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when he says, "His sojourn among men was a journey to angels; Heaven was round him not only when he entered the world but when he left it. Always, and everywhere, as student, priest, and bishop, persecuted or triumphant, joyful or weary, he beheld lights and faces which dwelt not in the common day, but shone down upon the traveller, who in the wilderness feels that he is in God's work and in God's house. So he went forward,-' By that vision splendid-on darkest way attended.'"

True from the beginning to the end, do we believe Taylor to have been to that divine attraction which drew him to the Cross; and yet there were disturbing forces, which though they never had the power to drive him wholly out of it, yet made him "tremble intensely" along the orbit of a true faith.

But it would be unjust to Mr. Willmott to blame him for not entering more largely upon such topics as those above referred to. He has shielded himself from such a charge. "The author hopes," he says in his Preface," that the pictorial intention of his book will not be forgotten. All elaborate analysis of treatises or doctrines lay beyond the design, which only attempts to give the spirit of Taylor's genius." In the execution of this design the skill of a highly accomplished artist is displayed. The descriptive and the critical-the one often vividly pictorial, the other often acute and original-are the warp and the woof out of which this volume is composed, and by their skilful interweaving a series of most graceful figures pass before the eye. Mr. Willmott, if not himself a painter, has made himself familiar with the works of the most eminent masters of that art. And he has learned something even in his own department of labour from that familiarity. "My object," he tells us,-and that object has been most successfully realized, was to present a picture, historical and domestic, in which the strongest lights should fall on one figure-Bishop Taylor; some of his most illustrious forerunners, contemporaries, and successors, being grouped around him-representatives of that majestic company of devout and learned men

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with beaming eye,

That, lifted, speaks its commerce with the sky,

who adorned our Church and literature during two hundred years."

The Religions of the World, and their Relations to Christianity, considered in Eight Lectures. By FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A., Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, and Professor of Divinity in King's College, London. London, 1847.

By a codicil to his will, dated in the year 1691, the Hon. Robert Boyle directed "that eight sermons should be preached each year in London, for proving the Christian Religion against notorious infidels,

to wit, Atheists, Theists, Pagans, Jews and Mahometans; not descending lower to any controversies that are among Christians themselves." The eight lectures which, in obedience to this direction, were delivered in the course of the year 1846, are presented to us in this volume. In discharging the office of Christian advocate, Mr. Maurice has wisely and successfully attempted to adjust his advocacy to the peculiar position in which Christianity has been recently placed. Till lately, at least all through the eighteenth century, the chief peril to our faith lay in the assaults of scepticism. All the great religions of the world with which Christianity was attempted to be confounded, were held up as so many gigantic systems of falsehood invented by designing men, and imposed by them, for priestly or political purposes, upon the weak credulity of their fellows. Faith in any of these religions was taken as a token of intellectual inferiority. Emancipation from their thraldom-a thraldom looked upon as one of the heaviest and most degrading burdens which oppressed humanity had to bearwas contemplated and striven after, as what would bring the highest and happiest benefits in its train. To shield Christianity effectually from the general and indiscriminate onslaught of the infidel philosophy, it behoved her apologists to make it clear that her pure and sacred truths and her well-authenticated histories had nothing whatever in common with the fabulous legends, the cosmogonies, and the mythologies of heathenism; and that the manner of her introduction, and the methods of her establishment in the world were such as altogether to preclude the idea of her being the offspring of human ingenuity or deceit. The present century, however, has brought with it a mighty revolution in the state of thought and feeling respecting Religious Systems generally. The most candid and the most thoughtful men have long since given up the idea that the religions of the world are the artful fabrications of the few, invented for the subjugation of the many. There are but very few who would count it a service rendered to any of their fellowmen to root up what faith they have in the things of an unseen world-leaving them nothing to look up to here, and nothing to look forward to beyond the grave. Faith-almost any faith-provided only it be sincere and strong, instead of a thing to be pitied or despised, has come to be respected, admired, and mightily applauded as a purifier and elevator of our nature. But with this great change in the public sentiment towards religion generally, a new peril to Christianity has sprung up. The enemies of all religious systems would have mixed her up with the rest, that with the rest she might be swept away. But the friends of all religious systems—is there no danger that they too may mix her up with the rest, and that in the homage paid to all, her peculiar and distinctive claims may be disowned and repudiated. "Is there not ground for supposing," (such are the questions which Mr. Maurice conceives that much of the erudite as well as of the popular literature of the day is giving secret birth to in many minds),

"Is there not ground for supposing that all the religious systems, and not one only, may be the legitimate products of that faith which is so

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essential a part of man's constitution? Are not they manifestly adapted to peculiar times, and localities, and races? Is it not probable that the theolgy of all alike is something merely accidental, an imperfect theory about our relations to the universe, which will in due time give place to some other? Have we not reason to suppose that Christianity, instead of being, as we have been taught, a revelation, has its root in the heart and intellect of man as much as any other system? Are there not the closest, the most obvious relations between it and them? Is it not subject to the same law of decay from the progress of knowledge and society with all the rest? Must we not expect that it, too, will lose all its mere theological characteristics, and that what at last survives of it, will be something of a very general character, some great ideas of what is good and beautiful, some excellent maxims of life, which may very well assimilate, if they be not actually the same, with the essential principles which are contained in all other religions, and which will also, it is hoped, abide for ever."

