"Life among the Choctaw Indians, and Sketches of the Southwest. By HENRY C. BENSON, A.M. With an Introduction by Rev. T. A. MORRIS, D.D., Senior Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church." 12mo., pp. 314. Cin

cinnati: L. Swormstedt & Poe. 1860.

"The Marble Faun; or, The Romance of Monte Beni. By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE." 2 vols. 16mo., pp. 283, 284. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1860. "Holmly House. A Tale of Old Northamptonshire. By C. J. WHYTE MELVILLE, Author of 'Kate Coventry,' etc." 8vo., pp. 324. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1859.

"Loss and Gain; or, Margaret's Home. By ALICE B. HAVEN." 12mo., pp. 319. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1859.

Lucy Clifton. By the Author of The Days of My Life,' etc., etc." 12mo., pp. 222. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1860.

"The Diary of a Samaritan. By a Member of the Howard Association of New Orleans." 12mo., pp. 324. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1860.

Highways of Travel; or, A Summer in Europe. By MARGARET J. M. LEVERET, Author of Ethel's Love-life.'" 12mo., pp. 364. Boston: Walker, Wise, & Co.

"The Life and Times of Gen. Sam. Dale, the Mississippi Partisan. Illustrated by JOHN M'LENAN. Edited by J. F. H. CLAIBORNE." New York: Harper & Brothers.

66

Life in Spain. Past and Present. By WALTER THORNBURY, Author of Every Man his own Trumpeter.' With Illustrations." 12mo., pp. 388. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1860.

"The Power of Jesus Christ to save unto the uttermost. By the Rev. A. J. CAMPBELL." 12mo., pp. 329. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers. 1860. "Isaac T. Hopper. A true Life. By L. MARIA CHILD. Twelfth Thousand." 12mo., pp. 493. Boston: Jewett & Co. 1860.

"The Story of a Pocket Bible. A Book for all Classes of Readers. Ten Illustrations." 16mo., pp. 412. New York: Carlton & Porter.

X.-Announcements.

1860.

PROFESSOR SCHEM, of Dickinson College, proposes to publish The American Ecclesiastical Year Book, containing: 1. The Religious Statistics of the World during the past year, with many other specialities; 2. A brief Religious History of the World during the past year; 3. A list of works bearing on Religious Statistics, or current Ecclesiastical History. The continuous work is intended to be an Annual, presenting every successive year the Religious Statistics of the World. Professor Schem has for some years furnished the readers of our Quarterly with a proof of his ability and mastery of this department. No man of the age is probably better accomplished for the work.

Dr. NAST's Commentary will, we trust, prove a great aid to our German ministry and laity, not only as an exegetical and practical exposition, but as a valuable production in apologetic literature. His work is constructed upon an original plan and a noble scale, and will stand, we believe, a permanent monument of the industry and ability of the author.

Dr. GEORGE PECK has in press a History of the Origin and Early Progress of Methodism in New York, between the Hudson and the Erie, including also the Northern range of Pennsylvania. It will derive interest, both from original documents and from the personal reminiscences of the author. This, together with the History of New Jersey Methodism, by Mr. Atkinson, will constitute a large and valuable accession to our denominational annals.

THE

METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW.

JULY, 1860.

ART I-MANSEL'S LIMITS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.

The Limits of Religious Thought examined; in Eight Lectures delivered before the University of Oxford in the year 1858, on the Bampton Foundation. By HENRY LONGUEVILLE Mansel, B.D. 1 vol., 12mo. Boston: Gould & Lincoln.

PERHAPS few volumes have issued from the teeming press of America or Europe, during the past two years, that have combined in themselves so many elements calculated to awaken thought and stimulate investigation as the one now before us. Apart from the fact that it deals with a subject of vital interest to humanity, it has sprung, like a Minerva full-armed, into the very midst of "the battle of the evidences," at an era when an amount of thought and research unparalleled in any past age is being applied to the problems that connect themselves either directly or indirectly with the Bible as a divine revelation. Superadded to this, however, it possesses an interest peculiar to itself, growing out of the fact that it may justly be considered the first authoritative application of the celebrated "Philosophy of the Conditioned to the problems of theology;" and we can but regard it as singularly appropriate that this work should have been undertaken by Mr. Mansel, who (as is well known) was a favorite disciple of Sir William Hamilton, and who has since been selected as one of the associated editors of his posthumous works. It was therefore with no ordinary degree of interest that we entered upon an examination of it, feeling assured that the known character and antecedents of its author are a sufficient guarantee that no injustice has been done to the system in subjecting it to the test of a practical application, either through misconception of its principles or incapacity to apply them properly. And while we must dissent, for FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XII.-23

reasons which will appear in the sequel, from the conclusions to which its distinguished author comes, we cheerfully bear testimony to the manly honesty, the profound learning, and the earnest devotion to the cause of truth everywhere apparent in its pages, to a brief survey of which we now invite the thoughtful reader.

