then, also, there is always the personal relation between him and God. From this latter point of view Dr. Martineau's "absolutely solitary individual" is an absolute impossibility. To apply the argumentum ad hominem, would any of our readers suppose moral distinctions obliterated for themselves if they were in Robinson Crusoe's position? We sincerely hope not. Our ego would still feel itself in the presence of a moral law, and conscious of higher and lower inner springs of action. Base inclinations would be sins; lying would be more than a blunder. Thus ethical ascent and descent would be realities. Nor would the soul be solitary. It would cry, "I am not alone, for the Father is with me;" and if all else failed, religion and the sense of personal relations with God would be competent to create ethics anew. We may be told that ethics are concerned with human relations only. This we cannot grant. We dare not dismiss religion into the death in life of an unmoral world. The very righteousness and holiness of God forbid us to do so. And besides, what is the essential difference between lying to ourselves or to God, and lying to our neighbours? It is only in the effects that are produced. The downward tendency of the conscience and the personal spiritual corruption are the same in both cases. And if we are to count these morally valueless in themselves, and deriving their sole ethical worth from the influence that they exercise upon other men, what is this but to stumble into the quagmire of Utilitarianism, and to judge right and wrong by a calculus of consequences? This cannot be Dr. Martineau's meaning. However, we need discuss no further the psychology either of Robinson Crusoe or the Man in the Moon. The venerated author's principles seem to us much wider than his own illustration, and to include all that we contend for.

The second point is this. Dr. Martineau says (p. 25) :—

If you quit this unique ground of moral experience, and for any other side of your nature throw open the windows to the Infinite, the overwhelming inrush of the Primary Causality will utterly drown the secondary, abolish the conditions of personality, and dissolve all detached existence in the deified cloud with which the mystic fills all space.

Now so long as Dr. Martineau occupies the ground of the moral consciousness, and argues thence for a recognition of the human and Divine personalities over against one another, we are entirely at one with him, and gladly admit the unanswerableness of his reasonings. In the moral sphere we do certainly know ourselves, and know God at the same time. But the brilliant metaphor is unfair to the mystic whose Pantheistic deity is something more than "a deified cloud," and it reduces the intellect, as a religious organ, to a condition of bankruptcy. It seems to us that Dr. Martineau, in his laudable anxiety to maintain the supremacy of the moral consciousness, underrates the value of pure metaphysics as the rational revelation of relationship between man and God, and falls over into the same abyss, though in another way, into which some human moralists fall when they decry theology, and into which some theologians fall when they decry an independent morality. The subject and the object are given

equally in the intellectual consciousness as in the moral consciousness. In both we may lose sight of the distinction, and melt the two into one; but in both when we do so the process is illegitimate. No doubt it is easier to do this in the intellectual sphere than it is in the moral sphere, and that is why Pantheism often has an intellectual glamour about it, which is dissipated as soon as we look at it in the clearer light radiating from the moral centre. But the apparent admission that intellectually there is no escape from Pantheism, and that when we open the windows of our nature to the Infinite on that side, the human personality fades away into the Primary Causality and the deified cloud, is one that we cannot make. We fear, too, that religious philosophy would soon come to incurable grief if we were to allow that, while it rests on a moral rock, it flounders helplessly in intellectual quick-sands. Both reason and conscience may place their feet firmly on the primary granite, and hold fast at the same time to the union and distinction between the finite and the infinite.

The three pamphlets we have briefly noticed are all important contributions to literature, embodying the ripe thoughts of Dr. Martineau on subjects of undying interest,-subjects, too, into which no man has a keener insight, and about which we know no man who can write with more quickening power. For the "Loss and Gain" and the Appendix, we have only thankfulness. They are admirable expositions of permanent theological truth enduring through changes of form, and in its fresh modifications coming forth with fresh strength. From two points in the Relation between Ethics and Religion we have expressed our dissent. That, however, little detracts from our sympathy with the author's main positions, and our admiration of the strength and charm with which he expounds them. Of the first point we can only say further that, to our mind, Dr. Martineau's philosophy involves personal relations between man and God, and that ethical conditions appear necessarily to follow them. Of the second, that the opening of the intellectual side of his own nature to the Infinite has left us, notwithstanding his warnings, in the enjoyment of full and divine sunshine, where our personality is not lost, but feels itself one and yet embraced, illuminated, and overflowed by the life of the all.

