fessor of Lausanne is at least on a level with the Professor of Neufchatel. The former has at times, perhaps, entered more profoundly into the strength of the objections. However this may be, he pursues with vigour, and presses close the Bauers and Reusses, and concludes, though perhaps with a little less decision than M. Godet, that the objections of internal criticism are entirely insufficient to weaken the testimony of antiquity. He affirms that the character of the fourth Gospel harmonises with this testimony, and that this writing of John is worthy of all our confidence, and of our highest admiration and esteem. Our two commentators, then, have answered, in the measure which the particular aim of his study prescribed to each, to the expectations of the age; and the reader impatient to open their books will not be disappointed. Although placed by their sympathies on rather different degrees of the scale of theological opinion, and differing widely on certain points of dogma, they are both agreed in their antagonism against the new school, and in their convictions relative to the fourth Gospel, and respect for its contents. In an age so agitated as ours, such agreement and such convictions say much. Is it not agreement in a belief in the supernatural? Is it not to have the same Father, and to find in Jesus the same Saviour-God, adorable in his eternal divinity, for his perfect redemption, and for the life-giving power which he exercises on souls by the Holy Spirit? Is it not to be disposed to the same obedience, and the same life of watchfulness and prayer? Perhaps it would be proper here to say a few words on the manner of the translation and interpretation offered to us by these two authors. We do not profess to agree with all their opinions, and certainly there are matters of detail which are liable to criticism. We should like, above all, to study after them those eighteen introductory verses which have exercised so profound an influence on Christian dogmatics. But it will always be time to return to them; those are immortal words. Let us hope, in conclusion, that these works may be well received by the French public, and that, appreciated as they deserve, they will never allow the authors to regret their labours. May many writers, now silent, be encouraged by their example to study with prayer other books of Scripture, to take up their pens, and prove to the world that the good studies and the love of the Bible are not, God be praised! dead among French Protestants. The Broad Church and Moral Law. 507 ART. IV.-The Broad Church and Moral Law. 1. Theology of the Nineteenth Century. Fraser's Magazine, Feb. 1865. 2. Sermons by the late Rev. F. W. Robertson of Brighton. 3. Maurice's Theological Essays. HOSE of our readers who are acquainted with the writings THOSE of Maurice, Robertson of Brighton, and such like,-whose lucubrations Dean Stanley has audaciously characterised as "the theology of the nineteenth century"!-must be aware that they are pervaded by a really unethical view of Moral Law; and that these theologists are not aware that this notion is selfcontradictory. They practically,-not by rhetorical illustration, which might be taken for what it is worth and largely or wholly set aside, but as giving forth a profound and philosophical generalisation,-identify moral with physical law, and represent God as ruling intelligent beings, capable of being his friends and, in a sense, his companions throughout eternity, on virtually the same principles as those by which he accomplishes his purposes with the dead material universe. That a notion like this, which renders any Moral Philosophy, strictly and properly so called, an impertinence and impossibility should be chosen as a foundation for a "Theology," is strange enough; but that the arbitrary speculations elaborated from it should be welcomed, and set over against the theology of the Reformation and the Confessions of the Catholic Church of Christ, with ostentatious preference and high-sounding augury of hopefulness, on the ground that they do more justice to the moral element in Christianity, is still more amazing, and fitted to convince us that the beginning of the end has come. To our mind, this is worse than another preference once expressed very loudly in the streets of Jerusalem; for we are not aware that the Jews augured great things for the future of Barabbas! But then he was a robber on a small scale compared with this. This theory would rob our universities of all their chairs of moral philosophy, raze to the ground our senate halls of justice throughout the land, expurgate our libraries of all their treasured wealth of wisdom on jurisprudence, dismantle all our men of law, and throw the ermines of our judges to the moles and to the bats. * "The third fact which forms a characteristic of modern [Broad Church] theology is, that it is more and more disposed to regard the moral attributes of God, and the moral duties of man, as the point from which all theology starts, and to which it must return." Sic!