbelievers, but (all save one) clergymen of mind; and that they were delivered and of the Church of England. "When," he inspired by God himself, as Peter and Paul says, "six persons dressed in academic and others do affirm.'" hoods, cassocks, and surplices come forth and preach scepticism, they do more mischief than six hundred sceptics clad in their own clothes. They wear the uniform of the Church, and are mingled in her ranks, and fight against her, and therefore they may well say,

Having shown that with this agreed the Helvetic Confession of 1536, the Gallican of 1561, the Scottish and the Belgic, and having quoted the doctrine of the old Lutheran divines, at least from the end of the sixteenth century, in these words: "Inspiration is the act by which God communicated supernaturally to the mind of the writers of Scripture not only the ideas of the things which they were to write, but also the conceptions of the words by which they were to be expressed. The true author of the Holy Scripture is God," he sums up his argument in these words:

"Can any language be more explicit ? And yet the essayist suggests that the Reformers laid little stress on the doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible. What else is the meaning of his language, 'The word inspiration is but of yesterday, not found in the earlier confessions of the reformed faith'-taken in connection with his assertion that Scripture is to be interpreted like any other book;' and that the question of inspiration is one with which the interpreter of Scripture has nothing to do'? Is he ready to adopt the language of those confessions to which he appeals? If he is not, why did he refer to them? If he is, must he not retract almost all that he has said in this essay on the subject of inspiration ? "

Surely as a matter of mere literary discredit this can scarcely be exceeded; and yet there is one element of literary shame behind, which we must say that Dr. Wordsworth fixes on Professor Jowett; for he shows, so far as it is possible to establish such an unacknowledged appropriation of other men's writings, that in all this the professor does not deserve even the poor praise of originating error, but is content, if he can but sow the seeds of sceptical doubtfulness, to stoop to be a plagiarist also. Dr. Wordsworth first points out what we ourselves noted at the outset of

this controversy, that it is not the power, or the originality, or the clearness of these writers which has given importance to their

"They are not original. The allegation just quoted may serve as a specimen. It is only a repetition of an objection which appeared ten years ago in a sceptical book (which, because it was not written by a clergyman fell still-born from the press) called

The Creed of Christendom.'. . . Let us

place the passages from the two volumes side by side:

"CREED OF CHRISTENDOM,” p. 55.

"It is now clearly ascertained and generally admitted amongst critics that several of the most remarkable prophecies were never fulfilled at all, or only very partially and loosely fulfilled. Among these may be specified the denunciation of Jeremiah (xxii. 18, 19; xxxvi. 30) against Jehoiakim, as may be seen by comparing 2 Kings xxiv. 6; and the denunciation of Amos against Jeroboam (vii. 11), as may be seen by comparing 2 Kings xiv. 23-29.'

ESSAYS AND REVIEWS,' pp. 342, 343. "The failure of a prophecy is never admitted, in spite of Scripture and history (Jer. xxxvi. 30; Isaiah xxiii.; Amos vii. 10, 17).'

I will not affirm that the essayist copied from the sceptic, but the coincidence is certainly remarkable."

"How," asks Dr. Wordsworth, "are we to account for such blunders?"

"Our answer is, We have seen that the sceptical writer to whom we have referred quotes precisely the same prophecy of Amos, and asserts that it failed. It seems most

probable that our essayist borrowed his ex- all his usual depth of thought; the Rev. A. amples of supposed failure from that or T. Russell's "Letter to the Bishop of Oxsome other similar work, but did not stop to ford," a vigorous and original volume; Mr. Burgon's essay "On Inspiration;" and

examine them."

by the Rev. T. N. Griffin, to which an Introduction has been contributed by an ex-Lord Chancellor of Ireland, the Right Honorable Joseph Napier. A very few words of his, indeed, we must quote, because they add to Dr. Wordsworth's heavy charges against the essayists, the solemn confirmation of one not himself a divine, but whose naturally great faculties have been trained throughout the professional career which seated him on one of the highest eminences of the law to the calm and dispassionate weighing of evidence. Thus he speaks :

This is severe, but, we are forced to add," Seven Answers to the Seven Essayists," it is most just criticism. It is for the sake of the highest truth, and not for what, if it were not thus made necessary, would be mere cruelty, that the great literary professions of our new sceptics are thus rudely plucked from them; and, inspired by this love of truth, Dr. Wordsworth is, indeed, without pity, both in the exposures we have already quoted, and when he resolves the dolorous dirge of the first six pages of the professor's essay into "the effeminate effusions of a maudlin sentimentalism" ("Replies," p. 411), and drily hints at the depth of his German erudition in the words "Lachman, as the essayist calls him, p. 352, and again Meier, as our author writes his name, p. 339" (p. 414).

