Letter IV. Dogmatism and Rationalism

Mr. Mansel’s First Lecture.—Dogmatism and Rationalism.—the Atonement and Incarnation.

My dear Sir,

Let me entreat you to read Mr. Mansel’s first Lecture carefully, and with the accompanying notes, before you look at this Letter. Nothing is further from my wish than that your impression of it should be determined by my criticism or by isolated passages selected from it. I am too deeply convinced of the injustice which is done to authors by this treatment—what I had thought on the subject before has been too firmly fixed in my mind by the perusal of the Bampton Lectures, and by considering how they handle the statements and beliefs of eminent men in all ages and countries—not to be most desirous that I may not fall into that method of proceeding myself, or tempt any one else into it.

The Lecture is a denunciation of two evils to which the preacher supposed that his hearers were exposed. The errors are, Dogmatism on the one hand, Rationalism on the other. ‘Between these two extremes religious philosophy perpetually oscillates’ (p. 1). Mr. Mansel’s business is of course to ascertain (1st) what each of these evils is, (2nd) what is that middle between them in which Religious Philosophy ought to rest from its oscillations. What help the Lecturer gives us for understanding the force of the words which he uses is contained in the following passage:—

“In using the above terms, it is necessary to state at the outset the sense in which each is employed, and to emancipate them from the various and vague associations connected with their ordinary use. I do not include under the name of Dogmatism the mere enunciation of religious truths, as resting upon authority and not upon reasoning. The Dogmatist, as well as the Rationalist, is the constructor of a system; and in constructing it, however much the materials upon which he works may be given by a higher authority, yet in connecting them together and exhibiting their systematic form, it is necessary to call in the aid of human ability. Indeed, whatever may be their actual antagonism in the field of religious controversy, the two terms are in their proper sense so little exclusive of each other, that both were originally employed to denote the same persons; the name Dogmatists or Rationalists being indifferently given to those medical theorists who insisted on the necessity of calling in the aid of rational principles, to support or correct the conclusions furnished by experience (1). A like significance is to be found in the later language of philosophy, when the term Dogmatists was used to denote those philosophers who endeavoured to explain the phenomena of experience by means of rational conceptions and demonstrations; the intelligible world being regarded as the counterpart of the sensible, and the necessary relations of the former as the principles and ground of the observed facts of the latter (2). It is in a sense analogous to this that the term may be most accurately used in reference to Theology. Scripture is to the theological Dogmatist what Experience is to the philosophical. It supplies him with the facts to which his system has to adapt itself. It contains in an unsystematic form the positive doctrines, which further inquiry has to exhibit as supported by reasonable grounds and connected into a scientific whole. Theological Dogmatism is thus an application of reason to the support and defence of pre-existing statements of Scripture (3). Rationalism, on the other hand, so far as it deals with Scripture at all, deals with it as a thing to be adapted to the independent conclusions of the natural reason, and to be rejected where that adaptation cannot conveniently be made. By Rationalism, without intending to limit the name to any single school or period in theological controversy, I mean generally to designate that system whose final test of truth is placed in the direct assent of the human consciousness, whether in the form of logical deduction, or moral judgment, or religious intuition; by whatever previous process those faculties may have been raised to their assumed dignity as arbitrators. The Rationalist, as such, is not bound to maintain that a divine revelation of religious truth is impossible, nor even to deny that it has actually been given. He may admit the existence of the revelation as a fact: he may acknowledge its utility as a temporary means of instruction for a ruder age: he may even accept certain portions as of universal and permanent authority (4). But he assigns to some superior tribunal the right of determining what is essential to religion and what is not: he claims for himself and his age the privilege of accepting or rejecting any given revelation, wholly or in part, according as it does or does not satisfy the conditions of some higher criterion to be supplied by the human consciousness (5).” (Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed. pp. 2-5.)

I have left the figures in my extract, that you may not suppose Mr. Mansel’s account of the two opposing terms is his only instrument for “emancipating them from the various and vague associations connected with their ordinary use.” Some of these various and vague associations, his readers may think, cleave to this elaborate exposition. The very words ‘philosophical’ and ‘religious,’ which recur so frequently in this passage, and which are so ambiguous, are not explained; it is presumed that we must know what they mean. Perhaps the audience at St. Mary’s did not need the information we want, for if they comprehended what is involved in “regarding the intelligible world as the counterpart of the sensible, and the necessary relations of the former as the principles and ground of the observed facts of the latter,” they were already great adepts in philosophy; their minds must have been exercised on some of its hardest problems. Yet even they may have needed some light as to the way “in which the Scripture is to the Theological Dogmatist what Experience is to the philosophical,” since it is generally supposed—and Mr. Mansel seems himself to confirm the opinion—that Experience is a ground which is common to the theologian and the philosopher, and that the dogmas of one are as much affected by it as those of the other.

But, as I said, the mystical numbers in the text show that Mr. Mansel has not trusted exclusively nor principally to definitions. They point to the persons who are condemned for Dogmatism or Rationalism, or both. I will enumerate them just as they occur, without reference to their chronology, their sect, or their importance. Wolf,¹ Paulus, Wegscheider, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Strauss and certain spiritualists² Anselm,³ Gerhard,⁴ Chemnitz,⁵ Jowett, Greg, Mackay,⁶ Socinus, Froude, Priestley, Maurice,⁷ Kant, Coleridge,⁸ Wilberforce, Damascenus, Schaller, Gischel, Dorner, Marheinecke,⁹ Occam,¹⁰ Fichte, Parker, Emerson, Leechman, Foxton (with others previously sentenced),¹¹ Baden Powell,¹² Schelling, Plotinus, Angelus Silesius (with others previously sentenced),¹³ Bruno Bauer, Feuerbach, Comte.¹⁴

This list, drawn from a few pages, proves surely the extent of Mr. Mansel’s reading, and his right to the title of Public or University Prosecutor, which his friends have vindicated for him. I have collected it that I may suggest the question which most concerns us: How are you and I to be delivered from these curses of Dogmatism and Rationalism which we know, upon such high authority, are always threatening us? Suppose you agree that all those whom the Bampton Lecturer cuts off as exceeding on this side or on that, or as mixing the two evils in one, are guilty of the charges brought against them,—supposing you had the opportunity which he possessed, of telling a large congregation that such and such men were Dogmatists, such and such Rationalists, and that neither were in the least free from the enormities of the other,—would that be an absolute security against any taint of Dogmatism in yourself? Might not you possibly be driven now and then to explain the grounds upon which you rested your conviction that you were right and they were all wrong? and might you not, in submitting to that necessity, find yourself dropping all unawares into Rationalism? I submit these topics to your consideration, wishing you always to recollect what terrible dangers those must be which could have induced Mr. Mansel to undertake the painful task of passing judgment upon divines and philosophers of all schools and ages, that you may spare no pains in discovering some adequate precautions against them.

