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ART. II.-The Creed of Christendom; its Foundations and Superstructure. By WILLIAM RATHBONE GREG. Second Edition. London: Trübner and Co. 1863.

It is not without a sense of grave responsibility that we venture to criticise the work before us. When a man of high moral tone and character, of great ability and power of expression, has thrown into a brief and compact form all the difficulties which he finds in Christianity, it is highly probable that he will specify many to which we are not provided with an immediate solution. It may be that on certain points, not really affecting the essence of the Christian faith, mistakes have been made by large portions of the great Christian family; mistakes which need to be corrected and replaced by sounder views. It may be that difficulties, which at present harass the minds of many devout and excellent persons, will almost provoke a smile among our descendants. And yet they too, though they will marvel to think that we could have been perplexed at what seems to them so simple, will most probably have doubts and hesitations of their own to furnish food in turn for the wonderment of the generation that follows them. And so, perchance, will the world go on; until the last of the redeemed has been gathered into Christ's garner, and faith is swallowed up in sight. A religion without any doubts or difficulties might be suited for such beings as the seraphim, but it could hardly by any possibility be a religion for such a creature as man.

We say that these things may probably happen, because as a matter of fact they have happened. When S. Austin in his 'De Civitate Dei' argues against the existence of antipodes, he does so under the impression that the fact of their existence would in some way imperil the truth of Christianity. We see that he was mistaken alike in his facts and in the supposed consequences of those facts. An instance of the second kind of difficulty may be seen in the well-known case of Galileo. To us, brought up to regard the Copernican theory of the earth's rotation round the sun as practically proven, it seems a source of wonderment that such texts as He has made the round world so sure that it cannot be moved' should have been pressed with such naked literalness. As, however, the case of Galileo is somewhat threadbare, let us glance for a moment at a later illustration of our position.

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A very aged Presbyterian minister told the present writer that when he, Dr. was a young man, he was assured that there was not one in ten among those who walked the boards of the Parliament House in Edinburgh who did not believe David. Hume's argument against miracles to be triumphant. Now, for aught we know to the contrary, there may exist now, as there existed then, a considerable number of Scottish advocates who are more or less sceptical concerning the truth of Christianity. But respect for their own credit, as men of intellect and culture, would most certainly prevent them from expressing the slightest confidence in anything now felt to be so weak as the once celebrated reasoning of Hume. All which Hume has made out,' says a writer of our day, and this he must be considered to have made out, is, that no evidence can be sufficient to prove a 'miracle to any one who did not previously believe the existence of a being or beings with supernatural power; or who believed 'himself to have full proof that the character of the Being 'whom he recognises is inconsistent with His having seen fit 'to interfere on the occasion in question.' This reduction to a minimum of the effect of Hume's elaborate essay is not the work of one of the restrained and shackled' clergymen to whom Mr. Greg refers in his eloquent and touching preface. It is the language, as many may remember, employed by Mr. John Stuart Mill in book iii. chap. 24, of his System of Logic.' Now it is our deliberate conviction, that Mr. Greg's small volume is replete with arguments which are calculated to dazzle and perplex for the moment as effectually as did that of Hume, but which in another age will be considered to prove just about as much as is proved by that of the famous sceptic of the eighteenth century.

It is desirable before proceeding further, that we should state what we understand by the words which our author has chosen for his title. If we were to attempt to make a brief epitome of the 'Creed of Christendom,' we do not know that we could do it more befittingly than in the following words :-That, in consequence of an original and hereditary enfeeblement, man— every man without distinction-has lost the power of fulfilling, and even of thoroughly knowing, his duty upon this earth, and of assuring the salvation of his soul after his death, and that 'thus he would have perished without resource, if God had not come in human form to re-open to him the sources of pardon, ' of virtue, and of life.'

We conceive this summary to be a fair one. It represents the mind of the vast majority of Christians, spread over a wide extent both of time and space. It is the groundwork of the religion professed alike by Cowper and by Fénélon, by Nikon

and by Laud, by Baxter and by Ken, by Loyola and by Knox. On it are based the writings of the Schoolmen as well of Luther, of S. Bernard and S. Anselm, of S. Augustine and S. Athanasius, of S. Chrysostom and S. Cyprian. Further back we will not, for the moment, extend our list of names. As regards the statement itself, it has been already remarked in this Review, that it might have proceeded from a member of almost any of the largest bodies of Christians, Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Orientalists, Roman Catholics: and this is in itself no slight proof of the genuineness of the claim here made for it. E contrario, if we find any proposition put forth as part of the Creed of Christendom' which would not command the assent of a fair majority of Christians, which would not be acknowledged by that majority as a true representation of its sentiments, we conceive that we have a right to repudiate it. If, for example, any man should say that the Christian conceives that, by an arbitrary decree of the Most High, the virtuous soul 'will be assigned to happiness, and the vicious soul to misery,' we should suppose that what he really had in view was not the 'Creed of Christendom,' but simply the Creed of Calvinists." That the Calvinists are a large and influential part of Christendom is undeniable; but no man is justified in taking a part for the whole and we regret that this should have been done by Mr. Greg, not only in the passage just cited from his book (p. 279), but in other passages also, if not so directly, yet at least by implication.