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*

But Dr. Wordsworth is not content with the annihilation of his opponent. Though he refers to another of his publications for establishing the truth," his present essay is full of valuable suggestions on this most important point; and for these and for his proofs that the calm sagacity of Lord Bacon and the impartial majesty of Bishop Butler's philosophy had preceded him in some of them, we gladly refer our readers to his pages. There is another essay in this volume, on which we heartily wish that our limits would allow us to dwell as its carefulness, its breadth, and its power deserve. It is that in which, not as a counter-essay to Mr. Wilson's, but rather as a thorough discussion of the great subject, Dr. Irons examines the whole question of a National Church. But for this we must refer our readers to the volume itself, assuring them that they will find that essay well worthy of the most careful study.

Here we are compelled, by lack of room for dwelling further on it, to quit what we may term the literature of this controversy, or there are other works which we would gladly examine, particularly Lord Lindsay's new volume, in which he traces the retrogressive character of Scepticism, and contrasts it with the stable and progressive character of the Church of England, with

"Lectures on the Inspiration and on the Interpretation of the Bible, delivered at Westminster Abbey." Rivingtons, 1861.

"It is well worthy of observation that, throughout the volume of Essays and Reviews,' there is not a new objection to be found; its scepticism is second-hand, if not stale. . . . To reproduce in an English dress the exhausted sophistry of Continental sceptics, and bring out in a modern style the old exploded fallacies of our own native Deists, to ignore the detection of the sophistry, and to disparage the authority of those who have answered and exposed the fallaciesthese are perverted efforts, of which we may say an enemy hath done this.'"

This charge of repeating as original, and without a hint of their staleness, the already refuted objections of others which we at first brought against these writers, is strikingly confirmed by every subsequent examination we have made as to the sources of their inspirations. Dr. Goulburn has already suggested that Dr. Temple's slight and somewhat wearisome introductory essay cannot claim the merit of originality. He has pointed out more than one passage in the writings of Lessing with a most suspicious and fatherly resemblance to the colossal man of the Head Master of Rugby. We need

not tell those of our readers who are acquainted with German literature that Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who was born in 1729, was one of those early Deists who, by the doubts they sowed, prepared Germany for all the long sufferings which she has since

endured.

Michelet ("Hist. de France," ii. 380. ed. Paris, 1852) says, as to the doctrine of certain people in the thirteenth century, that

the reign of God the Son was at an end, and | Mr. Sibree's translation of Hegel's work the reign of the Holy Ghost was at hand- (1861), first published by Mr. Bohn in "C'est sous quelque rapport l'idée de Les- 1857 :sing sur l'éducation du genre humain." Lessing himself alludes to those thirteenthcentury people. In his pages we find the following:

"That which education is to the individual, revelation is to the race. Education is revelation coming to the individual man; and revelation is education which has come and is yet coming to the human race... Education gives to man nothing which he might not educe out of himself; it gives him that which he might educe out of himself, only quicker and more easily. In the same way, too, revelation gives nothing to the human species which the human reason, if left to itself, might not attain; it only has given, and still gives to it the most important of these things earlier "* [than man could of himself reach them].t

We leave our readers to conclude for themselves how far this disposes of Dr. Temple's claim to originality, and what is the true sequence of the theory which pervades his essay.

it

"THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. "In a world of mere phenomena. is possible to imagine the course of a long period bringing all things at the end of it into exactly the same relations as they occupied at the beginning. We should then obviously have a succession of cycles rigidly similar to one another, both in events and in the sequence of them. The universe would order of recurrence. . . . Such a supposition eternally repeat the same changes in a fixed is possible to the logical understanding; it is not possible to the Spirit."-Pp. 1, 2.

"To the Spirit all things that exist must have a purpose; and nothing can pass away till that purpose be fulfilled. The lapse of time is no exception to this demand. Each moment of time, as it passes, is taken up in the shape of permanent results into the time that follows, and only perishes by being converted into something more substantial than itself."-P. 2.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.

"The changes that take place in Naturehow infinitely manifold soever they may beexhibit only a perpetually self-repeating cycle. in the region of Spirit does anything new Only in those changes which take place

arise."-P. 56.

66

We are thus concerned exclusively with the idea of Spirit. Nothing in the past is lost for it; for the idea is ever present; Spirit is immortal; with it there is no This past, no future, but an essential now. necessarily implies that the present form of Spirit comprehends within it all earlier steps.

