Scripture in the 6th of the xxxix Articles: "In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church." In fact, the two passages may be taken as one expression of doctrine. Now we do not press a consideration, which yet seems to deserve some attention, that as the Church manifestly and rightly requires a more definite expression of faith from the clergy than from the laity, so the Bishop seems more tied to the letter of Scripture than are the lower ranks of the clergy. The Bishop, speaking from his own position, asks, “Do you unfeignedly believe all the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament?" The candidate, looking at the matter from his point of view, answers simply, "I do believe them." We are aware that this will seem a subtle and perhaps an unfair distinction; but two considerations may modify this opinion. Mr. Wilson's words, in his wise and thoughtful essay on the National Church,* are surely true when he says, that in such a case as subscription "the strictly legal obligation is the measure of the moral one;" and it seems, moreover, that when every word of the Liturgy of the Church of England has been so weighed, so cavilled at, so amended, as we know it to have been, the absence of the words "so" or "unfeignedly" is not without significance. But, however this may be, the Article is not by any means so stringent as it has been often represented. If we are not bound to inquire or heed what was the "animus imponentis," if there shall arise good reason for doubting whether such and such books or portions of books be really deserving the authority hitherto given them, then, even though the Church is unable or unwilling at once to reform her canon, that book or portion of book ceases, by the very admission of the Article, to be binding as Holy Scripture on the individual conscience. "But," again it may be said, “the Ordinal requires belief in all the canonical books, of which canonical books the Article gives a list." To this it seems sufficient answer, that the list is rather a note on than a part of the Article; that if a book received as canonical is found by the above rule to be, perhaps, no part of Holy Scripture, our permission to reject is stronger than our obligation to accept it. A book is received into the canon because it is Holy Scripture, and does not become Holy Scripture because it is canonical. After all, however, the main stress is on the word believe, and here there must come in a certain limitation. We do not seek to learn theology in a history, or to gain political theories from books of travels; and yet we find them there. How many accept the facts contained in the histories of Grote or of Gibbon, without in either case accepting the author's obvious theological views? We may travel through Italy with many a modern tourist, and be thankful for the record of what they heard and saw, yet need not with them become Papal or Garibaldian. So should we keep clearly before us what the Bible is-a record of spiritual progress, of aspirations of and revelations to the spirit of man: whatever of history, or geology, or chronology, is therein, is beside the main purpose of the book. And when we disconnect these incidental matters, the difficulty seems rather to doubt than to believe that "through the ages one increasing purpose runs," culminating, so far as we yet can see, in the person and work of the Christ. It cannot, however, be denied-and here is a fresh and graver difficulty-that there is interwoven with the entire narrative of the Bible a web of miraculous interventions, for which no single theory hitherto advanced has satisfactorily accounted, some of which were they cut out from the New Testament would seem to involve the destruction of all faith in an historical Christ. It is probable that, both in the Old Testament and in the New, poetical descriptions, parables, legends, have been cooled down into mere prose, and understood as though they were narratives of fact; it is certain that round heroic men, in all times, have clustered, in after ages, stories, some pure fiction, others having affinity with what is known of the nature of him they describe, others having an actual basis of real events; nor is there any reason to suppose that the worthies of the Bible were free from the likelihood of such accretions to the story of their lives. Other wonders, again, may have been wonders only because not understood, as where an angel who troubled the water was invented by a people ignorant of the laws which regulate intermittent springs. Yet, when Paulus and Strauss have done their best or their worst, there remains much for which no laws as yet known, no theory yet propounded, will serve to account. And this that remains is chiefly concerned with one reverend Name and Life, which we would desire to rob of nothing that can increase our love, our veneration, our faith. Nor need we do so. If it be conceded, as it is by all Christians, that in some way or other Jesus Christ is the typal man, the crown and perfection of all humanity, will it seem strange that He, consciously or unconsciously, should have manifested in their fulness, those powers to which the human race seems by degrees to attain? If man, as he is, with all his shortcomings, "his sins of will, defects of doubt, and taints of blood," is yet able so to increase in scientific knowledge as to predict in a measure the course of the winds and electric currents which guide and rule the storm, it is not unlikely that in the coming years he will be able to govern those very laws by means of the higher law of his will and understanding. And what we trust or believe that man will be and