realising the Order of a Perfect Will in the physical world, and pleading for its realisation in our free spirits,—if the phenomena of the visible universe and the march of history are but the external scenery and drama of this inner Divine Personality, then Revelation is simply the emergence of the reality into knowledge: not a making of divine things (which, missed or seen, are always there), but a showing of them: not an exceptional coup d'état in the administration of the world, but an opened sample of its eternal laws. Even that the Son of God should take upon him a human individuality is but the manifesting climax of what, as abiding in our nature and originating all its good, he for ever partially does. And when his death is regarded simply as the uttermost surrender of a holy will, when its efficacy is sought, not in the penal virtue of its sufferings, but in the moral perfection of its obedience, and is found, not in the pacifying of God, but in the redeeming force of such self-sacrifice on man, the atonement itself does its best to return within the shelter of righteous law, and ceases to be a forensic insult and browbeating to the Conscience of mankind. Observe, finally, the proper meaning of the word "Faith," as determined by these antecedents. It is personal trust in the Divine Guide, who speaks with us in every higher claim;-a trust consciously exercised by the Christian, who discerns in the claim a living and a loving eye; unconsciously, by the righteous Pagan, who knows not the Person but reveres the Law. Salvation by Faith falls thus into coalescence with salvation by Obedience: only, that its true power first declares itself, when the impersonal Law breaks from its cloud and comes forth as the living God; when our surrender is one, not of constraint to a dead statute, but of free affection to an Almighty Guardian; when what else were Morality rises into Divinity. How different is this from that Salvation by dogma,-or, at all events, not without dogma,-which poisons the heart of almost every church, and is little else than Christendom's standing sin against the Holy Ghost! Is it wonderful that Mr. Maurice incessantly recurs, perhaps not always pertinently, to this distinction, radical to all religion, and scattering an infinitude of doubts, between opinion as critical assent to a proposition, and faith as moral reliance on a higher Person?

From this theology no more wise and welcome consequence flows than the erasure of the false distinction between secular and spiritual things. It is a distinction that has no root in reality, and lies only in our blindness or our vision. The world is divine, whether we see it or not: its common duties, its humblest work, the order of its affections, the hierarchy of its relations, in the home, in the village, in the commonwealth,

in the family of nations,—are holy ordinances, the very sacraments of reality, alive with the Highest Presence: they are secular only to those from whom this truth is hid, and whom no secret awe deters from making them the field for the selfish play of humour, interest, or ambition. "There are not two moralities," one for nature, the other for grace: "Conversion" does not alter, but only reveal, a man's spiritual obligations and position it puts him into no divine kingdom, where he was not already he stands in the same universe in which he stood before only the scales have fallen from his eyes. That the new experience thus opened is wonderful, nay even a rebirth of the spirit, may be asserted with the Evangelical: yet that God's grace is contingent on human consciousness and recognition may be denied with the Catholic. In this view, the world and the Church, labour and prayer, morals and religion, the life of nature and the life in God, merge into each other and are objectively one; and stand apart only through the subjective illusion of our darkness or our sin. This consecration of the common ground and work of our humanity relieves many a heart that vainly demands of itself the anguish and raptures of conviction, yet beats with a living pulse of righteousness, and flushes the cheek with joy in what is noble, pure, and true. In all these respects, the distinctive theology of our new "Tractarians" has hold of such deep truths, and stands clear of so many protests which strike home elsewhere, as to address itself with great advantage to the troubled faith of honest and serious minds. There are two forms of religious distress or dearth to which, especially, it brings infinite deliverance. First, where, as in Scotland, the Genevan "plan of salvation," with its corresponding plan of damnation,-has at last, by long hammering, broken through the logical crust, and pierced the heart, of humanity; an insurgent agony has arisen, a fierce struggle between defiant denial and believing despair,-on which the gospel of this school opens as a tranquillising revelation, permitting hope and charity without forfeiture of faith and holiness. And, secondly, where a Deistical philosophy or a mere Historical theology had virtually set God away from the "here" and now," and, under prolonged drought and famine of divine things, even delivered the prophet's rod to Carlyle's hand, to bring water from the rock and show the manna on the ground, -an unspeakable refreshment was brought by a theology which, also lifting the thick veil, showed not only a divine mystery and beauty, but the Living God himself, and re-baptised the present, not simply in wonder and reverence, but in the communion of trust and affection. The depth to which Mr. Maurice's faith is penetrated with this truth,-of the immediate

ness and perpetuity of the Divine self-witness,-betrays itself in a verbal peculiarity pervading his writings. In speaking of the acts and dealings of God, he is fond of substituting the continuous or progressive tense (is doing, was doing, will be doing) for the aorist (does, did, will do) in all the times; as if to preclude the idea of cessation, and to suspend us ever in the midst of the divine activities. Thus it is said, "God is manifesting himself," "is meeting" men, "is revealing to them what their character is" (No. II p. 8). The usage seems to be infectious, and, in other hands than Mr. Maurice's, spreads into new connexions, not without a disagreeable effect on the style of the writers. "Christ," says Mr. Hughes, of the miracles, “seems to me to have been asserting the freedom of that law of God by suspending these natural laws:" and, of the first chapter of Genesis," What impressed me most in it then was, the order and harmony of the whole, and the way in which every stage is leading up through man to God" (No. İ. pp. 27, 29). The more we respect the origin of this habit of speech, the more should we regret its degenerating into even the appearance of affec

tation.

