1850.] Transcendentalism not to be dreaded. 181 is precisely the knowledge which Christ professed miraculously to possess. "We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen." "The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." Christ's whole conduct was in keeping with this profession. He assumed and sustained the bearing and dignity of an especial messenger from God, the authorized teacher of mankind. If we may believe Christ's assertion, that which to us seems probable to him was certain. There is no way, that I can see, in which he can be brought down to our level, but by impeaching his veracity, or denying his wisdom, or casting doubt on the historic verity of his life. There is no way of exalting us to a level with him, without bridging over the chasm which in our minds separates the probable from the certain. There is no phraseology of intuitions, or the absolute, or any other metaphysical mysticism, of which such a bridge can be constructed. The great question between the Transcendentalist and the Supernaturalist, the Deist and the Christian, is this: Did Jesus KNOW any thing of God and of the realities of the spiritual world, in a sense which made them absolutely certain, or are his sayings mere probabilities, and of course only his opinions? In the one case, we have doctrines to be taught upon authority, and in the other, only mere speculations, to be accepted or rejected as each one sees fit. Is there any thing, then, in Transcendentalism so exceedingly dangerous, that the Christian minister is to be deterred by it from the study of the Bible? I, for one, think its danger has been greatly overrated. It has not in this country as yet obtained a logical statement, much less a logical defence. It has not as yet solved its first problem. It professes to discard the miraculous from the New Testament as unhistoric, yet receives much of it as true and authentic. In order to define its position, and have a distinct, substantive existence, it must carry out its analysis, and tell us what we are to accept and what we are to reject. It must give us an expurgated Gospel, or the Gospel according to Transcendentalism. Thomas Jefferson proposed this work to himself, to "sift apart," to use his phraseology, the historic from the unhistoric parts of the New Testament, as an employment for some of his leisure hours. He afterwards had abundance of leisure, but the thing was never done. Strauss attempted this feat in Germany, but his work by all parties was acknowledged to be a failure. In this country, as yet, we have had no clear statement of the Transcendental hypothesis, no reasoning about it, but merely a rhapsodical declamation here and there, about as conclusive as Burke's ironical argument against all the institutions of civil society. Some few have been blinded for a while by a cloudy mysticism, or dazzled by a brilliant rhetoric, into an admiration for they could not tell exactly what; but most of them have been brought to their senses again by the calm, deep wisdom, the stainless integrity, the tender love, the unaffected piety, and the awful majesty of Jesus of Nazareth. Hitherto the blows of Transcendentalism have told, not on Christianity, but on Protestantism. Deism can sustain no church. It never built a church, and never can. It requires faith to build churches. If it could get possession of all Protestant churches to-morrow, it would only be to hand them over to the Church of Rome, and make her the grave, as she has been the womb, of all Protestant denominations. But is Transcendentalism an unmixed evil? Is it merely destructive in its tendencies? Has it no mission for good in the arrangements of Providence? It may be, I believe, under wise management, made to exert a corrective and conservative influence upon Christianity and the Church. Being itself an extravagance, it may operate to correct an opposite extravagance, which has been too prevalent in the Christian world,—an idolatry of the Bible and a contempt for man. For certainly there is a wide difference between believing that man made the Bible, and that the Bible is necessary to create man. It is equally extravagant to maintain that there is nothing divine in man, and to maintain that there is nothing human in the Bible. Equal mischief follows from making too much or too little of the Scriptures, and it is as fatal to religion and morality to make man a deity as a devil. The truth must lie between these two extremes, and perhaps it is necessary for the human mind to vibrate like a pendulum between the two for a while before it will settle in the truth. If the two extremes could 1850.] Our Position and Duty. 183 be brought to discuss the subject calmly and dispassionately together, they might mutually correct each other's errors, and the world be edified by the controversy. This, however, in the present state of feeling, cannot be, and the task of reconciliation falls on us, who imagine that we occupy the true and middle ground. Superadded to these momentous questions, which are coming up among Protestants, and between Protestants and Deists, there are the fundamental questions between Protestants and the Church of Rome. Immense immigration is daily giving an importance to the Catholic Church in this country, wholly unanticipated by our ancestors. There are, and always have been, men in that Church of great learning, intellectual acuteness, and dialectic dexterity. Their literary enterprise and activity have been greatly quickened by a migration to this country of railroads, steam-engines, and telegraphs. And there is no antagonist who makes so strong a draught on the theological attainments of his adversary, as a welltrained and truly learned Catholic. Under