New Testament Presentation, &c. 269

the view now taken we have at least a wonderful figure transcending his time, transcending his disciples,-attaching them but transcending them; in very much that he uttered going far above their heads, treating Scripture and prophecy like a master while they treated it like children, resting his doctrine on internal evidence while they rested it on miracles; and yet, by his incomparable lucidity and penetrativeness, planting his profound veins of thought in their memory along with their own notions and prepossessions, to come out all mixed up together, but still distinguishable one day and separable ;-and leaving his word thus to bear fruit for the future.-Literature and Dogma.

JESUS CHRIST AND SOCRATES.

A GREAT solicitude is always shown by popular Christianity to establish a radical difference between Jesus and a teacher like Socrates. Ordinary theologians establish this difference by transcendental distinctions into which plain people cannot follow them. But what really does make the radical difference between Jesus and Socrates is, that such a conception as Paul's conception of faith would, if applied to Socrates, be out of place and ineffective. Socrates inspired boundless friendship and esteem; but a penetrating enthusiasm of love, sympathy, pity, adoration, reinforcing the inspiration of reason and duty where this inspiration is of insufficient power, does not

belong to Socrates.

On this

In the

With Jesus it is different. point it is needless to argue ; history has proved. midst of errors the most prosaic, the most immoral, the most unscriptural, concerning God, Christ, and righteousness, the immense emotion of love and sympathy inspired by the person and character of Jesus has had to work almost alone by itself for righteousness; and it has worked wonders. The surpassing religious grandeur of Paul's conception of faith is that it seizes a real salutary emotional force of incalculable magnitude, and reinforces moral effort with it.-St. Paul and Protestantism.

THE MARVELLOUS WORK AND WONDER.

THE 'marvellous work and wonder' about the saving truth which the simple receive is, not that, being difficult to the reason, it is yet got hold of by the unlettered and not by the wise; but that, being so simple, it should yet be so immense, important, indispensable; and that, being so immense, important, indispensable, it should yet so often be followed by quite unlettered people, and neglected by such very clever ones. The clever are attending to other things, things which do task the reason and intelligence, and in which the unlettered have no skill and no voice: these things however are, at most, only one-fourth of life. And this absurdity, for such it really is, we see every day ;-people attending to the difficult science of matters where the plain practice they quite

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The Marvellous Work and Wonder! 27RSITY OF let slip. How many people will be now busy with MRNIA.

Darwin's new book, so admirably ingenious, on the natural history of the emotions, who yet are always using their own emotions in the worst possible manner! They are eager to know how their emotions arose, how these came to express themselves as they do; yet there the emotions now are, and have for a long time been, and the first thing for any sane man to do is to make a proper use of them, and to know how to make a proper use is not difficult ;but all this we never think of, but investigate zealously how they arose ! Such persons are just like those learned inquirers the Cynic laughed at, who were so busy about the strayings of Ulysses, so inattentive to their

own.

And Israel's greatness was that he was so impatient of trifling of this kind, of being busy with one-fourth of life while the three-fourths, conduct, was forgotten. And Israel boldly said: "They that seek the Eternal understand all things;' that is, they are occupied with conduct, righteousness, which truly is, as we have seen, at least three-fourths of life, and which Israel thought the whole of it. They have a hold on three-fourths of life, while it may be that their great, clever, and accomplished neighbours have a hold on only one-fourth, or part of onefourth, of life. Which is the solid and sensible man, which understands most, which lives most? Compare a Metho1 Written in 1872.

dist day-labourer with some dissolute, gifted, brilliant grandee, who thinks nothing of him!--but the first deals successfully with nearly the whole of life, while the second is all abroad in it. Compare some simple and pious monk, at Rome, with one of those frivolous men of taste whom we have all seen there !—each knows nothing of what interests the other; but which is the more vital concern for a man: conduct, or arts and antiquities?

Nay, and however false even his Biblical criticism, the believer who applies the method and the secret of Jesus has a width of range and sureness of foothold in life, which the best scientific and literary critic of the Bible, who applies them not, is without; because the first is right in what affects three-fourths of life, and the second in what affects but one-fourth, or even but oneeighth. Each has a secret of which the other, who has no experience of it, does not know the value; but the value of the learned man's secret is ridiculously least. This, I say, is the very glory and marvel of the religion of the true Israel, and what makes this religion, as Jesus called it, 'the good news to the poor;' that it covers nearly the whole of life, and yet is so simple.-Literature and Dogma.

THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH.

WHEN Jesus was going away, and his disciples were to be thrown on themselves and left to use his method

The Spirit of Truth.

273

of inwardness more deeply and thoroughly, not having him to go to, then they would find, he said, a new power come to their help; a power of insight such as they had never had before, and which was none of their making, but came from God as Jesus did, and said nothing of itself, but only what God said or Jesus said; a 'Paraclete,' or reinforcement working in aid of God and Jesus: even the Spirit of Truth. While Jesus was with them, the disciples had lived in contact with aletheia, or reality; and they were promised now an intuition of reality within themselves.

Now, will it be believed, that the Athanasian Creed, and our bishops, and the clergymen who write to the 'Guardian,' and dogmatic theology in general, should have imagined that Jesus Christ here meant to convey to us the 'blessed doctrine' that this Spirit of truth, too, 'is a PERSON'? The force of metaphysical talent out-running literary experience could really, we say, no farther go! The Muse, who visited Hesiod when he was tending his sheep on the side of Helicon, and 'breathed into him a divine voice, and taught him the things to come and the former things,' might every bit as well be made, with much display of metaphysical apparatus, 'a PERSON.' The influence which visited Hesiod was a real one,-that is as much metaphysics as we can without error, in a case of this sort, apply. Whoever applies more, falls into absurdity.

T