But whilst we admit that Dr. Goulburn seems to have traced some of Dr. Temple's essay to the pages of Lessing, we are inclined ourselves to believe that as a whole it was copied more immediately from the writings of Hegel. The whole idea of the essay seems to us to be borrowed from his "Philosphy of History;" whilst in many particular passages the identity of expression is so great that Dr. Temple may almost be thought to have translated into English, with due regard for our lack of metaphysical genius, the enlarged speculations of the German philosopher. We will ask our readers to cast their eyes from one to the other of the pas-volves at the same time the rise of a new life. Change, while it imports dissolution, insages which we print side by side, and decide for themselves if the similarity between them can by any laws of probability be held to be purely accidental. We quote from

*"Replies," pp. 45, 46, 47.

The life of the ever-present Spirit is a circle of progressive embodiments. . . . The grades which Spirit seems to have left behind it, it still possesses in the depths of its present."-P. 82.

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Spirit, consuming the envelope of its existence, comes forth exalted, glorified, a purer spirit. . . . Each successive phase becomes in its turn a material, working on which it exalts itself to a new grade."—P. 76.

We must exhibit to our readers one other of these parallels, which seem to us to prove a remarkable though unacknowledged borrowing from the German speculator:

"Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts," Occupying pp. 308-329 in vol. x of Lessing's Works, Lachmann's ed., Berlin, 1839. This work was published by Lessing as "edited" by him, and it has been questioned whether he was the author: it is now, however, generally admitted that the work is Lessing's own. The question is "We may then, rightly speak of a childdiscussed in Gervinus," History of German Liter- hood, a youth, and a manhood of the world the "Dictionnaire des Sciences Philosophiques," (p. 4). In childhood we are subject to posedited by Frank, under the article "Lessing.' itive rules which . . . we are bound implic

ature;" and some remarks on it will be found in

itly to obey. In youth we are subject to the various forms (in China, in India, in Thibet); influence of example, and soon break loose the general principle of which he regards as from all rules unless. . . . In manhood we being an elevation of the spirit from the are comparatively free from external re-finite and contingent conceived as a mere straints, etc. (p. 5). Precisely analogous to all this is the history of the education of the negation, to the consciousness of absolute early world (p. 6). When the seed of the power as the one universal existence." * Gospel was first sown, the field which had We can hardly conceive it possible that been prepared to receive it may be divided these strict resemblances are the result of into four chief divisions: Rome, Greece, mere chance. We cannot but believe that Asia, and Judea. Each of these contributed "The Philosophy of History," in conjuncsomething, etc. (p. 15). Rome contributed tion perhaps with the same author's lectures her admirable spirit of order and organization (ibid.). To Greece was entrusted the

cultivation of the reason and the taste.
Her highest idea was not holiness, as with
the Hebrews, nor law, as with the Romans;
but beauty, etc. (p. 47). The discipline of
Asia was the never-ending succession of con-
quering dynasties. . . . Cycles of changes
were successively passing over her, and yet
at the end of every cycle she stood where

she had stood before."-P. 18.

"This is the childhood of history etc. Continuing the comparison with the ages of the individual man, this would be the boyhood of history; no longer manifesting the repose and trustingness of the child,

pe

but boisterous and turbulent. The Greek world may, then, be compared with the riod of adolescence. . . . Here is the kingdom of beautiful freedom. . . . The third phase is the Roman state, the severe labors of the manhood of history.

on the "Philosophy of Religion," was, in truth, the parent of "The Education of the World." Nor, if we are right in this, is it worth notice only because it is another instance of the "staleness" of these essays, and a new proof of the degree to which they are obnoxious, as literary productions, to the grave charge of abounding in plagiarisms. There is yet another deduction to be drawn from this, over and above the literary reproach which attaches to it. It is highly indicative of the real spirit of the essay. For it is the characteristic of the whole Hegelian theory, that whilst its propounder continually wrote as being himself a believer in the truth of the Christian Revelation, yet the inevitable conclusion of his system, as it developed itself in its completeness, was to oscillate between two results, equally inconsistent with all Revelation; either, that is, to resolve with the Pantheist all created life into a mere phenomenal mode of a higher and more absolute existence, and so to destroy, in fact, personality in God, and personality and responsibility in man; or to cut the knot of difficulty by denying altogether with the Atheist the existence of There is one other passage in another God. We doubt not that Dr. Temple would work of Hegel's, between which and Dr. Temple's Essay the similarity is equally striking. According to Dr. Temple there were four great instructors of mankind in the early stage of education, viz.-Judæa, which taught Monotheism and chastity; Greece, science and art; Rome, order and organization; Asia, which contributed the mysterious element in religion, disciplining the spiritual imagination. And so, according to Hegel, "The Jewish religion is that of sublimity; the religion of Greece is that of beauty; the religion of Rome that of organization or purpose (as we may perhaps translate the German Zweckmässigkeit); whilst Asia is the seat of Pantheism in its

