XII. Milman's View of Christianity

 [ British Critic, Jan. 1841]

 THE "History of Christianity" which Mr. Milman has lately given to the world, is a work of very considerable ability, and bears upon it tokens of much thought and varied research. No one could doubt that such would be the character of any publication of the author's, and the expectation raised by his name has been increased by the length of time during which reports have been current of his having a work on Christianity in hand. It consists of three ample volumes, but even these are but an instalment of the whole design to which he has devoted himself. "If he should be blessed with life and leisure," says his Preface, "the author cannot but look forward to the continuation of this history with increasing interest, as it approaches the period of the re-creation of European society under the influence of Christianity." P. 10. It is notorious that the English Church is destitute of an Ecclesiastical History; Gibbon is almost our sole authority for subjects as near the heart of a Christian as any can well be. We do not indeed mean to say that Mr. Milman will supply this want; rather we conceive him to hold that it is a want which ought not to be supplied. Our impression at least is, we do not mean to state it as more than an impression, that he considers Church histories, as such, to be nothing better than "tolerabiles ineptiæ." His present volumes are rather the substitute than the supply of this desideratum in our ecclesiastical literature, and are meant to supersede the history of the Church by the history of Christianity. But we acknowledge even this as a boon; without agreeing to Mr. Milman's historical views or doctrinal opinions, as what we shall presently say will show, we consider it to be impossible even for a Gibbon to write an uninstructive history of the Evangelical Dispensation; and much less can Mr. Milman, who is not a Gibbon, but a clergyman, fail to be useful to those who are in search of facts, and have better principles than his own to read them by. We frankly confess that he has not pleased us; nor, on the other hand, will he please any clear-headed, long-sighted adherents of that philosophy which he has allowed himself just to taste, except, indeed, as far as, in the present state of things they will thankfully accept whatever is conceded to them, and welcome it as a precedent and pattern for fresh innovations.

 1.

 However, we shall be very unjust to Mr. Milman, unless we try carefully to place ourselves in the position which he has chosen for contemplating and delineating the Christian religion. Unless we succeed in this, we shall cruelly misunderstand him, as if he held certain opinions, when he does but state the premisses which practically involve them. It is obvious that the whole system of Revelation may be viewed in various, nay antagonist aspects. He who regards our Lord as man, does not in consequence deny that He is more than man; and they who with Mr. Milman love to regard the whole Christian history as much as possible as a thing of earth, may be wise or unwise, reverent or irreverent, in so doing, may be attempting what is practicable or impracticable, may eventually be led on to commit themselves to positive errors about it, and may accordingly be wantonly trifling with serious matters, but cannot without unfairness be charged with an ipso facto denial of its heavenly character. The Christian history is "an outward visible sign of an inward spiritual grace:" whether the sign can be satisfactorily treated separate from the thing signified is another matter; but it seems to be Mr. Milman's intention so to treat it, and he must be judged by that intention, not by any other which we choose to impute to him. Christianity has an external aspect and an internal; it is human without, divine within. To attempt to touch the human element without handling also the divine, we may fairly deem unreal, extravagant, and sophistical; we may feel the two to be one integral whole, differing merely in aspect, not in fact: we may consider that a writer has not mastered his own idea who resolves to take liberties with the body, and yet not insult the animating soul. So we do; but all this is another matter; such a person does not mean any harm; nor does the writer who determines, as far as he can, to view the Christian as a secular fact, to the exclusion of all theological truth. He gives a representation of it, such as it would appear to a man of the world. This, at least, is our primâ facie view of Mr. Milman's book, and to draw it out shall be our first step, in doing which we shall have an opportunity, without unkindness to the author, of convicting him of what seems to us a want of clearness and definiteness of conception in his original design.

 And first he shall state his object for himself, as it is set before us in his Preface:

 "As the Jewish annals might be considered in relation to the general history of man, to the rank which the nation bore among the various families of the human race, and the influence which it exercised on the civilization of mankind: so Christianity may be viewed either in a strictly religious, or rather in a temporal, social, and political light . In the former case, the writer will dwell almost exclusively on the religious doctrines, and will bear continual reference to the new relation established between man and the Supreme Being: the predominant character will be that of the theologian. In the latter, although he may not altogether decline the examination of the religious doctrines, their development, and their variations, his leading object will be to trace the effect of Christianity on the individual and social happiness of man, its influence on the polity, the laws and institutions, the opinions, the manners, even on the arts and the literature of the Christian world: he will write rather as an historian than as a religious instructor . Though, in fact, a candid and dispassionate survey of the connexion of Christianity with the temporal happiness, and with the intellectual and social advancement of mankind, even to the religious inquirer, cannot but be of high importance and interest; while with the general mass, at least of the reading and intellectual part of the community, nothing tends so powerfully to the strengthening or weakening of religious impression and sentiment, nothing acts so extensively, even though perhaps indirectly, on the formation of religious opinions, and on the speculative or practical belief or rejection of Christianity, as the notions we entertain of its influence on the history of man, and its relation to human happiness and social improvement." Pp. v. vi.

 In another place he tells us that the course of his history

 "will endeavour to trace all the modifications of Christianity, by which it accommodated itself to the spirit of successive ages; and by this apparently almost skilful, but in fact necessary, condescension to the predominant state of moral culture, of which itself formed a constituent element, maintained its uninterrupted dominion. It is the author's object, the difficulty of which he himself fully appreciates, to portray the genius of the Christianity of each successive age, in connexion with that of the age itself; entirely to discard all polemic views ; to mark the origin and progress of all the subordinate diversities of belief; their origin in the circumstances of the place and time at which they appeared; their progress from their adaptation to the prevailing state of opinion or sentiment: rather than to confute error or to establish truth; in short, to exhibit the reciprocal influence of civilization on Christianity, of Christianity on civilization. To the accomplishment of such a scheme he is well aware that besides the usual high qualifications of a faithful historian, is requisite, in an especial manner, the union of true philosophy with perfect charity, if indeed they are not one and the same. This calm, impartial, and dispassionate tone he will constantly endeavour, he dares scarcely hope, with such warnings on every side of involuntary prejudice and unconscious prepossession, uniformly to maintain. In the honesty of his purpose he will seek his excuse for all imperfection or deficiency in the execution of his scheme." P. 47.

 These extracts, setting forth the intellectual idea under which the author writes, contain matter more than sufficient for the limits within which we wish our remarks upon him to be confined.

 2.

 Now let us see how much we are disposed to grant to Mr. Milman, and where we part company with him: in doing which we must be allowed to begin somewhat ab ovo, and for a while to exchange a critical for a didactic tone. We maintain then, as we have already said, that Christianity, nor Christianity only, but all God's dealings with His creatures, have two aspects, one external, one internal. What one of the earliest Fathers says of its highest ordinance, is true of it altogether, and of all other divine dispensations: they are twofold, "having one part heavenly, and one part earthly." This is the law of Providence here below; it works beneath a veil, and what is visible in its course does but shadow out at most, and sometimes obscures and disguises what is invisible. The world in which we are placed has its own system of laws and principles, which, as far as our knowledge of it goes, is, when once set in motion, sufficient to account for itself, as complete and independent as if there was nothing beyond it. Ordinarily speaking, nothing happens, nothing goes on in the world, but may be satisfactorily traced to some other event or fact in it, or has a sufficient result in other events or facts in it, without the necessity of our following it into a higher system of things in order to explain its existence, or to give it a meaning. We will not stop to dwell on exceptions to this general statement, or on the narrowness of our knowledge of things: but what is every day said and acted on proves that this is at least the impression made upon most minds by the course of things in which we find ourselves. The sun rises and sets on a law; the tides ebb and flow upon a law; the earth is covered with verdure or buried in the ocean, it grows old and it grows young again, by the operation of fixed laws. Life, whether vegetable or animal, is subjected to a similar external and general rule. Men grow to maturity, then decay, and die. Moreover, they form into society, and society has its principles. Nations move forward by laws which act as a kind of destiny over them, and which are as vigorous now as a thousand years ago. And these laws of the social and political world run into the physical, making all that is seen one and one only system; a horse stumbles, and an oppressed people is rid of their tyrant; a volcano changes populous cities into a dull lake; a gorge has of old time opened, and the river rolls on, bearing on its bosom the destined site of some great mart, which else had never been. We cannot set limits either to the extent or to the minuteness of this wonderful web of causes and effects, in which all we see is involved. It reaches to the skies; it penetrates into our very thoughts, habits, and will.

 Such is confessedly the world in which our Almighty Creator has placed us. If then He is still actively present with His own work, present with nations and with individuals, He must be acting by means of its ordinary system, or by quickening, or as it were, stimulating its powers, or by superseding or interrupting it; in other words, by means of what is called nature, or by miracle; and whereas strictly miraculous interference must be, from the nature of the case, rare, it stands to reason that, unless He has simply retired, and has left the world ordinarily to itself, content with having originally imposed on it certain general laws, which will for the most part work out the ends which He contemplates, He is acting through, with, and beneath those physical, social, and moral laws, of which our experience informs us. Now it has ever been a firm article of Christian faith, that His Providence is in fact not general merely, but is, on the contrary, thus particular and personal; and that, as there is a particular Providence, so of necessity that Providence is secretly concurring and co-operating with that system which meets the eye, and which is commonly recognized among men as existing. It is not too much to say that this is the one great rule on which the Divine Dispensations with mankind have been and are conducted, that the visible world is the instrument, yet the veil, of the world invisible, the veil, yet still partially the symbol and index: so that all that exists or happens visibly, conceals and yet suggests, and above all subserves, a system of persons, facts, and events beyond itself.

 Thus the course of things has a natural termination as well as a natural origin: it tends towards final causes while it springs from physical; it is ever issuing from things which we see round about us; it is ever passing on into what is matter of faith, not of sight. What is called and seems to be cause and effect, is rather an order of sequence, and does not preclude, nay, perhaps implies, the presence of unseen spiritual agency as its real author. This is the animating principle both of the Church's ritual and of Scripture interpretation; in the latter it is the basis of the theory of the double sense; in the former it makes ceremonies and observances to be signs, seals, means, and pledges of supernatural grace. It is the mystical principle in the one, it is the sacramental in the other. All that is seen, the world, the Bible, the Church, the civil polity, and man himself, are types, and, in their degree and place, representatives and organs of an unseen world, truer and higher than themselves. The only difference between them is, that some things bear their supernatural character upon their surface, are historically creations of the supernatural system, or are perceptibly instrumental, or obviously symbolical: while others rather seem to be complete in themselves, or run counter to the unseen system which they really subserve, and thereby make demands upon our faith.

 This may be illustrated from the creation of man. The Creator "formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." He first formed a material tabernacle, and then endued it with an unseen life. Now some philosophers, somewhat after the manner of the ancient Gnostics whom Mr. Milman mentions (vol. ii., p. 113), have speculated on the probability of man's being originally of some brute nature, some vast misshapen lizard of the primeval period, which at length by the force of nature, from whatever secret causes, was exalted into a rational being, and gradually shaped its proportions and refined its properties by the influence of the rational principle which got possession of it. Such a theory is of course irreconcilable with the letter of the sacred text, to say no more; but it bears an analogy, and at least supplies an illustration, to many facts and events which take place in this world. When Providence would make a Revelation, He does not begin anew, but uses the existing system; He does not visibly send an Angel, but He commissions or inspires one of our own fellows. When He would bless us, He makes a man His priest. When He would consecrate or quicken us, He takes the elements of this world as the means of real but unseen spiritual influences. When He would set up a divine polity, He takes a polity which already is, or one in course of forming. Nor does He interfere with its natural growth, development, or dependence on things visible. He does not shut it up in a desert, and there supply it with institutions unlike those which might naturally come to it from the contact and intercourse of the external world. He does but modify, quicken, or direct the powers of nature or the laws of society. Or if He works miracles, still it is without superseding the ordinary course of things. He multiplies the flocks or the descendants of Jacob, or in due season He may work signal or public miracles for their deliverance from Egypt; but still the operation of ordinary causes, the influence of political arrangements, and what is called the march of events, are seen in such providences as truly, and can be pointed out as convincingly, as if an Angel and a pillar of a cloud were not with them.