-See Theology of the Nineteenth Century, Fraser's Mag. Feb. 1865, p. 259. If moral law is no longer to be regarded as strict and proper commandment, objective authoritative commandment, but as a subjective influence operating per se, and moulding the nature and doings of men after the same fashion as gravitation governs the movement of a planet, or as chemical affinities affect the more hidden properties of matter, why should we be thought irreverent or discourteous if we should propose to carry out the The distinction between Law Moral and Law Physical is drawn by Chalmers with his own remarkable copiousness of expression and of exposition, in a work written long before it could have been supposed that professing theologians would have confounded things which differ so radically : : "It is of great importance,"-far greater now than then,-"that you be made acquainted with the two different senses that belong to the word law. At one time it signifies an authoritative code, framed by a master for the regulation and obedience of those who are subject to him. And so we understand it when we speak of the law of God, whether by this we mean His universal moral law or any system of local and temporary enactments-such as those which were embodied for the special government of the Jews, and have obtained the general denomination of the Mosaic law or the ceremonial law. According to this meaning of it, it stands related to jurisprudence-established by one party who have the right or the power of command, and submitted to by another party on whom lies the duty or the necessity of obedience. The laws of the Medes and Persians-the laws of any country-and, in a word, any rule put forth by authority and enforced by sanctions, whether it has issued from the Divine Governor, or from those who have the reins of civil or political authority upon earth--All are expressed by the same term and in the same sense of the term. But there is still another and very frequent meaning of this word, apart altogether from jurisprudence-a meaning applicable in cases where there is no obedience of living and accountable creatures at all; and a maning in which it might be used and understood even by the Atheist, who denied the being or the power of a living sovereign who presided over nature, and established the various successions that go on with such order and regularity around us. It is quite consistent with the use of language, to speak of the laws of nature denoting thereby the process by which events follow each other, in a train of certain and unvarying accompaniment-Such for example as the law of falling bodies-the law of reflection from polished surfaces-the laws of the vegetable kingdom; and even in this sense may we speak of the laws of the human mind, as altogether distinct from that law of God to which it is morally and rightfully subject in the way of jurisprudence. By one of these laws its thoughts follow each other in a certain order that might almost be predicted-so that if one thought be present to it, it is sure to suggest another thought; and this is called the law of association. And so in proportion as we make an intimate study of ourselves, shall we find certain methods of procedure, in the order of which the feelings and the faculties and the habits of man are found to go forward; and all these may be announced by metaphysicians and moralists as the laws of human nature. The law which willing and accountable creatures are bound to obey is one thing. The law, in virtue of which creatures whether animate or inanimate are found at all times to make the same exhibition in the same circumstances, is another. "At the same time it is not difficult to perceive, how one and the same term came to be applied to things so distinct in themselves. For you will observe that law, according to the first sense of it, is not applicable to a single command that may have issued from me at one time, and perhaps may never be repeated. It is true that this one commandment, like all the others, is obeyed, because of that general law by which the servant is bound to iu fil the will of his master. Yet you would not say of the special commandment itself that it was a law; nor does it attain the rank of such a denomination, unless Spinning Jennies doing Duty. 509 theory? The truly grand modern generalisation* in physical science is the "Co-relation of Forces," asserting indeed, as it does, the ultimate identity of all physical forces whatsoever. And as force produces and is measured by motion, individual forces can be all made alternately to replace each, even to exact numerical equivalence. Thus, "Heat" is ultimately but "a Mode of Motion ;" and in a given temperature is identical with a calculable intensity of gravitation that would cause a projectile describe a specified parabola, or a planet a particular ellipse. Now, on the Broad Church view of moral law, why not find an equivalent force, for instance, for the fifth com the thing enjoined by it be a habit or a practice of invariable observation. Thus the order that the door of each apartment shall be shut in the act of leaving it or that none of the family shall be missing after a particular hour in the evening-or that Sabbath shall be spent by all the domestics either in church or in the exercises of household piety-These may be characterised as the laws of the family-not the random and fortuitous orders of the current day, but orders of standing force and obligation for all the days of the year; and in virtue of which you may be sure to find the same uniform conduct on the part of those who are subject to the law, in the same certain circumstances that the law hath specified. "Now it is this common circumstance of uniformity, which hath so