"The first phase ... is the East It is the childhood of history. . . . We find the wild hordes breaking out ... falling upon the countries . . . but in all cases resultlessly. . . etc. On the one side we see duration, stability . . . the states . . . without undergoing any change are constantly changing their position toward each ot her."-Pp. 111-113.

recoil as honestly as we should from either of these alternatives; but we believe that, with the seeds of Hegelian teaching, the tendency to one or other of these monstrous conclusions does really pervade what has sometimes been considered as his comparatively harmless contribution to this volume.

Besides the new volumes which we have passed under review, we must also note with pleasure that the controversy has occasioned the reprinting of the late Dr. Mill's "Observations on Pantheistic Principles," a work worthy of the great name of its writer, and which by anticipation supplied wellnigh all the materials necessary for exposing the recent attempts of our new sceptics to shake the ancient faith of Christendom.

*Hegel's works, vol. xi., p. 30s. Ed. 1840.

From The London Review, 18 Oct. of the authority of a Cabinet could have THE RECOGNITION OF THE SOUTH. sanctioned so serious a decision as that THERE seems a general disposition to as- which Mr. Gladstone is supposed to have sume that the rhetoric of Mr. Gladstone is announced at Newcastle. We were not the serious exposition of a substantial change therefore surprised to see in a semi-official of policy on the part of the English Cabinet evening journal a paragraph explicitly diswith respect to American affairs. If that claiming, on the part of the Government, really were so, we could conceive nothing all responsibility for the sentiments of Mr. more to be deplored than the change itself, Gladstone. For our part we have very little except it were the manner selected for its doubt that this disclaimer is weli founded, announcement. Of all the events of modern and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer times, by far the most momentous is the must be taken to have expressed nothing drama now playing out of the dissolution of more than his own individual opinion. As the American Union. The proper attitude to the policy or propriety of a man in Mr. of England with regard to this great end Gladstone's position compromising himself, seemed so obvious and so unquestionable his colleagues, and the country by the indisthat no considerable politician of any party creet expression of crude and unauthorized has seriously ventured to recommend any sentiments, we have already sufficiently other course than that of strict and impartial spoken. It happily, however, makes a conneutrality. Whigs, Tories, and Radicals, siderable difference whether we have to dishave hitherto unanimously concurred in ap-cuss the question as the isolated view of an proving that true policy which the English individual politician or as the pregnant conGovernment has, up to this time, consist-clusion of the Executive Government. It is ently and successfully pursued. There have not improbable that the approaching Cabinot been wanting persons like Mr. Gregory net may have been summoned for the exin the House of Commons and Mr. Spence press purpose of deliberating upon the very out of it, who have endeavored to force the question which some people have assumed nation into the position of partisans of Se- from Mr. Gladstone's speech to have been cession and the South. But these persons already settled. If this be so it may be have been neither numerous nor influential, worth while, before so vital a matter is and the common sense of the country has finally resolved upon, seriously to consider ratified the exclamation of Lord Russell in what reasons can be alleged why England the earliest stage of the business: "For should be induced to depart from the course God's sake, let this country keep out of the of policy which has been hitherto pursued by quarrel." Now, there may or may not have unanimous accord. No wise man will take been good and sufficient reasons arising out a decided step of this character-especially of recent events to justify a departure from when he is perfectly free to stand neutral this wise and dignified resolve. But this at-without asking himself "What next?" least we will venture to say, that the consequences of any departure from the policy of neutrality must be so capital that the decision is one which should neither have been lightly made nor incautiously announced. The recognition of the Southern Confederacy is not a matter to be disposed of in an afterdinner conversation. Such a step, if it is to be taken at all, is one which profoundly involves the responsibility of the Administration as it most capitally concerns the interests of the nation.

Assume the independence of the South to be recognized, what would be the advantage either to the South or to England? In a certain sense perhaps it would be a sort of moral triumph to the Confederacy, inasmuch as it would be a public mortification to the Union party. But how it could operate in any manner to the advantage of England it is very difficult to conjecture. It is not very easy to bring the advocates of the recognition of the South to look into their ulterior wishes or policy. Do they look upon the dissolution of the Union as an object of hope or fear to England? Covertly, we believe, if not avowedly, the great majority of Southern sympathizers in this country, at the bottom of their hearts, desire American disrup