A FEW PRELIMINARY WORDS.

CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY; PROGRESS, TRUE CONCEPTION, SCIENTIFIC

STATEMENT.

DURING the first seven centuries of the Christian Church, the attention of Theologians, so far as we can judge, seems to have been directed chiefly to the establishment of the claims of Christianity as the true religion of God, and to the establishment within the Church itself of the fundamental truths of that religion. By the end of that period, and after innumerable conflicts, the doctrine of the Church everywhere, seems to have been fully settled and confirmed by the decisions of general councils, concerning God and concerning Christ; and in the West, at least, settled also, very generally concerning man. But these-God, Man, and the Godman, are the grand elements of the science of Theology; and when they were settled in the faith of the Church, that science ought immediately to have risen, and, resting upon divine truth, to have passed steadily and rapidly to its perfect state. Instead of this, we have in the Western Church a period of eight centuries during which scholasticism in its rise and predominance is the most conspicuous manifestation of thought, down to the outburst of the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The Schoolmen interpreting the religion of Jesus by the Philosophy of Aristotle, as their predecessors of the Alexandrian school had interpreted it by the Philosophy of Plato; added, it may be allowed, to the stock of inquiry and speculation, much that deserved the consideration of posterity; but they added almost nothing to Theology, considered as the science of the knowledge of God unto salvation, whether as to its conception, the method of its proper treatment, or its practical development. Considered from the point of view of Reformed Christianity, scholasticism was a complete failure.

In this state of things that great awakening occurred, which we call the Reformation; which was connected with the past by so many streams, which combined in one movement so many powerful influences, which delivered to the future the seeds of so much that was glorious. It was an awakening of the Church of God to the spirit of its primeval and only true life; and it manifested itself in the reception and love of divine truth,

and by consequence in true faith and true holiness. The scientific treatment of Divine truth, therefore, followed the movement of the Reformation, more closely than it had followed the movement of the first planting of Christianity. In the Latin Church, the spirit and the method which had predominated during so many centuries of fatal error remained, and still remain; for to have shaken them off would have been to share in the revolt which emancipated the Reformers, the dread of which gave so strange an aspect to Ancient Theology, and exercised such fatal influence upon the speculations of the Schoolmen. In the bosom of the Reformation a division in the conception and treatment of Theology as a science, manifested itself from the beginning and has continued. In Protestantism, these diverse conceptions have been called, accurately enough, the one material, the other formal: the one grounding everything in a particular aspect of Divine Truth—the doctrine of Justification by Faith, for example; the other grounding everything in the sum of the whole truth revealed by God. The former conception, however true in particular, is altogether too narrow, altogether incomplete, as the conception of a science so vast. The latter conception-that of the Reformed strictly so called-was just. From it, the Reformed Theology ought to have developed itself, firmly and at once. The Church had not only recovered the position she occupied at the end of the seventh century—but had taken a great step in advance.

That the Reformed Theology did not adequately avail itself of its great position, nothing can prove more clearly than that after three centuries, the first attempt-that of Calvin-retains its supremacy. Augustine, even with his strange conception of the Papal Church, finds no name to match him—till Calvin. And Calvin's great work—which I had no small share in restoring to general circulation--though it is arbitrary in its method, and though abstract, practical, and controversial Theology, truth objective, subjective, and relative, are mingled confusedly throughout it; has no rival amidst the hundreds which have followed it. I attribute this failure of the Reformed Theology to develop itself completely as a perfect science, to the imperfect conceptions which these very defects signalize. It failed to conceive adequately what that science is, which is the sum of all revealed truth. It failed necessarily after that failure, to conceive adequately the method responsive to the true conception of that grandest of the sciences. It failed necessarily after these two failures, of adequate breadth of spiritual insight into the divine proportion of that truth, which was itself the very substance of the whole science of Theology. Whoever is willing to survey with candour, the whole field of scientific Theology, abstract, practical and controversial-Latin, Lutheran, and Reformed-since the Reformation was firmly established and its first fruits gathered; will see small cause to be satisfied that the Critical, Speculative,

or Philosophical methods of the ages which have succeeded that great period, are to be preferred to the arbitrary and artificial method they would supplant, or perhaps even to the best specimens of the scholastic spirit which the Reformation overthrew.