 Thus the great characteristic of Revelation is addition, substitution. Things look the same as before, though not an invisible power has taken hold upon them. This power does not unclothe the creature, but clothes it. Men dream everywhere: it gives visions. Men journey everywhere: it sends "the Angels of God to meet them." Men may elsewhere be hospitable to their brethren: now they entertain Angels. Men carry on a work; but it is a blessing from some ancestor that is breathing on and through it unseen. A nation migrates and seizes on a country; but all along its proceedings are hallowed by prophecy, and promise, and providence beforehand, and used for religious ends afterwards. Israel was as much a political power, as man is an animal. The rites and ceremonies enjoined upon the people might be found elsewhere, but were not less divine notwithstanding. Circumcision was also practised in Egypt, frequent ablutions may be the custom of the East, the veil of Moses may have been the symbol of other rulers (if so be) before him, though the fact has to be proved; a Holy of Holies, an altar, a sacrifice, a sacerdotal caste, in these points the Mosaic law resembled, yet as to these it differed from, the nations round about. The Israelitish polity had a beginning, a middle, and an end, like other things of time and place; its captivities were the natural consequences, its monarchy was the natural expedient, of a state of political weakness. Its territory was a battle-ground, and its power was the alternate ally, of the rival empires of Egypt and Assyria. Heathen travellers may have surveyed the Holy Land, and have thought it but a narrow slip of Syria. So it was; what then? till the comparative anatomist can be said by his science to disprove the rationality and responsibility of man, the politician or geographer of this world does nothing, by dissertations in his own particular line of thought, towards quenching the secret light of Israel, or dispossessing its angelic guardians of the height of Sion or of the sepulchres of the prophets. Its history is twofold, worldly to the world, and heavenly to the heirs of heaven.

 What is true of Judaism is true of Christianity. The kingdom of Christ, though not of this world, yet is in the world, and has a visible, material, social shape. It consists of men, and it has developed according to the laws under which combinations of men develop. It has an external aspect similar to all other kingdoms. We may generalize and include it as one among the various kinds of polity, as one among the empires, which have been upon the earth. It is called the fifth kingdom; and as being numbered with the previous four which were earthly, it is thereby, in fact, compared with them. We may write its history, and make it look as like those which were before or contemporary with it, as a man is like a monkey. Now we come at length to Mr. Milman: this is what he has been doing. He has been viewing the history of the Church on the side of the world. Its rise from nothing, the gradual aggrandizement of its bishops, the consolidation of its polity and government, its relation to powers of the earth, its intercourse with foreign philosophies and religions, its conflict with external and internal enemies, the mutual action for good or for evil which has been carried on between it and foreign systems, political and intellectual, its large extension, its growth and resolution into a monarchy, its temporal greatness, its gradual divisions and decay, and the natural causes which operated throughout, these are the subjects in which he delights, to which he has dedicated himself, that is, as far as they can be detached from their directly religious bearing; and unless readers understand this, they will think that what is but a contemplation of what is outside, is intended by him for a denial of what is inside . Whether such denial has in any measure resulted, even in Mr. Milman's own mind, from such contemplation, is a farther question, afterwards to be considered; but, anyhow, it is to be feared that too many persons will unfairly run away from his book with the notion that to ignore the Almighty in ecclesiastical history is really to deny Him.

 3.

 Some specimens of Mr. Milman's peculiarity will serve further to explain what we mean. The following, for instance, are some of his observations on the resemblance between the Magianism of the East and Judaism after its return from captivity there:

 "The earliest books of the Old Testament fully recognize the ministration of Angels, but in Babylonia this simpler creed grew up into a regular hierarchy, in which the degrees of rank and subordination were arranged with almost heraldic precision. The seven great archangels of Jewish tradition correspond with the Amschaspands of the Zendavesta; and in strict mutual analogy, both systems arrayed against each other a separate host of spiritual beings with distinct powers and functions. Each nation, each individual had in one case his Ferver, in the other his guardian angel, and was exposed to the hostile Dev or Dæmon ... The great impersonated Principle of Evil appears to have assumed much of the antagonist power of darkness . The name itself of Satan, which in the older poetical book of Job is assigned to a spirit of different attributes, one of the celestial ministers who assemble before the throne of the Almighty, ... became appropriated to the prince of the malignant spirits, the head and representative of the spiritual world, which ruled over physical as well as moral evil." Pp. 70-72.

 Our object in quoting this passage is neither to deny the similarity between the two theologies, nor to inquire how this came to pass, but to give an instance of Mr. Milman's peculiar manner, and the facility with which he may be taken, not unnaturally, but still over-hastily, to be saying what he does not say, that the Jewish theology is worth no more than the Magian. He as little says it as, in asserting that man is an animal, he would be denying that he is rational.

 And in like manner when he calls the Magnificat "Jewish," he need not mean more than to be an "historian rather than a religious instructor;" we take him to be merely stating what he considers a fact, whatever comes of it, whatever theory is to be built upon it, what explanation is to be given of it, viz., that the language which the Blessed Mary uses, is such as the Scribes and Pharisees, Judas the Zealot, or Caiaphas the High Priest might use also; in spite of this, he may consider the spirit and meaning in each party to be quite different. "It is curious," he says, "to observe how completely and exclusively consistent every expression appears with the state of belief at that period; all is purely Jewish, and accordant with the prevalent expectation of the National Messiah." Vol. i., p. 102.

 Again, when he says that the Baptist " partook of the ascetic character of the more solitary of the Essenes, all of whom retired from the tumult and licence of the city," vol. i., p. 141, no one can reasonably suppose that he means to be more than an historical relator, keeping clear of religious principles and doctrinal theories, and stating facts, external facts.

 In like manner he parallels Christian asceticism to Oriental; whatever theory he does or may proceed to erect upon this fact of a correspondence between the two, still, as far as the profession of his Preface goes, he is not bound to consider it at all in a "strictly religious" but "rather in a temporal, social, and political light." A supernatural cause for it may exist in Christianity, a divine authority; but this does not conflict with the fact that the Christian athlete may externally resemble the heathen; unless indeed, which no one will maintain, the parallel fact of the heathen or Jewish ceremonial ablutions be an argument against the divine appointment of evangelical baptism. He says,

 "On the cold table-lands of Thibet, in the forests of India, among the busy population of China, on the burning shores of Siam, in Egypt and in Palestine, in Christianised Europe, in Mahommetanised Asia, the worshipper of the Lama, the Faquir, the Bonze, the Talapoin, the Essene, the therapeutist, the monk, and the dervish, have withdrawn from the society of man, in order to abstract the pure mind from the dominion of foul and corrupting matter. Under each system, the perfection of human nature was estrangement from the influence of the senses, those senses which were enslaved to the material elements of the world; an approximation to the essence of the Deity, by a total secession from the affairs, the interests, the passions, the thoughts, the common being and nature of man. The practical operation of this elementary principle of Eastern religion has deeply influenced the whole history of man. But it had made no progress in Europe till after the introduction of Christianity." Vol. ii., pp. 86, 87.

 Again he says, speaking of the time of Christ's coming,

 "Man, as history and experience teach, is essentially a religious being; there are certain faculties and modes of thinking and feeling apparently inseparable from his mental organization, which lead him irresistibly to seek some communication with another and a higher world. But at the present juncture the ancient religions were effete; they belonged to a totally different state of civilization; though they retained the strong hold of habit and interest on different classes of society, yet the general mind was advanced beyond them; they could not supply the religious necessities of the age. Thus, the world, peaceably united under one temporal monarchy might be compared to a vast body without a soul: the throne of the human mind appeared vacant ; among the rival competitors for its dominion, none advanced more than claims local, or limited to a certain class." Vol. i., p. 8.

 These instances will be sufficient of Mr. Milman's manner. We proceed next to observe that, as if in order that there may be no mistake, he often gives his readers intimation, more or less express, of the external view he is taking of his subject; as a few out of the many instances, which might be quoted in point, will show.

 Thus he says of the Jews, that "to the loose manner in which religious belief hung on the greater part of the subjects of the Roman empire, their recluse and uncompromising attachment to the faith of their ancestors offered the most singular contrast ." Vol. i., p. 345; and that "the Jews stood alone, according to the language and opinion of the Roman world, as a nation of religious fanatics".  Ibid . Again, "so long as" the Christians "made no visible impression upon society, their unsocial and self-secluding disposition would be treated with contempt and pity rather than with animosity." Vol. ii., p. 144. Words like these bear on their very face the writer's intention merely to describe how Christians appeared to the heathen.

 Still more expressly he speaks of "One who appeared to the mass of mankind in His own age as a peasant of Palestine," vol. i., p. 35: he says that the establishment of the Mosaic Law was "accompanied, according to the universal belief, with the most terrific demonstrations of Almighty power," ibid ., p. 168; and he makes the solemn announcement, "in the stable of the inn or caravansera was born the CHILD ... who has been for centuries considered the object of adoration as the divine Mediator between God and man by the most civilized and enlightened nations of the earth."  Ibid ., p. 108.

 Speaking of the Greeks who came to Christ at the feast, he says, " to their surprise ... the somewhat ambiguous language of Jesus dwells at first on His approaching fate, etc." P. 306. Speaking of our Lord's injunction to secrecy on occasion of His miraculous cures, he says, that this was so frequent "that one evangelist considers that the cautious and unresisting demeanour of Jesus, thus avoiding all unnecessary offence or irritation, exemplified that characteristic of the Messiah so beautifully described by Isaiah, 'He shall neither strive, etc.'" P. 224. That one evangelist considered a prophecy exemplified, is quite consistent, of course, with a belief that at the same time inspiration pronounced it to be fulfilled . Mr. Milman need not mean more than to state an external fact.

 In the same spirit he calls our Saviour's miracles "preternatural," not "supernatural works."  Vid . vol. i., pp. 283, 389. The latter word would assume the point in debate between the world and the Church, their divinity, whereas he is taking up an impartial or philosophical position between the two. He speaks of Christ as a man "who as far as he [Pilate] could discover, was a harmless, peaceful, and benevolent enthusiast." P. 346. And, in describing the attempt of the Nazarenes to cast our Lord down the brow of their hill, he cautiously says, in the same historical tone, "they found that the intended victim of their wrath had disappeared."  Ibid ., p. 188. And in another passage where he is led to compare Budhism with Christianity, he expressly "deprecates misconstruction." "The characteristic of the Budhist religion," he says, "which in one respect may be considered ( I deprecate misconstruction ) the Christianity of the remoter East, seems an union of political with religious reformation." And then he even takes the trouble to mention where Christianity, in his opinion, parts company with Budhism, as well as what it shares with it. "Its end," he observes, "is to substitute purer morality for the wild and multifarious idolatry into which Brahminism had degenerated, and to break down the distinction of castes. But Budhism appears to be essentially monastic; and how different the superstitious regard for life in the Budhist from the enlightened humanity of Christianity!" P. 98. Thus Christianity certainly is superior to Budhism.

