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in the Epistles have special value, but they have little weight when contemplated apart from the records of the Gospel. The man who had been educated solely under the influence of the former might indeed feel the force of their reasonings, and confess that there was a superhuman dignity and glory belonging to Him of whom they speak, but in order to the strong and earnest faith which sweeps away all doubts, and brings the soul into loving fellowship with Him, he must have also that intimate personal knowledge of Christ which is to be gained from the simple narrative of the Gospels. In this way, these Gospels have a more important place to fill than has been generally ascribed to them, awakening in men that kind of feeling which was expressed by the Samaritans, "Now we believe, not because of thy saying; for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world."

It is the nature and power of this spiritual force which divines appear almost unable to realize. They employ themselves in careful criticism of the text; they do battle about the meaning of particles and phrases; and not unfrequently seek to press into the service passages that, to say the least, are somewhat doubtful, and meanwhile they are weakening that impression of our Lord's divinity which is to be derived not so much from any isolated declarations as from the entire representation of His character and work which is given by the Evangelists. So completely has this notion of the Christian doctrine, as something built upon a certain number of texts, and therefore weakened in its foundation if the application of any of them can be set aside, taken possession of many that they regard any questioning of the orthodox interpretation of these passages as in itself a proof of heresy. Thus it is only recently that the argument derived from the celebrated passage in the 1st Epistle of John relative to the "three witnesses has been given up as untenable, and there are doubtless many still to be found who regard the admissions which scholars have been compelled to make in relation to it as a grievous departure from the faith. They do not see that they are really sacrificing the interests of the truth by arguing it on so narrow a basis, and suffering it to be supposed that any kind of verbal or textual criticism could affect the authority of a doctrine the surest evidence for which is in the fact that "we see His glory," and that it is "the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Criticism may set aside the genuineness of one passage, and lead us to question either the rendering or the interpretation of another, but it cannot dim the beauty of that perfect portraiture, every lineament of which bears on itself the stamp of divinity. His words, His acts, His whole spirit place Him on a level so far

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above not only all human achievements, but all human conceptions, that we recognize at once the special dignity belonging to Him. Not only is it true that "Never man spake like this man," and that never man lived like this man, but, still further, that in the brightest imaginings of the purest spirits of the race, such an ideal of humanity never presented itself. We cannot too strongly insist upon the distinctive features of this portrait, its matchless beauty, its essential difference from every type of nobility or excellence to which man has ever done reverence, the inability of man even now to appreciate, much more to reproduce, its most characteristic traits. There, at all events, is the picture: how came it into existence? If not a copy from an original, to whom are we to attribute a conception so sublime? Wondrous as the story is, it would be still more marvellous were we to believe it false, and to suppose either that the result of the mere deposits of mythology was a creation so perfect, or that men who did not hesitate to impose upon the world a fraud the most gigantic were yet men of spirit so elevated and pure that they alone have set before the world, in their fiction, an example of a goodness, unapproachable in every point, but in nothing more remarkable than the breadth of its sympathies and the absence of those prejudices belonging to the people among whom the inventors dwelt, and by which, on the showing of their own record, they were themselves largely influenced.

Feeling these points very strongly, we wish very heartily to recognize the service Mr. Plumptre has rendered in his "Boyle Lecture" on "Christ and Christendom." Regarded purely in a literary point of view, his book has a great charm. The minute and painstaking examination of the contents of the Gospels; the quickness with which every hint, however slight and incidental, is seized upon; the wondrous skill shown in grouping scattered facts together and looking at them in their relation to each other and the general narrative, give these lectures a remarkable freshness, and ought to make them as popular with the ordinary reader as they will be peculiarly suggestive and useful to the scholar and divine. But he has a higher aim. He feels that no contribution can, in the present time of doubt and discussion, be more valuable than anything which helps to a more perfect understanding of the Christ: that in Him is to be found the answer to the sceptic's doubts on the one hand, and the solution of the perplexities and difficulties of those who are eagerly craving for a deeper unity of the Church on the other. What Episcopal consultations, Evangelical Alliances, carefully-prepared terms of compromise and fellowship, reunions of great ecclesiastical bodies cannot effect, may be secured by the common attraction exercised on all by

the Christ. "The history of Christendom shows that, in proportion as men have lived in and on those words and acts, they have risen upward to truth and purity; that in proportion as they have neglected them, they have fallen into grossest superstition or barren dogmatism."

But it is to strengthening the defences of the faith that the writer's attention is chiefly given. He marks carefully the distinction between the character of the assaults made on Christianity in Boyle's own time, and those against which it has to contend now, and shows how, though "the school of merely forensic apologists, who have never known the conflict with doubt, may be acute, triumphant, defiant, meeting scorn with scorn, and railing with railing," such a temper can have no place with those who understand the pressure of religious difficulties on sincere and anxious, though doubting hearts. Such we cannot deal with more effectually or tenderly than by leading them on to a true understanding of the Lord. When they have learned who He is and what He did, they will have found great help at least in dealing with a multitude of other questions which at present demand solution and are troubling the hearts of many. They who have come to form exalted conceptions of Him will learn from Him how they ought to regard those Scriptures "in which He acknowledges the teachings of His Father, in which He saw the lineaments of His own life and work portrayed distinctly, which were His weapons in the crises and conflicts of His life;" for "His reverence for the law and prophets should surely be the standard for our reverence."

