Theology. Bushnell's Vicarious Sacrifice, 276. History and IV. FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN.-J. W. Chadwick V. BUSHNELL ON VICARIOUS SACRIFICE.-J. F. Clarke VI. AN AMERICAN IN THE CAThedrals of EuROPE. — W. R. Alger 377 - Theology. Ecce Homo, 394. Donaldson's Early Christian Liter- ature and Doctrine, 396. Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church, 397. Orme on the Three Heavenly Witnesses, 398. Higginson's Epictetus, 398.- History and Politics. Martin's Decline of the French Monarchy, 401. Mr. Buchanan's Ad- ministration, 405. Wilson's Prehistoric Men, 409. Lubbock's Prehistoric Times, 410. Geography and Travels. West Coast of America, 411. Isthmus of Panama, 413. Brazilian Questions, 414. Northwest Passage by Land, 415. Holiday in Saxony, 416. Dixon's Holy Land, 417. Eastern Europe and Western Asia, 419. — Miscellaneous. Our Convicts, 420. Moir on Capital Punishment, 420. Madame Roland's Me- 425 THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER. JANUARY, 1866. ART. I.-POPULAR CREEDS AND THE NATION'S A CONSIDERABLE part of all the best thinking, the truest feeling, and the highest worth of our time, is outside of the visible Church, - not connected with its institutions or its operations, and silently alienated from its faith. Strong, original, and independent thinkers, pursuing their own private reflections and thoughtful studies, are brought into states of mind so contradictory to those which animate the popular pulpit, so contrary to the religious opinions in which they were educated, so inconsistent with the current creeds of the Church, that they quietly withdraw from public worship, unwilling to be thought to profess convictions which they do not share, and even refuse to call themselves Christians in any ordinary acceptance of the word. It would surprise those who have paid little attention to the subject, to learn how large this class is. It is best known to the importers and publishers of scientific and philosophical literature, who are called upon to supply this extensive body of independent inquirers, of all denominational origins, and all local positions, and almost all grades of social standing, with the intellectual and scientific food dearer to them than the most attractive fiction, or the most sparkling narrative of events. We do not refer to sceptical literature, so called, or VOL. LXXX. -NEW SERIES, VOL. I. NO. I. 1 avowedly infidel and antichristian writings. They have no inconsiderable market; but it is a very small one, compared with that for works which treat, in a wholly philosophical spirit and without theological reference, of the fundamental questions in metaphysics, and in pure science; of what is knowable, and what the knowing powers are, and what is really known; — works that strike under all the secondary questions in controversial theology, and even Christian evidences. The sale for such books to solitary thinkers in the cities, and scattered orders in the country, is immense. Works so dry, learned, and abstract, that one would think nobody but professors in colleges would read them, and only a few great libraries contain them, are sold by the thousand, edition after edition, to persons not heard of or known even in the neighborhoods where they live, but who are quietly growing up to become the leading men in the country. For it is not men bred in cities, without time to read or study or think,- always engrossed with immediate affairs or pleasure or gain, who govern our intellectual, moral, or political world, or even our municipal Our bar, our pulpit, our senate, our press, -all are recruited from the country, where leisure, retirement, solitude, have thrown men's minds in upon themselves, given time for solid thinking based on solid reading, and developed that muscular vigor of the intellect and the character, which enables such men to turn, with their thrice-tempered steel, the cast-iron weapons with which presumptuous but undisciplined and ungrown minds attempt to meet them. It is because a large and quiet class of readers and thinkers of this sort exists widely scattered over the whole land, that the phenomenon to which we have called attention is due; namely, an alienation from public religion on the part of a very large and growing class of persons of character, persons whose influence is destined to be very great, nay, which is already great. We described this class as containing much of the best thinking, truest feeling, and highest worth of our time. And yet its constituents are alienated from public religion; not church-goers, not workers with the ministry, nor for their ends. And their frame of mind is due to their acquaintance with the foremost literature, science, and philosophy of the day. The necessary inference is, that the highest thinking, the most advanced science, are in opposition, not necessarily to Christianity, but to the current creeds and opinions of the so-called Christian world. This opposition is all the more serious and effective because indirect and unprofessed. It is not formal, but essential. The fundamental ideas of cosmogony, of the age of our planet, of the antiquity of man, are absolutely fatal to the theology based on Adam's fall. The received rules of literary criticism, when applied to the Pentateuch, banish the pretensions made so needlessly by its theological idolaters to verbal inspiration. The proper Deity of Christ- an hypothesis held by the common people in all ages in a totally different sense from that in which the learned have held it is fast taking its place, with honest and earnest thinkers, among the mythological extravagances which, among all tribes, have tended to deify heroes, sages, and martyrs. The notion of a curse resting on the human race, on the very ground, and actually on the whole course of nature, in consequence of Adam's sin, is, to those who study ethnologically the gradual development of humanity, or geologically the slow adjustment of the globe to human habitation, something almost ludicrously incredible. It is, in short, simply impossible to be acquainted even superficially with the most advanced science, or the best philosophies of history, or the latest theories of physiology and psychology, without feeling their inconsistency with the whole ground-plan of the ruling theology of Christendom. And this is sufficiently proved by the hostility to science, which theologians usually betray, and by their hatred of philosophy, a spirit too often, and with just as much justice, met on the part of science and philosophy with secret or open contempt for theology. How happy would be the day when the Church, through its theologians and ministers, should be the first to welcome truth from any quarter; the most hospitable friend of light, the greatest encourager of inquiry, the most implicit believer in the expediency and safety of frank and utterly honest thinking! Does God create and send into the world men of marked genius for observation and research, minds endowed with philosophical depth and scientific insight, to undermine the foundations of his own throne, and overturn the kingdom of his Son? Are the open secrets and inner mysteries of creation, the wonderful laws that govern the evolution of matter and mind, to be regarded as rivals and foes of true religion? Have morality and piety different interests from those of general truth, and progress in the knowledge of the crea tion? Is Nature a cruel step-mother, who deceives her children as to the heavenly Father's character and wishes? Or must we believe and trust and affirm, that natural and revealed truth are in perfect harmony with each other, and that nothing can be asserted and established in either, which is not sustained by what is to be found in the other? Truth can know neither time nor place, neither heaven nor earth. She is everywhere divine, always self-consistent, -ever calm and self-possessed, because sure of her rights and conscious of her immortality. She fears no investigation; no light is too strong for her eyes; and she sooner expects "the music of the spheres" to grate upon the ear of the listening astronomer, than one note of discord to be struck in all the great Pandean pipe of knowledges, along whose ever-lengthening gamut the lips of modern science sweep so boldly and with such ravished attention; and she teaches us, that in those upper notes beyond our reach, which are sounded not by human lips, but by the breath of the Spirit, there can be no change of key, no want of harmony with those within the range of purely human touch. It is the want of a distinct recognition, on the part of the Church, of this principle of faith in the coherency of truth, divine and human, that drives the most earnest and thoughtful minds away from her altars. Tell Science and Philosophy to bring all the results of their best thinking, their keenest observation, their bravest doubts, to her divine academy; let there be no anathemas there for serious questions, honest misgivings, and speculative opinions; and we may hope to recall to her communion the wandering wisdom, the ban |