 4.

 We have said nothing to imply that we approve of the judgment which has determined Mr. Milman to this mode of writing. Still less can we speak well of it, considering it has led him to that apparent suppression of doctrinal truth which we are now to notice. For the fact is undeniable, little as Mr. Milman may be aware of it, that this external contemplation of Christianity necessarily leads a man to write as a Socinian or Unitarian would write, whether he will or not. Mr. Milman has not been able to avoid this dreadful disadvantage, and thus, however heartily he may hate the opinions of such men himself, he has unintentionally both given scandal to his brethren and cause of triumph to the enemy. A very few words will account for this. The great doctrines which the Socinian denies are our Lord's divinity and atonement; now these are not external facts; what he confesses are His humanity and crucifixion; these are external facts. Mr. Milman then is bound by his theory to dwell on the latter, to slur over the former. Nay, further still, the forgiveness of sins is not an external fact; but moral improvement is; consequently he will make the message of the Gospel to relate mainly to moral improvement, not to forgiveness of sins. Again, those who maintain most earnestly the divinity of Christ as a matter of doctrine, must yet admit that what is " manifested " in Him, is not, cannot be, more than a certain attribute or attributes of the divinity, as, for instance, especially love. Accordingly, Mr. Milman, speaking mainly of what is externally seen, will be led to speak almost in a Sabellian fashion, as if denying, because not stating, the specific indwelling which Scripture records, and the Church teaches. Hence the general effect of Mr. Milman's work, we cannot deny, though we wish to give as little offence as possible, is heretical.

 On these considerations, for instance, we account for the following passages: he says that the "structure of the new faith" is "a temple to which all nations in the highest degree of civilization may bring their offerings of pure hearts, virtuous dispositions, universal charity," and that "our natural emotion on beholding it," is "the recognition of the Divine goodness in the promulgation of this beneficent code of religion, and adoration of that Being in whom that Divine goodness is thus embodied and made comprehensible to the faculties of man . In the language of the Apostle, God is in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." Vol. i., p. 51.

 We all know it to be an essential and most practical doctrine that the Person of Christ is Divine, and that into His Divine Personality He has taken human nature; or, in other words, the Agent, Speaker, Sufferer, Sacrifice, Intercessor, Judge, is God, though God in our flesh; not man with a presence of Divinity. The latter doctrine is Sabellianism, Nestorianism, and Socinianism.

 Yet it is adopted to the letter by Mr. Milman, who, admitting nothing but what is of this world when he contemplates Christ's person, is obliged to see in it by his very theory nothing more than a man. Thus, he says, that "Jesus declared" "that the Son of God ... had descended from heaven," and was "present in His Person ." Vol. i. p. 173.

 Again, what could be more lax and unsatisfactory than such discrimination as the following between the Gospel and the religions of the East, but for the salvo that Mr. Milman's very object and only object is to show how like Christianity is to heathenism?

 "The incarnation of the Deity, or the union of some part of the Divine Essence with a material or human body, is by no means an uncommon religious notion, more particularly in the East. Yet in the doctrine as subsequently developed by Christianity, there seems the same important difference which characterizes the whole system of the ancient and modern religions. It is in the former a mythological impersonation of the power, in Christ it is the goodness of the Deity, which associating itself with a human form assumes the character of a representative of the human race; in whose person is exhibited a pure model of human perfection, and whose triumph over evil is by the slow and gradual progress of enlightening the mind and softening and purifying the heart ." Vol. i., p. 97.

 The concluding words of this extract should be well observed; the victory of the Cross and the free pardon of sin are not mentioned among Christ's "triumphs." The author adds presently that the sole design of the "Christian scheme is to work a moral change, to establish a new relation between man and the Almighty creator, and to bring to light the great secret of the immortality of man." It is said that the exception proves the rule; now it so happens that the vague words put into italics are the nearest approach which we have observed in Mr. Milman's volumes to the doctrine of forgiveness of sins, let alone that of the atonement. We are far from pronouncing for certain that there is nothing more definite to be found in them, but we are sure that we are faithful to the general tone of his work in thus speaking.

 Again, he speaks of the more opulent Romans being "tempted to make themselves acquainted with a religion, the moral influence of which was so manifestly favourable to the happiness of mankind, and which offered so noble a solution of the great problem of human philosophy, the immortality of the soul." Vol. ii., p. 156. Surely this account of the great problem awkwardly fits in with the real and deep cry of human nature embodied in the jailor's words, "What shall I do to be saved?"

 Again, he speaks of Christ as one "whose moral doctrines, if adopted throughout the world, would destroy more than half the misery, by destroying all the vice and mutual hostility of men," vol. i., p. 108; where the last phrase is perhaps intended as an explanation of Christ "having made peace ."

 Elsewhere he dwells upon the beauty of the picture presented to us in Christ's removing bodily afflictions; and on the other hand, "gently instilling into the minds of the people those pure, and humane, and gentle principles of moral goodness to which the wisdom of ages has been able to add nothing;" and God's condescending "to show this image and reflection of His own inconceivable nature for the benefit of" men, "to restore them to, and prepare them for, a higher and eternal state of existence." Pp. 197, 198. He is, it seems, precluded by his position from expressing definitely the idea conveyed in the proclamation, "Repent ye," and in the announcement, "Thy sins be forgiven thee."

 In another place he expressly sets himself to interpret the last-mentioned words. When the woman that was a sinner washed our Saviour's feet with her tears, He said, "Thy sins be forgiven thee;" Mr. Milman paraphrases, "the reply of Jesus intimates that His religion was intended to reform and purify the worst." P. 233. That is, Christ's reply hints less than it expresses .

 Again, speaking of what he considers the growing illumination of society, he says:

 "Even if (though I conceive it impossible) the imagination should entirely wither from the human soul, and a severer faith enter into an exclusive alliance with pure reason, Christianity would still have its moral perfection, its rational promise of immortality, its approximation to the one pure, spiritual, incomprehensible Deity, to satisfy that reason, and to infuse those sentiments of dependence, of gratitude, of love to God, without which human society must fall to ruin, and the human mind, in humiliating desperation, suspend all its noble activity, and care not to put forth its sublime and eternal energies." Vol. i., p. 132.

 Again, he speaks of baptism as being a mark of the convert's "initiation into the new faith," while "a secret internal transmutation was to take place by divine agency in his heart, which was to communicate a new principle of moral life ." Vol. i., p. 172. Still no mention of the forgiveness of sins.

 Again, he tells us that the object of the Temptation was "to withdraw" Christ "from the purely religious end of His being upon earth, to transform Him from the author of a moral revolution to be slowly wrought by the introduction of new principles of virtue, and new rules for individual and social happiness ... who was to offer to man the gift of eternal life, and elevate his nature to a previous fitness for that exalted destiny." Vol. i., p. 156.

 5.

 Now it is very far from our intention indeed to say that the solemn topics of atonement, and forgiveness, and of our Lord's divine nature, are to be introduced upon all occasions, and especially in an historical work such as Mr. Milman's. He is, as he truly says, "an historian rather than a religious instructor." But still, when he is engaged in specifying expressly what the revealed doctrine consists in, and what the object of Christ's coming was, we consider it to be a very unhappy view of historical composition, which precludes him from mentioning what all members of the Church hold to be fundamental in that doctrine, and primary in that object.

 Yet, singular to say, Mr. Milman makes this mode of writing a subject of especial self-congratulation; and this is a phenomenon which deserves dwelling on. It is impossible then to mistake the satisfaction which he feels in adopting the external view of Christianity, and the sort of contempt, we are sorry to say it, in which he holds theological science; yet we really do not see what the merit is, which he seems to claim for his historical method. Not that we cannot conceive many reasons for contemplating sacred things as they show themselves externally; but there is a broad intelligible difference between throwing one's mind into the feelings of a certain state of society, or into the views of certain persons, for an occasion or purpose, and habitually taking their feelings or views as one's own, and making what is not the true position for surveying them the centre of our own thoughts about them. Men may take this external view of sacred things by way of putting themselves into the place of unbelievers, and entering into their difficulties, and so assisting them in finding the truth. Such is the case with Paley and other writers on External Evidence. Again, there is certainly a silent and soothing pleasure in viewing great things in the littleness and feebleness in which they appear to the world, from the secret feeling of their real power and majesty, and an exulting anticipation of their ultimate and just triumph. Such is the pleasure excited by the recognitions or discoveries of Greek tragedy, which, as being generally foreseen from the beginning, feed the imagination. Moreover, a mean exterior cast over what we admire and revere acts as a veil of mystery heightening our feeling of its greatness. And again, the very keenness and fulness of our feelings may often act, in leading us in very despair or from deep awe to use simple and homely words concerning what is more constraining with us, and more affecting, than anything else in the world. None of these considerations, however, will serve to explain Mr. Milman's course of proceeding. Neither as a conscientious exercise of mind, nor except very partially in the way of evidence, nor from any poetical pleasure, nor to gratify the love of mystery, nor in admiration, nor from a principle of reserve, does he display the earthly side of the Gospel; but, strange to say, from a notion of its being philosophical to do so. It is quite undeniable, and quite as astonishing, that he thinks there is something high and admirable in the state of mind which can thus look down upon a Divine Dispensation. He imagines that it argues a large, liberal, enlightened understanding, to be able to generalize religions, and, without denying the divinity of Christianity, to resolve it into its family likeness to all others. He thinks it a sign of an acute and practised intellect to pare down its supernatural facts as closely as possible, and to leave its principal miracles, the multiplying bread, the raising Lazarus, or the Resurrection, standing alone like the pillars of Tadmor in the wilderness. He evidently considers that it is an advance in knowledge to disguise Scripture facts and persons under secular names. He thinks that it is so much gain if he can call Abraham an Emir or a Sheik; that it is a victory to be able to connect Church doctrine with Magianism, or Platonism, or Judaism, or Essenism, or Orientalism; and to liken holy Basil or Bernard to Faquir, Bonze, Talapoin, and Dervish. This is what meets us on the very surface of his book, and it is, we must speak frankly, no promising trait. What, for instance, should we say to a comparative anatomist, who not only exercised his science in his own line and for its own ends, but should profess to write an account of man, and then should talk much of man's animality and materiality, of his relation to the beasts of the field, of the processes of nutrition, digestion, disease, and dissolution, and should boast of his having steered clear of all mention of the soul, should waive the question of the moral sense, should deprecate the inquiry into a future life, leave the debate upon responsibility to the schools, and all this with the air of one who was no common man, but was breathing the pure, elevated, and serene atmosphere of philosophy? Yet such as this in the eyes of all serious men will be an author who speaks of any inquiry into the doctrines of Christianity as a sort of condescension, and looks upon its outward and secular aspect as its glory. We cannot exempt Mr. Milman from the force of this comparison.

