the mere invention of a frail and erring being like ourselves. Nay, more; if Christianity is not miraculous and divine in its origin, it is an imposition, and its founder was a cheat; for no declaration was more decidedly made by him, no assertion is more frequently written out in the Gospels, than that he was the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Messiah spoken of in the Scriptures, and waited for by the people, who came to make known the will of the Father, and to save mankind from their sins. In proof of this special commission and divine authority, he pointed to the wonderful works which he did; so that they who deny those works, who say that a miraculous event is incredible, and that it is foolish to suppose that any one was ever specially commissioned by the Deity for any purpose, do in fact deny the claims which he put forth, and heap the coarsest reproach upon his memory. The gloomy and comprehensive conclusion at which Strauss and his followers arrive, as the end of their inquiry, is well presented by that writer himself.

"The results of the inquiry which we have now brought to a close have apparently annihilated the greatest and most valuable part of that which the Christian has been wont to believe concerning his Saviour Jesus, have uprooted all the animating motives which he has gathered from his faith, and withered all his consolations. The boundless store of truth and life which for eighteen centuries has been the aliment of humanity seems ir retrievably dissipated; the most sublime levelled with the dust, God divested of his grace, man of his dignity, and the tie between heaven and earth broken. Piety turns away with horror from so fearful an act of desecration, and, strong in the impregnable selfevidence of its faith, pronounces that, let an audacious criticism attempt what it will, all which the Scriptures declare and the church believes of Christ will still subsist as eternal truth, nor needs one iota of it to be renounced.”. Strauss, Vol. III., p. 396.

There can be no doubt respecting the true position and name of persons who have come to this melancholy result. They may be amiable and good men, in the worldly sense of that phrase, of honest intentions and irreproachable lives. All this can be said of David Hume; but he never thought of calling himself a Christian. If the followers of Strauss arrogate to themselves this title, they are dishonest and guilty of a wilful attempt to deceive. In any thing like the ordinary meaning of the name, in the only meaning of it

which is present to the minds, not merely of this or that sect, but of the whole Christian world, they know they are not Christians. It is foolish to attempt to confound their sweeping unbelief with the many points of difference which are mooted among various Christian denominations. They deny the fundamental assumption of Christianity and of every other religion; they deny that a miraculous event, a special revelation from heaven, is possible or even conceivable. They assert that no such revelation was made by Christ, that what was affirmed on this subject by himself and his apostles was untrue, that the four Gospels are untrue, and what is written in them, from the mere fact that it is there, is of no authority. Such a sweeping doctrine of unbelief as this cannot without a foolish and disgraceful abuse of language be called a mere "variation" of Christianity, like the thousand and one shades of belief which are properly so denominated. It is humiliating to be obliged to say a word on a point which is so evident. Those who call such persons Christians in some measure share their doctrine, and in so far repudiate Christianity themselves; for they acknowledge thereby, that the doctrine of a special revelation by Jesus Christ is not necessarily a fundamental part of Christianity. On this point, we intentionally make our language as plain and direct as possible. To argue against sincere and honest infidelity is one thing, to repel a dishonest assumption of the Christian name is another. In the former case, we may respect our opponents; in the latter, we are compelled to despise them.

The concluding dissertation in the work of Strauss is very curious, for it gives a tolerably fair view of the extravagant shifts, the inane allegorical and metaphysical theories, to which the several schools of infidel critics and philosophers in Germany have been driven, in order to reconcile their decided rejection of what they call "historical" Christianity, their disbelief of the actual existence of the Saviour and of the reality of miracles or a special revelation, with the obstinate retention both by themselves and their followers of the name, office, and emoluments of Christian clergymen and theologians. The systems of Paulus, Schleiermacher, Kant, Hegel, and others are presented with tolerable distinctness, and refutedas if refutation of such extravaganzas were necessary - with absolutely conclusive reasoning. Finally, Strauss proposes a system of his own, quite as absurd as the worst of those VOL. LXIII.- No. 133.

37

which he had just rejected; but he proposes it with little confidence, and in fact admits almost directly, that, if the clegyman entertaining his views be unlucky enough to have a tender and scrupulous conscience, there is no course left for him but to quit the ministerial office altogether. We have room but for a very brief summary, given mostly in Strauss's own words, of his own system and that of Schleiermacher. These are fair specimens; some of the others unite quite a decided expression of atheism with their disavowal of "historical" Christianity. And we should not burden our pages and the patience of our readers with even this brief notice of them, if it were not for the light which the expressions used, the peculiar phraseology of this school, cast upon some language with which our ears have been shocked even on this side of the Atlantic. We shall know, hereafter, what these persons mean, when they say that they reject only "historical" Christianity, and when they continue to talk about Christ and a revelation, though they hold that the narratives of the four Evangelists are mythical and fabulous.

