'Oh, sir!' said he, 'I am sure you do not think prayer-meetings can be dispensed with?'

'My friend,' replied the other, 'prayer-meetings, in idea, are, to my mind, most delightful; but what they are in fact is something very different. The idea is that of Christians mutually drawn together to pour out, with one mind and one heart, their devout feelings and desires; and to a genuine meeting of this kind, too great value could not be attached. But, in point of fact, I fear that, for the most part, they are continued, not so much because people delight in them, and cannot but delight in them, but because it is one of our Dissenting forms, which we will not allow ourselves to think can possibly become less suited to the manners, and habits, and tastes of the day. In most places the people require to be urged, and teased, and goaded, to attend them. Wanted, a whipper-in for such and such a chapel,' is a sort of advertisement which would only convey a just impression of the state of things. Now, I cannot think there is less piety, less devoutness, in the Christian Church, than heretofore. I think there are pleasant signs of religious progress and improvement all around us; and yet, side by side with this, a general confession that this one particular form is falling into the shade. Now, where they cannot be improved-I mean, where the good brethren who pray cannot, from circumstances, be expected to become much more apt in public prayer -why not try an experiment or two?'

'Well, sir ?'

6

'For example; suppose a few Christians of your own sort, naturally drawn to associate together, were to meet in private in one of your homes, for social prayer, where, upon bended knee-without the restraint, I dare say, you feel in public-there might be more of real prayer offered than in the vestry.'

Ah, sir, I think very likely there would be more of genuine devotion, for 'tisn't everybody as can rise superior to the outward circumstances.'

"Then, for social prayer, see how very restricted these meetings are. First of all, it is confined to men. Now, I believe, as a general rule, Christian women, when they have accustomed themselves to social prayer, pray very much more aptly and devotionally than men do. Yet these are necessarily excluded from taking part in your present prayer-meetings. But of men, you are shut up, in most places, to four or five, who are engaged over and over again-not because of the desirableness, but the necessity. I think, if this kind of meeting be valuable at all, you miss the largest half of the value by excluding the women; and as they cannot with propriety take part, except in meetings among themselves, I would promote such, together with those I have intimated, in lieu of what you have at present. At least, I would in many places; in all like this, certainly.'

'We have always said that prayer-meetings were the pulse of the church. You don't think so, sir?'

'Assuredly, I do not. I want to know whether a man exhibits the spirit of Christ at home, in society, in his business, every day, and

everywhere; whether he is a lover of righteousness and truth, a noble, disinterested, amiable, and generous-spirited man; a man becoming more and more worthy of everybody's esteem and confidence; a man in whom selfishness in all its forms is dying out; one whose removal hence would make earth the poorer. But there my catalogue might be much longer; but, alas! my friend, how one condemns one's self in laying down these requirements, perhaps.'

But, sir, such men would make prayer-meetings more valuable than they are?'

'Just as they would make all societies they came into more fraught with good influence. But I have known even such men who, from various causes, could not, with comfort to themselves, pour out their hearts to God in public. It was a trial to them to attempt it; nay, some of them have found it to be a season of sore temptation. Possibly, the old folks were right in drawing a distinction between the spirit of 66 and prayer a gift in prayer." At all events, when prayer-meetings are perfectly natural things, when men are naturally drawn to pray together, then they will be good; but where, if the very truth were told, nobody really cares much about them, but only tries to care, the experiment of discontinuing them, or trying the same thing in another form, might be ventured on with advantage. But just as where you have nobody fit to preach, you had better dispense with preaching, and read a good sermon; so where there is a dearth of men able to lead the devotions of an assembly, I would discontinue the force-work that it evidently is-at all events, for a time. And especially where there obtains this pernicious notion about such meetings being the pulse of the church,' I would knock them on the head at once, and most unhesitatingly, if only in order that, such an artificial test ceasing, there might be a chance of a truer one being adopted; and quite sure that whenever it became desirable to renew them, they would spring up, as it were, of themselves, and quite naturally. The remark of a shrewd and vigorous writer of our own day is not inapplicable. He says:

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"It is meritorious to insist on forms; religion, and all else, naturally clothes itself in forms. But there are suitable, true forms; and then there are untrue, unsuitable. As the briefest definition, one might say: Forms which grow round a substance, if we rightly understand that, will correspond to the real nature and purport of it, will be true and good; forms which are consciously put round a substance -bad. I invite you to reflect on this. It distinguishes true from false in ceremonial form; earnest solemnity from empty pageant in all human things.""