WILLIAM BINNS.

PR

PROFESSOR BLACKIE'S LAY SERMONS.

ROFESSOR BLACKIE has rightly named the papers collected into this volume"Lay Sermons," for, while they are not all on formally religious subjects, they all have that severity of ethical intention and that direct purpose of edification which are the chief marks of

Lay Sermons. By JOHN STUART BLACKIE, Professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh. London: Macmillan and Co. 1881.

good sermons. Each is complete in itself, and there is no thread of logical continuity binding them together. It is very interesting, and it may be very useful, to see how a shrewd, clear-headed layman looks at religious questions; and still more so to see how, being a religious man, he brings his religion to bear upon matters of a purely secular kind. The public generally will, perhaps, give more heed to the religious aspect of things when put before them by a layman who has no professional interests to arouse their suspicions, and who looks at religion in unconventional ways; and even religious teachers themselves may learn something from seeing, not only how religious problems present themselves to the minds of the laity, but also how secular subjects may be made to "feel the light of eternal things."

The subject-matter of the sermons-nine in number-is very various : from "The Creation of the World" to " The Politics of Christianity," and from the doctrine of " Faith" to "The Dignity of Labour; " but they are all fresh and vigorous; some of them careful and learned, and others characterised by all the shrewdness of a keen Scottish man of the world who has clear eyes, an independent mind, and an outspoken tongue. All this can be felt and admitted without the reader's mind committing itself to agreement in many matters of detail or to some more important portions which may be considered as yet fairly open questions. The book has the merit of compelling the reader often to pause and thinkto ask questions, and to go back and see how the thread of the argument leads up to where it has reached. Professor Blackie is far too individual himself to expect to carry all his readers along with him over ground which is thick with points of controversy, and the path not seldom right across old distinctions and time-honoured limitations.

The first sermon says all that can be said in favour of the "Genesis account of the Creation, regarding it as a symbolical, poetical summary of the most reverent insight of the old world-a "revelation of the great lines of theological and philosophical truth." In the face of recent

criticism, this is claiming much for the story; and it is, at least, open to question whether a great deal of the Professor's doctrine is not read into his text rather than deduced from it. He assumes too easily for it the authorship of Moses and its extreme antiquity, and never seems to have come within sight of the probability that however old it may be as a Semitic legend-in many of its features common to all the Semitic peoples-it can hardly be, in the form we know it, earlier than the captivity. That there is in it an attractive nobleness and simplicity no one can reasonably deny, and also a rough conformity to the probable order of development; but it needs a keen eye and a very prepared state of Inind to see in it a "revelation of the great lines of theology and philosophy." The sermon is, however, suggestive, and full of matter which will well repay careful study.

The second sermon sets forth the institution of the Jewish Sabbath, its purpose, and how for Christians it came to be superseded by the first day of the week; and closes with a very powerful and attractive plea for

the Sunday as it ought to be in a Christian country. The whole treatment of this much-disputed question is likely to give little satisfaction to rigid Sabbatarians, and is too common-sense and wisely practical to be generally adopted in the present state of society.

"Landlords and Land laws" is a moderate and fair argument for reform, in which the conclusions tend to the radical side, with a good deal of caution and qualification. There is, however, no doubt left possible as to the inexpediency of the present laws of entail and succession, or of the injustice of the existing restrictions and difficulties of transfer. The special value of this sermon lies in the way in which the subject is lifted out of all party lines, and set in the light of simple justice and of the general weal.

