candor or justice, Unitarians hold that an attempt to sustain such a view of the inspiration of the Bible as has been reasserted by Gaussen, subjects the interests of true faith and piety to a fearful risk. The fact that some persons are willing to avert their own gaze from all the real difficulties of the case, will not close the eyes or silence the complaints of others. That the strong and childlike in the docility of faith are ready to believe in behalf of the Bible that full explanations may at one time or another be given to all its historical, scientific, or critical perplexities, ought not to make them obstinate or unjust in slighting the embarrassments of faith for such as may value the Bible as highly as themselves.

Within the last few years we have had offered to us the best fruits of long and anxious discussions upon the authority and the interpretation of the Scriptures. Angry controversies, venturesome scepticism, perilous and reckless audacity in theorizing, have mingled largely, but we must think only incidentally, in the great work of Scriptural criticism. We would by no means undertake to justify the positions which some even of the most eminent among Unitarian interpreters have taken. Far otherwise. Our own humble opinion is, that in general we have made larger concessions to what threatened to be a destructive criticism, than the emergencies of the case have really been proved to demand. For ourselves, we yield only inch by inch, and then only when the necessity is fairly made out, in each instance which qualifies the highest possible view of the authority and the inspiration of the chief contents of the Bible. But when any demand is fairly made out, we pay our homage to truth under the form of concessions to it, not under the form of obstinate denials of its presence. It is with a profound satisfaction that we now find in the works of distinguished scholars and divines, nominally of various creeds, admissions, full, frank, and complete, of views advanced by Unitarians in qualification of the popular estimate of the Bible, and in the general and specific applications of criticism to important texts. Gaussen has indeed received the indorsement of Orthodox "religious journals." Let us see how the mature views of Tholuck, as they are now obtaining currency, will be treated by those who have heretofore given him their

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love and confidence. Neander has strained the elasticity of Orthodox attachment to its utmost limits by his historical, doctrinal, and symbolic construction of Christian ideas. Bunsen and Tholuck have yet a repute to keep, but if they retain it, let them prize it as generous.

If we bring into close comparison some of the lectures, essays, or sermons of eminent modern writers, Orthodox and Unitarian, upon the inspiration and authority of the text of Scripture, we are struck with the following difference in their tenor,- the difference shall stand as one of great or of little moment, as our readers shall choose. The elaborate Orthodox essay begins, takes its start, opens, with bolder assertions of Infallibility and Plenary Inspiration than we could make, pitched in the old tone, as if announcing the old theory in a way determined to maintain it, stiffly, resolutely, and defiantly. But read on carefully, and you will find admissions cautiously, timidly yielded, forced out by facts which are not to be winked out of sight when such men as Professor Stuart, J. P. Smith, Arnold, Alford, Jowett, and Tholuck have their eyes turned upon them. When you reach the end of the essay, you will find that every allowance has been granted that you think is essential, and that the conclusion is in marked contrast with the beginning. You may think of the text, "Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off." On the other hand, a similar essay by a Unitarian will begin with perhaps an excessive allowance of concessions, with an admission of all the necessary qualifications and limitations of the claim of inspiration. It will have in view, at the start, the difficulties which are to be encountered. Therefore it will not open so boldly or defiantly as an Orthodox essay. But when it has made its concessions, it will hold resolutely to the main substance, the essential truth, the kernel of the nut which is within the shell. The contents of the two essays will have more in common than we should by any means expect. In some cases we might even conceive that, if they had come from the same printing-office, some labor of composition might have been saved by transposing and overrunning pages or paragraphs. Is the difference of great or of little moment?

We must be supposed to have intimated all through our discussion our own views upon the serious themes involved in it. If any one asks, To what extent must the popular estimate of the authority and inspiration of the Bible, as a whole, be reduced? what limitations are to be defined for denial? what position is to be assumed for rebuilding a new citadel of faith? we can but answer, The Christian scholarship of this and of the next ages will decide those questions. Our province has been merely to redeem these momentous issues from the contempt of a poor sectarian strife.