 For instance, he speaks in the first extract above given, as not being able " altogether " to " decline the examination of the religious doctrines, their development, and their variations," though "his leading object" is to trace the effect of Christianity on the individual and social happiness of man, its influence on the polity, laws, and institutions, the opinions, the manners ... the arts and literature of the Christian world." He implies that his survey is to be " candid and dispassionate," and says that though mainly relating to what is temporal, intellectual, and social, it will be of high importance and interest " even to the religious inquirer," and will be of a nature to act upon "the general mass at least of the reading and intelligent part of the community," in forming their religious opinions, and in their "speculative or practical belief" of Christianity. He goes on to congratulate himself that, as regards the sceptical and infidel writers of Germany, for so we understand him, he "shall not be accused of that narrow jealousy, and, in his opinion, unworthy and timid suspicion, with which the writers of that country are proscribed by many." P. viii. He compliments them on "their profound research and philosophical tone of thought." He celebrates St. Thomas the Apostle as "remarkable for his coolness and reflecting temper of mind." P. 226. As to the points at present in controversy in our Church, including, let it be observed, baptismal regeneration and other doctrines not less important, "though of course," he says, "I cannot be, yet I have written as if, in total ignorance of the existence of such discussions." P. ix. This ought to mean, we suppose, I have my definite opinion, but I will not controvert; but it sounds very like, I hold a great and a calm view, and all others are partizans and zealots. He continues: " I have delivered without fear and without partiality what I have conscientiously believed to be the truth. I write for the general readers rather than for the members of my own profession ;" and now let us attend to the reason of this great resolve: " as I cannot understand why such subjects of universal interest should be secluded, as the peculiar objects of study to one class or order alone." In other words, My own profession cannot be brought to take an external view of Christianity; but I write for the world, which does.

 He further tells us that

 "As Christian History, surveyed in a wise and candid spirit, cannot but be a useful school for the promotion of Christian faith; so no study can tend more directly to, or more imperatively enforce on all unprejudiced and dispassionate minds, mutual forbearance, enlightened toleration, and the greatest even of Christian virtues, Christian Charity." P. xi.

 In the second of the extracts with which we commenced, he repeats his hope of attaining a " calm, impartial, and dispassionate tone;" that is, the calmness and dispassionateness, we suppose, which can bring a man comfortably through an assimilation of the later Jewish prophets to Zoroaster, and Christianity to Buddhism. Moreover, he tells us, that "his disposition inclines" to labour even more, "to show the good as well as the evil of each phasis of Christianity." Vol. i. p. 49.

 We have further light what Mr. Milman means by "calmness and dispassionateness" by the tone in which he speaks of any show of zealous feeling in others. He contrasts it with his own state of mind. For instance, in one place he disavows, though he excuses, the " isolation of the history of Christ in a kind of sacred seclusion," though, he proceeds, it "has no doubt a beneficial effect on the piety of the Christian, which delights in contemplating the Saviour undisturbed and uncontaminated by less holy associations." Vol. i., p. 52. Now is not this unreal? Mr. Milman surely himself is contemplating, not " the Saviour," but his Saviour; and the question with the Christian is, not what effect it has upon his piety as if he cherished reverent thoughts of Christ from a mere calculation of the benefit such reverence will do to his own mind but "How can I, independently of a call of duty, forget, or speak as if I forgot, who and what He is?" Mr. Milman's language certainly implies that calmness and dispassionateness and an absence of prejudice are shown in being able to hear and to repeat, without wincing, as regards our great Benefactor, the profane things which infidels and scorners say of Him. We know he cannot mean this; yet his language implies it, and in consequence we cannot wonder at his exciting a clamour. Presently he speaks of a departure "from the evangelical simplicity in the relation of facts," such as he has adopted, offending "the reverential feelings of the reader ;" why not of the writer?

 However, we should be unfair unless we added that there are occasions when he can respond personally to the calls of reverence made upon him by the subject on which he is employed. For instance, of the last scenes of our Lord's life, he writes, with imposing effect, "As we approach the appalling close, we tremble lest the colder process of explanation should deaden the solemn and harrowing impression of the scene, or weaken the contrast between the wild and tumultuous uproar of the triumphant enemies and executioners of the Son of Man with the deep and unutterable misery of the few faithful adherents who still followed His footsteps." Vol. i., p. 359.

 6.

 Our object hitherto has been, to the best of our ability, to analyze the view, with which Mr. Milman apparently starts, of his position and office, freely to censure it, but at the same time to vindicate him from any sinister intentions in assuming it. That view involves, as we have incidentally shown, a great error in judgment; it necessarily lays the author open to misrepresentation, as if he held or countenanced what he disapproves; and it could not avoid paining many excellent persons, whom so kindly-tempered a man as Mr. Milman would be very unwilling to perplex or alarm. We should have said thus much, had Mr. Milman adhered ever so rigidly, were that possible, to what seems to us his original design of merely stating the facts of Christianity, without notice, good or bad, of the principles which are their life. But such an adherence was impossible; as in fact he confesses when he speaks of "not altogether declining" theological subjects. He does make a theory of the facts which he records, and such a theory as unhappily implies that they belong mainly to that external system of things of which he writes, and must be directly referred to visible causes and measured by intelligible principles. His mode of writing does not merely pass over, but actually denies the existence and presence among us of that higher and invisible system of which we have spoken above. Not content with claiming for the historical facts of Christianity a place in the course of this world, which they have, he disallows that supernatural world, in which they have a place also. As anatomists might treat man simply according to their science and become materialists, as physical experimentalists might teach pantheism or atheism, as political economists might make wealth the measure of all things and deny the social uses of religion, as the professors of any science may deny the existence of any world of thought but their own, and refer all facts which meet them to it, so Mr. Milman, viewing Christianity as an external political fact, has gone very far indeed towards viewing it as nothing more; denying in one or two places, in so many words, the great truth, which we have been employed above in drawing out, that it is in two worlds at once, and that the same occurrences, persons, and actions seem to be natural consequences of what is seen, and yet really have as natural a place in a system which is not seen. The effects of this denial upon Mr. Milman's history are now to be shown. We have candidly said where we think he is open to unfair misrepresentation; we shall as candidly say where we think he has given just cause of offence and dissatisfaction to all Churchmen.

 Just one word, however, first on the author's evident inconsistency, unavoidable as it is under his circumstances, in professing to keep to fact, and yet insinuating a theory. He promised us in his Preface a political and social history he disclaimed theology. Presently he deprecated polemics. Had we not otherwise been sure of the line he was taking, that protestation alone would have been equivalent, in our judgment, to a declaration of war. As liberals are the bitterest persecutors, so denouncers of controversy are sure to proceed upon the most startling, irritating, blistering methods which the practice of their age furnishes. We never knew of any one of them who set about charming and lulling the spirit of bigotry without joining "Conjuro te, scelestissima," to "good Mrs. Margaret Merrilies." Further evidence how matters stood would have been afforded us, had we fallen upon his concluding pages, in which he tells us that a "clergyman who in a credulous or enthusiastic age dares to be rationally pious, is a phenomenon of moral courage ." Vol. iii., p. 535. These signs of conflict, before and after, have abundant accomplishment in the body of his work. It is quite impossible in the few pages which we are devoting to it (in which we think it best to confine ourselves to one subject), to give an idea of the range and variety of dogmatic thought and statement in which he has allowed himself. To take a few instances which come first to hand: he tells us, for instance, that the millennium is a "fable of Jewish dotage" vol. i., p. 79, note; that "among the vulgar there is a passionate attachment to religious tyranny" p. 292; that "a kind of latent Judaism has constantly lurked within the bosom of the Church" p. 456; that "the sacerdotal and the sectarian spirit had an equal tendency to disparage the 'perfection of piety' and 'sublimity of virtue'" p. 457; that "sacerdotal domination is altogether alien to genuine Christianity;" yet that "an hostility to every kind of priesthood," is a sign of a "vitiated" mind pp. 10, 11, note; that "the sole difference" in a church from a synagogue was, "that God was worshipped in it through the mediation of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth" vol. ii., p. 2; that Christianity is "grounded on the abrogation of all local claims to peculiar sanctity" vol. i., p. 319; that the Almighty's "pure and essential spirituality" does not under the Gospel "attach itself to, or exhibit itself under, any form" p. 22; that "God is power in the old religion, love under the new"  ibid .; that "Christian morality" is, "strictly speaking, no law," but "the establishment of certain principles" p. 206; that St. Paul "could scarcely be entirely dead to or ignorant" of the "elevating associations" of Athens vol. ii., p. 16; that the age when Christ came was in an "advanced state of intellectual culture" vol. i., pp. 8, 36, and "enlightened" p. 41; and that, because of its "reasoning spirit" p. 37, Christianity has "accommodated itself to the spirit of successive ages" p. 47; that it "will advance with the advancement of human nature," and that "intellectual culture is that advancement" p. 50; and that "the development of a rational and intellectual religion" is "perhaps not yet complete, certainly not general" p. 49.

 These are some of the enunciations of doctrine, true or false, peremptorily advanced by Mr. Milman, and yet he tells us that he writes "as an historian rather than as a religious instructor" he only does "not decline" theological subjects, writes "as if in total ignorance of the existence" of pending controversies, and "entirely discards all polemic views." Such is Mr. Milman's mode of keeping the peace; and he observes, we suppose, partly with reference to it, that "he himself fully appreciates the difficulty " of his undertaking. P. 47. All this is so very strange, that we can only suppose that he considers it to be among the rights of philosophy to profess opinions without incurring their responsibilities, to have a sort of lasciar passare, which enables it to introduce bag and baggage free of examination; or that it lives on some high cliff, or some remote watch-tower, and is able thence to contemplate with the poet the sea of human opinion, "alterius spectare laborem;" and in a pure ethereal region to discern Christianity abstracted from all religion, and to gauge it without molestation by principles simply incommensurable with its own. But now to the business in hand.

 7.

 We will begin with citing a passage at the end of his volumes, in which he describes and condemns the peculiar religious sentiments of the Middle Age, sentiments which are in fact based upon the very principles which we have above advocated as primitive and true. In doing this, we are fair to Mr. Milman, for it is beautifully written.

 "The Christian of these days lived in a supernatural world, or in a world under the constant and felt and discernible interference of supernatural power. God was not only present, but asserting His presence at every instant, not merely on signal occasions and for important purposes, but on the most insignificant acts and persons. The course of nature was beheld, not as one great uniform and majestic miracle, but a succession of small, insulated, sometimes trivial, sometimes contradictory interpositions, often utterly inconsistent with the moral and Christian attributes of God. The divine power and goodness were not spreading abroad like a genial and equable sunlight, enlightening, cheering, vivifying, but breaking out in partial and visible flashes of influence; each incident was a special miracle, the ordinary emotion of the heart was divine inspiration. Each individual had not merely his portion in the common diffusion of religious and moral knowledge or feeling, but looked for his peculiar and especial share in the divine blessing. His dreams came direct from heaven; a new system of Christian omens succeeded the old; witchcraft merely invoked Beelzebub or Satan instead of Hecate; hallowed places only changed their tutelary nymph or genius for a saint or martyr ... God had been brought down, or had condescended to mingle himself with the affairs of men. But where should that faith, which could not but receive these high and consolatory and reasonable truths, set limits to the agency of this beneficent power? How should it discriminate between that which in its apparent discrepancy with the laws of nature (and of those laws how little was known!) was miraculous, and that which, to more accurate observation, was only strange or wonderful, or perhaps the result of ordinary but dimly-seen causes? How still more in the mysterious world of the human mind, of which the laws are still, we will not say in their primitive, but, in comparison with those of external nature, in profound obscurity? If the understanding of man was too much dazzled to see clearly even material objects; if just awakening from a deep trance, it beheld everything floating before it in a mist of wonder, how much more was the mind disqualified to judge of its own emotions, of the origin, suggestion, and powers of those thoughts and emotions which still perplex and baffle our deepest metaphysics." Vol. iii., pp. 532-534.

