Coleridge on Faith.

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Faith. And the third is what is presupposed in the human conscience, the acknowledgment of God, the rightful Superior whose will conscience reveals, duty to whom imparts their obligatory force to all other duties. We believe in God because it is our duty to believe in Him. "The wonderful works of God in the sensible world are a perpetual discourse, reminding me of His existence, and shadowing out to me His perfections. But as all language presupposes in the intelligent hearer or reader those primary notions which it symbolises; as well as the power of making those combinations of these primary notions which it represents, and excites us to combine; even so I believe that the notion of God is essential to the human mind; that it is called forth into distinct consciousness principally by the conscience, and auxiliarily by the manifest adaptation of means to ends in the outward creation. It is, therefore, evident to my reason, that the existence of God is absolutely and necessarily insusceptible of a scientific demonstration, and that Scripture has so represented it. For it commands us to believe in one God. I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have none other gods than me. Now all commandment necessarily relates to the will; whereas all scientific demonstration is independent of the will, and is apodictic or demonstrative only as far as it is compulsory on the mind, volentem, nolentem." With Coleridge, it is the intrinsic character of Christianity, not the external proof, which leads the way in inspiring a conviction that God is its author. As "to matters of faith, to the verities of religion," in the belief of these "there must always be somewhat of moral election, 'an act of will in it as well as of the understanding, as much love in it as discursive power. True Christian faith must have in it something of inevidence, something that must be made up by duty and obedience.'" The quotation included is from Jeremy Taylor. In another place, Coleridge exclaims: "Evidences of Christianity! I am weary of the word. Make a man feel the want of it; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge of his need of it; and you may safely trust it to its own evidence; remembering only the express declaration of Christ himself: No man cometh to me, unless the Father leadeth him.'" Of the principles which underlie all specific

1 Coleridge's Essay on Fuith.

precepts of the Bible, Coleridge writes: "From the very nature of those principles, as taught in the Bible, they are understood in exact proportion as they are believed and felt. The regulator is never separated from the mainspring. For the words of the Apostle are literally and philosophically true : We (that is, the human race) live by faith. Whatever we do or know that in kind is different from the brute creation, has its origin in a determination of the reason to have faith and trust in itself. This is the first act of faith, is scarcely less than identical with its own being."

Among living theologians no one has set forth the moral basis of faith with more philosophical depth than Dr. John Henry Newman. Faith, a living faith, “lives in, and from, a desire after those things which it accepts and confesses." "Philosophers, ancient and modern, who have been eminent in physical science, have not unfrequently shown a tendency to infidelity." "Unless there be a pre-existent and independent interest in the inquirer's mind, leading him to dwell on the phenomena which betoken an Intelligent Creator, he will certainly follow out those which terminate in the hypothesis of a settled order of nature and self-sustained laws." "The practical safeguard against Atheism in the case of scientific inquirers is the inward need and desire, the inward experience of that Power, existing in the mind before and independently of their examination of His material world." "Faith is a process of the Reason, in which so much of the grounds of inference cannot be exhibited, so much lies in the character of the mind itself, in its general view of things, its estimate of the probable and the improbable, its impressions concerning God's will, and its anticipations derived from its own inbred wishes, that it will ever seem to the world irrational and despicable;-till, that is, the event confirms it." "Can it, indeed, be doubted that the great majority of those who have sincerely and deliberately given themselves to religion, who take it for their portion, and stake their happiness upon it, have done so, not on an examination of evidence, but from a spontaneous movement of their hearts towards it?" Faith "is said, and rightly, to be a venture, to involve a risk." "We believe because we love. How plain a truth!" "The safeguard of Faith is a right state of heart. This it is that gives it birth; it also disciplines it." "Why

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does he "-the believer-"feel the message to be probable? Because he has a love for it. . . . He has a keen sense of the excellence of the message, of its desirableness, of its likeness to what it seems to him Divine Goodness would vouchsafe, did He vouchsafe any, of the need of a Revelation, and its probability." God, "for whatever reason, exercises us with the less evidence when He might give us the greater:" . . . perchance by the defects of the evidence He is trying our love of its matter." Faith "rests on the evidence of testimony, weak in proportion to the excellence of the blessing attested."1 These quotations, after what I have said on preceding pages, need no comment. GEORGE P. FISHER.

ART. X.-Current Literature.