To bring such inquiries as these to trial-to ascertain, after minute and patient scrutiny, what portions of truth and what of falsehood they contain, is the leading object of the volume now before us. In fulfilment of his comprehensive design, Mr. Maurice subjects to analysis all the leading religious systems of the world, exclusive of Christianity, not with the desire to detect and expose their absurdities, but in search of the main characteristic principle by which each of them is distinguished. As a specimen of the manner in which the inquiry is conducted, and of the results sought in each case to be realized, let us take his treatment of Mahometanism-the first of the religious systems brought here under review.

To what, it is asked, did Islamism owe its wide and rapid conquest? what gave to it, in the season of its life and power, so strong a hold over so many millions of devoted adherents? Its victories were due to the discipline and prowess of its warriors; but that discipline and prowess was itself an effect, and cannot properly be assigned as the cause of the religion's spread. Man's proneness to be deluded by any new imposture, while it may account for many of the grosser absurdities of the Mussulman faith getting so ready a reception, it cannot account for the unbounded zeal and amazing energy displayed. Nor can that zeal and energy be accounted for by saying that Mohammedanism had borrowed much-let it be admitted had stolen all that was most valuable in it-from Christianity; it must have had something that was its own-something not to be found at least in that Christianity with which it came into conflict, or it would not have so fiercely opposed, and could not have so often triumphed over it as it did. Nor, assign to it what weight we may, can we attribute the large and continued triumphs of his followers to the personal character and influence of Mahomet himself. And though the doctrinal monotheism and hatred of all idolatry which he proclaimed, gave its origin and object to the great crusade, it was no mere spirit of opposition to error which nerved the arms by which so many idols were thrown down, and such multitudes of their

worshippers were slaughtered. Wherein, then, lay the secret of Islamism's strength? Not in the mere profession of monotheism, but in the strong and living sense of a divine Almighty Will, to which all human wills are subject, and before which, if they do it not spontaneously, they must be forced to bow. Amid the many controversies and speculations, and moral corruptions, and modes of false worship prevalent at the time among Christians, as well as among the worshippers of other gods, all true, deep, soul-stirring recognition of God's personal existence and reign upon the earth, and of the sovereignty, complete and absolute, of his all-controlling will, had nearly evaporated. That recognition-not in word only, but in mighty powercame upon the spirits of the faithful-that recognition they shall force all others to make also. "It was given," says Mr. Maurice, "to the soldiers of Mahomet to make this proclamation in the ears of men. They said by their words and acts-God verily is, and man is his minister to accomplish his will upon earth. This we shall find was the inspiring thought in the warriors of the crescent. This gave them valour, subordination, discipline. This, when it encountered no like or equal feeling in the minds of those among whom they came, made them invincible." There was some truth, it is conceded some portion of vital eternal truth embodied in that deep sentiment which stirred the heart of the true Mussulman. And the sameif we search far enough for it, and be candid enough in the searchthe same will be found to be the case with all those religions which have had wide prevalence and extensive power. But what in this case of Mahomedanism shall we make of the general allegation, that the purely and properly theological is but the drapery-the outward environment-covering some simpler idea, some deeper theory of the universe, which theological vestment being stripped off and cast aside, all that is worthy of being preserved, that is capable, indeed, of an enduring existence, is still left to us? That is not true as to Islamism. The very reverse is true. The theological is here the central essential element around which all else gathers, and by which all else is inspired. Take it away, and how much of Mahommedanism remains ?-But Mahommedanism soon lost its earlier vivacity; it sheathed its sword, and when its hand was idle, the life-current from the heart ran slowly and feebly along. It was because it had taken up but a small fragment of the truth, a portion that could sustain it but for a season. It taught that God was-it told little of what he was. It was the bare power of his will, not the divine glories of his character or doings which it announced: and so, whenever its work of forcibly constraining men to acknowledge the Divine Supremacy was over, the truth which it had taken up became transmuted into a falsity. The sovereign will of a personal Deity passed into a blind Fate, and all the ministry of man demanded, was an abject and degrading submission to a power before which he bent the knee, but never in a grateful and willing homage bowed the heart. In what relation, then, to this religion does Christianity now stand? She does not need sternly and summarily to reject all that Mahomet has taught. Neither

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here nor elsewhere, in order to sustain her own true character, is it incumbent on her to make out that all which every other teacher has been announcing is false ;-enough that whereinsoever any of them can be shown to be deficient, she can at once produce that whereby the deficiency may be made up. To the idea, then, of an absolute will, she adds that of a perfect justice, an infinite mercy, an immeasurable grace, residing in that Deity whom she sets forth for the love and worship of mankind. To the weakness, therefore, which age has inflicted upon Islamism, she can never be subject. And the place which Islamism is too feeble permanently to occupy, she can take up and hold even to the end.

Such is a brief outline of Mr. Maurice's treatment of one of the Great Religions of the world. We have followed him through his analysis of Hindooism, Buddhism, the Greek, Roman, Persian, and Egyptian systems, and in his exhibition of the manner in which Christianity comes in to the aid of all that is good in each of them, and for the displacement of all that is erroneous— -of all that is decaying, and ready to vanish away. In following such a guide through a range so wide and for purposes so momentous, it is our comfort to find ourselves in the company of one who himself has laid the grasp of so firm and earnest a faith on the great and peculiar doctrines of the Gospel, and yet whose candour and catholicism of spirit leads him to look with a kindly eye upon whatever has ministered long and largely to the religious wants and longings of our nature.

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