The clock struck eleven! Mr. Seeclear, and the good brother Meek parted with mutual esteem; and the vestry-mouse was left alone in undisputed possession of the place.

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Christian Doctrine and Controversy.

'There is no learned man but will confess he hath much profited by reading controversy, his senses awakened, his judgment sharpened and the truth more firmly established. Being permitted, falsehood will appear more false, and truth the more true.'-MILTON: On True Religion.

Nor is it at all incredible, that a book which has been so long in the possession of mankind, should contain many truths as yet undiscovered. For all the same phenomena, and the same faculty of investigation, from which such great discoveries in natural knowledge have been made in the present and last age, were equally in the possession of mankind several thousand years before.'BISHOP BUTLER : Analogy of Religion.

MR. RIGG ON THE COLERIDGEAN THEOLOGY.

It is from Samuel Taylor Coleridge that has originated one of the most popular and influential, and, as some would add, one of the most pernicious schools of modern Anglican theology; not the Tractarian, of course, but that of which the best known representatives are Messrs. Maurice and Kingsley. Their theology is properly to be studied in that of their master, and it will be our endeavour, in the present paper, to trace it to its source in such a manner that its true character and import may be clearly understood. We cannot be deemed in this respect to have undertaken a work of supererogation; for, while it is characteristic of a certain other gospel that a wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err therein,' it is certainly true of the Coleridgean gospel that it is very hard to be understood.' The obscurity of Coleridge's own writings has been a standing subject of complaint, and the mass of perplexity which the writings of Maurice and Kingsley generally, if not universally, leave on the minds of their readers, is matter of common experience. It is time that it should be otherwise, and that people should at least know what, whether for good or for evil, they believe. In endeavouring to make a small contribution towards this result, we shall avail ourselves of the guidance of a writer in whose ability and learning we think we have good reason to confide.*

We begin with the observation, that the real reason why the theological writings of Maurice and Kingsley are to general readers obscure is, that they are underlaid by, and founded upon, a system of philosophy which, being remote from ordinary apprehension, is assumed without explanation. How many persons, for example, have pondered such expressions as these-Christ is 'the root of humanity,' all men are created in Christ,' and others of similar import, until they were weary of pondering, in order to get an answer to the question, what do they mean? Undoubtedly, an answer to the question can be obtained, but not out of the same book; it is neces

* Modern Anglican Theology: Chapters on Coleridge, Hare, Maurice, Kingsley, and Jowett; and on the Doctrine of Sacrifice and Atonement.' By the Rev. H. Rigg. London: 1857.

sary to go back to the 'root idea' in the philosophy, in order to find an explanation to the theology. To the philosophy, therefore, we must go.

Before we do so, however, we may make this additional remark, that the philosophy is, in this case, the influential and determining element. It is not as though this group of divines had allowed their speculations to be controlled by the Bible, and had adopted a scheme in harmony with its general teachings; they have, on the contrary, adopted independently and in the first place a system of philosophy of which they infuse the leading principles into their theology, and to which they subordinate the statements of revealed truth. This philosophy is the unknown quantity-to use a mathematical phrase— of which we are in search.

We shall commence by giving from the volume before us the following brief sketch of Coleridge's intellectual history:

'Coleridge was born in 1772. He was a dreamy, precocious child, with "all the simplicity, all the docility, of the little child, but none of the child's habits." He became a strangely speculative youth, already, when at "Christ's Hospital,” enamoured of pantheistic mysticism, as taught by the Alexandrian Neo-Platonists, of both the heathen and the Christian schools. Before he was fully fourteen years old he had translated the hymns of Synesius into English Anacreontics. Before he left Cambridge, whither he went up from Christ's Hospital in the year 1791, we find that he had become familiar with the metaphysicians of the eighteenth century, from Leibnitz to Hartley. For some years he greatly admired not only Berkeley, but also Hartley. At this time he was in morals a philosophical necessitarian, with Hartley; in regard to nature, his philosophy seems, from his "Religious Musings" (1794), to have been a sort of fusion of Hartleyism and Berkeleyism, taking the form of semi-pantheistic idealism; in theology he was a Unitarian. But while a Unitarian in theology, it is a thing to be noted, that he was a NeoPlatonist philosophical Trinitarian '-Pp. 5, 6.