these circumstances, is it safe for us to suffer theology to decline among us? Is there any way in which we can so effectually break our force, and render ourselves impotent and insignificant? We must be, for a long time to come, from the very position we occupy, a church militant. thorough theological training, kept up through life, will be to us just what weapons and discipline are to an army. They make us superior to multitudes without them. If we abandon them, we ourselves become an easy prey. Whatever may be thought in this good city of Boston, the controversial age of our denomination is by no means passed. That we enjoy comparative peace, we owe entirely to the fact of our comparative numerical insignificance. The word is passed from time to time, all over the country, that Unitarianism is dying out, and it is thought hardly worth while to reason down or to write down a denomination which never gets up. Any rapid growth on our part would cause a reaction against us as fierce and bitter as that which created the Inquisition. A I end, then, as I began, by commending the study of systematic theology, as demanded of us especially, by our position, and by the wants of the age. It is the only thing that can give us, as individuals and as a denomination, strength, assurance, and influence. It is the only thing which can give us the control we ought to exercise over the opinions and the character of this great country in the coming ages, when this vast continent shall be overspread by a population as dense as Asia, and the English tongue shall be spoken by more millions than ever were united by one language under heaven. ART. II.—MAHOMET THE PROPHET OF ARABIA, AND BONIFACE THE APOSTLE OF GERMANY.* THE appearance of the two works whose titles we give below has revived the interest excited a few years ago, by Carlyle's brilliant Lecture, in the career of the Arabian prophet. Heretofore, our best available authorities have been a brief but well-written sketch in the Family Library "History of Arabia," and Bush's "Life of Mohammed," a rather feeble and unsatisfactory volume of the same series. Gibbon's chapter is too condensed to be properly biographical, though bearing abundant marks of his strong hand as an historian, and of his assiduous muck-rake as annotator; and the old-fashioned libels of Prideaux, and others of that school, are of service only as curiosities. The field was clearly open for a fresh popular narrative, such as Mr. Irving has undertaken to give. The public judgment decides that he has done it acceptably and well. He has made faithful use, not only of the sources open to him in Spain, but of other recent contributions to the literature of the subject. But we are inclined to join in the disappointment which has been elsewhere expressed, "that no fresh circumstances are brought to light, which are weighty enough to form the cardinal points of a new estimate of Mohammed's char 1. Mahomet and his Successors. By WASHINGTON IRVING. New York: G. P. Putnam. 1850. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 373, 500. 2. The Life and Religion of Mohammed, as contained in the Sheedh Traditions of the Hyât-ul-Kuloob. Translated from the Persian, by JAMES L. MERRICK. Boston: Phillips & Sampson. 1850. 8vo. pp. 483. 1850.] Irving and Merrick. 185 acter and position." A large addition has been made to the stores of personal anecdote. The fabulous parts of the narrative are selected and introduced with great felicity. A few chapters of pleasant gossip have been added. The group of the companions and successors of the Prophet has been drawn in altogether new distinctness of color and outline. But one finds comparatively little of substantial value in the new material so industriously gathered. The characteristic merit of the work is from other qualities than that of vigor in conception, or suggestiveness of thought. In the second volume, especially, it has struck us that the author was encumbered with his materials; and we miss such things as we find in the bold, rapid narrative of Gibbon, or the filling out of the sketch offered in a chapter of Sismondi or in a paragraph of Carlyle. One regrets, too, that the account stops short of the most interesting period. For a good history of the Spanish conquest we must still wait. None that we have seen is fully worthy of the subject. And we shall look impatiently for the third volume, which Mr. Irving has intimated he may yet prepare, covering a region and a period peculiarly his own. As the value of Mr. Irving's work is popular, so that of Mr. Merrick's is literary and scholastical. It is a sort of abridged Mahometan Talmud, with all the garniture of fable which Eastern fancy and superstition have heaped upon the plain story of the Prophet. It is a schedule of mythical curiosities, containing the most singular and out-of-the-way scraps of information, and the most astonishing array of marvels. No less than fifty detailed miracles are enumerated gravely in a single list; and seven such lists make up the contents of a single chapter. History becomes as wavering and fantastical as the dreams of the Arabian Nights. There is a sober, statistical manner in relating the overwhelming array of prodigies, and a placid unconsciousness of irony or scandal in adopting what looks like the grossest style of satiric humor, quite refreshing by way of contrast to the rationalistic and ethical habits so pertinacious in the Western mind. The work has served us only very incidentally, and we are of course Prospective Review, Vol. II. p. 165, in an article on Dr. Weil's “Mohammed der Prophet,' -a work (which Mr. Irving has both used and cited) containing the results of the most recent and thorough researches. |