In the eloquent peroration to his eighth Lecture (p. 266), Mr. Mansel announces the oracle, Know thyself, as the one guide to all safe thought upon any subject. In cases like this, that oracle has taken even a more distinct and awful form, as it has issued from a more sacred shrine. “Cast first,” it has been said, “the beam out of thine own eye; then shalt thou see clearly to take the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” This principle, being so exactly in accordance with the maxim of the Lectures, must, we are bound to assume, have been diligently weighed by the Lecturer. Before he proceeded to charge any one else with Dogmatism or Rationalism, he went through, we may be sure, a laborious process of inquiry, to ascertain what seeds of them there might be in himself. But his performance of that task, and his success in it, cannot absolve us from a similar one. I, at least, who have been warned by Mr. Mansel in some of the notes to which I have referred, that I have caught the infection of one or both diseases from greater men, am bound to look diligently for the signs of them in the only region in which I may truly judge of their nature or their effects.

I have not far to search for either. If you do not recollect moments in your past life when you have deserved the name of dogmatical, when you knew that it must have been applied to you by those who were about you,—especially by those with whom you were disputing,—when you knew they had a right to apply it,—if those moments do not come back to you with a sense of unspeakable shame,—oh, friend, how I envy you! But I do not envy you, if you are not aware with what fierceness that temptation may come back at any moment,—if you do not feel that it is one against which there is need constantly to watch. Now no one, I believe, who has this experience, need be ignorant in what the vice of Dogmatism consists, whence it springs, whither it may lead. My opinion about this or that class of facts, the conclusion to which I have been led,—whether I have accepted the general judgment of the world about them, or have dissented from it,—has a worth in my eyes which raises it not only above every other man’s opinion, but above the facts themselves. For this do I throw down my gage, this will I maintain against the Universe. Is not the world justified in saying that I am very disagreeable, very insolent?

Can I refute the charge? But what if, because that is the case—and I know it is the case—I should resolve to cast all my dogmatism aside? What if I should appear in quite a new character, yielding to everybody, maintaining no ground for myself, admitting that one conclusion is just as likely as another? Such a reaction against our own dogmatism most of us may have known; the more dogmatical we have been in one period, the more likely we are to exhibit that change in another. Is not the verdict of mankind just in condemning this state of mind also? Is it not just in demanding that a man should have something to hold by, in pronouncing him worthless if he has not?

There is then—it is not a question, but an admitted fact—something good at the bottom of this Dogmatism; there is something very evil in the exercise of it. Do you serve me much if you tell me that I am not to be too dogmatic; that a little dogmatism is well, but that ne quid nimis is the maxim of life? You do not serve me at all. You insult me with a pompous, unpractical rule, which fails me every moment I want to use it. My conscience, and the conscience of mankind, witnesses that Dogmatism, in the sense of maintaining a notion because it is mine, is altogether detestable. It does not admit of degrees; there cannot be too little of it; there ought to be none. My conscience and the conscience of mankind witnesses that Dogmatism, in the sense of standing by a principle, is altogether good; there cannot be too much of it; my want of it is my sin. Here is a distinction which must somehow be sustained. But how is it to be sustained? Every one is aware of the difficulty in his own case; every one knows that he has transgressed, and does transgress continually the boundary; every one therefore has a call to be compassionate when he sees or suspects that his neighbour transgresses it. Every man knows perfectly why he commits this transgression, and what would be the escape from it. He knows that he is a Dogmatist in the offensive, immoral sense, whensoever he confounds that which seems to him or to any man with that which is; that he is a Dogmatist in an honest and true sense whensoever he swears with deliberate purpose that something is, and that from that no man and devil shall tear him away.

You see how rude and poor my way of arriving at the force of this word is in comparison with Mr. Mansel’s. But you and I are not schoolmen; we are roughing it in the world. We have to look upon all questions as they bear upon the actual business of life. I know that Mr. Mansel’s account of Dogmatism must strike every one as far more profound and philosophical than mine; but I am thinking of it as a great sin which I have to avoid for the sake of my own being,—as a great moral habit which I must preserve for the sake of my own being. My words will be nothing to you if they do not meet your mind, and point out something which you must fly from, and to which you must cleave; if they do, perhaps they may be some help to you hereafter, if not now.

Well, and Rationalism! Is this ‘Know thyself’ of Delphi and Oxford not applicable to the investigation of that tendency also? I can attest in my own experience the truth of Mr. Mansel’s assertion that Dogmatism and Rationalism are not necessarily in contradiction; that these habits of mind in their most evil form may dwell together, nay, must dwell together. I have listened to the words of some wise man, a lecturer on Moral Science, it might be, or on Physical. I have been asking myself the reason of his statements; I have not had my ears open to take in what he said, just because I was busy with that question. I have looked at a picture which other people admired, which it would have done me good to admire, I have asked for the reason why I should admire, and that occupation of mind made it impossible for me to receive any blessing from the picture. This restless rationalism pursues us though our lives, into every corner of them; those who have been and are tormented by it themselves, may not be quite as ready as those are whose consciences are clearer, to cast a stone at other sinners; but they will be most ready to receive hints about the way in which the evil may be overcome, and to assist their fellows with any hints which they have found beneficial.

There is one remedy which most of us have tried with more or less of hope. The reaction against Rationalism is at least as fierce in a man’s soul as the reaction against Dogmatism. When our eyes have been straining themselves with looking into vacancy, the natural inclination is to close them, to go to sleep if we can. When our reason has been acting as if it had power to create its own objects, the natural inclination is to say, ‘We will have nothing more to do with it. Tell us what you please; we will take it upon trust. Logical deduction, moral judgment, religious intuition, all are equally hateful to us. We want nothing but the repose of authority. Give us that, and our souls will be at peace.’ So you have got rid of Rationalism.