do, that can we believe Christ was and did. Again, if there pass from man to man certain strange influences which we in our ignorance name "magnetic;" if healthy bodies have effect on unhealthy, so that over brain and nerves and heart there seems to pour a fountain of vital energy; if, again, the mysterious elective affinities between drugs and the human body are reduced each day more and more to a positive science;-is it strange that, under any Christian conception of his being and character, Christ should, under certain circumstances, have given health to the sick, even at his word or touch? It is neither irreverent nor in truth unorthodox to explain such miracle as can be explained, and refer all others to modes as yet unknown; it is needful, if we would retain the thought of a God of order and of law, to reject the supposition that He mars or interferes with what He has done and appointed, save where a higher law cuts across the track of a lower, as do starry systems, which seem involved only to the unscientific, but are to those who understand them a high sacrament and sign of perfect order and completest harmony. We have not so great confidence in our own powers or our own grasp of truth as to imagine these remarks will satisfy all our readers, any more than all the positions in liberal writings, such as those of M. Nicolas and others, are satisfactory to ourselves. It would never do that any man's difficulties should be settled by others in a moment, for so would he place himself under a worse dogmatism than that of any church. Each man must fight his battle for himself; each in the great conflict is alone. All that any one can do for another is to point out some mode of onslaught, or it may be some trick of fence, which has proved useful to himself and may be to other combatants. The light of fuller knowledge in all regions of science, as it broadens day by day, disperses mists on every side, and extends our mental horizon, so that we can see the great tide of free thought rising on our own shores. Like that of the Nile, it may stir some ugly deposit, but must in the end fertilize the fields. The clergy are they who should meet the swelling wave, their feet gladdened and their hearts cheered with its fresh and vigorous life. It is they who should open the sluice-gates and guide the waters on the land. But if, as the waves seem to raise their crests higher than in days past, these men fear and cower, or attempt to stem the tide, its resistless energy will carry away even useful barriers and channels, and themselves may be engulfed in the surge. It lies with the Church of England now, in this day of new things, to decide whether she can hold old truths in the light of new knowledge. It will be an evil day for her and for all the religious bodies which stand around her if it can be said of her to her children, "Come away; for Life and Thought But in a city glorious A great and distant city-have bought Would they could have stayed with us !"'* C. K. P. III-THE QUESTION OF MIRACLES. 1. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. Art. Miracles. By Right 3. Aids to Faith. Art. on Miracles as Evidences of Chris- Tennyson. The Deserted House. 4. Vie de Jésus. Par Ernest Renan. Paris. 1863. 5. The Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of Modern Criticism. By John Tulloch, D.D. Macmillan & Co. 1864. To acknowledge a living God, and to declare Him incapable of departing from an invariable order of manifestation, are inconsistent acts of belief. The impossibility, or the necessary incredibility, of Miracles, can be maintained only on the hypothesis of Atheism. A God who has no life or freedom, outside the system of Nature, is not distinguishable from Nature. If the laws of material causation are only modes of His action, He must be free to adopt other modes when it seemeth good to His wisdom and His will; if they are independent of Him, then there is no living LORD of the universe, and God is only another name for the order, the cosmos, that human intellects perceive. That Miracles are unworthy of God may be maintained by those who would freely admit their possibility if they could seem good in His sight. This is the only ground on which a Theist can assert their absolute incredibility. An a-priori exclusion of Miracles for scientific reasons is Atheism an a-priori exclusion of Miracles for spiritual reasons would be, so far as is yet seen and determined, an arbitrary rule, in opposition to the only court of judgment accessible to us, the spiritual discernment of mankind. One or other of these positions the denier of Miracles, as per se incredible, must take up: that scientifically regarded they are impossible to God,-or, that spiritually regarded they are unworthy of God. A believer in a personal God could therefore be justified in refusing all attention to the historical evidences of Miracles only after he had established, as a universal canon of disbelief, that the free action of God beside or beyond the physical laws of causation, for any purpose whatsoever, is incompatible with His perfect goodIf philosophical antisupernaturalism is inconsistent with all religious faith,-and spiritual antisupernaturalism, the dishonourableness to God of all immediate manifestations of Himself, cannot be demonstrated,-the credibility of a Miracle in any particular case is simply a question of evidence internal and external. Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his examination of Hume's doctrine of Miracles, has clearly seen that their absolute rejection, independently of due consideration in each special case, is legitimate only to an Atheist, ness. |