 No one can deny that this is a very eloquent and striking passage, and, to complete our admissions, we must candidly add that it is a view of the medieval religion in which a number of persons, not friends of Mr. Milman, will concur, and which others again, with greater reason, will consider partly true, and partly false: now let us see what comes of it, as Mr. Milman uses it.

 For instance, two kinds of miracles are recorded in Scripture, public and sensible, and private; those which many saw, and which had for their object something material; and those which one person or no one saw, or which belonged to the world of spirits. Our Saviour's cures, which were subjected to the scrutiny of the senses, are instances of the former class; the Annunciation and Transfiguration, of the latter. The former form part of the evidences, the latter of the matter or mode of Revelation. The former are facts of this world, and have their place in the political course of things, as fully as facts which are not miraculous; the latter have no such place, but belong solely to the spiritual system. Now Mr. Milman inclines, to say the least, to deny the reality of the latter. Speaking of "the more imaginative incidents of the early Evangelic History" (by which he especially means "the angelic appearances, the revelations of the Deity addressed to the senses of man," in the first chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke), he observes that "these passages in general are not the vital and essential truths of Christianity, but the vehicle by which these truths were communicated, a kind of language by which opinions were conveyed, and sentiments infused, and the general belief in Christianity implanted, confirmed, and strengthened." Vol. i., p. 130. He continues:

 "Whether then these were actual appearances, or impressions produced on the mind of those who witnessed them, is of slight importance . In either case they are real historical facts; they partake of poetry in their form, and, in a certain sense, in their groundwork; but they are imaginative, not fictitious; true as relating that which appeared to the minds of the relators exactly as it did appear ... The incidents were so ordered that they should thus live in the thoughts of men ... Could, it may be inquired, a purely rational or metaphysical creed have survived for any length of time during such stages of human civilization?"

 That is, he considers, that when St. Luke says, "In the sixth month the Angel Gabriel was sent from God to a Virgin," etc., first, that there are reasons for the Blessed Virgin's having an impression that there was an Angel Gabriel, and that he was sent to her; and, secondly, that there are reasons against the occurrence being a real fact external to her mind. That she should think she saw an Angel, is important, he observes, because a religion with such poetical incidents is more influential and long-lived than one that has them not. Well, then, if so, why should not the incidents have really been vouchsafed? has Almighty God no Angels? why should He not have done what He is said to have done, since there is so good a reason for His doing it? Mr. Milman proceeds to give us the reason on the other side, "the purely rational and metaphysical" reason; viz., that according to a certain class of writers, (followers of Hume and and Bentham we suppose,) "these incidents, being irreconcilable with our actual experience, and rendered suspicious by a multitude of later fictions, which are rejected in the mass by most Protestant Christians, cannot accord with the more subtle and fastidious intelligence of the present times. Some writers go so far as to assert that it is impossible that an inquiring and reasoning age should receive these supernatural facts as historical verities." P. 130. And for the sake of these persons Mr. Milman proposes an intermediate view, as a sort of irenicon or peace-offering, to reconcile the faith of eighteen centuries and the infidelity of the nineteenth; on the one hand suggesting that St. Mary's imagination may have been deceived, or that her " reminiscences " were dim and indistinct, and, on the other, defending her veracity and that of her contemporaries. The circumstances recorded "are too slight," he says, "and wanting in particularity, to give the idea of invention ; they seem like a few scattered fragments preserved from oral tradition." P. 132. On the whole, then, it seems that Mr. Milman inclines to think that God will never do anything which to philosophers is difficult to receive, and that the Blessed Virgin is more likely to have been mistaken than unbelievers to be irrational.

 Again, he thus glances at the true explanation of the Angel's appearance to Zacharias:

 "Almost the most important [function of the officiating course] was the watching and supplying with incense the great brazen altar, which stood within the building of the temple, in the first or Holy Place. Into this, at the sound of a small bell, which gave notice to the worshippers at a distance, the ministering priest entered alone; and in the sacred chamber, into which the light of day never penetrated, but where the dim fires of the altar, and the chandeliers which were never extinguished, gave a solemn and uncertain light,still more bedimmed by the clouds of smoke arising from the newly fed altar of incense, no doubt (!), in the pious mind, the sense of the more immediate presence of the Deity, only separated by the veil, which divided the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, would constantly have awakened the most profound emotions ... In the vision of Zachariah, he had beheld an Angel standing on the right side of the altar," etc. Vol. i., pp. 90, 91.

 Again, of the miracle attendant on our Lord's Baptism, Mr. Milman says, "Neander represents it as a symbolic vision." P. 151. And he refers to the passages of the Fathers, not happily, as we think, to show that the "explanation of voices from heaven, as a mental perception, not as real articulate sounds, but as inward impressions, is by no means modern, or what passes under the unpopular name of Rationalism." Possibly not; but let us for argument's sake grant it; yet what do we gain by such a view of the subject? this, we tend to rid ourselves of the unseen world, of the belief that the things which we see have relations to, and are parts of, a system of things which ordinarily does not disclose itself to us. This does not seem to be any great achievement [n.].

 Again, when Mr. Milman comes to our Lord's Temptation, after an announcement, with much circumstance but obvious drift, that "on the interpretation of no incident in the Gospels do those who insist on the literal acceptation of the Evangelists' language, and those who consider that even in the New Testament much allowance is to be made for the essentially allegoric character of oriental narrative, depart so far asunder," he adds, in a note, "this is one of those points which will be differently understood according to the turn and cast of mind of different individuals. I would therefore deprecate the making either interpretation an article of faith, or deciding with dogmatic certainty on so perplexing a passage." P. 153. Afterwards he says, that whether we believe Christ tempted by Satan, or by the High Priest, or by His own feelings, "the moral purport of the scene remains the same, the intimation that the strongest and most lively impressions were made upon the mind of Jesus to withdraw Him," etc. P. 156. Here is a writer admitting, without "perplexity," the great invisible miracle that the Son of God took on Him a human soul and body, yet finding a difficulty in receiving literally the narrative of His being tempted in that body and soul by the Evil One in person, and " deprecating " the necessity of doing so.

 The principles, which the above extracts have been illustrating, make it impossible for Mr. Milman to believe in the reality of demoniacal possession. All the phenomena which demoniacs exhibit can be referred to the laws of pathology; therefore they cannot also have relation to an unseen state of things, and be caused by evil spirits. He says,

 "I have no scruple in avowing my opinion on the subject of the demoniacs to be that of Joseph Mede, Lardner, Dr. Mead, Paley, and all the learned modern writers. It was a kind of insanity, not unlikely to be prevalent among a people peculiarly subject to the leprosy and other cutaneous diseases; and nothing was more probable than that lunacy should take the turn and speak the language of the prevailing superstition of the times. As the belief in witchcraft made people fancy themselves witches, so the belief in possession made men of distempered minds fancy themselves possessed." Vol. i. p. 234, note.

 None of us can go a little way with a theory; when it once possesses us, we are no longer our own masters. It makes us speak its words, and do violence to our own nature. Would it be believed that Mr. Milman's zeal against the reality of possessions as a preternatural phenomenon, actually carries him on here to the denial of external and visible fact, which is the very basis on which he has rested his opinion that they were not preternatural? It is obvious that the miracle of the swine interferes with his theory; accordingly he hints at an explanation, which seriously compromises the outward historical fact attendant upon the miracle; that is, first he denies demoniacal possession, because the recorded phenomena of its visitation upon man do not necessarily involve its reality; next he denies the recorded phenomena of its visitation on the swine, which do involve its reality, because there is no such thing as demoniacal possession. How too does this hold with what he assures us elsewhere, that his doubts about invisible or private miracles would not entrench upon sensible or public ones? He told us, that such doubting, "of course, does not apply to facts which must have been either historical events or direct fictions," such as the Resurrection of Jesus. Vol. i., p.131. And he promised that he would " strictly maintain this important distinction" between them and "the more imaginative incidents of the history." Now for the performance of his engagement.

 "The moral difficulty of this transaction has always appeared to me greater than that of reconciling it with the more rational view of demoniacism. Both are much diminished, if not entirely removed, by the theory of Kuinoël, who attributes to the lunatics the whole of the conversation with Jesus, and supposes that their driving the herd of swine down the precipice was the last paroxysm in which their insanity exhausted itself." P. 238, note.

 Would it be a much greater violence to the history than this, to say, with some unbelievers, that our Lord was taken down from the Cross alive, and showed Himself again without a Resurrection? For after all, as Mr. Milman said just now, would not "the moral purport of the scene remain the same?" What limits are we to put to this denial of historical truth? Where is theory to stop, if it is once allowed?

 Again, we read in the Acts a narrative of an evil spirit answering, "Jesus, I know," etc., but Mr. Milman paraphrases it to the effect that the possessed party "had probably before been strongly impressed with the teaching of Paul, and the religion which he preached; and irritated by the interference of persons whom he might know to be hostile to the Christian party, assaulted them with great violence," etc. vol. ii., p. 28; that is, what Scripture calls an evil spirit, he calls a Christian convert. How long will this interpretation stand? How many will receive it? Will Mr. Milman himself this time next year?

 8.

 Now let us proceed to some further, though hardly more violent practisings, upon the Christian documents and facts, which these volumes exhibit. The following is curious as a reductio ad absurdum of Mr. Milman's beau ideal of the Christian temper. He observes that James and John, who "received the remarkable name of Boanerges, the Sons of Thunder ... do not appear remarkable among their brethren either for energy or vehemence:" and he adds, that accordingly "it is not easy to trace" its "exact force;" and that "the peculiar gentleness of" St. John "both in character and in the style of his writings, would lead us to doubt the correctness of the interpretation generally assigned to the appellation." Vol. i., p. 225. Strange to say, his only idea of St. John's, as of our Lord's character, as seen in Scripture, is gentleness ; and then, strong in this most gratuitous assumption, he finds a difficulty in the received interpretation of a plain passage.

 In the same way, in another place, he "would reject, as the offspring of a more angry and controversial age, the story of St. John's "flying in fear and indignation from a bath polluted by the presence of the heretic Cerinthus." Vol. ii., p. 62. Did not our author recollect certain "angry and controversial" words ascribed to St. John in Scripture? "If there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him Godspeed ."

 Striking too is the contrast between the clear, keen, majestic, and awful language of the Evangelists and Mr. Milman's circuitous, inadequate, and (we must add) feeble version of it. St. Luke says of Herod, "immediately the Angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory;" Mr. Milman explains away both the fact and the reason. "In [the] terrific and repulsive circumstances" of his death, he says, "the Christians could not but behold the hand of their protecting God," vol. i., p. 410; whereas the remarkable thing is that it is not represented in Scripture as an interposition in behalf of the Church at all.

 Again, "Whosoever sinneth against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come," is turned into "an offence which argued such total obtuseness of moral perception, such utter incapacity of feeling or comprehending the beauty either of the conduct or the doctrine of Jesus, as to leave no hope that they would ever be reclaimed from their rancorous hostility to His religion, or be qualified for admission into the pale and to the benefits of the new faith." Vol. i., p. 235. Forgiveness of sins, the one subject of our Lord's announcement in this passage, is literally obliterated from it by Mr. Milman; whence this strange aversion to mention sin and the forgiveness of sin?