And it is peace—if a solitude and peace are the same; peace till the Conscience of which Butler spoke awakes; peace till some words like those of St. Paul, “Christ shall give thee light,” tell it that at least it is not obeying Him when it is denying its own function, when it is refusing to act. Then comes a very strong conviction that the last state was worse than the first, that the most eager and profitless questionings and debatings were better than dreary inanition, that one condition betokened a dim belief that God must be, the other a practical denial of Him. For we insult ourselves and we insult mankind if we say there was not a truth at the bottom of our Rationalism as well as of our Dogmatism. In the one case as much as the other, the discovery of the truth is the only way to the clear acknowledgment of the falsehood.

God teaches me to assert; for there is that which I did not make by my thought, belief, reason, and which I cannot unmake. I glorify my assertions, and so actually constitute my belief, thought, or reason, into a ground of things. God teaches me to question, that I may separate the one from the other, that I may not accept Opinions for Realities. I turn my questioning into an excuse for denying Realities. So I come round to the same point again. My Rationalism becomes impotent Dogmatism, as my Dogmatism becomes the most hopeless Rationalism.

I have tried to test these words by common experience, not mixing at first any theological associations with them. That I suppose was Mr. Mansel’s original intention. If he could have fulfilled it, his treatment of the subject would have been more orderly and satisfactory; perhaps a little fairer to his opponents. But he did not find it possible. He could not produce the moral effect which he desired to produce on his hearers, unless he instantly connected Rationalism with a special mode of treating the Scriptures, unless he sometimes contracted and sometimes expanded the definition of it, in order that it might reach all who differed from him, and might by no possibility touch himself. I have shown you that I do not protest against either of his definitions because it includes me. I demand that each of them should include me. A Dogmatist and Rationalist in their worst sense, I know that I am liable to be. A Dogmatist and a Rationalist in their best sense, I desire to be.

But though I think that this method of determining the signification of the words would have been pronounced the honest and reasonable one by Sir William Hamilton, though I am satisfied Butler would have adopted it, I am anxious that it should be applied to the same use to which the Bampton Lecturer applies his. He plunges at once into the doctrines of the Atonement and the Incarnation, testing by the ways in which they have been treated the dogmatic and rationalistic tendencies. I will follow him, trembling indeed, but only on account of the awfulness of the subjects, not the least because I shrink from stating my own convictions respecting them, or from saying what there is in his statements which from the bottom of my heart I repudiate. It is no time for concealing what one believes on any great questions, least of all upon those which form the central subjects of my preaching, as they will do, I trust, one day of yours.

The following sentences bring the first of these subjects directly before us:

“Thus, to select one example out of many, the revealed doctrine of Christ’s Atonement for the sins of men has been alternately defended and assailed by some such arguments as these. We have been told, on the one hand, that man’s redemption could not have been brought about by any other means:—that God could not, consistently with His own attributes, have suffered man to perish unredeemed, or have redeemed him by any inferior sacrifice:—that man, redeemed from death, must become the servant of him who redeems him; and that it was not meet that he should be the servant of any other than God:—that no other sacrifice could have satisfied divine justice:—that no other victim could have endured the burden of God’s wrath. These and similar arguments have been brought forward, as one of the greatest of their authors avows, to defend the teaching of the Catholic Faith on the ground of a reasonable necessity. While, on the other hand, it has been argued that the revealed doctrine itself cannot be accepted as literally true; because we cannot believe that God was angry, and needed to be propitiated:—because it is inconsistent with the Divine Justice that the innocent should suffer for the sins of the guilty:—because it is more reasonable to believe that God freely forgives the offences of His creatures:—because we cannot conceive how the punishment of one can do away with the guilt of another.” (Bampton Lectures, 2nd edition, pp. 10, 11.)

One remark respecting this passage will strike you immediately. It is the foundation of ten notes, condemning a large portion of those writers whose names I have given you already. And yet the Lecturer does not waste even a single line in telling us what “that revealed doctrine of Christ’s Atonement for the sins of men” is, which they have assailed and defended. He must be perfectly aware that more than one able series of Bampton Lectures has been delivered for the express purpose of ascertaining what it is and what it is not. He must be aware that in those able treatises some notions which have attached themselves in the minds of many men to the revealed doctrine of the Atonement, are dismissed as untenable. Whether it ought to be received with these additions or without them, in what terms it should be stated or presented to men generally, we are not told. Nevertheless a number of actual men, living or dead, are held up as examples of mischievous Dogmatism or mischievous Rationalism for their way of attacking or maintaining it. Of all outrages upon philosophical method, and upon ordinary English justice, which are to be found in our literature, I believe this is the most flagrant. Mr. Mansel must have had a very strong suspicion that if he had stated the “revealed doctrine of the Atonement” according to his notion of it, a number of the most earnest, the most confessedly orthodox and Evangelical clergymen in England, would have said either, ‘We do not accept it in that sense;’ or, ‘That method of setting it forth does not satisfy us;’ or, ‘Such an explanation may do very well for the schools, but it is not the doctrine we preach in our pulpits to sinners.’ It was therefore convenient to leave the whole subject in vagueness. In virtue of that vagueness he is able to deal his blows right and left; he can at least frighten his readers with the belief that there is something which they ought to eschew, though he is unable or unwilling to tell them what they should embrace.

But, my dear Sir, however convenient this course may be to a University Doctor, it is not convenient, it is not right, for those who believe that they are actually entrusted with a Gospel, and who must give account to God for the way in which they discharge the trust. We must be able to say what we mean when we declare that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and that He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” It cannot be our chief business to find out what mistakes men have made in arguing about our message on one side or the other. What is the message itself? that must be our question. From whom does it come? To whom is it addressed? That it is a message of peace from a Father to His children: that that Father is a righteous Father, and that the children have been unrighteous because they have been separated from Him; that the peace is made in the body and blood of a righteous Son, one with the Father, who has given Himself for men; that the peace is carried home to men’s hearts by a righteous and reconciling Spirit,—is this heterodox doctrine? Because if it is, it is what I mean, so help me God, to live and die in declaring to those among whom I minister; what I am ashamed that I have declared so little and with so cold a heart; what I hold has the mightiest power to reform and renew human society. This is what I understand by the doctrine of the Atonement; this is what I believe Saints and Martyrs understood by it. In it, I hold, is revealed the goodness and truth and long-suffering of God.