'From such Unitarianism as has been described—i, e., from a system of semipantheistic and idealist fatalistic opticism-Coleridge seems to have passed, by a sort of logical necessity, into utter scepticism, scepticism more sheer and thoroughgoing than even that which Hume argued for. But it was not possible that this should hold him or any man long. He found he must postulate some truths, and began to perceive that certain facts and principles of religious faith had as good a claim to take rank as necessary postulates as any regarding the existence and mutual relations of man and outward phenomena. He is said to have become acquainted with the works of Spinoza about the year 1797, and for many years he retained a strong admiration for his writings. These did not, however, secure his adhesion, though no doubt they prepared the way for his acceptance of those transcendental speculations of German philosophy of which Spinozism forms the common substratum, and of which, notwithstanding important minor distinctions and characteristics, certain fundamental principles of Kantism define the general mould and shaping. Coleridge visited Germany in 1798, and from this time, for a number of years, he must be considered as a student of that German philosophy, of which he was to be the first to impart the rudiments to his countrymen. Lessing was his master in general criticism; Eichhorn in biblical criticism; and first Kant; then Schelling, in philosophy. The most fundamental parts of the system of the latter he rendered into English in his "Biographia Literaria," originally published in 1817. But he never completed his exposition of this philosophy, which passed not for Schelling's, but for his own, as he made slight acknowledgment of his heavy obligations to the German. Many hints and notes, indeed, are scattered through his various writings, which throw light upon a point here and there of his system. All together, however, are insufficient to give any conception whatever of such a school of philosophy, in its relation to metaphysics, morals, and religion,

736

as he was ever promising for many years before his death (1833). Nay, the
effect of many of his latest and most valuable notes, appended to the "
Literaria," is to undermine the foundations of that very philosophy on which he
had professed to ground all his speculations, and in conformity with which he had
Biographia
fashioned all his phraseology. His work of construction, so far as any system of
philosophy was concerned, ended in demolition. He became convinced at length
that the fundamental philosophy of Schelling was essentially pantheistic, and
incapable of being reconciled with the Christian Revelation, in which, for many
years before his death, he professed to be an orthodox believer.'-Pp. 7-9.

Of the leading elements of this belief, we gather from Mr. Rigg the following summary :

'Reason and Religion, according to Coleridge, are not so properly in agreement, as identical, unless we may so far distinguish as to say that Religion is right Reason applied to morals and worship. Philosophy is inclusive of Theology, as its highest and noblest department. These positions are postulated or implied throughout every part of his system. And the cherished desire of the last twenty or thirty years of his life was, to show the coincidence of the transcendentalism which he had adopted with the Christian Revelation-in a word, to harmonize Schelling with St. John and St. Paul.'-P. 9.

As one means of doing this, he availed himself of the Neo-Platonic divine Triad, in which he thought he found the connecting link between Schellingism and Christianity.

According to the "subjective idealism" of Schelling, Knowledge and Being, "the Idea and the Mind" (to quote from the Trinitarian formula, given some pages back), are ultimately and essentially one. is but a manifestation of the Infinite, or, as Schelling would say, the Absolute All creaturely and finite Being Being ; all Ideas and all Knowledge are but emanations from the Infinite Mind, or Absolute Knowledge or Reason. This Being and this Knowledge or Reason both inhere in, or rather both are, One, viz., the Absolute. But, besides Being and Knowledge, there is in Nature and Man an active Energy, resulting from and ultimately one with this Being and Knowledge. Coleridge chose to consider it, as a third principle, distinct from and yet one with This may be considered, and the two former; and to this he gives the name Love. cisely accord with the Neo-Platonic Triad, the Being or the Good, the Nous or These three principles preLogos or the Reason, and the Psyche or Soul of the World. And Coleridge attempts to identify them with the Christian Trinity, by baptizing these abstractions with the names, and investing them with the personal attributes, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. He did not see, so had his over-subtleties blinded him in this case as in many more, the essential and infinite distinction between the metaphysical abstractions and the Living Persons.

'From all this it comes out, that the relations of the Father to the Son is as that of Being to Knowledge, or of the Mind to the Idea. In this sense, or nonsense," the Father beholdeth himself in the Only-Begotten Son, and the Son acknowledgeth the Father in Himself" (ub. supr. cit.)! So, in "The Friend" (vol. ii. p. 172, edition of 1844), "Christ, the Logos," is called "objective Deity." Similarly, the relation of the Spirit to the Father and the Son is as that of Action to Being and Knowledge, or to the Mind and its Ideas. In this sense, the Spirit proceedeth from the Father and the Son!

Here is the core of Coleridge's philosophical Pantheism, from which, with all his efforts, he could never extricate his understanding, whatever we may hope from his heart; and here too is the root of all that Coleridgean mysticism which pervades the writings of the Maurice-Kingsley school.'-Pp. 11, 12.

But let us now be permitted to venture on a large quotation,