extended the application of the term law. Should you drop a piece of heavy matter from your hand, nothing more certain nor more constant than the descent which it will make to the ground-just as if constrained so to do by the authority of a universal enactment on the subject, and hence the law of gravi tation. Or if space be allowed for its downward movement, nothing more certain or uniform than the way in which it quickens its descent-just as if bidden to make greater speed, and hence the law of acceleration in falling bodies. Or if light be made to fall by a certain path on a smooth and polished surface, nothing more mathematically sure than the path by which it will bo given back again to the eye of him who looks to the image that has thus been formed, and hence in optics the law of reflection. Or if a substance float upon the water, nothing more rigidly and invariably accurate than that the quantity of fluid displaced is equal in weight to that of the body which is supported; and all this from a law in hydrostatics. Now there is a like constancy running throughout the whole of nature, and any of her uniform processes is referred to the operation of a law-just as if she sat with the authority of a mistress over her mute and unconscious subjects, and as if they by the regularity of their movements did willing and reverential homage to the authority of her regulations. But you will perceive wherein it is that the difference lies. The one kind of law is framed by a living master for the obedience of living subjects, and may be called juridical law. The other is framed by a living master also, for amid the diversity of operations it is God who worketh all in all; but it is not by a compliance of the will that an obedience is rendered thereunto-it is by the force of those natural principles wherewith the things in question are endowed, and in virtue of which they move and act and operate in that one way which is agreeable to their nature. This kind of law would by philosophers be called physical law. The one is a perceptive rule for the government of willing and accountable creatures. The other is an operative principle residing in every creature, be it animate or be it inanimate; and determining it by its own force to certain uniform processes."—Chalmers's Lectures on Romans, Lect. on Rom. viii. 2. See Grove's Co-relation of Forces, and Professor Tyndal's Heat a Mode of Motion; remarkable, the one for fine generalisation, the other for beautiful experiment. VOL. XIV.NO. LIII. M m mandment? We remember, on visiting a flat of spinning jennies in Manchester some years ago, being told by our conductor that these beautiful pieces of machinery performed the duty of so many children. Of course he understood himself as speaking figuratively. But that was before Robertson had published his sermons, or Maurice written his essays. Things are altered now. Why should not a disappointed parent, being one of the merchant princes of the earth, compensate for the distress of a domestic rebellion, by giving an order for the equivalent number of the jennies, and putting on the exact additional horse-power in the engine room? And then the little rebels might equivalate too. For if they lose the reward of "the first commandment with promise," there are equivalent medicinal as well as mechanical forces to make up for it, and all may be square again by the tabulated indemnifying number of Parr's life pills! We are quite prepared to have this called profane. But Pascal has rebuked that charge. So that "you see, fathers, ridicule is, in some cases, a very appropriate means of reclaiming men from their errors; do not then expect to make people believe that it is unworthy of a Christian to treat error with derision" (Prov. Let. xi.). But we can treat this error seriously too, and intend to do so. We observe then,— In the first place, that the application of the term Law to the uniform sequences of phenomena in the physical world is sufficient to shew that law, in its original signification, implies something more than the physical world can either embody or adequately illustrate. For, unquestionably, it is applied in such connections figuratively, or rhetorically. It is an instance of the rhetorical figure called personification. But personification is an attribution of ideal personality where it is quite understood that real personality does not exist. In the solar system, for instance, the sun is poetically conceived of as a mighty monarch seated on his central throne, and issuing his commands to the planets and satellites that move like obedient subjects round him. But who does not see that in the attribution of personality, in any sense, to the elements of the material world, the objects of contemplation, by an illusion to which the mind pleasurably resigns, without deceiving, itself, are regarded as belonging to a realm not natively and really their own? And the very use which we make sarcastically or satirically of the word satellite, as indicating slavish or sycophantish obedience, has no point or meaning, except as carrying in it the accusation that the individual has abandoned his position and prerogative as the inhabitant of a realm of personal liberty and moral power, and descended, as it were, into that mere physical world, the elements of which fancy must lift up into a kingdom higher than their own, before they can be conceived |