Wherein do I suppose that this statement differs from any that Mr. Mansel would make? I have very imperfect means of judging, as he has kept his counsel about that which he believes, and has only been communicative about that which he deems dogmatical or rationalistic. But I should suppose that he would construct from different passages of Scripture a doctrine which he would call the doctrine of the Atonement, and that he would object decidedly to my saying that the passages of Scripture are far more distinct and intelligible than all that has been constructed out of them or on them, and that they declare not a doctrine about Reconciliation, but the actual Reconciliation of God with Man in the person of His Son. Perhaps I ought not to assume this point at present, for you must remember that he has not yet given us his application of the doctrine of the Unconditioned. This present Lecture is only preliminary to the series. The holocaust of writers in the Notes is doubtless offered to the genius of Sir William Hamilton; but he has not yet been brought forward himself to determine what is included in the horizon of our faith, what are or are not the possibilities of a Revelation. Nevertheless, I think we shall find presently that I have stated the Lecturer’s meaning fairly, and therefore that what I have said of the Atonement must necessarily subject me to his condemnation.

Assuming this difference then, I wish to show you how it bears upon the question of Dogmatism and Rationalism. I am tempted, of course, to dogmatize upon this as upon every subject; that is to say, to put certain notions of mine concerning the Atonement before my hearers, in place of the Atonement itself. The hindrances to my doing this are, first, the strength of my conviction that it is very horrible to intercept the direct communication between God and His creatures which I believe the Bible bears witness of; secondly, the conviction that just what I and all men want, is to be delivered from our notions and conceits about Him, and the relation in which we stand to Him, which notions and conceits have led to infinite disorder and unrighteousness; thirdly, to the discovery that the more I introduce these notions and conceits into my teaching, the more I am out of harmony with the practical teaching of the Bible, and unable to profit by it,—the less I am able to do justice to the various thoughts and speculations and reasonings of men who are seeking after righteousness through communion with a righteous God. The Revelation of God Himself, as the Reconciler and Atoner of man, is, it seems to me, the substitute for Dogmatism, which tries to measure and confine Him by our narrow and carnal notions.

To escape from Dogmatism about the Atonement is also, I think, to escape from Rationalism about it. The unveiling of a Charity such as I could form only the faintest dream or conception of,—of a God who makes a perfect sacrifice for the sake of reconciling to Him those who have wandered from Him, takes from me all excuse for measuring and circumscribing Him by any thoughts and notions of mine. Of course I try again and again to do so. I make all sorts of silly experiments to bring this love down to my level. I devise arrangements and form imaginations to account for it, and to determine the limits of it. But the more the Atonement itself, in its own mighty power,—not as a doctrine, but as the Sacrifice of a Divine Person,—is brought home to me and overpowers me, the more I am driven out of this false and wretched Rationalism; the more I am content to let God manifest Himself to me as He has done in His Son, as He promises to do in us all by His Spirit. And this because I become in the truest and fullest sense a Rationalist, because a spirit that was asleep in me before, is awakened, to perceive a length and breadth and height and depth of Divinity which could, so far as I know, only reveal itself in that way, and which must open the eye that was created to discern it.

How does this way of contemplating and presenting the Atonement affect one’s judgment of those whom Mr. Mansel declares to have made shipwreck, either as Dogmatists or Rationalists? I would take an instance of each kind. I do not know whether you are a reader of Anselm. I own myself to be a very affectionate and admiring reader, though certainly in no sense a disciple of him. Perhaps I may venture to quote some sentences which I wrote about him several years ago, certainly with no purpose of their serving any argumentative purpose:—

It is an agreeable characteristic of Anselm’s works that a very small portion of them indeed belong to controversy. There is one treatise, written at the instigation of the Pope, on the Greek doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost, and one against Roscellinus, on the Incarnation. With these exceptions, meditations, prayers, letters, and books written for the solution of difficulties which had actually occurred to some person who had consulted him, generally to some brother at Bec, form his contribution to Middle Age literature. Not more for the honour of Anselm himself than for the comprehension of his books, this last characteristic should be recollected. They were not hard dogmatical treatises written in cold blood, to build up a system or to vanquish opponents. They were actual guides to the doubter; attempts, often made with much reluctant modesty, to untie knots which worthy men found to be interfering with their peace and with their practice.

“The characteristic of Anselm as a man was, we think, a love of righteousness for its own sake. That noble habit of mind is illustrated in his conversation respecting Alphege, scarcely less in a sentence of his, reported by Eadmer, which has given rise to some very uncharitable Protestant commentaries, that ‘he would rather be in Hell if he were pure of sin, than possess the Kingdom of Heaven under the pollution of sin.’ This too is the spirit of his writings. It is from this that they derive their substantial and permanent worth. Right there must be—that is the postulate of his mind. Then, partly for the sake of entering more deeply into the apprehension and possession of that which he inwardly acknowledged, partly for the sake of removing confusions from the minds of his brethren, he undertakes to establish his assumption by proof. Oftentimes we are compelled to doubt the success of these demonstrations. We have an uncomfortable feeling, that the principle which we are to arrive at by an elaborate process of reasoning has been taken for granted at the commencement of it: some of the arguments seem scarcely worthy of their object, some of them seem to interfere with it, by tempting us to accept one mode of contemplating it instead of the object itself. Theology has cause to complain of Anselm for having suggested theories and argumentations in connection with Articles of the Creed, which through their plausibility and through the excellency of the writer have gained currency in the Church, till they have been adopted as essential parts of that of which they were at best only defences and explanations. But viewing him, as we are privileged to do, simply as philosophical students,—caring less about the results to which his treatises have led dogmatists, than about his principles and about his method of thought,—he offers us a very interesting subject of examination. In Johannes Scotus the metaphysical element was evidently predominant over the ethical; in Anselm the moral absorbs everything into itself. Moral ends are first in his mind; scientific truth he learns to love, because he is too honest a man not to feel that Goodness is a contradiction if it has not Truth for its support. But the difference in the starting point of these two writers affects all their intellectual habits. Anselm is much more of a formal reasoner than Johannes; amongst ordinary school-readers he would pass for a much more accurate reasoner. He supplies many more producible arguments; he meets the perplexities which the use of words occasions more promptly; though far enough from a superficial thinker, he keeps much more the high-road of the intellect, and is not tempted to explore caverns. For such a person, Logic becomes an invaluable auxiliary; he has not the dread of its limiting the infinite which the other had; he secures his moral truth from all verbal invasions; then he can let verbal refinements have their full swing in the discussion of objections and in the effort to remove them.”

