366

UNITY OF SCRIPTURE.

any exercise in religious matters; and the blind faith they have inculcated, first opened the door to scepticism. Infidelity is the natural heir of superstition.

*

In searching Scripture for practical rules of conduct, we must be equally careful not to lose sight of its one-ness, — so to speak of the inseparable connection of all its parts. In another chapter we have shown that we must seek in the Gospel for principles, not for minute directions, applicable to particular circumstances. Those principles must be deduced in the same manner as articles of faith, not from any separate text or class of texts, but from the whole tenor of the Gospel. We must refer our readers to Archbishop Whately's excellent "Essay on the Mode of conveying Moral Precepts in the New Testament," for an illustration of the manner in which each part of Scripture is necessary to explain the rest; how it is only from the whole, connected, balanced, and modified by the combination of parts, that we can learn the full purport and scope of God's message to us. The whole building is fitly framed together; and if we contemplate only one or two stones in it, and overlook their place in the general design, and their connection with other parts, our view of the Gospel system will fall as far short of the truth, and our consequent practice as far below our Christian model, as our conception includes only detached portions instead of the harmonious and perfect whole.

What

We shall gain much in studying the Bible, if we study it not only in its general purport, but with reference to its place in the general scheme of human life. There are few errors more pernicious than that of supposing that we study it aright by studying it exclusively. So partial and narrow a view must be misleading. We should rather bring to bear on the Scriptures every ray of light we can gather from collateral sources. ever bears upon the history of the human race must bear also upon the revelation which was given to raise that race from degradation and light it onward to its final destiny. Some prejudices, some received notions may be shaken by this mode of investigation, but the result will be a more comprehensive and far more noble view of revealed religion. We may find the Bible not so complete in itself as we had imagined, we may discover that in the science and chronology it never was intended to teach, it adopts the popular errors of the people whom it immediately addressed. But at the same time we shall learn to place it far higher as a part of the great scheme of God's Providence, than as a complete scheme in itself. We shall better appreciate its in* Chap. iv. "On Conscience."

See also Whately's Essay, "On Apparent Contradictions in Scripture." Essays, Second Series.

fluence on man's nature and destiny by comparing it with other religious systems. With that as with the physical creation, the more enlarged in our knowledge, the more cultivated our perceptions, the more shall we discover of grandeur, beauty, and harmony, and the homage we are now too often superstitiously inclined to pay to the record itself, we shall then address with undivided heart to its great Author.

There are but too many who from circumstances or from want of mental vigour are debarred this noble study, who must ever be content to rest their faith on the simple assertion of those, who by natural or assumed right are their guides and rulers; but surely those whom nature or fortune has placed in a more favourable position, will not reject or barter the high privilege thus granted to them. Such a study would be full of interest did we regard the Bible simply as an historical record of events or a collection of writings that have widely affected human destiny; but when we regard it as the law of life, as the revelation of immortality, as the word of God interpreting His works, we must surely feel that none other can compare with it in interest and importance, and that the reading of Scripture should not be the mere habit of pious routine, but the exercise of the faculties God has given us in the discovery of His will and truth.

It would seem scarcely necessary to repeat here the cautions we have already given in another place with regard to the spirit in which truth must be sought, but the subject is too important to be passed over without further notice. The narrative of the inquiry addressed to our Saviour by the Pharisees, as to the authority by which he performed his miracles, and his refusal to answer them after their uncandid evasion of his own questions, is pregnant with instruction to us. The Pharisees were wanting in the love of truth; they had not the honesty to acknowledge openly that which they secretly admitted, and their inquiries were evidently dictated by curiosity, not unmingled with malignity. The answer of Christ is that which we may be assured will be given to all who inquire in the same spirit: Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things."* If humility, candour, and anxious watchfulness against those previous habits of thought and feeling which might affect our judgment, be necessary in seeking any truth, how far more necessary when seeking that, which is so momentous in its results, so involved with early prejudices and associations, and so intimately connected with every

* We owe this view of our Saviour's words on that occasion to an admirable sermon preached by Mr. Sortain, at Brighton, October, 1848.

368

HUMILITY OF SPIRIT.

feeling, every hope, and every fear, that after the most strenuous efforts to discern it, we must yet acknowledge in deepest humility how great are the chances on the side of error.

The wisest, the most learned, the most experienced have need of this humility: what then shall we say to the young, who have neither learning, wisdom, nor experience? Few things could grieve us more than that any into whose hands these pages may fall should draw from them a supposed encouragement of the rash and arrogant levity with which young people sometimes reject the opinions in which they have been brought up, because they are the opinions of their parents or teachers. We have urged them to inquire and judge for themselves, in accordance with the Apostle's injunction, "to try all things, and hold fast that which is good;" because every rational and responsible being is bound to know the grounds of his convictions, and the principles on which he acts. But they must remember, that when they reject an opinion sanctioned by parental authority, by the Church to which they belong, or by the general assent of the country in which they live, the burden of proof lies with them. They are bound to show on what grounds they dissent from opinions which have so great weight of authority on their side; and if they have sense and candour, they will learn in this process of inquiry and proof a practical lesson of humility, more effectual than any sermon on the duty of passive submission to authority. We believe that there would be far greater tolerance of dissent in religious opinions were the generality of persons taught by personal experience the difficulty of attaining even proximate truth, and brought thereby to the humbling consciousness of their own fallibility; for we generally find that the most dogmatic in the assertion of their own views, and the most intolerant of any dissent from them, are those who have taken their religion as they do their dress, from the customs of the country they live in, and have never sufficiently looked into its evidences to understand even the nature of the proofs on which it rests, or of the attacks directed against it.