THE publication of Dr. Dorner's great work upon Dogmatics2 moves on quickly. About two-thirds of the whole have now appeared, and it is possible to estimate with some accuracy its position among recent works upon systematic theology. It is a most valuable addition. The former volume, a notice of which will be found in the April number of this Review, opened up the great theme in a novel manner, and by its profound analysis of the genesis of Faith, by its astonishing deduction of the Doctrine of God, and by its original construction of the Doctrine of the Trinity from the ethical idea of love, suggested to all readers, what a few pupils of the famous. Berlin Professor had incessantly declared, that the reasoned treatment of Christian truth had received the accession of another name to its higher ranks. That impression this second volume deepens. The apologetic branch of the subject is now left behind, and, the foundation having been thus laid, the specific doctrines of Christianity are entered upon. In the pages before us there pass under a most logically conceived

1 University Sermons, pp. 193, 194, 203, 216, 225, 234, 236.

2 Christliche Glaubenslehre, von Dr. J. A. DORNER. Zweiter band, specielle Glaubenslehre, erste Hälfte. 1880, Berlin. (System of Christian Doctrine, by Dr. J. A. Dorner. Second vol., first half.)

survey the Doctrine of Sin and the Doctrine of Christ. That Dr. Dorner's historical and dogmatic consideration of Christology would be lucid, thorough, biblical, and philosophical, every student of his now classic treatise upon the Person of Christ would anticipate. For our part, we should nevertheless give the palm to his consideration of the Doctrine of Evil, which is steadily and progressively tracked through its biblical, ecclesiastical, and dogmatic phases,-the postulates and the nature of sin, its generic and its habitual character, all coming in for careful and vigorous location and regard. The appendices upon the Devil and Death are especially interesting. The fact is, that, despite the numerous works which have been given to the world in response to the impulse initiated by Schleiermacher, this System of Dr. Dorner's seems the final word along this line, however disputable the line itself. Certainly the doctrinal method created by Schleiermacher has not before received so judicious, so sympathetic, so national, and so discriminating a prosecution. Further, from the very distinct recognition by its author that he is the successor of a long series of religious thinkers, Christian and un-Christian, this work might be called a Handbook to Modern German Theology, by one of its most eminent exponents. It is at once a manual and an original treatise.

It was well that the proceedings of the noteworthy assembly of the Evangelical Alliance at Basle should be embodied in a form adapted to the British public. A report of these proceedings had, it is true, been already published at Basle itself, but naturally enough the papers were written in French or German. In this edition every foreign paper is translated, and in many cases condensed, and if, in the task of translation and condensation, some freshness is lost, the force of this wide testimony to the "One Lord," the "One Faith," and the "One Baptism," afforded by eminent men of various nationalities and communions, is scarcely diminished. Some of the papers here collected have much more than a fleeting importance. It is,

1 The Religious Condition of Christendom, described in a Series of Papers presented to the Seventh General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, held in Basle, 1879. Edited by the Rev. J. MURRAY MITCHELL, and published by authority of the Council of the British Organisation of the Alliance. Hodder and Stoughton. 1880.

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of course, impossible to give any adequate summary of what is thus presented, for this volume is itself a summary, compact and loaded; but so authoritative and catholic a collection of wise and stimulating utterances upon some of the most pressing matters of theoretical and practical import should surely be often referred to with advantage. If particularisation is not invidious, we would call especial attention to the addresses of Orelli, Godet, and Gess upon "The Unchangeableness of the Apostolic Gospel," and to the several descriptive notices upon Evangelical Religion-in Switzerland, by Güder; in Germany, by Cremer; in France, by Babut; in Holland, by Oosterzee; in America, by Schaff; in Austria, by von Tardy; and in Scandinavia, by von Scheele. The report of the conference upon the Training of Ministers of the Word of God, as led by such men as Gess, Baur, and Riehm, is of much present interest. Altogether, this closely printed volume deserves careful reading and frequent reference.

A new book from the pen of Dr. Dawson, the accomplished Principal of M'Gill College, Montreal, is sure to meet with a ready welcome. The volume before us is entitled The Chain of Life in Geological Time, and it may be regarded as a pendant to the two admirable works which have recently attracted no small share of attention-The Story of the Earth and of Man, and Fossil Man. Its purpose is to show the beautiful sequence in which the various forms of life have been linked together from age to age; and the importance of illustrating this law of sequence can only be understood by those who are familiar with the assumption, or rather chain of assumptions, according to which sequence becomes development, development evolution, and evolution finally automatic generation. Principal Dawson's position is practically this: that sequence must be written down as sequence and nothing more, until something more is really proved. He maintains that "the introduction of new species of animals and plants has been a continuous process, not necessarily in the sense of derivation of one species from another, but in the higher sense of the continued operation of the cause or causes which introduced life at first."

1 The Chain of Life in Geological Time. By J. W. DAWSON, LL.D., F.R.S., etc. London: Religious Tract Society.