I believe this is a faithful description of the man. It may explain to you the passages from the Cur Deus Homo which Mr. Mansel has quoted. Anselm was no doubt a Dogmatist. He received with the simplest affection the creeds of his childhood, and not only the creeds, but the ordinary medieval system. He was also, no doubt, a Rationalist. He tried to meet difficulties, to account for facts, to establish formulas, with what result I have tried to express. But what saved him from being a mere Dogmatist and a mere Rationalist? What gave his books a beauty and worth which I am sure every earnest student will find in them, now in this nineteenth century, when all the forms and habits of the time to which he belonged have passed away? It was this, that God was to Anselm more than all systems; that he was sure God was a righteous Being,—that, and only that; that he was sure God had revealed His Righteousness to men, and meant that they should know it. Caring then very little for his arguments and proofs about the Atonement, I know of no truer witness for its essential character, no stronger witness against those who would bring back Paganism under the name of Christianity, and who suppose that the notions of men concerning an Atonement, instead of pointing to the one which God has made, are to be the measures and standards of its character or its method.

I will pass from the earliest instance in Mr. Mansel’s Notes to the latest. I will venture, not without diffidence and hesitation, to speak of a passage he has quoted from his own learned and devout contemporary Professor Jowett. I have the misfortune to differ from that excellent man, not only in particulars of his interpretation of St. Paul, but in the fundamental maxim of it. Modern thought, it seems to me, has been approaching more and more near to a condition in which no teachers can meet it so directly as St. Paul and St. John, taken in their most literal sense. I could have recognized the chasm which he finds between their revelations and English thoughts and hopes in the eighteenth century. The nineteenth, I believe, as much by its doubts, perplexities, contradictions, as by what is noblest in it,—as much by its political as by its philosophical and theological movements,—has been brought into a state in which all glosses upon them will be cast to the winds; in which they will be received as the clearest, simplest messages to the scholar and to the wayfarer, capable of meeting what we sometimes fancy are the newest demands of humanity and Science. I differ from him therefore not as radically as I differ from Mr. Mansel, yet partly on the same ground. Nevertheless, I recognize in him one of the honestest and bravest of men,—honest and brave as few men are in this day,—in that he will not express more than he thinks, and that he will state what he thinks, without regarding consequences,—a quality all the more remarkable in one who evidently hesitates so much before he assumes a position. Such a habit of mind must, I should conceive, have a salutary effect upon us all, seeing that one of our great temptations is to use ‘unreal words,’ and to let our statements outstrip our convictions.

Having these feelings respecting this eminent Teacher, it is the greater duty as well as pleasure to express the most hearty concurrence in a sentiment which Mr. Mansel quotes from him for the purpose of fixing on him the charge of Rationalism on the subject of the Atonement. “In what did this Satisfaction consist? Was it that God was angry, and needed to be propitiated like some heathen deity of old? Such a thought refutes itself by the very indignation which it calls up in the human bosom.” — (Jowett, Epistles of St. Paul, vol. ii. p. 472.) Now mark for what purpose this passage is quoted. It is not to relieve St. Paul, or any writer of the Old or New Testament, from the possible imputation that he represented the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, the God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but not clearing the guilty, the God who is Just and without iniquity, as resembling ‘a heathen deity of old.’ It is not to show that the anger against sin which is attributed to the Lord God throughout the Bible is the most opposite thing possible to the anger against particular persons who had done them injury which is attributed to heathen deities. It is not to quote those long chapters of the Prophets in which God appeals to the conscience of His people against their revolts from Him, or in which He is contrasted with idols. It is not to urge that the declaration of our Lord, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,” if it is taken as it stands, will at once settle all controversies respecting His character and Nature. No! but it is to say either that there is no moral indignation in the human bosom against the confusion of our God and Father with Moloch and Siva; or to say that that moral indignation is good for nothing. And this comes from a pupil of Butler, the great champion of the Conscience! And this comes from an Apologist for Prophets and Apostles, every one of whom would have died, many of whom did die, because they would not worship the gods of the nations! And this comes from the apologist of Apostles who said that in Jesus dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily! Mr. Mansel has put forth a defence of what is denounced by some as anthropomorphic language. I prize that language, little as I like his way of pleading for it. I hold, for instance, the name of ‘jealous,’ which is so often given to God in Scripture, to be a true epithet for a holy and good Being. I believe God is jealous of His name and character, jealous of that confusion with wicked beings which Mr. Mansel implicitly authorizes; which he pronounces it Rationalistic to abhor. Have not all dogmatists, when their schemes of accounting for the purposes of the Most High have been most gratuitous and even most profane,—have not all Rationalists, when their cries have had the most of an atheistical form and character, been useful protestants against this last, most hopeless, most horrible kind of orthodoxy? Can we dispense with their testimony while this language is heard in high places, while it goes forth from the central pulpits of the land? May we not at least be sure that it will be listened to, and that we shall have ourselves to blame for any consequences that may proceed from it?

I must repeat what I have said already in my Sermons. I do not impute to Mr. Mansel what his language seems to convey. I fully believe he would start with horror at the thought of identifying the God in whom is light and no darkness at all, with the dark beings whom men have made for themselves to worship. But see what a Nemesis awaits those who treat the most sacred portions of the Gospel—those portions which speak most of union and reconciliation—chiefly as excuses for finding out how much of wrong and unbelief there is in their fellow-men! These doctrines lose their very nature. They are to be received at the point of the bayonet because they are set down in a book. What is set down there what we are asked to receive—what is involved in the reception of them—there is not leisure to inquire. The words are to be eaten; but it is the great business of those who enforce the eating, to prove that we have no organs wherewith we can masticate or digest them.

