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ART. X.-WORDSWORTH'S BAMPTON

LECTURES.

The One Religion: Truth, Holiness, and Peace desired by the Nations and revealed by Jesus Christ.-Bampton Lectures, 1881. By JOHN WORDSWORTH, M.A. (Oxford, 1881.)

NEARLY forty years have passed since Archdeacon Grant preached his Bampton Lectures on the subject of Missions. Those sober and earnest, yet cheerful and animating, addresses did much to give definiteness to the views of Churchmen about their missionary duty. What was then gained has never since been lost. All that has occurred in the intervening period has tended to concentrate men's attention more and more on the work of evangelizing the heathen. The consolidation of our empire in India, the opening up of China and Japan, and the constant advance of our intercourse with uncivilized races in every part of the world, have compelled men to ask themselves in what relation they, as Christians, stood to such as have not the knowledge of the Gospel. There could be but one answer in the mind of any ordinarily well-informed person: ""Christianity is a trust deposited with us on behalf of mankind;" and the most wonderful facilities have been providentially afforded to us Englishmen for the performance of our trust. Væ nobis si non evangelizaverimus.

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The steady growth of this practical conviction among us can scarcely be doubted. In spite of all the pressing calls for help which are made to us by our home populations, there has been a marked expansion in almost every province of the mission field.

Meantime we have become gradually conscious that there has been another set of forces at work in an antagonistic direction. Various forms of anti-Christian error have during the last thirty years been finding their way into our literature. In some cases views have been professed which hardly can be said to differ at all from those of ancient Pagan philosophers. Even transmigration and nihilism have had their advocates, in France and Germany at least, if not among ourselves. It is obvious how perilous a thing it must be, at such

1 1 The well-known words of Bishop Butler.

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a time, for men to come forward and undertake to form ' science of religions.' That is a work which none can achieve who does not carry with him the touchstone of religious truth communicated from God Himself.

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We cannot, therefore, but give a hearty welcome to these lectures of Mr. Wordsworth, which, he tells us in his preface,1 are meant to be a contribution to the comparative study of religion from a Christian point of view.' The lecturer has shown himself to possess in an unusual degree the qualifications which are indispensable for so difficult a task. First and foremost of these is a firm hold on the truths of revealed religion. But along with this he has combined a careful study of all that relates to the religious systems of Greece and Rome, of India and China, as well as of the less cultured portions of mankind. There is no reason why a Christian may not survey these with a feeling of tender compassion. It was an atheistic philosopher who could take pleasure in seeing men everywhere

'Errare, atque viam palantes quærere vitai.'

There is nothing of this feeling in the volume before us. It is evident throughout that the lecturer has endeavoured to conduct his inquiry, if with truthfulness and candour, yet with a studious desire of showing delicate and respectful consideration even to the saddest exhibitions of human frailty.

It was not an easy thing to see how unity could be given to the vast mass of details which would have to come under the lecturer's notice. The method he has adopted is at once simple and ingenious. He has distributed the main portion of his subject under the three heads of Truth, Holiness, and Peace. Man's intellect longs to receive a revelation from the God of Truth. His conscience seeks for some way of reconciling itself with Divine Holiness. His social affections can find their due exercise only under the protection of Peace. These yearnings of the soul of man are traceable in the various 'religions of the world;' but they nowhere find any satisfactory provision made for them, except under the Gospel. These three wants of men and the threefold response given to them by Christianity occupy the last six lectures; which form the staple of the volume.

Before entering, however, upon these distinctively Christian discussions, the lecturer judged it to be desirable that he should set forth the idea of God which pervades the whole Bible: since, if it be found that this idea bears on it the marks 1 p. vii.

of Truth, of which all other systems prove to be destitute, this will supply a reason for advancing to the remaining inquiries with all the more confidence. This is done in Lecture II.

The introductory lecture is fitly occupied with some practical remarks as to the unreasonableness, and in many cases the sinfulness, of abstaining from serious inquiry into religious truth. It is very important that this should be clearly understood. If religion be true, the obligation under which man is placed to the Author and Sustainer of his being is simply infinite. The very possibility, therefore, of its being true (as Pascal so well pointed out) makes it a duty to pay reverent regard to even the slighter evidences of its truth. To be careless in such a case is a sin, whatever be the immediate cause of such negligence. In some it may be worldliness and frivolity; in some a too exclusive devotion to literary or scientific pursuits- a very subtle form of self-indulgence; in some an unwillingness to encounter the self-humiliation which it is foreseen must be required, if the Gospel is to be the rule of life. Others are led astray by false notions of intellectual impartiality, as if nothing were to be admitted to be true or of practical obligation, unless it could be proved by the pure reason. It is difficult to say how far a habit of mind like this last may mislead some. If long continued, it may end in systematic suspicion of whatever appears to have a balance of evidence in its favour.1

This sceptical tendency is especially to be guarded against in dealing with the so-called 'science of religions.' Its operation here is to prejudice the mind against the legitimate deduction which is drawn from the facts-the 'testimonium animæ naturaliter Christianæ’—and to incline it to be satisfied with the indolent assumption that what is true of the religions of the world' is true of Christianity, and that if they are the products of man's own mind, so must it be.