The most favorable position for the attainment of just views on this great subject is that which is occupied by a faithful and devout Christian minister, who has received the best intellectual culture of his time. The most thorough critical study of the Bible in private, and a daily application of its lessons to the sins. and sorrows, the duties and the straits of human life, are the two conditions which must meet and harmonize. The critical study of the Bible, with no reference to its uses "for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness," will be sure to turn the most devout man into the coldest of sceptics. On the other hand, a devout exhorter, with his thumbs and fingers inserted in the Bible ready to turn to any part of it for words which he ascribes directly to God, if his ignorance exposes him to recklessness, and his feeling runs into rant, will make infidels of the majority of his hearers, and fanatics of the rest. The educated and devout minister alone can meet the emergencies of the case. His critical studies, his knowledge of the unbelieving, as well as of the "religious" world, will keep him mindful of the perplexities which faith in its relation to the historical records of a revelation must present, and will lead him continually to draw from his own triumphs over struggle and doubt the wisest aid in dealing with the difficulties of others. His use of the Bible in the pulpit and in the sick-chamber, as the inestimable and inexhaustible source of all holy lessons which have power over the soul of man and can alone sanctify life and cheer affliction, will day by day renew his grateful confidence in the preciousness of the sacred volume. He knows that it is the world's only light, law,

1856.] The Divine Word and the Human Heart. 287

and hope. The very conventionalities of his office, the very straits of his daily and weekly duties, require that those to whom he ministers should with him believe and love the Bible. The measure of his power over the sinful and the afflicted and those terms embrace all that live-is proportioned to the vigor of his own faith, and to the depth of his own experimental acquaintance with the truths conveyed in the Bible. He is in every way concerned that faith in it should reach the highest possible height, and that gratitude and reverence for it should know no abatement. For many weary centuries the piety of Christendom was kept alive by the Romish priest without the Bible. It will be hard if that piety cannot live with a brighter and purer vigor through the Protestant minister with the Bible.

Let us have no fear of the work of scholarly and reverent criticism upon Scripture. It is in the hands of men and women who too well know its worth to allow it to suffer from the very inquisition which tests its value. We know nothing beyond what the Bible teaches us in any direction or upon any subject in which it undertakes to instruct us. One barrier is fixed; one limit is certain; one condition, known from the beginning, still stands unchallenged, the Divine element in the Bible always has exceeded, exceeds now, and always will be acknowledged as exceeding, its human element. The Bible has floated on the sea of human life, below which so much has sunk of the ever-changing interests, and of the ever-changing generations, of men. Or rather it has risen from that sea as an island rock, and has heard the storms of ages, and has been lashed by all the waves that have tossed us and our poor barks. Can we find a better anchorage?

G. E. E

ART. VII. MILMAN'S LATIN CHRISTIANITY.*

THEY who love ease and clearness in writing, especially if they have just risen from the graceful flow of Prescott, the free and almost careless perspicuity of Irving, the solid straightforwardness of Sparks, the nervous compression of Bancroft, the brilliant fervor of Motley, or the graphic skill of Parkman, will find much to be forgiven in the historic style of Dr. Milman. If that of Mr. Macaulay, with its lavish wealth, its unerring accuracy, its perpetual insisting on being perfectly understood, is the very finest in the English tongue, that of his friend the Dean of St. Paul's is so artificial and stiff, with its elliptical, involved, and dislocated sentences, as frequently to impede and perplex its readers. If in the "History of England from the Accession of James II." we are continually pausing or going back as we read, for the sake of deepening the effect in our memory, or of prolonging our delight, in the "History of Latin Christianity" we feel compelled to repeat the same process with the very different view of disentangling the meaning, or from a grammatical curiosity to straighten out a tangled braid into some natural order.

In a notice of the first three volumes of this work,† we spoke with some particularity of these faults of Dr. Milman's style of composition. The less need be said of them here. He himself, in a short note prefixed to the fourth volume, says: "Some, even of my most friendly critics, have observed certain negligences and inaccuracies of style in the former volumes. Most of these, if I may not venture to say all, are to be traced to errors of the press and of punctuation; some few, perhaps, to an injudicious attempt at too close condensation of the multifarious materials." Without say.

ing as it might be said that the condensation need not have been so close if the materials had been made more select, and if there had been introduced fewer names that no one remembers, and fewer events that

* History of Latin Christianity, including that of the Popes to the Pontificate of Nicholas V BY HENRY HART MILMAN, D. D., Dean of St. Paul's. Vols. IV., V., and VI. London. 1855. pp. 1719:

† Christian Examiner for September, 1854.