 Again: of the passage which speaks of "the unclean spirit going out of a man," etc., he observes that Christ "reverts in language of more than usual energy," (that is, not "gentle" language, we presume,) "to the incapacity of the age and nation to discern the real and intrinsic superiority of His religion." P. 236.

 In our Lord's slowly granting the request of the Syro-phSnician, who wished for the crumbs that were the dog's portion, with the words, "O woman, great is thy faith," Mr. Milman discerns but a condescension to the prejudices of the Jews and His Apostles, by which "Jesus was enabled to display His own benevolence without awakening, or confirming if already awakened, the quick suspicion of His followers." P. 253.

 In the same spirit he elsewhere observes that the Apostles, "with cautious deference to Jewish feeling, were forbidded to proceed beyond the borders of the Holy Land." P. 238. The words, "Ye are of your father the devil," (words which Mr. Milman apparently feels to be inconsistent with what he considers our Lord's "gentleness,") become "the spirit of evil, in whose darkest and most bloody temper they were ready to act, was rather the parent of men with dispositions so diabolic." P. 268.

 The discourse in the Synagogue of Capernaum, after the miracle of the loaves, related by St. John, ch. vi., is explained to mean merely "the improvement of the moral and spiritual condition of man, described under the strong but not unusual figure of nourishment administered to the soul." P. 243. How can an earnest mind, contemplating our Lord's most mysterious words, thus satisfy itself? Further, Mr. Milman tells us that in the rite of the Lord's Supper there really are " allusions to the breaking of His body and for the pouring forth of His blood." P. 329.

 He says respecting the incident in John xii., that what "the unbelieving part of the multitude heard only as an accidental burst of thunder, to others ... seemed an audible, a distinct, or, according to those who adhere to the strict letter, the" (it avails not to delay, out with it!) "the articulate voice of an Angel." P. 306. Yes, the real articulate voice; how painful to our "subtle and fastidious intelligence"!

 As to the power of binding and loosing, promised first to St. Peter, then to all the Apostles, then afterwards bestowed, the subject is too formidable, we suppose, to approach siccis oculis . Mr. Milman thus hurries by: "the Apostle" St. Peter, "is commended in language so strong that the pre-eminence of Peter over the rest of the Twelve has been mainly supported by the words of Jesus employed on this occasion." P. 256. What? do these memorable words, in substance thrice uttered, only account for a certain interpretation of them? do they determine but a relative question? do they decide nothing at all positive about all the Apostles?

 It is quite perplexing what satisfaction a man of Mr. Milman's religious character can have in explaining away the supernatural accompaniments of our Lord's last conflict; and yet he certainly does seem to think it even more philosophical to make the Resurrection an isolated miracle. "This spake he," says the Evangelist, of Caiaphas, "not of himself, but being high priest that year, he prophesied :" "his language," says Mr. Milman, "was afterwards treasured in the memory of the Christians as inadvertently prophetic." P. 286. He says that Pilate's wife's dream was in "her morning slumbers, when visions were supposed to be more than ordinarily true." P. 355. The impenitent thief is "infected" with a "fanatical Judaism;" his companion is "of milder disposition;" and " inclines to believe in Jesus," who, " speaking in the current language, promises him an immediate reward." P. 361. As to the resurrection of "many bodies of the saints that slept," Mr. Milman is of opinion that the earthquake opened the tombs and exposed the dead to public view. He adds, "To the awestruck and depressed minds of the followers of Jesus, no doubt, were confined those visionary appearances of the spirits of their deceased brethren, which are obscurely intimated in the rapid narratives of the Evangelists." P. 365. What antecedent objection does the "intelligence" of this age find to the resurrection of the bodies of these saints which will not apply also to the resurrection at the last day? They must rise some time; why should they not have risen then? because, Mr. Milman seems to answer, there is no system going on in the world now, except the visible, political, temporal system which our eyes and ears experience. Again: to the minds of the women he says " highly excited and bewildered with astonishment, with terror, and with grief, appeared what is described by the Evangelist as a 'vision of angels.' One or more beings in human form seated in the shadowy twilight within the sepulchre." P. 378.

 One circumstance, however, we cheerfully acknowledge, that Mr. Milman does not, with some writers of latter times, in violence to our Lord's words, explain away the guilt, or what he calls "the extraordinary conduct," of Judas. He candidly says, "Much ingenuity has been displayed by some recent writers in attempting to palliate, or rather account for, this extraordinary conduct of Judas; but the language in which Jesus spoke of the crime appears to confirm the common opinion of its enormity." P. 326. As to his remorse, he considers that there were quite circumstances enough to "drive him to desperation, little short of insanity ." P. 329. This, we suppose, is to show that he need not have a verdict of felo de se recorded against him.

 9.

 We have now seen how Mr. Milman's theory operates upon the facts and documents of Christianity; now let us observe what it does for its fundamental and essential doctrines, which, even without taking it into account, have, as we have already seen, fared very hardly from his mere negative method of historical composition. In doing this, however, we do not make Mr. Milman responsible for our account of his views. Principles have a life and power independent of their authors, and make their way in spite of them; this at least is our philosophy. Mr. Milman may in his own instance limit or modify what nevertheless has its mission, and, whether he like it or not, will be sure to tell its tale to an end, before it has done. By others, then, it must be viewed, not shackled, and as it were muzzled, according to any careful directions which this or that writer may deliver, but in itself. We are sure that Mr. Milman does not see the tendency of the line of thought of which both his present and a former work give such anxious evidence; and therefore, while we need not, we clearly could not, if we tried, delineate the principles which are contained in them, as they are held by himself personally; he would be sure to say we were unfair. The very inconsistency which, in a former place, we pointed out, between the design and the execution of his work, is an intelligible warning to us what a false position we should be taking up, if we were to attempt to draw out for ourselves his doctrinal notion of Christianity. We disclaim such an intention altogether. No writer likes to accept his opinions in the wording of an opponent. We shall use Mr. Milman's volumes, therefore, only in illustration of those momentous principles, which he has adopted indeed, but which are outside of him, and will not be his slaves.

 As regards then the settlement of Christian doctrine, Mr. Milman's External Theory seems to us to result or manifest itself in the following canon: That nothing belongs to the Gospel but what originated in it; and that whatever, professing to belong to it, is found in anterior or collateral systems, may be put out of it as a foreign element. Such a maxim easily follows upon that denial of the supernatural system, which we have above imputed in large measure to Mr. Milman. They who consider with him that there was, for instance, no spiritual agency in what is called demoniacal possession, on the ground that the facts of the case may be satisfactorily referred to physical causes, are bound, or at least are easily persuaded, to deny for the same reason any doctrine to come from Christ, which they can trace to the schools of men. Such persons cannot enter into the possibility of a visible and an invisible course of things going on at once, whether co-extensive or not, acting on each other more or less, and sometimes even to the cognizance of our senses. Were the electric fluid ascertained to be adequate to the phenomena of life, they would think it bad philosophy to believe in the presence of a soul; and, sooner than believe that Angels now minister to us unseen, they deny that they were ever seen in their ministrations. No wonder then that in like manner as regards the articles of the Creed, they deny that what is historically human can be doctrinally divine, confuse the outward process with the secret providence, and argue as if instruments in nature preclude the operations of grace. When they once arrive at a cause or source in the secular course of things, it is enough; and thus, while Angels melt into impressions, Catholic truths are resolved into the dogmas of Plato or Zoroaster.

 A theory does not prove itself; it makes itself probable so far as it falls in with our preconceived notions, as it accounts for the phenomena it treats of, as it is internally consistent, and as it excels or excludes rival theories. We should leave Mr. Milman's undisturbed, and proceed at once, as we proposed, merely to give instances of its operation, except that it might seem to be allowing to that theory, as it were, possession of the field, when, in truth, there is another far more Catholic philosophy upon which the facts of the case, as Mr. Milman states them, may be solved. Now, the phenomenon, admitted on all hands, is this: that great portion of what is generally received as Christian truth, is in its rudiments or in its separate parts to be found in heathen philosophies and religions. For instance, the doctrine of a Trinity is found both in the East and in the West; so is the ceremony of washing; so is the rite of sacrifice. The doctrine of the Divine Word is Platonic; the doctrine of the Incarnation is Indian; of a divine kingdom is Judaic; of Angels and demons is Magian; the connexion of sin with the body is Gnostic; celibacy is known to Bonze and Talapoin; a sacerdotal order is Egyptian; the idea of a new birth is Chinese and Eleusinian; belief in sacramental virtue is Pythagorean; and honours to the dead are a polytheism. Such is the general nature of the fact before us; Mr. Milman argues from it, "These things are in heathenism, therefore they are not Christian:" we, on the contrary, prefer to say, "these things are in Christianity, therefore they are not heathen." That is, we prefer to say, and we think that Scripture bears us out in saying, that from the beginning the Moral Governor of the world has scattered the seeds of truth far and wide over its extent; that these have variously taken root, and grown up as in the wilderness, wild plants indeed but living; and hence that, as the inferior animals have tokens of an immaterial principle in them, yet have not souls, so the philosophies and religions of men have their life in certain true ideas, though they are not directly divine. What man is amid the brute creation, such is the Church among the schools of the world; and as Adam gave names to the animals about him, so has the Church from the first looked round upon the earth, noting and visiting the doctrines she found there. She began in Chaldea, and then sojourned among the Canaanites, and went down into Egypt, and thence passed into Arabia, till she rested in her own land. Next she encountered the merchants of Tyre, and the wisdom of the East country, and the luxury of Sheba. Then she was carried away to Babylon, and wandered to the schools of Greece. And wherever she went, in trouble or in triumph, still she was a living spirit, the mind and voice of the Most High; "sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions;" claiming to herself what they said rightly, correcting their errors, supplying their defects, completing their beginnings, expanding their surmises, and thus gradually by means of them enlarging the range and refining the sense of her own teaching. So far then from her creed being of doubtful credit because it resembles foreign theologies, we even hold that one special way in which Providence has imparted divine knowledge to us has been by enabling her to draw and collect it together out of the world, and, in this sense, as in others, to suck the milk of the Gentiles and to suck the breast of kings.

 How far in fact this process has gone, is a question of history; and we believe it has before now been grossly exaggerated and misrepresented by those who, like Mr. Milman, have thought that its existence told against Catholic doctrine; but so little antecedent difficulty have we in the matter, that we could readily grant, unless it were a question of fact not of theory, that Balaam was an Eastern sage, or a Sibyl was inspired, or Solomon learnt of the sons of Mahol, or Moses was a scholar of the Egyptian hierophants. We are not distressed to be told that the doctrine of the angelic host came from Babylon, while we know that they did sing at the Nativity; nor that the vision of a Mediator is in Philo, if in very deed He died for us on Calvary. Nor are we afraid to allow, that, even after His coming, the Church has been a treasure-house, giving forth things old and new, casting the gold of fresh tributaries into her refiner's fire, or stamping upon her own, as time required it, a deeper impress of her Master's image.