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But having stated in its briefest form what we conceive to be the Creed of Christendom,' the further question then arises, What is the basis of this Creed? by what steps did we, who profess it, arrive at such a conviction? That this is a distinct question from the previous one concerning the substance of the Creed may seem too obvious a truism to require statement. And yet the distinction does seem to be very frequently ignored; sometimes by the defenders of the faith, but still more often by its assailants. Such confusion of thought has a tendency to prejudice the case. It would indeed be more desirable that we could all act up to the Apostolic precept, and be ready to give an answer to every man that asketh a reason of the hope that is in us. But the task, in such days as those in which God's providence has cast our lot, is not an easy one. It must often happen that numbers whose entire life would be to them a burden and an unreality, if it were not for their firm and practical grasp of the 'Creed of Christendom,' may have so little experience in the analysis of their own sentiments and mental

processes as to be unable to afford to others, with anything like precision, a statement of the grounds of their belief. Far from being prepared with such an apologia as S. Peter exhorts us to cultivate, they would probably injure the strength of their case in the eyes of bystanders, by the apparent want of connexion between their premisses and their conclusions.

Nevertheless such discrepancy would, on any other subject but that of religion, receive its due meed of allowance. Wordsworth, in one of his earliest ballads, has urged that children may be taught the practice of lying' by the injudiciousness of parents, who insist on a reply, not merely to the question whether they prefer one thing or place to another, but to the further demand why they prefer it. Nor is the difficulty confined to children. Many will recollect the story of Lord Mansfield's advice to a man who, though untrained to legal habits, expected to be called upon to exercise judicial functions in a distant colony, 'Give your decisions, they will generally be right, but do not give your reasons, for they are sure to be 'wrong.' The eminent judge knew his friend to be a man of strong sense, but he also knew that he was a person unaccustomed to inquire into his own grounds of action, and that he would most probably fail in discerning, and in explaining to others, the real grounds on which his conclusions were based. We might cite, as bearing on this theme, a passage of much beauty from Professor Shairp's 'Essay on Wordsworth.' But it it unnecessary; for here at least, if we mistake not, we have Mr. Greg on our side. 'The only occasions,' he writes at p. 276, on which a shade of doubt has passed over my conviction of a future existence, have been when I have rashly endeavoured to make out a case, to give a reason for the faith that is in me, to assign ostensible and logical grounds for my 'belief. If we feel the responsibility of essaying any such task within the brief space which our limits allow, the sentiment does not spring from any fear of causing a shade of doubt' in our minds, but simply from the dread of failure in the attempt to set the grounds of our belief before others.

But it seems a duty to run the risk: nec ullum periclum sine periclo vincitur. Having summarily stated what we believe, we proceed to consider why we believe it.

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To us there appear to be three great factors of Christian dogma: human reason, the Bible, the teaching of the Universal Church, Human reason is certainly competent, as an Apostle has told us, to demonstrate from the works of creation eternal power and Godhead' of the Creator. It also plays a highly important part in the adjustment of tradition with Holy Scripture, in the exegesis of Scripture, and in the consideration

of the nature of the claims made by revelation: for, with the lamented Charles Marriott, we certainly hold that it is impossible for any man heartily to believe that in which he does not in some sense think that he sees reason. The second factor, the Bible, comes to most men last in point of time, as it certainly comes last, taken as a whole, in the history of mankind. For the Christian Church must have taught for at least sixteen years without any writings of the New Dispensation to appeal to. People often talk in a lax manner, which seems to imply forgetfulness of this important fact. One might imagine from their language, that after S. Paul had been struck down on the road to Damascus, his primary duty on the recovery of his sight must have been the study of the Holy Gospels. They forget that at that period not one of the four had been published, and that the Apostle's own Epistle to the Thessalonians is most probably prior in point of date to any one of them.

Now references to the Bible, and certain difficulties connected with it, must occupy the latter part of this short paper; but, before we arrive at that portion of our critique, it is necessary to dwell a little on tradition and the teaching of the Catholic Church. It strikes us as not a little remarkable, that throughout Mr. Greg's book of nearly 300 pages, there is not, we believe, one single allusion to the claim of the Christian Church to teach. Yet surely, if the Church's authority be resisted or condemned, it ought not to be wholly ignored. To say nothing of the testimony borne by Scripture in favour of that claim, the existence of the Church as a teaching body during the first fourteen centuries after the Christian era, cannot seriously be called in question. Take the lectures of M. Guizot, Sur la Civilisation en France.' M. Guizot is a layman, a Protestant, a statesman, and not one of the 'restrained and shackled' clergymen. Yet M. Guizot declares that, throughout the earlier Middle Ages, but for the Christian Church the Christian religion must have perished. M. Michelet, and M. Michelet's reviewer in the Edinburgh some twenty-two years since (Mr. John Stuart Mill), give very similar evidence; evidence which might from the mouth of lay witnesses be multiplied indefinitely. Indeed laymen occupy a conspicuous place in the Church history of the time. It would be no slight gap that would be effected in mediæval annals, were we to strike out all notice of the influence exercised by such men as Alfred of England, Louis IX. of France, and the poet Dante. And what these men effected on a large scale, was re-enacted by other laity within the smaller circles accessible to them. Of course the work of the priesthood was closely intertwined with that of such lay sons of the Church the great poem of Dante could hardly have had an