Schleiermacher, says our author, "has adopted in its fullest extent the negative criticism directed by Rationalism against the doctrine of the church; nay, he has rendered it even more searching." His system is founded, not, like that of the Protestant, upon the Scriptures; nor, with the Catholic, upon the decisions of the church; but on the consciousness of the individual Christian, and the "internal experience" which he obtains from his connection with the Christian community; "a material which, as its basis is feeling, is more flexible, and to which it is easier to give dialectically a form that satisfies science."

:

"As a member of the Christian church, this is the point of departure in the Christology of Schleiermacher, I am conscious of the removal of my sinfulness, and the impartation of absolute perfection in other words, in communion with the church, I feel operating upon me the influence of a sinless and perfect principle. This influence cannot proceed from the Christian community, as an effect of the reciprocal action of its members on each other; for to every one of these sin and imperfection are inherent, and the coöperation of impure beings can never produce any thing pure as its result. It must be the influence of one who possessed that sinlessness and perfection as personal

qualities, and who moreover stands in such a relation to the Christian community that he can impart these qualities to its members: that is, since the Christian church could not exist prior to this impartation, it must be the influence of its founder. As Christians, we find something operated within us; hence, as from every effect we argue to its cause, we infer the influence of Christ, and from this again, the nature of his person, which must have had the powers necessary to the exertion of this influence. "To speak more closely, that which we experience as members of the Christian church is a strengthening of our conscious. ness of God, in its relation to our sensuous existence; that is, it is rendered easier to us to deprive the senses of their ascendency within us, to make all our impressions the servants of the religious sentiment, and all our actions its offspring. According to what has been stated above, this is the effect wrought in us by Christ, who imparts to us the strength of his consciousness of God, frees us from the bondage of sensuality and sin, and is thus the Redeemer." Strauss, Vol. II., pp. 417, 418.

It is needless to quote further; the other offices of Christ are explained in the same way. The substance of the theory appears to be, that a sort of Christ exists nowadays. in the consciousness of every individual who belongs to a Christian community. "In this sense alone is the doctrine of the threefold office of Christ to be interpreted." "The facts of the resurrection and ascension do not form essential parts of the Christian faith.” He holds, in some inexplicable way, that a historical Christ existed, but affirms that there is no reason for this belief but what may be found in the consciousness of every individual. "Whatever in the dogma of the church goes beyond this-as, for example, the supernatural conception of Jesus, and his miracles, also the facts of the resurrection and ascension, and the prophecies of his second coming to judge the world - ought not to be brought forward as integral parts of the doctrine of the Christ." We have no evidence from " our internal experience" of the truth of these facts; ordinary Christians believe in them" only because they are stated in Scripture; not so much, therefore, in a religious and dogmatical, as in an historical manner." This doctrine of Schleiermacher, says Strauss, is inadequate on both sides, for it does not satisfy the requisitions either of "the faith of the church or of science."

"It is clear, however, from his doctrine of the work of Christ,

that, in order to satisfy the former so far as is here done, such a contradiction of the latter was quite unnecessary, and an easier course might have been pursued. For resting merely on a backward inference from the inward experience of the Christian as the effect, to the person of Christ as the cause, the Christology of Schleiermacher has but a frail support, since it cannot be proved that that inward experience is not to be explained without the actual existence of such a Christ." Strauss, Vol. 111., p. 424.

We fully agree with the following remark of our author.

"We may now estimate the truth of the reproach which made Schleiermacher so indignant; namely, that his was not an histori. cal, but an ideal Christ."

"This Christology," says our critic, "is undeniably a beautiful effort of thought!" But it does not satisfy him, any more than three or four other systems which he examines, and he accordingly propounds a "Christology" of his own.* For him whom the Scriptures and the generality of Christians call Jesus Christ, or, as Strauss luminously expresses it, "as subject of the predicate which the church assigns to Christ, we place, instead of an individual, an idea." This idea realizes itself, not indeed in the "historical" Christ, as the Scriptures would have us believe, nor yet in the consciousness of any Christian individual of the present day, as Schleiermacher supposes.

"This is, indeed, not the mode in which Idea realizes itself; it is not wont to lavish all its fulness on one exemplar, and be niggardly towards all others, — to express itself perfectly in that one

It is important to understand the phraseology of these persons, and their mode of using names. When they speak of Christ, they understand thereby the idea so called, which, according to some, is realized in the consciousness of every individual; according to others, in universal humanity; and in the opinion of a third class, is never realized at all. Thus, we have a "Christology," or doctrine of Christ, just as we have a " pneumatology," or doctrine of spirit. The word is not a proper, but a common noun (as appears, indeed, from its etymology and primitive use), and ought to be written christ. When they speak of Jesus, they mean the historical personage of that name; for most of them admit that such a person actually lived, and was a good man and an eminent preacher of virtue, though the recorded history of him is but a tissue of fables. To show very clearly their opinion of him, his name is usually placed in a list of other excellent persons, such as Socrates, Fénelon, Howard, and some worthies of our own day, whose names we prefer not to mention in such a catalogue.