There is one eloquent passage in this Lecture which, if I had read it without the context, I should have claimed as a testimony on behalf of the truth which Sir W. Hamilton, we have seen, was willing to acknowledge, that man is made in the image of God, and therefore that a participation of divinity is implied in his constitution. I should have supposed it was meant to show philosophers that our assertion of the union of the Godhead and Manhood in one Christ, far from being the stumbling-block to the Reason which they have taken it to be, is the one possible reconciliation of that human belief which has pervaded the hearts of all human beings,—which has been at the root of all mythologies,—with the protest against it which their consciences have borne, and which the Bible bears,—against the confusion of God with the works of His hands. Read it, and judge for yourself.

“The origin of such theories is of course to be traced to that morbid horror of what they are pleased to call Anthropomorphism, which poisons the speculations of so many modern philosophers, when they attempt to be wise above what is written, and seek for a metaphysical exposition of God’s nature and attributes. They may not, forsooth, think of the unchangeable God as if He were their fellow-man, influenced by human motives, and moved by human supplications. They want a truer, a juster idea of the Deity as He is, than that under which He has been pleased to reveal Himself; and they call on their reason to furnish it. Fools, to dream that man can escape from himself, that human reason can draw aught but a human portrait of God! They do but substitute a marred and mutilated humanity for one exalted and entire: they add nothing to their conception of God as He is, but only take away a part of their conception of man. Sympathy, and love, and fatherly kindness, and forgiving mercy, have evaporated in the crucible of their philosophy; and what is the caput mortuum that remains, but only the sterner features of humanity exhibited in repulsive nakedness? The God who listens to prayer, we are told, appears in the likeness of human mutability. Be it so. What is the God who does not listen, but the likeness of human obstinacy? Do we ascribe to Him a fixed purpose? our conception of a purpose is human. Do we speak of Him as continuing unchanged? our conception of continuance is human. Do we conceive Him as knowing and determining? What are knowledge and determination but modes of human consciousness? And what know we of consciousness itself, but as the contrast between successive mental states? But our rational philosopher stops short in the middle of his reasoning. He strips off from humanity just so much as suits his purpose;—‘and the residue thereof he maketh a god;’—less pious in his idolatry than the carver of the graven image, in that he does not fall down unto it and pray unto it, but is content to stand afar off and reason concerning it. And why does he retain any conception of God at all, but that he retains some portions of an imperfect humanity? Man is still the residue that is left; deprived indeed of all that is amiable in humanity, but, in the darker features which remain, still man. Man in his purposes; man in his inflexibility; man in that relation to time from which no philosophy, whatever its pretensions, can wholly free itself; pursuing with indomitable resolution a preconceived design; deaf to the yearning instincts which compel his creatures to call upon him. Yet this, forsooth, is a philosophical conception of the Deity, more worthy of an enlightened reason than the human imagery of the Psalmist. ‘The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open unto their prayers.’

Surely downright idolatry is better than this rational worship of a fragment of humanity. Better is the superstition which sees the image of God in the wonderful whole which God has fashioned, than the philosophy which would carve for itself a Deity out of the remnant which man has mutilated. Better to realize the satire of the Eleatic philosopher, to make God in the likeness of man, even as the ox or the horse might conceive gods in the form of oxen or horses, than to adore some half-hewn Hermes, the head of a man joined to a misshapen block. Better to fall down before that marvellous compound of human consciousness whose elements God has joined together, and no man can put asunder, than to strip reason of those cognate elements which together furnish all that we can conceive or imagine of conscious or personal existence, and to defy the emptiest of all abstractions, a something or a nothing, with just enough of its human original left to form a theme for the disputations of philosophy, but not enough to furnish a single ground of appeal to the human feelings of love, of reverence, and of fear. Unmixed idolatry is more religious than this. Undisguised atheism is more logical.” — (Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 17-20.)

I cannot imagine a man writing such fervent sentences as these, denouncing men as ‘fools’ for fancying that God has not human qualities and sympathies—telling them that they had better worship the most miserable idol, than hold what they hold,—assuring them that they would be wiser to be undisguised atheists—if he is not prepared to say, ‘I can show you a more excellent way. I can tell you what God has done to satisfy “that marvellous compound of human consciousness which He has joined together, and which man cannot put asunder.” I can show you how He has made Himself known to us in His only-begotten Son, so that we may not any longer confound Him with his feeble and sinful creatures, or yet divide Him from them as if His nature was not really the ground and archetype of theirs.’ If this cannot be done, are we not bound, by the preacher’s own showing, to take refuge in one or other of his terrible alternatives?

How then does Mr. Mansel speak of the union of the Godhead and Manhood in Christ? Thus: “We believe that Christ is both God and Man, for that is revealed to us. We know not how He is so, for this is not revealed, and we can learn it in no other way.” (pp. 14 and 15.) Now you will see at once that the revelation of this union is not presented here in any sense whatever as the interpretation of the doubt whether men are to worship God as one of His creatures, or whether they are to regard Him as separate from them all. It is an additional, a hard, an insoluble difficulty, which we must receive in addition to all other difficulties, because God commands us in His book to receive it. We are left by this amazing revelation—that He who was the express Image of the Father, was made man and dwelt among us—just where we were before. We are left just as much as ever to oscillate between unmixed idolatry and undisguised atheism, with only this additional comfort, that every attempt of a man to find a middle between them, makes him more irreligious than if he chose the first course, more illogical than if he chose the last.

To me this result is a very shocking one. Nor is the shock at all diminished as I trace the course of thought which justifies it to the mind of the Lecturer. A man whom many of us remember with gratitude and affection, who, we hope, is now in communion with those from whom on earth he thought it right to separate,—the late Mr. R. Wilberforce,—wrote a book, as you know, on the Incarnation. In that book he appears to ground the idea of the union of the Godhead and Manhood in Christ upon the assumption of a real Human Nature, distinct from the nature of each individual man. Mr. Mansel at once perceives that the writer has introduced into theology the realism of Duns Scotus and those schoolmen whom, as we commonly suppose, Occam confuted. Here, then, is a plausible excuse for warning his hearers that, if they receive the Incarnation as anything more than a tenet which is revealed in the Bible, they will certainly fall into all the medieval confusions, will again blend Theology and Philosophy together, so destroying the simplicity of the one and the freedom of the other.