Is there, then, no natural method, whereby Theology planting itself on the grand foundation which the Reformers obtained three centuries ago, may develop itself as a science of positive truth? It may be true that Theologians have always felt obliged to confess to themselves, that the Knowledge of God attainable by man, was in some vague sense a true science-nay, the highest of the sciences. Manifestly, they were obliged to see that whatever Knowledge of God man does obtain, must be obtained by some means or other which are answerable to the faculties of man ; and all of these have designated the Word of God as one of these meanswhile all the orthodox have held that Divine Word to be the chief means, and all the Reformed have held it to be the only infallible means. But all this militates nothing against what I assert, nor against the importance of it. What I maintain is, that seeing the Knowledge of God is attainable by lost men unto salvation, seeing that the sources of this knowledge are few, precise and capable of exhaustive demonstration: it follows absolutely from these data, that the Knowledge of God unto salvation must be in the strictest sense-a science. And then as soon as those few and precise sources of knowledge are exhaustively demonstrated, it follows absolutely that the kind of science proved, is one of positive truth, both inductive and deductive.

It may also be conceded that all Theologians have been obliged to see, that some method or other must always be resorted to, by every one who will teach anything, or acquire anything, worthy to be called scientific knowledge. But it is nevertheless true, that they have to a deplorable extent, failed to observe that any particular method lay in the very nature of this divine science itself; failed to observe that the Revelation of divine truth, and the divine operation of truth in the human soul, followed any particular method; failed to observe that any particular method of teaching men the Knowledge of God unto salvation had preeminent if not exclusive claims; while it is undeniably certain that they have generally and continually used methods in the treatment of Theology, which were arbitrary, capricious and inconsistent with each other. On the other hand, what I maintain is, that a science being given, a method responsive to the nature of that science, follows of necessity; that the science of the Knowledge of God unto salvation being a purescience of absolute truth both inductive and deductive-and the sources of it exhaustively demonstrated-an analogous method of developing and teaching that science is inevitable: that till the acknowledgment and suc

cessful application of that method, the science to which it appertains cannot possibly reach its complete development and statement; and that even after the perfection of the science, it could not be adequately taught otherwise than by its own natural method. It seems to me that if all this were propounded merely as a speculation, instead of being almost selfevidently true as soon as it is clearly stated; the history of the progress of Theology through all ages, would beget the most violent presumption that the speculation was true.

Truth is capable of being considered systematically and absolutely, simply as truth reduced into a scientific form. Thus understood, but not otherwise, any system of truth is afterwards capable of being considered in all the possible effects and influences of that system of truth. Let it be remembered that no number of isolated truths, which have no known relations to each other, can ever be reduced into a scientific form, or ever produce any effects, or have any consequences, considered as a system. They cannot compose any system, nor be the subject of any knowledge beyond the mere knowledge of them as intractible particulars. If this be the character of Divine Revelation, it is idle to speak of systematic knowledge of it-absurd to talk about the plan of salvation. If there is any such thing as a system of divine truth capable of being known by man, then that system is necessarily subject to the distinction stated above; and considered in both the aspects stated, it is capable of being precisely distinguished from all serious error. It is in these three aspects that the Knowledge of God unto salvation must be considered, if it is to be completely understood-must be stated if it is to attain a complete scientific form. When so stated and so understood-allowance being made for human weakness-every pure science is placed in the only position in which its own perfect development is possible; and every separate truth which enters into that science, as it is demonstrated and located with precision, instead of weakening, confirms the science and adds to its efficacy, whether considered in an abstract, a practical, or a relative point of view. Every system of truth, and above all the system of divine truth, must be capable of maintaining itself under the test of this threefold and exhaustive aspect of all truth. In divine truth thus tested, even those sublime mysteries which men are pleased to call the contradictions of the Scriptures, disclose their real nature as great spiritual paradoxes inherent in the nature of the subject, necessarily liable to a double solution by us, and perceived to belong to a generalization higher than our faculties can reach in their present state.

Thus there is the clearest possible distinction between the exact statement of truth, and a disputation in support of that truth; a distinction, I insist, which cannot be overlooked in the elemental statement of any