We should have dealt less earnestly and less strongly upon the erroneous views of religion noticed in this chapter, did we not feel convinced that their practical influence is as injurious as it is extensive. By giving a sectarian and irrational aspect to the Christian faith, they deprive it of that very character of universality which stamps it as Divine. If we reduce our religion to a system of theological propositions, or of peculiar forms of prayer and Church government, it becomes applicable only to individuals of certain times and countries. As human intelligence expands, as knowledge increases and throws new light on every subject, such

a system must grow obsolete; and from the error of regarding it as identified with religion, arises a two-fold danger: on the one hand, pious but weak minds are led to regard all progress, all knowledge, as inimical to religion; on the other, bolder and stronger minds are tempted to regard religion as inimical to human progress, or at least as a system quite apart from the great interests and duties of life. Both views are almost equally injurious to the spread of true piety and true civilization. They separate that which should be indissolubly united,-the noblest interests of man's soul and his practical duties.

This separation between our religious and our secular life, to which we have so often before alluded, is, we believe, more pernicious in its effects than any other single error whatever. The error assumes a different form according to the stronger or weaker religious feelings of the person who holds it With one class, religious emotions and doctrinal practices are alone considered worthy to occupy a Christian, and the daily duties, the necessary relaxations, all the pursuits, in short, which cannot be considered strictly devotional, are not indeed renounced, for that were impossible, but excluded from the pale of religious principle, and for that very reason placed under the influence of lower motives, and carried on but too often in a lower spirit than that of the mere worldly man of honour. With the great mass of the world, again, religion is a thing of Sundays and holidays, limited to church-going and Bible-reading, and entirely excluded from the domain of active every-day life, in which the attempt to act on avowedly religious principles would be laughed at as enthusiasm. In both cases the result is the same,i.e., to limit the influence of religion to one class of feelings and actions, and to bring it down from its real position as a universal and governing principle to a partial and subordinate one.

It is to this and similar errors that we must attribute the slow and imperfect advance of the world in moral improvement as compared with the rapid development of material civilization. To them we may trace the infidelity that has everywhere dogged the steps of superstition, and that melancholy inconsistency between the principles and the practice of religious communities which too nearly justifies the taunt of the unbeliever. As we look around on the mass of ignorance and vice which festers beneath the surface of society, and painfully meditate on the low tone of morals, the low views of human life which pervade every class, and make the reformer at times despair of his kind, the question is again and again forced upon us: could these things be in the nineteenth century of Christianity, had its true end, the moral purification and progressive improvement of man, never been lost

sight of in undue attention to means;-had the teaching been as enlightened and comprehensive as it has been general;-had differences of opinion and form been merged in the unity of that Spirit which breathes "Glory to God on high, and on earth peace, and good-will towards men!"

The wider view of religion we have striven to sketch out excludes all division between religious and secular duty, between reason and the moral emotions. It may clothe itself at different epochs in different forms, and according to the progress of knowledge admit different views of religious truths, but the vital principle of love to God, producing entire obedience to his will, remains the same, applicable to all times, to all countries, and to every diversity of intellect. It is the principle which runs through every page of the Gospel,-which inspired the life and death of our Master, Christ,-which breathes in the teaching of his Apostles, giving unity to the whole, notwithstanding minor differences and discrepancies; it is the same principle which forms the groundwork of Christian morals in which all sects are agreed, whatever their doctrinal differences, and which, we earnestly hope, will, as prejudices decay, as knowledge and tolerance increase, manifest itself in nobler forms, a loftier faith, a wider charity, till the life of individuals and of society shall become the expression of God's will in man's destiny, and our Saviour's prayer be realized that "His will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

But if this hope is ever to be realized, it must be through the agency of women. Every lasting social reform must, as we said in the first pages of this book, take root in home education; men may discover truth and lay down principles, but women alone can give those principles vital power over the heart, by associating them with the strongest feelings of our nature. It is the religion of the mother we must look to to mould the religious feeling of the child; it is the atmosphere which surrounds the cradle, whether it be that of the peasant or the prince, which determines whether the germs of virtue, piety, and holiness, which lie in each baby soul, shall be developed into vigorous and fruitful life, or die ere they have put forth one bud of promise. It is the mother's influence, the mother's character, giving certain and visible reality to the unseen truths she teaches, which must enable the young spirit to struggle against the passions excited by the ever-present temptations of sense. But, alas, if we look around us, where do we see such religious education as this? Instead of it we find children diligently instructed in the catechism, made to learn by rote collects and articles of faith which are necessarily incomprehensible to them. To this is added the daily reading of