I have called this argument plausible, by which I mean that it is one which was quite sure to commend itself to a great majority of those who heard it. The word Realism would be just sufficiently understood by an Oxford congregation to cause a vague terror; the practical conscience of Englishmen would protest against the mixture of scholastic refinements with the faith of God; the events in the later life of the author who was criticized would be inevitably connected with the theses he had defended; that indolence which Butler considered so fatal to his course of inquiry, would make the moral palatable to all the no-thinkers among the crowd that listened to the Lectures; those whose minds had been exercised by the realistic and nominalistic questions, might eagerly welcome any promise of repose from them. I gave the argument no better name than plausible, because I regard it as the argument of an able rhetorician, not of an earnest philosopher or theologian who cares to explain what these medieval strifes meant; to satisfy the honest conviction of the practical Englishman; to arouse the no-thinker out of his slumbers; to show the perplexed thinker how he may find a way out of his perplexities without losing the great blessing of them.

It is the easiest thing in the world to talk as Mr. Mansel talks about “the forgotten follies of Scholastic Realism,” and about “endangering the cause of Religion by seeking to explain its deepest mysteries by the lifeless forms of a worn-out controversy.” Many such things has one heard; there is always a certain response to them in our minds. But they help us exceedingly little. Why do these ‘forgotten follies’ start up so often in connection with these ‘deep mysteries’? Why could not Realistic and Nominalistic controversies sever themselves from the doctrines of the two Natures in Christ, and of the Trinity? Why have Divines and Philosophers both been protesting for so many centuries against the confusion of their provinces, while yet there is more of it in our day than in any previous one? Why does Mr. Mansel protest against it, and yet put forth a work which contains more appeals to the religious feelings against Philosophers, and (as we shall see when we come to his next Lecture) more of verbal subtleties that are likely to disturb simple faith, than almost any book of the century? These facts are not to be got rid of by loose declamation. They require the most serious pondering. May I give you one or two hints which will possibly assist your own reflections upon them?

If one considers the history of Medieval Philosophy, not for the purpose of laughing at ‘forgotten follies,’ but of understanding what a set of very earnest men were engaged in, and how God was leading them by a better way than they knew, this conclusion forces itself upon us. These men could not be satisfied with regarding “the deepest mysteries of our faith” as dogmas; if they were to be believed at all, they must be more. They must be involved in the very Constitution of things. They must be at the very ground of it. The schoolmen were inclined enough to say, “We have received them as a tradition. They are, because we have received them.” But they could not. The tradition must surely speak of that which is; if it did not, it was a lying tradition, to be cast aside like those over which the Gospel had triumphed. Hence the vehement protest on the part of the orthodox in the eleventh century against Nominalism, because it seemed to them that the deepest realities by this teaching were changed into mere names; hence the fight, no less honest, on the part of the Nominalists, to prevent a confusion of notions in our minds with actual things. Through this school conflict, I believe, if we use it aright, we may discover true principles which do not belong to the schools but to mankind have asserted themselves—we may discover what work the schools can do and cannot do. As in the case of the conflicts between the King and the Priest, between the King and the Barons, between the King and the Commons, it is not by ranging ourselves on either side, least of all is it by despising both sides and setting up ourselves as superior to both, that we arrive at the right historical lesson. Rather should we confess what a strong conviction was working in the heart of each, and how that conviction proved its worth and its stability in spite of all the dogmatical vehemence and the dogmatical feebleness with which it was accompanied.

The battle ceased for a time when the practical and personal faith of the Reformers broke through the webs of Scholasticism, and claimed a personal affiance in the Son of God, who had taken our nature. For awhile Theologians—Protestant at least—were ready enough to take a position of their own, and to let the Philosophers take theirs. But this assignment of provinces was soon disturbed again; it was felt that the personal faith could not determine that which it believed; that into this determination, processes of the understanding entered; the philosophers and logicians must give their opinions about these processes. Theology became as dogmatic as it was in the Middle Ages; apparently there was not the same conflict to ascertain whether its dogmas pointed to realities or were only notions of the understanding. But that controversy soon reappeared in another shape. Personal faith again put in its vehement protest against dogmas; its claim to some actual living ground on which it might rest: again it had to be asked, ‘Can personal faith affirm what is to be believed?’ The seventeenth century was full of these strifes. The eighteenth seemed to promise the subsidence of them. Theology, it was hoped, might keep its own ground, Philosophy might keep its ground. In no period did each more resolutely attack the province of the other. In no period were there more efforts, unsuccessful efforts, made for the adjustment of their respective claims. Meantime the strong convictions of men once more became violently impatient of religious dogmatism, as well as of mere moralities. The deep mysteries again were sought for, as realities to which the Conscience must betake itself as a refuge from its own torments. The Cur Deus Homo was a question debated in the hearts of peasants and miners with as much earnestness as it had been seven centuries before by the monks of Bec.

These miners and peasants cared little about philosophers or school Theologians; would have regarded them as profane men. But they affected, more than they knew, the speculations of both. It has been found impossible in our day for Theologians to shut themselves up in a set of opinions. They must answer, not to a demand of the schools, but to a demand of the people; ‘Have those opinions any counterpart in Reality? Do they mean anything? You call them mysteries; do you tell us, by using that word, that we have nothing to do with them,—that they stand in no relation to us? Speak! for we will know.’ On the other hand, it has been found absolutely impossible for Philosophers, from whatever point they might start, not to come into contact with the question of the union of Humanity with Godhead. Read Sir William Hamilton’s discussions; look through Mr. Mansel’s Notes; no further evidence is necessary. Warn philosophers off the ground as you will; call it a violation of neutrality, aventuring into the Theological preserves. Denounce it, laugh at it, persecute it; you cannot hinder it. Remember, it has happened not only in spite of Theological protests, but of Philosophical. Numbers of Philosophers voted solemnly that they would leave us to manage our own nonsense. They could not. A necessity has urged them on. Take the extreme cases. Choose them from whatever country you please. Shall it be Strauss? shall it be Feuerbach? shall it be Comte? The question is still forced upon us. What is Humanity? Has it anything to do with what has been called Divine? Yes, or No? What if some answer, ‘No—absolutely nothing’? What if some answer, Yes, but on exactly the opposite principle to the one you set forth,—‘Humanity is to make itself divine.’ What if there are all degrees of opinion intermediate between these? Supposing we are not asserting a truth; supposing the Incarnation is not a fact, but only a dogma; supposing the union of the Godhead and Manhood in a Person is not involved in the very existence of man, in the very order of things—all these contradictions, from the greatest to the least, are very alarming. No wonder that we quake at them; no wonder that we try by any means to stifle them. No wonder that we sometimes groan over the paucity of the means which are left to us,—that the sword and the fire, which, if they are used with a consistent, exterminating purpose, have done something, should be exchanged for the paltry machinery of argument and ridicule. But what if that which we say is even so? What if the Incarnation is a fact? What if the union of the Godhead and Manhood in Christ is involved in the very existence of man, in the very order of the Universe? Would it then be a cause of sorrow that so much of questioning from all quarters should be directed towards this point? Should we then shuffle, and evade the conflict, saying that a mystery of the faith could have no connection with the thoughts that are working in the minds of philosophers? Should we not rejoice and give thanks that it has so much to do with them? Should we not tremble lest any one of these inquiries should be hidden or suppressed which indicate what men are needing,—which compel us to offer them realities, and not opinions, in exchange for the doubts and objections which they offer to us?