The writers of this school, guided by natural genius and the special work they have to do, have, with all their individual varieties, fallen into a certain method of their own. They are men of religious insight, of moral nobleness, of deep personal convictions: they have a message to deliver, and they deliver it ; leaving it for the most part to bear its own testimony. It is to them immediate truth, which wants no mediation of theirs; let it only be laid out side by side with the alternative half-truths, or sham-truths, and it will make itself good, by simply being what they are not. Its persuasiveness consists in its answer to the inner need which it meets, and its faithful interpretation of the experience on which it falls. Beyond, therefore, its positive announcement, there is little further support given to it than a comparative portraiture, often contemptuous enough, of doctrines which would dispute its place. What vast power there may be in this mere exhibition of some gem of truth suspended in a gallery of counterfeits, is evident from the effect of Mr. Carlyle's writings, whose procedure is so far essentially the same. Such a method is quite adequate to the functions we have assigned to the Maurice theology. To the heart parched by the arid miseries of Calvinism, the simple offer of this theology is as the cup of cold water to the lips of fever. And so, when pure and susceptible natures have been permitted to grow up, stiff and stunted, in the frosts of Deistical exile, the mere approach of a mind charged with the living warmth of the Eternal Light, -the very gleam of its thoughts and tone of its words,-will

suffice to release and melt them into redemption. But there are limits to the force of simple enunciation, even of the highest truths. And when our authors, in their recoil from the formal dialectic of divinity, propose, as a kind of theory of method, to fall back in general on the delivery of a message and the proclamation of a creed, they overstrain the resources of mere statement, and underrate the complex exigencies of modern thought. The principle is thus laid down by Mr. Llewelyn Davies:

"If there is any truth in the Scriptures, His blessing will rest upon those who bring forward His gospel in advance of all arguments or traditions, even if they can do nothing but seriously repeat it, and trust to its being its own evidence. If I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?' 'We are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him.' 'By manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.'" (No. IV. p. 33.)

Though this is justly enough advanced as a reason for not staking the gospel-appeal on any management of the miracleargument, it is evident from the following illustration that Mr. Davies gives the principle a wider application:

"Professor Stanley, in his interesting account of the Nicæan Coun cil, relates two stories, which, whether they are true, or whether they express a conviction in the mind of the Church, are almost equally instructive. Many popular discussions of doctrine took place, he says, previously to the formal opening of the Council. In one of these, after divines had been endlessly disputing, a layman stepped forward, and abruptly said, Christ and the apostles left us, not a system of logic, nor a vain deceit, but a naked truth, to be guarded by faith and good works.' On another occasion, a heathen philosopher had been contending with learned Christians, and had always slipped, velut anguis lubricus, out of the grasp of their arguments. An aged confessor hereupon stepped forth to meet him. 'In the name of Jesus Christ,' he said, 'hear me, philosopher. There is one God, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible: Who made all things by the power of His Word, and by the holiness of His Holy Spirit. This Word, by which name we call the Son of God, took compassion on men for their wandering astray, and for their savage condition, and chose to be born of a woman, and to converse with men, and to die for them; and he shall come again to judge every one for the things done in this life. These things we believe without curious inquiry.' After a few more direct words like these, the philosopher yielded. Hear,' he said, 'my learned friends. So long as it was a matter of words, I opposed words to words; and whatever was spoken, I overthrew by my skill in speaking; but when, in the place of words, power came out of the speaker's lips, words could no longer resist power, man could no longer resist. If any of you felt as I have felt, let him believe in Christ, and

let him follow this old man in whom God has spoken.'

Church, p. 132.)

(Eastern

It would be foolish, no doubt, to imagine that unbelievers may be captured by a coup de main, through the mere reiteration of any such simple statements. But it is not foolish to bring out the unspeakable importance of giving due prominence to the simplest affirmation of what God is, and what He has done for men." (No. IV. p. 33.)

:

Notwithstanding the qualifying clause by which the author guards his rule, we think the reliance of these Tracts on the coup-de-main method quite excessive, and especially unsuited to the occasion which has called them forth. They professedly deal with the crisis evoked by the Essays and Reviews, and cannot but intend to throw some light upon the questions which that volume raises. Those questions are all of them seated pretty deep in the philosophy of religion, and the researches of biblical and historical criticism. The relation between the inner course of Hebrew history and the outer lines of Heathendom; the real meaning, true or false, of the Mosaic account of the Creation; the discord or harmony of science and faith; the existence and purport of Messianic predictions; the credibility and function of the Scripture miracles; the age and authorship of the several New Testament books; their consistency or discrepancy in narrative and doctrine; the right procedure for their true interpreter; the nature and limits of their authority these are topics on which it is vain to pronounce by simple affirmation; which cannot be referred to the inner response of conscience; which remain undetermined in the face of the deepest sense of the Living God; and on which the truth can be approached only by the patient skill of the critic, and the combinations of a thorough philosophy. Yet in the Tracts before us, only one of these questions,-viz. that raised by Mr. Baden Powell, as to the relation between Natural and Supernatural Order,-is treated with any thing like a reasoned discussion,-first, in its relation to the miracles, by Mr. Davies, and then, in relation to kosmical law as grounded in Will, by Mr. Ludlow. Both these writers show a respectful appreciation of their subject, and contribute thoughtful and suggestive essays. But from none of their associates will "Priests and People," puzzled by the Essays and Reviews, gain the slightest help, beyond the comfort of knowing what Mr. Hughes believes, and what "lessons" Mr. Maurice draws from the seven treatises, and the panic, and the quarterly Reviews, and the Bishop of Oxford and his Lay Critic, and the remaining eleinents of the crisis. Personal confessions of faith, whatever their autobiographical interest, and homiletic comments, however true their spirit, on what we want to be told and what we