Instead of thus foreclosing the inquiry, it is clearly their duty to examine carefully all the facts that are brought before them. Let them consider, if there be not good ground for concluding,

1. That the instinct which has led all nations to feel after God is a genuine part of our nature, and has a real object corresponding to it.

2. That Christianity does in fact supply that reality.

In the month of May last, M. Renan, in the presence of the French Academy, 'professed himself ignorant whether he himself was a spiritualist or a materialist, but avowed a sceptical tendency to doubt what was affirmed and to believe what was denied.' ('The Guardian,' May 3, 1882.)

We propose to follow the lecturer in his investigation of these points; first, however, giving an outline of the argument of Lecture II.

It was noticed by the early Christian apologists that when the heathen were speaking with natural earnestness they used such expressions as 'God is great' and 'God grant it,' thus showing that the human soul in its unbiased moments bears witness to the unity of God. Now, this instinctive testimony of the soul is confirmed by four separate, but convergent, lines of argument-from causation and design in nature, and from the sense of dependence and the moral law in man.' 1

But it is to be observed that this idea of the Divine Unity, which is so rooted in man's natural consciousness, and in so perfect agreement with the highest efforts of cultivated reason, has been held in its purity only by those who have had the light of Divine revelation communicated to them.2 It appears already in the history of Abraham, 1,900 years before Christ, and it continues to shine age after age with increasing clearness, in spite of the frequent incursions of Pagan idolatries among the people who were its special witnesses. It should be especially remarked how much important truth respecting the Divine nature was wrapped up in that name of God which was communicated to Moses. The affirmation, 'I am that I am,' combines the two ideas of personality and infinity, which man's understanding has never known how to reconcile. The 'I,' which appears in each member of the name, most plainly enforces the Divine personality. Yet the words, 'I am that which I am,' place the speaker before us as absolute, self-existent, and eternal. This is well set forth by the lecturer. 'All other things,' he says, 'have a limit outside them; they are finite, that is to say, bounded and conditioned, produced by, or tending to, or supported by, something else. But it is not so with God, who alone is Infinite. . . . Other things are defined in terms of something higher, and more generic. But God can only be defined as that which He is-the First, the Midst, and the Last; of whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things.' Let it be further noted that, immediately after this revelation of God as the Infinite Personal Being, Moses is commanded to say to the children of Israel, 'I AM hath sent me unto you,' thus teaching them to think of 1 B. L., p. 36.

2 See B. L., p. 34. Islam is, of course, no exception, even if the Moslem idea of God was less faulty than it is. For Mahomet acknowledged both the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures. Cp. Max Müller on Semitic Monotheism, which he traces to the faith of Abraham, and ascribes to "a special revelation.”—Selected Essays, vol. ii. pp. 463ƒ. p. 38.

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Him as one who watched over the welfare of His creatures.1 'This emphatic assertion of personal interest and loving care pervades the whole Bible, and is fundamental to the Hebrew and Christian conception' of the Divine nature.

If the argument which has been drawn from the above facts be objected to on the ground that the attributes of infinity and personality are not compatible, the lecturer suggests a twofold reply: first, that, for now a hundred generations, men have actually believed in the union of the two apparent opposites in the Divine nature'; and, secondly, that we can even see our way towards a sufficient explanation of the mystery. For (it is remarked 2) 'the limits of the Divine Being, in His relation to other dependent beings, are only such as He chooses to impose upon Himself. It is His infinite will that certain finite wills should exist in time, distinguishable from His own.' This is enough to satisfy us that there is no incompatibility between the two attributes. For the rest, we need not hesitate to allow that the full reconciliation of them is beyond our power; for who does not feel that the idea of God, the Uncreated, must needs have that in it which surpasses the comprehension of any created intellect? If, then, there be a transcendental element in the revealed conception of God, this can only serve to commend it the more to our acceptance, as befitting Him, whose nature must contain in it inexhaustible riches of what will for ever remain to us mysteries.

Very different is the case when we turn our eyes in other directions. In Paganism we find these two fundamental attributes invariably severed one from the other. We have Pantheism on the one side, denying the personality of God, and on the other anthropomorphic Deism,' which contradicts His infinity.

The lecturer gives an interesting sketch of the various modifications of these errors, and points out their injurious influence. Pantheism tends to overthow the very basis both of morals and of religion. It obliterates all distinction between good and evil, between right and wrong. It leaves no room for human free-will to operate, and consequently removes all responsibility for what is done.3 The whole of life and nature is for the Pantheist but a meaningless vision.' Deism, on its side, is ever tending to the practical neglect of God. God is no longer the Ruler and Sustainer of the Universe, but stands wholly aloof from it. The world is placed under the management of fixed laws, which are as 1 B. L., p. 39. 2 p. 41. 3 p. 47.

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