I am as eager that Theology should hold its own simple, positive ground as Mr. Mansel can be; I am as eager that Philosophy should have its fullest range and freedom. But I do not think that Theology has any ground at all, if it merely accepts as a Tenet what is revealed as a Truth; I do not think Philosophy has any freedom at all, if philosophers are forbidden to learn anything but what Sir William Hamilton teaches them. I admit that theologians may do more than mere philosophers, to mark out the respective spheres of Theology and Philosophy; by preserving their own simplicity they will best assert its liberty. But I am also convinced that theologians will not arrive at this result by falling back upon the maxims of the eighteenth century. They may arrive at it if they proceed in the course into which they have been led, as I think, by a higher wisdom than their own; if they sincerely ask themselves what has caused one and another to fail in that course.

What I mean by the course into which they have been led, is this. The Person of Christ, as distinguished from a mere doctrine about Christ, appears to have become more and more the absorbing subject among those divines who exercise any considerable influence over the thought either of England or of Germany. Even the growing Mariolatry of Romish countries, even the new Papal decree respecting the conception of the Virgin, points in this direction. That a ‘Leben Jesu’ should be the favourite work of each of the eminent theologians of Germany, is all the more remarkable from their specially abstract tendencies. That such a book as Mr. Wilberforce’s on the Incarnation should have been written by one whose habits of thought inclined him to be peculiarly dogmatic, is also a very striking sign of the times. The study of Butler at Oxford must have affected the writer even more than he was aware of. He owns himself how much he had been led into that line of inquiry by finding the necessity of something to complete and sustain that personal faith, the all-importance of which he had learnt from the school in which he was educated. Other books, scarcely less significant, and pointing to a different kind of discipline, might be referred to; one of them, Mr. Young’s ‘Christ of History,’ is quoted with qualified approbation by Mr. Mansel.

All these are attempts to escape from Dogmatism to a ground of reality. All of them, I think, may teach us much. All of them are open in some measure to the criticism which the Bampton Lecturer has directed against Mr. Wilberforce. They mix philosophy with revelation; at times you fancy they are forming a Christ out of their own thoughts,—at times, that they are recognizing a Christ such as is set forth by the Evangelists. The writers are perfectly innocent of any such confusion,—as innocent as I believe Mr. Wilberforce was of any wish to put a universal notion of Humanity between himself and Christ. They would gladly escape from notions. If they are hampered by them, it is from some defect of method. I suspect it is from their being too anxious to meet the thoughts of philosophers halfway; whereas if they had assumed a different standing-ground, they would have had a hope of meeting them altogether.

I will explain this statement to you. These writers suppose that their opponents would never concede to them the Divinity of Christ; ‘We will stand, therefore,’ they say, ‘on your own ground. We will talk to you about His Humanity. We will see if that does not command your affection and reverence. We will then inquire whether that affection and reverence must not ascend to a higher region still.’ Mr. Wilberforce did not act on this maxim. He had discovered a deeper necessity than those who contemplate the life of Christ merely as the life of a man, he had felt the force of the expression, Son of Man, which occurs so continually in the Gospels; of St. Paul’s expression, “He is the Head of every man;” of that other, “The Firstborn of every creature.” But with his method of ascending from the earthly to the heavenly, I do not see how he could give effect to this language, without falling into the Realism which Mr. Mansel objects to him. And I do not see how he could practically escape another danger to which his critic has not alluded. Duns Scotus, the great champion of Realism in its strongest sense, was also he who won laurels at Paris for defending the doctrine which Pius IX. has erected into an Article of Faith. The mere universal Humanity was an abstract notion, though he might invest it with reality; its dreariness must be sustained by this worship of a concrete Humanity in the nature of the Virgin.

To that point I believe we shall tend,—Auguste Comte, as much as Pius IX., leading the way to it,—if theologians are not willing to be theologians again, and to proceed in directly the opposite method to that which I have just been indicating,—the method which the Church points out in the Epistle and Gospel for Christmas Day,—the old method of the Creeds. Then suppose we believe the Incarnation to be true, may we not cry, must we not cry, to the cities of England, as the Prophet cried to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God?” We declare how He has manifested Himself to us in that Son who is the brightness of His glory, the express image of His Person. This is the Being whom we praise and declare to be the Lord. We say that Christ has come to make known the Father; we say that in Him all may know Him, because He has revealed Himself, fully revealed Himself, not in words and letters, but in a Man.

Here, it seems to me, is the office of the theologian. He comes with this Gospel to mankind. So far as he is asserting, he is a dogmatist. But he does not rest his assertion upon his own judgment or upon the judgment of ages; he addresses it to the conscience, heart, reason of mankind. He leaves God to justify it in His own way, by the sorrows, needs, sins, contradictions of men. He desires only that the news should go forth with no force but its own. He can trust it; for he can trust Him who has shown us in His Son what He is, who has promised His Spirit of Truth to guide us into all Truth. Dogmatism and Rationalism cannot be reconciled in words; the verbal middle between them is feebler than either, destructive of what is good in both. Here is the living, real, uniting Mean between them. The verbal middle between the idolatry which is the worship of creatures, and the atheism which is the worship of nothing, is “less religious than the one, less logical than the other.” God declaring Himself to His creatures in a Man, that the creature may rise to the full knowledge of Him,—here is that middle which you, if you are to be a clergyman of the Christian Church, must hold forth in the practical and living words of the Scripture, to the righteous and the sinful, to the wise and the unwise.

Very truly yours,