There is only room to refer to one more sermon-that upon "the Scottish Covenanters," in which is told once more the story of one of the bravest, most courageous, and enduring of all the world's struggles after spiritual freedom; and it is well told. Here the preacher's heart is in his work, and every drop of his blood glows with appreciative enthusiasm as he follows them through loss and gain, through strife and death, to final victory. One may hesitate a little, perhaps, at some of the acts he takes pains to justify; but those were not common times nor common men, and they are not to be tried by common rules. We commend the "Lay Sermons" to careful perusal and thought. They will repay all that is expended upon them.

T. W. F.

I

CHRISTMAS EVANS.

N a bulky volume of over four hundred pages* Mr. Hood has vividly depicted the career of a very remarkable man, and incidentally that of several of his Welsh contemporaries possessed-he eminently, they in a less degree-of remarkable preaching power. Christmas Evans was born on Christmas Day, 1766. Unable to read till he was seventeen, he devoted himself eagerly to self-improvement after his conversion at a revival meeting. The low and ruffianly companions whom he abandoned in consequence waylaid him one night and gave him an unmerciful beating, depriving him, by a blow, of the sight of one eye, a calamity which became a mark of distinction afterwards when he was widely known as "the one-eyed preacher." At twenty, as a Baptist minister, he entered the pulpit, or mounted the platform when the crowds who flocked to hear him were too numerous to be contained within the walls of a chapel. The Welsh had then, perhaps have still, a passion for great religious gatherings and lengthy discourses such as would now be termed highly sensational. Not one

*Christmas Evans, the Preacher of Wild Wales, his Country, his Times, and his Contemporaries. By the Rev. PAXTON HOOD. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1881.j

preacher but two were often required to sustain the interest of a crowded congregation for a couple of hours. Nor were they sober, silent auditors. They listened to a sermon pretty much as a secular audience would now surrender themselves to a powerful actor. They gave vent to their intense excitement in loud ejaculations of sympathy, even in torrents of tears, as their passions and their feelings were stirred by oratory uttered in their own strikingly picturesque mother-tongue. Christmas Evans might thus be called an actor of sacred dramas. The stories, the events, the characters of the Bible, he made visible and audible, sometimes in allegories, after the manner of Bunyan, sometimes in descriptive scenes and highly dramatic dialogues. His preaching thus was not altogether spontaneous. He carefully prepared and thought out his subject beforehand, and then trusted to his marvellous command of language for the verbal drapery in which to clothe it. Mr. Hood gives us many specimens of this order of preaching, so well suited to the times and the people; but detached from these, and especially from the preacher himself, they do not possess any marked merit in a literary point of view.

Christmas Evans was apostolic in his way of living, not only in his purity and self-denial, but in the scantiness of his worldly means. For many years he had but £17 as his annual stipend, which rose to, but never exceeded, £30; and on this small income he had to maintain himself and his excellent wife. In the midst of his many labours and preaching engagements he managed to become a fair scholar, acquiring a knowledge of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. He may be said to have died in harness, in his seventy-third year. Mr. Hood's biography of this remarkable man is full of incidents and anecdotes, all more or less illustrating the times, the manners, the superstitions, and, above all, the religious life of the Welsh people. Why they are so universally given to dissent, not formally and of set purpose, may be seen in the fact that this life is altogether too excitable and emotional to find vent within the dry formulas and sober and dignified services of the State Church.

C. L. C.

MR. W. R. GREG'S LAST ESSAYS.*

Y the lamented death of Mr. William Rathbone Greg we have lost

criticism and of warning counsel, in matters which concern some of the most deeply felt interests of our present day life. To those who are given to the serious study of the more complicated and difficult problems of the social state, and who feel the influence of those questions of religion, and philosophy, and of politics and practical ethics, which are "in the air," and which, directly or indirectly, affect men's personal convictions and ways of life, his removal from the scene of our controversies will be a source of unmixed regret. Mr. Greg's vocation might almost be defined * Miscellaneous Essays. By W. R. GREG. London: Trübner and Co. 1881.