 The distinction between these two theories is broad and obvious. The advocates of the one imply that Revelation was a single, entire, solitary act, or nearly so, introducing a certain message; whereas we, who maintain the other, consider that Divine teaching has been in fact, what the analogy of nature would lead us to expect, "at sundry times and in divers manners," various, complex, progressive, and supplemental of itself. We consider the Christian doctrine, when analyzed, to appear, like the human frame, "fearfully and wonderfully made;" but they think it some one tenet or certain principles given out at one time in their fulness, without gradual enlargement before Christ's coming or elucidation afterwards. They cast off all that they also find in Pharisee or heathen; we conceive that the Church, like Aaron's rod, devours the serpents of the magicians. They are ever hunting for a fabulous primitive simplicity; we repose in Catholic fulness. They seek what never has been found; we accept and use what even they acknowledge to be a substance. They are driven to maintain, on their part, that the Church's doctrine was never pure; we say that it never can be corrupt. We consider that a divine promise keeps the Church Catholic from doctrinal corruption; but on what promise, or on what encouragement, they are seeking for their visionary purity does not appear.

 10.

 Which of these theories is the true, this is not the place for discussing; our business here, to which we now address ourselves, is to trace out some of the applications of the one on which Mr. Milman proceeds, as his volumes enable us to do, and to inquire how much will be left of Christianity at the end of the process. He states then, that in her first ages the Church separately encountered Judaism, Orientalism, and Paganism, and again, that her system resembles all three. From the encounter, he would argue the probability of their influencing her; from the resemblance the fact . He says:

 "As a universal religion aspiring to the complete moral conquest of the world, Christianity had to encounter three antagonists, Judaism, Paganism, and Orientalism. It is our design successively to exhibit the conflict with these opposing forces, its final triumph, not without detriment to its own native purity and its divine simplicity, from the interworking of the yet unsubdued elements of the former systems into the Christian mind; until each, at successive periods, and in different parts of the world, formed a modification of Christianity equally removed from its unmingled and unsullied original; the Judæo-Christianity of Palestine, of which the Ebionites appear to have been the last representatives; the Platonic Christianity of Alexandria, as, at least at this early period, the new religion could coalesce only with the sublime and more philosophical principles of Paganism; and, lastly, the Gnostic Christianity of the East." Vol. i., p. 413.

 In like manner he speaks elsewhere of an " inveterate Judaism," which "has perpetually revived in the Christian Church in days of excitement." P. 148. "The Grecian philosophy," he says, "and, at a later period, influences still more adverse to that of Judaism, mingled with the prevailing Christianity. A kind of latent Judaism has, however, constantly lurked within the bosom of the Church." P. 456. Again, "Asiatic influences have worked more completely into the body and essence of Christianity than any other foreign elements." Vol. ii., p. 82. Such, we say, is the theory; now to apply it.

 To begin with the hierarchy of Angels, to which we have already referred. Speaking of Simon Magus's doctrine on that subject, Mr. Milman says:

 "This peopling of the universe with a regular descending succession of beings was common to the whole East, perhaps in great part to the West. The later Jewish doctrines of angels and devils approached nearly to it ; it lurked in Platonism, and assumed a higher form in the Eastern cosmogonies." Vol. ii., p. 101.

 And more strongly in an earlier passage:

 "It is generally admitted that the Jewish notions about the angels, one great subject of dispute in their synagogues, and what may be called their demonology, received a strong foreign tinge during their residence in Babylonia ... In apparent allusion to or coincidence with this system, the visions of Daniel represent Michael, the titular angel or intelligence of the Jewish people, in opposition to the four angels of the great monarchies; and even our Saviour seems to condescend to the popular language when He represents the parental care of the Almighty over children under the significant and beautiful image, 'for in heaven,'" etc. Vol. i., p. 70.

 It seems, then, the angelic hierarchy is not a doctrine of divine truth, because it was taught in the Zendavesta; and further, what is still more observable, even our Lord's teaching it does not make it so. This illustrates forcibly the view given above of Mr. Milman's canon for ascertaining what is matter of Revelation. Our Lord cannot say a thing in earnest, which heathen sages taught or surmised before Him.

 Next, Mr. Milman tells us that "the Jew concurred with the worshipper of Ormusd in expecting a final restoration of all things through the agency of a Divine Intelligence." Vol. i., p. 77. The words of St. Peter might come into the reader's mind, about the time of refreshing, when "He shall send Jesus Christ, whom the heavens must receive until the times of restitution of all things ;" but Mr. Milman overturns the authority of the whole passage, observing that it seems "as if even yet Peter himself was not disencumbered of that Jewish notion of an immediate re-appearance of Christ." Vol. i., p. 391. "The disciple is not better than his Lord;" if not Christ's, much less are St. Peter's words, though spoken after a miracle, matter of Divine Revelation, provided they betray any resemblance to a doctrine of Zoroaster.

 Speaking of the Resurrection, he says, "It appears and in its more perfect development, soon after the return from the captivity. As early as the revolt of the Maccabees, it was so deeply rooted in the public mind, that we find a solemn ceremony performed for the dead ... In the Zoroastrian religion, a resurrection holds a place no less prominent than in the later Jewish belief." Vol. i., p. 75. In spite of this, Mr. Milman of course insists, though we see not with what consistency, on the doctrine of the Resurrection as proper to Christianity; however, soon after the above passages, speaking of the "Oriental colouring" which the Jews adopted, he says, "even the doctrine of the Resurrection was singularly harmonized with their exclusive nationality. At least the first Resurrection was to be their separate portion; it was to summon them, if not all, at least the more righteous, from Paradise, from the abode of departed spirits; and under their triumphant king they were to enjoy a thousand years of glory and bliss upon the recreated and renovated earth." P. 78. Is not this "colouring," as Mr. Milman calls it, very like St. John's language in the Apocalypse? Is that language to fare as the words of our Lord and St. Peter? or is it, on the other hand, to be considered as Eastern tradition which is appropriated and guaranteed by St. John?

 But there are instances in which Mr. Milman recoils from his own theory. For example, he tells us, that "the practice of the external washing of the body, as emblematic of the inward purification of the soul, is almost universal . The sacred Ganges cleanses all moral pollution from the Indian; among the Greeks and Romans, even the murderer might, it was supposed, wash the blood clean from his hands ... The perpetual similitude and connexion between the uncleanness of the body and of the soul, which run through the Mosaic law ... must have familiarized the mind with the mysterious effects attributed to such a rite." P. 142. True; but then why might not Orientalism in like manner "familiarize" the mind with the religious observance of celibacy, instead of throwing discredit on its divine authority?

 Again, concerning the doctrine of a Mediator, Mr. Milman says:

 " Wherever any approximation had been made to the sublime truth of the one great First Cause, either awful religious reverence or philosophic abstraction had removed the primal deity entirely beyond the sphere of human sense, and supposed that the intercourse of the Divinity with man, the moral government, and even the original creation, had been carried on by the intermediate agency, either in Oriental language of an emanation, or in the Platonic, of the wisdom, reason, or intelligence of the one Supreme. This Being was more or less distinctly impersonated according to the more popular or more philosophic, the more material or more abstract notions of the age or people. This was the doctrine from the Ganges, or even the shores of the Yellow Sea to the Ilissus; it was the fundamental principle of the Indian religion and Indian philosophy; it was the basis of Zoroastrianism, it was pure Platonism, it was the Platonic Judaism of the Alexandrian school. Many fine passages might be quoted from Philo, on the impossibility that the first self-existing Being should become cognizable to the sense of man." Vol. i., pp. 72, 73.

 Now, here again, as before, the principle which Mr. Milman elsewhere applies, is too much for him: and since he will not admit that this universal belief is from tradition or secret suggestion, (as we would maintain,) and of course dare not take the alternative, which in consistency he ought to take, of denying that what is found outside of Christianity is part of Christianity, he is obliged to have recourse to the following expedient by way of accounting for the fact: "From this remarkable uniformity of conception and coincidence of language," he says, "has sometimes been assumed a common tradition, generally disseminated throughout the race of man. I should be content with receiving it as the general acquiescence of the human mind in the necessity of some mediation between the pure spiritual nature of the Deity and the intellectual and moral being of man." P. 74. "Content," means "too happy, thus to turn my back upon my own theory;" however, supposing others are not content? all minds have not equal piety; they are carried away by reason; they are run off with by a principle; what is to hinder a writer less religious-minded than Mr. Milman, proceeding to infer concerning the doctrine of mediation what he himself does infer concerning the angelic host? Is not mediation proved to be an Orientalism? and may not the "moral effect" of its idea be the same on the vulgar, even though the "refined intelligence" of the educated, who do not need it, should decline it? And again, if the universality of the doctrine of mediation is to be accounted for on an instinct, why may not the doctrine of celibacy also?

 In like manner all the divine and regal titles of Christ had been anticipated in one quarter or another; why are they not to be rejected as Oriental, Jewish, or Alexandrian? Mr. Milman tells us

 "Each region, each rank, each sect, the Babylonian, the Egyptian, the Palestinian, the Samaritan, the Pharisee, the lawyer, the zealot, arrayed the Messiah in those attributes which suited his own temperament. Of that which was more methodically taught in the synagogue of the adjacent school, the populace caught up whatever made the deeper impression. The enthusiasm took an active or contemplative, an ambitious or a religious, an earthly or a heavenly tone, according to the education, habits, or station of the believer; and to different men the Messiah was man or angel, or more than angel; he was king, conqueror, or moral reformer; a more victorious Joshua, a more magnificent Herod, a wider-ruling Cæsar, a wiser Moses, a holier Abraham; an angel, the angel of the Covenant, the Metatron, the Mediator between God and man; Michael, the great tutelar archangel of the nation, who appears by some to have been identified with the mysterious Being who led them forth from Egypt; he was the word of God; an emanation from the Deity, himself partaking of the Divine nature." Vol. i., pp. 82, 83.

 Or, to take another passage:

 " In all the systems a binary, in most a triple, modification of the Deity was admitted. The Logos, the divine word or reason, might differ in the various schemes, in its relation to the parental divinity, and to the universe; but it had this distinctive and ineffaceable character, that it was the mediator, the connecting link between the unseen and unapproachable world and that of man. This Platonism, if it may be so called, was universal. It had gradually absorbed all the more intellectual class; it hovered over, as it were, and gathered under its wings all the religions of the world. It had already modified Judaism ; it had allied itself with the Syrian and Mithraic worship of the Sun, the visible Mediator, the emblem of the word; it was part of the general Nature worship; it was attempting to renew Paganism, and was the recognized and leading tenet in the higher mysteries." Vol. ii., p. 427-8.

 Where then are we to stop? What will be left to us of Christianity, if we assume that nothing is of its essence which is found elsewhere? Will even its precepts remain? "If we were to glean," says Mr. Milman, "from the later Jewish writings, from the beautiful aphorisms of other Oriental nations, which we cannot fairly trace to Christian sources, and from the Platonic and Stoic philosophy, their more striking precepts, we might find perhaps a counterpart to almost all the moral sayings of Jesus. But the same truth is of different importance as an unconnected aphorism, and as the groundwork of a complete system." Vol. i., p. 207. Most true; but we suspect the same distinction will be found to hold concerning some other Catholic doctrines and observances, which Mr. Milman would reject as Oriental or Judaic. It will hold too, in a remarkable manner, of a doctrine, which, as we have shown above, Mr. Milman so strangely passes over, but which surely is the practical basis of the whole Revelation, the forgiveness of sins.

 However, there are two doctrines, which Mr. Milman seems to admit as especially proper to Christianity, which therefore ought to be especially considered of the essence of the Revelation; we suspect, however, that, characteristic as they are, they are not of that liberal and enlarged sort, which will please the "fastidious intelligence" of this age. The two to which we allude, are the principle of dogmatism, and the doctrine of ecclesiastical liberty. This is remarkable.