Still more must our views as to law and its operations in the world of Nature, and consequently of our ideas as to the possibility of miracles, be mainly determined by the views we form of Christ. "The life of Him who has drawn all men to Him by the truth and holiness of His nature, who has given mankind (I use no other word than might be used by one furthest removed from the faith of His disciples), the noblest and purest of all creeds, is interwoven with, and inseparable from, the supernatural. Whatever portions of the narrative may be rejected as mythical in character or of doubtful origin, the smallest residuum that is left leaves us no other conception than that of One who at least believed Himself and was believed by others, to possess a wonder-working power, who asserted His own authority over nature in word and act, and where the common order of succession was not broken, taught men to believe that not one sparrow fell to the ground,' and not one hair of their head should perish,' without their Father's will." Reject all this, believe that the life is a fiction, or that Jesus was either a deceiver or the dupe of His own fancy with body of

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followers as much deceived as himself, and we are left "in the dreary darkness of a life without hope and without God." But "if the life leaves on us the impression of being not only the loftiest ideal, but the most real and living of all human lives-if we learn to believe that He was neither deceived Himself nor the worshipper of a Deus quidam deceptor-will it not help us to endure till all things shall be made clear, seeing in all laws that we can trace, the finger-prints of a Divine Will, owning a law above this law, as we see star beyond star and glory beyond glory, but believing that there is one Supreme Will, which has determined all from the beginning, and that from that centre and source of all laws the natural and the supernatural are seen, as are the spiritual and the material, as necessary complements of each other and working as He wills?" We must refer our readers to the volume itself to learn how admirably Mr. Plumptre has fulfilled his own purpose of showing how in the life of Christ is to be found one of the most powerful vindications of Christianity. In the course of his lecture many of the objections that have been made to the Gospels on internal grounds pass under review, and are dealt with in a very skilful and discriminating manner. We should have been very glad to justify our observation by examples, but our space will not allow us to do more than bear our very distinct and hearty testimony, not only to the spirit of the book and the weight of the general argument, but also to the great value of his criticisms, which are almost invariably marked by singular delicacy and justice.

"Ecce Deus" has been already noticed by us, but requires also to be regarded in the present connection. It is a very remarkable book, and would undoubtedly have been thought more so had not its title, the fact of its appearing anonymously, and the strictures it contains on "Ecce Homo" all challenged comparison with a work to which, so far as literary excellence is concerned, it is certainly much inferior. We suppose that when an author preserves his incognito, it is anticipated that his work will excite more attention, just as the mystery around the Black Knight, who fought in the lists at Ashby, invested him with a special interest. Certain it is, however, that it leads to some extraordinary and rather inconvenient guessing as to the authorship. We have heard "Ecce Deus" put down to two or three ministers of some eminence, and in one case have been assured that the hearers of the preacher in question remembered some of the passages in the volume. Despite, however, such strong testimony, we must doubt whether any Christian minister is the author of the book containing, as it does, descriptions of the sect-churches, as it calls all denominations, utterly inconsistent as coming from one holding such a position. Of course there

are many ministers who feel with the writer that great reforms are needed in all our ecclesiastical organizations, that there has been an "undue (may we not say criminal?) protrusion of the sectarian phase of religious life," that "the act of joining the church has been regarded as a transaction between man and man,” instead of being, as it is, a transaction between the soul and its Divine Lord, and that the terms of admission adopted by many communities are not only unwise but unscriptural. But there is a savageness in other of his remarks which appears to indicate an intense contempt for and absolute revolt from "organized Christianity." We could fancy that we hear the voice of some worthy Plymouth brother in the assertion that the church (now understanding by the term organized sects) is, "humanly speaking, the most despicable institution which men are now tolerating." Even this fierce assault does not content him, for, as if dissatisfied with his language as too moderate, he says, a little lower down, "Nothing can be more un-Christ-like that is not positively devilish." If a man who writes in this style is a minister in any of these "sect-churches," he is surely in his wrong place, and ought at once to shake himself free of all connection with an institution that, on his own showing, is rotten at the core. We say nothing of some of the theological opinions expressed in this volume, for we know not what latitude men may claim in these days, but we should hardly expect to hear a minister of an Evangelical church treating the doctrine of regeneration as an esoteric doctrine of Christianity not to be inculcated on the masses of mankind. "Take the matter of being born again.' Christ did not use such words to the common multitude, but specially to a master in Israel.' He never used them again, so far as we can learn from the narrative, yet because He used them in such an exceptional case, thousands of preachers perplex promiscuous congregations with them every Sunday." We hardly think that the divine to whom the book has been so confidently attributed, would be very grateful to those who credit him with such views.

It is to be regretted, indeed, that the course which the author has taken in these cases, and especially the extravagance of some of his censures, should mar the beauty of a book which is marked by real force and originality. The title indicates this general design. The author believes that any theory which does not recognize that Jesus Christ was God incarnate is inconsistent not simply with a few facts, but with the whole phenomena of His life, in which there is throughout remarkable unity and consistency. From this he proceeds to argue "that the author of Ecce Homo,' having overlooked or ignored those conditions (the unprecedented conditions, that is, under which Jesus Christ became incarnate), has worked from a wrong centre,

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