3

the Author keeps strictly within the sphere he had marked out for himself, everything of a higher nature in Man, intellectual or religious, that could aid or enforce his argument, or supply a living and quickening motive to the dead matter of knowledge, is made to flow into the stream of his thought. The Argument, indeed, is most largely occupied in affording economic information and guidance, but its stress rests mainly on moral and spiritual motive.

ART. V.-NEW PASSAGE FROM PROFESSOR NEWMAN'S CREED.

Phases of Faith: or, Passages from the History of my Creed, by Francis William Newman, formerly Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. Second Edition. London: Chapman, 1853.

THIS Second Edition of the Phases of Faith contains, besides minor additions, two new chapters, designed to settle the author's accounts with his critics. In one of these, he replies to the "Eclipse of Faith;" in the other, he discusses, with especial reference to the notice of his book in the Prospective Review, the doctrine of the Moral Perfection of Jesus. Perhaps it is proof of self-deceiving partiality, that we confess ourselves greatly delighted with the one, and wholly unconvinced by the other; and it may be unbecoming in us, seeing that we also are in the same case, to express satisfaction at Mr. Newman's indignant self-vindication against the flippant insults of the "Eclipse of Faith." But that book, with all its cleverness of caricature, has always appeared to us so full of reprehensible misstatement, and so exclusively an inspiration of utter moral scepticism and irreverence, that we cannot but rejoice in the terrible justice of Mr. Newman's exposure and rebuke. The method of the work-its plan of appealing from what seems shocking in the Bible to something more shocking in the world—simply doubles every difficulty, without relieving any; and tends to enthrone a Devil everywhere, and leave a God nowhere: and, though the writer does but follow here in the argumentative steps of Butler, he manifests a very different spirit, never caring to relieve the real oppression of a doubt, but exulting in the discovery of another to balance it; attempting absolutely nothing to clear the disturbed waters of Revealed faith, but hastening with the utmost glee to poison the fountains of Natural piety; relishing the sorrow of the believers whose dreams he seeks to dissipate; and content to persuade them that, as the Universe is ugly, and their Life an injustice, and their own Nature a lie, it would be

squeamish to find anything in Scripture that is not good enough for them. The whole force of the writer's thought -his power of exposition, of argument, of sarcasm, is thrown, in spite of himself, into the irreligious scale; and to no class of readers, we believe, has his book been more acceptable, than to the literary and political men, who look on all theological reasoning as a mere play of gladiatorial skill, and, assuming religious truth to be unattainable on any terms, are pleased to see each fresh attempt to find it put down in favour of an hereditary creed. If the work be really written in good faith, and be not rather a covert attack upon all religion, it curiously shows how the temple of the author's worship stands on the same foundation with the officina of atheism, and in such close vicinity that the passer-by cannot tell from which of the two the voices stray into the street. Betrayed by his mocking spirit, the author had grossly misrepresented Mr. Newman's opinions and arguments; and now meets a fitting retribution from a logic more masterly, and a conscience more commanding than his own.

How it is that these same powerful instruments, when wielded in a different cause and directed against ourselves, appear to us to beat the air, we really cannot tell. If it be any pride of personal consistency, or any blindness of prejudice and fear, that hides from us the truth as it presents itself to the perceptions of our author and friend, we are unworthy to discuss with him questions which only trustful men, loving reality better than their own dreams, are fitted to approach. His own considerate and affectionate treatment, leaves us too without excuse for any sentiment inconsistent with perfect openness and veracity of mind. We are conscious of a profound deference for Mr. Newman's moral and historical judgments; yet so little can we feel the force of his new arguments, that we rest our Christianity on that Moral Perfection of Jesus which he arraigns, and in the holiest elements of our conception of God, trace the lineaments of that Historic Person whom he charges with arrogance, affectation, and vanity. We must justify in a few words our tenacity on this point.

Mr. Newman argues against the Moral Perfection of Christ on two grounds: that it is, intrinsically and à priori,

incredible, if his nature were simply human: and that it is directly contradicted by many traits of imperfection presented in the Gospels. The first argument is presented thus :—

"To me, I confess, it is almost a first principle of thought, that as all sorts of perfection co-exist in God, so is no sort of perfection possible to man. I do not know how for a moment to imagine an Omniscient Being who is not Almighty, or an Almighty who is not All-Righteous. So neither do I know how to conceive of perfect holiness anywhere but in the Blessed and only Potentate.

"Man is finite and crippled on all sides; and frailty in one kind causes frailty in another. Deficient power causes deficient knowledge, deficient knowledge betrays him into false opinion, and entangles him into false positions. It may be a defect of my imagination, but I do not feel that it implies any bitterness, that even in the case of one who abides in primitive lowliness, to attain even negatively an absolutely pure goodness seems to me impossible; and much more, to exhaust all goodness, and become a single Model-Man, unparalleled, incomparable, a standard for all other moral excellence. Especially I cannot conceive of any human person rising out of obscurity, and influencing the history of the world, unless there be in him forces of great intensity, the harmonising of which is a vast and painful problem. Every man has to subdue himself first, before he preaches to his fellows; and he encounters many a fall and many a wound in winning his own victory. And as talents are various, so do moral natures vary, each having its own weak and strong side; and that one man should grasp into his simple self the highest perfection of every moral kind, is to me at least as incredible as that one should preoccupy and exhaust all intellectual greatness. I feel the prodigy to be so peculiar, that I must necessarily wait until it is overwelmingly proved before I admit it. No one can without unreason urge me to believe, on any but the most irrefutable arguments, that a man, finite in every other respect, is infinite in moral perfection."-P. 141.

This argument, however, would be overruled, Mr. Newman conceives, if a superhuman origin could be claimed for Jesus. Those who raise him, physically, into an exceptional being may, with some consistency, make him a moral unique; by taking him out of the category of humanity, they may exempt him from its predicates of infirmity.

"It could not be for nothing that this exceptional personage

was sent into the world. That he was intended as head of the human race, in one or more senses, would be a plausible opinion; nor should I feel any incredulous repugnance against believing his morality to be, if not divinely perfect, yet separated from that of common men so far, that he might be a God to us, just as every parent is to a young child."-P. 142.

The parent, however, stands in this relation to the young child, without being an "exceptional personage at all, or deriving any aid from a miraculous entrance into this world. Nay, his whole moral power over the child, the interchange between the two of tenderness and reverence, depend upon their being the same in kind, related as the higher and the lower stage of homogeneous existence. And so it is throughout all the wider circles to which moral ties communicate their form and symmetry. The whole world is held together by like forces of natural reverence, grouping men in ten thousand clusters around centres diviner and more luminous than themselves. if every family, every tribe, every sect, may have its head and representative, transcendant in the essential attributes that constitute the group, what hinders this law from spreading to a larger compass, and giving to mankind their highest realization, superlative in whatever is imitable and binding?

And

The doctrine, common to Mr. Newman with most Christians, that a hyperphysical nature or endowment is an indispensable condition of a sinless life, appears to us to mistake and compromise the very essence of Moral Perfection. Such perfection consists, as we understand it, in entire fidelity to a trust, and the persistent obedience to a higher impulse in the presence of a lower. To say that this is impossible, is to deny the power of man to do the will of God: to claim, as its prerequisite condition, an extra supply of forces, is to pronounce the human problem an over-match for human resources, and to impugn the proportion and measures of our task. Were Christ's immaculate excellence attained on these exceptional conditions, not only would it fail to impose, but it would actually disprove, any obligation in us to be like him—for it would be a public proclamation, that, had not Heaven come to his special rescue, even his administration of life must have broken down. Nor would it, in fact, have