 As to the former of the two, the principle of maintaining the faith, Mr. Milman says, speaking of the times of Athanasius:

 "How singular an illustration of the change already wrought in the mind of man by the introduction of Christianity ... This controversy related to a purely speculative tenet . The disputants of either party ... appear to have dwelt little, if at all, on the practical effects of conflicting opinions. In morals, in manners, in habits, in usages, in Church government, in religious ceremonial, there was no distinction between the parties which divided Christendom ... The Arians and Athanasians first divided the world on a pure question of faith ... Religion was become the one dominant passion of the whole Christian world; and everything allied to it, or rather, in this case, which seemed to concern its very essence, could no longer be agitated with tranquillity or debated with indifference ." Vol. ii., pp. 423-432.

 The other principle was that of ecclesiastical liberty:

 "It is curious," observes Mr. Milman, "to observe this new element of freedom, however at present working in a concealed, irregular, and perhaps still guarded manner, mingling itself up with, and partially upheaving, the general prostration of the human mind. The Christian, or in some respects it might be more justly said, the hierarchical principle, was entering into the constitution of human society, as an antagonist power to that of the civil sovereign." Vol. iii., p. 34.

 11.

 Instances, however, such as these, deserving as they are of notice, scarcely do more than illustrate the rule to which they are exceptions. We repeat, then, in perfect sincerity and much anxiety, our inquiry, What tenet of Christianity will escape proscription, if the principle is once admitted, that a sufficient account is given of an opinion, and a sufficient ground for making light of it, as soon as it is historically referred to some human origin? What will be our Christianity? What shall we have to believe? What will be left to us? Will more remain than a caput mortuum, with no claim on our profession or devotion? Will the Gospel be a substance? Will Revelation have done more than introduce a quality into our moral life world, not anything that can be contemplated by itself, obeyed and perpetuated? This we do verily believe to be the end of the speculations, of which Mr. Milman's volumes at least serve as an illustration. If we indulge them, Christianity will melt away in our hands like snow; we shall be unbelievers before we at all suspect where we are. With a sigh we shall suddenly detect the real state of the case. We shall look on Christianity, not as a religion, but as a past event which exerted a great influence on the course of the world, when it happened, and gave a tone and direction to religion, government, philosophy, literature, manners; an idea which developed itself in various directions strongly, which was indeed from the first materialized into a system or a church, and is still upheld as such by numbers, but by an error; a great boon to the world, bestowed by the Giver of all good, as the discovery of printing may be, or the steam-engine, but as incapable of continuity, except in its effects, as the shock of an earthquake, or the impulsive force which commenced the motions of the planets.

 It is impossible that a thoughtful man like Mr. Milman should not feel this difficulty even as a matter of logical consistency, not to speak of it as a deep practical question. Accordingly he has attempted, though, as we think, most arbitrarily and unsuccessfully, to set bounds to his own principle, and to shut the door on innovation, when he has let in as much of it as suited his taste. Some incidental symptoms of his anxiety have appeared in the course of passages lately quoted; but it is elsewhere embodied in protests, cautions, and attempts at explanation. Early in his work he begins by a protest; after speaking of the successive changes which have taken place in the form of Christianity, he proceeds:

 "While, however, Christianity necessarily submitted to all these modifications, I strongly protest against the opinion, that the origin of the religion can be attributed, according to a theory adopted by many foreign writers, to the gradual and spontaneous development of the human mind. Christ is as much beyond His own age, as His own age is beyond the darkest barbarism." Vol. i., p. 50.

 Doubtless, no principle of Mr. Milman's book is inconsistent with the proof of our Lord's divine mission concisely stated by him in the last sentence; but proof in behalf of His mission does not tend to determine His doctrine . The question is, whether Mr. Milman has not taken up a position which puts him out of reach of all means of ascertaining or proving what Christ came to tell the world? For instance, he himself seems to be contented to retreat back as far as the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and there to take his stand. Now this is confessedly not a new doctrine, first proposed by Christianity; let us see then whether he can so state his case in its favour, as not at the same time to suggest proof in behalf of other doctrines which he rejects. He thus defends it from the objection in question:

 "Henceforward that great truth begins to assume a new character, and to obtain an influence over the political and social, as well as over the individual, happiness of man, unknown in the former ages of the world . It is no longer a feeble and uncertain instinct, nor a remote speculative opinion, obscured by the more pressing necessities and cares of the present life, but the universal predominant sentiment, constantly present to the thoughts, enwoven with the usages, and pervading the whole moral being of man. The dim and scattered rays, either of traditionary belief, of intuitive feeling, or of philosophic reasoning, were brought as it were to a focus, condensed and poured with an immeasurably stronger, an expanding, an all-permeating light upon the human soul. Whatever its origin, whether in human nature, or the aspirations of high-thoughted individuals, propagated through their followers, or in former revelation, it received such an impulse, and was so deeply and universally moulded up with the popular mind in all orders, that from this period may be dated the true era of its dominion. If by no means new in its elementary principle, it was new in the degree and the extent to which it began to operate in the affairs of men." Vol. i., pp. 371, 372.

 A very good argument indeed, as we should say, in favour of the doctrine of the soul's immortality as a part of the special Gospel message. Yet, strange to say, hardly has Mr. Milman uttered it, but he is obliged in a note to make the following most remarkable, though indirect, confession, that the rationalizing principles which he has adopted do not necessarily secure even to this doctrine a place in the idea of Christianity; and that, in the judgment, not of any mere paradoxical minds, but of one of the most profound thinkers, as fame goes, of his age. Mr. Milman says:

 "The most remarkable evidence of the extent to which German speculation has wandered away from the first principles of Christianity, is this, that one of the most religious writers, the one who has endeavoured with the most earnest sincerity to reconnect religious belief with the philosophy of the times, has actually represented Christianity without, or almost without, the immortality of the soul ; and this the ardent and eloquent translator of Plato! Copious and full on the moral regeneration effected by Christ in this world, with the loftiest sentiments of the emancipation of the human soul from the bondage of sin by the Gospel, Schleiermacher is silent, or almost silent, on the redemption from death . He beholds Christ distinctly as bringing life, only vaguely and remotely, as bringing immortality to light." Vol. i., p. 372, note.

 Christianity did not even bring the immortality of the soul to light; where then, after all, and what is Christianity?

 However, Mr. Milman's expedient for limiting his own principles is, as we have seen, this, to assert that a broad line must be drawn between the starting and the continuance of the religion, Divine Providence watching over it for its purity in the first age in a way in which it did not in the second; and then, as if by way of makeup to the second and following ages for this implied charge of corruption against them, to console them with the concession that perhaps their corruptions tended to the permanence of Christianity. But the champions of the ages in question, with all due acknowledgments for the compliment, will not allow him thus delicately to tiptoe over the difficulty. His words are these:

 "On a wide and comprehensive survey of the whole history of Christianity, and considering it as left altogether to its own native force and impulse, it is difficult to estimate how far the admission, even the predominance, of these foreign elements, by which it was enabled to maintain its hold on different ages and races, may not have contributed both to its original success and its final permanence . If it lost in purity, it gained in power, perhaps in permanence. No doubt in its first contest with Orientalism, were sown those seeds which grew up at a later period into Monasticism; it rejected the tenets, but admitted the more insidious principle of Gnosticism; yet there can be little doubt that in the dark ages the monastic spirit was among the great conservative and influential elements of Christianity." Vol. ii., pp. 94, 95.

 We neither thank Mr. Milman for granting to us that the monastic spirit has been "conservative," nor will we grant to him in turn that "no doubt" it sprang from the "insidious principle of Gnosticism."

 It will be observed that throughout the foregoing remarks on Mr. Milman's volumes, we have been granting generally the existence of a resemblance between Christianity and certain doctrines and practices scattered to and fro in the heathen philosophies and religions. Our purpose was to show that the genuineness of the Catholic creed, ethics, and ritual was unaffected by this fact; their being an existing Catholic theory on which the fact could stand without detriment to Catholicism, as well as a popular and liberalistic theory according to which the fact would throw discredit upon it. But the professed fact itself needs careful looking after, for it has been before now, and is continually, shamefully misstated. We had intended in this place to have added some words upon it, but our limits forbid.

 There is another question which obviously arises out of the fact under consideration, viz., as to its effect upon the authority of Revealed Religion. It may be objected, that originality is necessary, if not for truth of doctrine, at least for evidence of divinity; and, though there is nothing very profound in the remark, it ought to be answered; and we mention it, that we may be seen not to have forgotten it.

 12.

 And now, in bringing our remarks on this able work to an end, we must confess the mixed feeling with which we have made them. We have felt it to be an imperative duty to take that view of Mr. Milman's volumes which first presents itself to a Churchman. It is also their prominent aspect, and such as is likely to arrest the attention of the general reader, as well as of those whose habit of mind it is to associate the visible world with the invisible. The second aspect in which we should regard them, is as being a serviceable collection, or commonplace-book, of the worst which can be said by a candid enemy against the theory of Catholicism. The third remark we make upon them, and we make it with great sincerity and much pleasure, only wishing it could come first instead of third, is in their praise as a work of unusual learning and thought, containing a large mass of information, valuable to the students of ecclesiastical history. The author's method has its good side as well as its bad. He treats Catholic persons, proceedings, and events, in a large and tolerant spirit. His sketches of the great bishops of the fourth century are particularly interesting, though defaced, of course, by the peculiarities of his religious theory. With the same drawback, we can express great satisfaction in many of his discussions on particular points, of which we especially notice the chapters called "Christianity and Orientalism," and "Christianity and the Fine Arts."

 It is indeed most painful, independently of all personal feelings which a scholar and poet so early distinguished as Mr. Milman must excite in the minds of his brethren, that a work so elaborate and so important should be composed upon principles which are calculated to turn all kindly feeling into mere antipathy and disgust. Indeed there is so much to shock people, that there is comparatively little to injure. To one set of persons only is he likely to do much mischief, those who just at this moment are so ready to use his main principle for the demolition of Catholic views, without seeing that it applies to the New Testament History and teaching just as well. He will assist such persons in carrying out their principle. We observe that a publication, prominent in this warfare, cautions its readers against Mr. Milman's most dangerous and insidious work. We beg to join this publication and all other similar ones in its sage and seasonable warning. Let all who carp at the Fathers and deny Tradition, who argue against sacramental influence, who refer celibacy to Gnosticism, and episcopal power to Judaism, who declaim against mysticism, and scoff at the miracles of the Church while at the same time they uphold what is called orthodox Protestantism, steadily abstain from Mr. Milman's volumes. On their controversial principles his reasonings and conclusions are irresistible.

 January, 1841.

 Note

 Mr. Milman says of the pool of Bethesda, that it "was supposed to possess remarkable properties for healing diseases. At certain periods there was a strong commotion in the waters, which probably bubbled up from some chemical cause connected with their medicinal effects. Popular belief, or rather perhaps popular language, attributed this agitation of the surface to the descent of an Angel." Vol. i., p. 215. On the other hand, the Evangelist says expressly, "an Angel went down at a certain season into the pool." Mr. Milman adds in a note, that "the verse relating to the Angel is rejected as spurious by many critics, and is wanting in some manuscripts." That is a fair argument against it: if the verse cannot be supported on external evidence, let it be rejected; but let it not be kept, and explained away on a theory.