It starts out, in opposition to Rationalism on the one hand and to Dogmatism on the other, with the fundamental postulate: "That the primary and proper object of criticism is not religion, natural or revealed, but the human mind in its relation to religion." (P. 61.) For a direct criticism of religion as a representation of God can only be accomplished by the construction of a philosophy of the infinite; but such a philosophy is essentially impossible to man, because the infinite and absolute, as such, are essentially incognizable and inconceivable. Incognizable, because they can be known neither immediately as unconditioned, nor yet mediately through the finite. Inconceivable, because consciousness is possible only under the conditions of relation, limitation, and personality; but to predicate any one or all of them, of the infinite and absolute, were to destroy them in the attempt to conceive them. Nevertheless, as necessary negative notions, they do and must exist as part of the furniture of the mind; possessing, it is true, no positive value, since they do not represent reality; but invaluable "as regulative ideas of the Deity, which are sufficient to guide our practice, even if they do not satisfy our intellects." (P. 131.) Every attempt therefore to reason concerning them must needs terminate in a maze of self-contradictions and absurdities, and this result is equally inevitable whether we confine our researches to the domain of abstract science and metaphysics, or whether we seek, by the aid of revelation, to know and conceive God as the self-existent, immutable, and infinite Creator and moral Governor of the universe. It is to no purpose then that the Rationalist or skeptic pleads the incomprehensible or seemingly self-contradictory nature of certain doctrines of revelation as an objection to their truth, since the objection would lie with equal force against science or metaphysics; these self-contradictions inhering in the limitations of the finite reason and not in the essential nature of things. The possibility or impossibility of conception cannot therefore be assumed to be identical with the possibility or impossibility of existence; and revelation must not be judged in virtue of the presence or absence of the incomprehensible and self-contradictory, but of the strength or weakness of the external evidence by which its claims are supported.

Such, in brief, is the plausible and skillfully developed theory which Mr. Mansel has presented, by which he claims to have utterly

invalidated the attacks alike of the Rationalist and the skeptic, by removing the whole controversy from the plane of reason to that of a transcendental faith, thus resting the issue upon the strength of the positive evidences for and against the genuineness and authenticity of the Scriptures as a divine revelation. The only pertinent question is, therefore, are his premises valid, and his conclusions legitimate?

His initial postulate, "That the true object of criticism is not religion, but the limits of religious thought," suggests two important queries, namely: 1. How shall the limits of thought be determined? and, 2. What is the legitimate corollary that must be drawn from the nature of those limits as thus determined? How our author has solved these problems the sequel will more fully show; meanwhile he shall speak for himself:

"We can adequately criticise that only which we know as a whole. The objects of natural religion are known to us in and by those ideas which we can form of them; and these ideas do not of themselves constitute a whole apart from the remaining phenomena of consciousness. We must not examine them by themselves alone; we must look to their origin, their import, and their relation to the mind of which they are a part. Revealed religion, again, is not by itself a direct object of criticism: first, because it is but part of a larger scheme, and that scheme one imperfectly comprehended; and, secondly, because revelation implies an accommodation to the mental constitution of its human receivers, and we must know what that constitution is before we can pronounce how far the accommodation extends."-P. 60.

Now all this, at a cursory glance, appears very reasonable; yet it obviously involves two difficulties, namely: First, That on these conditions any criticism whatever of religion or science as such is a simple impossibility. If we may only criticise that which we know adequately, not merely in itself, but in all its relations, we cannot criticise anything-the schoolboy's essay, the Principia of Newton, and the revealed word of God equally escape us.

Secondly, Conjoining to it a subsequent statement of Mr. Mansel's, we find ourselves involved in the meshes of the absurd corollary, that no degree of self-contradiction, however great, nor any absurdity, however apparent, can justify us in rejecting any pretended revelation whatever. Logically, therefore, the Vedas, the Koran, the Bible, and the Book of Mormon, so far as internal evidence is concerned, must be recognized as having equal claims upon our faith, and must therefore be accepted or rejected solely on the ground of the inherent strength or weakness of the external evidence by which they are severally supported. To such a conclusion we must demur. As a rule of action it would be insufferably tedious and unsatisfactory, shutting the door at once and forever upon

all a priori reasoning, and condemning us to the endless labor of examining into the external or material evidences, not merely of every pretended revelation, but also of every fancied discovery in the arts or sciences, no matter how puerile or absurd. Yet from such a conclusion Mr. Mansel cannot escape after having propounded the twin dicta: first, That no criticism is legitimate in the absence of a complete knowledge of the subject, per se, of its origin, its import, and its relations. And, secondly, that neither relative nor self-contradictions can authorize us, a priori, to reject any doctrine whatever. Nor are these incidental expressions; they are dogmas which he not only iterates and reiterates, but which he himself applies practically: first, by proving that all conceptions of God as absolute and infinite (forms, be it remembered, under which he testifies that we must necessarily conceive Deity if we conceive him at all) are mutually as well as self-contradictory; and secondly, by attempting to fasten upon us this bundle of contradictions as the only proper object of faith. But if we may, nay, must believe one pair of contradictions, by what warrant shall we reject any other?

Such a definition of criticism not only effectually destroys it as an agent of human progress, but supersedes the necessity for its use where it is possible. The very act of criticism involves the idea of an attempt to reach truth by progressive approach, and it may therefore be successfully applied by the unskilled to the works or theories of the adept. But on Mr. Mansel's hypothesis it were not merely presumptuous, it were absurd for one possessing anything less comprehensive than omniscient wisdom to attempt to criticise any book whatever, however crude its statements or absurd its conclusions; and to one possessing such wisdom criticism were puerile, and direct revelation alone appropriate.

But if our author's definition of criticism is self-destructive, is his dialectic application of it, in his attempt to determine the limits of religious thought, more fortunate? Here, contrary to what might rationally have been anticipated, he seeks to solve the problem by applying the powers of reason directly to the solution of the very questions of theology in reference to which he desires to ascertain their scope. This, of course, necessitated the adoption of some a priori standard of criticism, in conformity to which the results of each successive application might be determined. This touchstone Mr. Mansel finds in the principle of contradiction. Every conception or notion, therefore, which in its logical development ultimates in contradictions, is declared to be incogitable and inconceivable, to transcend the limits of thought, and to have place only in the shadowy realms of faith. Thus our notions of the absolute and