feel still more inclined to adorn his history with such traits taken from mosaic and prophetical traditions; only that in the mild spirit of the new covenant they left out the penal side of these ancient miracles.". §. 73, p. 76.

Here we have the statement of an hypothetical truth: if the early Christians did form these myths, they did not make them penal but salutary ones. Very far however is this from justifying Mr. Harwood's assertion, "Christian Legend loved not the penal miracle;" for we know that Christian Legend does love the penal miracle, from the evidence of the Apocryphal miracles, whose origin can be traced up very near to the time which Mr. Harwood has assigned to the four gospels. In these confessedly Legendary works, we find Jesus represented as a cruel and tyrannous enchanter, in conformity with the fierce and barbarous age of superstition to which they owe their origin, so that we can only here generalize by pointing out the difference between the Gospel narratives and Christian legend, by saying, that while the former record only miracles and mercy, the latter love penal miracles.

The next passage we quote will be in illustration of the difference between rounding a period, and giving to a point, however minute, its just position in a train of inquiry. Speaking of the blind man cured by Jesus in Jerusalem, Mr. Harwood adds:

66

'Elisha sent Naaman to wash in Jordan: the Christ sent his patient to wash in the pool of Siloam, which is, by interpretation, Sent. How perfectly natural! There was grammatical propriety in it, as well as mystical fitness."-Lecture IV. p. 66.

Strauss however informs us, that this grammatical propriety is an etymological impropriety, because Siloam does not mean sent, but flow of water. He does not however agree with Lücke, that this explanation ought to be eradicated from the text as the addition of some transcriber, because all the authorities excepting one of minor importance present it.

Now, unimportant as this point is in itself, we confess it makes a difference in our feeling towards this passage, for it seems to us to furnish an argument against our having a myth before us, as we naturally ask ourselves whether it agrees more with our own observation, that in names, concerning which a peculiar interest is felt, a false etymology is sometimes given, or that when men have the whole world of sound to select from, they chose not merely a false name, but a false derivation.

We now turn away from all mere verbal discussions to the all-important topic of the resurrection of Jesus, the great

stumbling-block in the way, not only of the mythical, but of all other anti-supernatural explanations of the Life of Jesus. Here, it is evident, we have to part with all those collateral aids to the mythical, as the distance in time and place from the scene of action, by those who invented the mythi, which have before been so largely dwelt upon in order to reconcile us to the possibility of this being the true solution; and here, as elsewhere, the full statement of the true nature of the difficulty will be furnished to us by the German master, while his English pupil seems rather to draw off our attention from some of the important features of the case. In the fifth Lecture, page 81, we read as follows:

The resurrection of Jesus does not, like the other miracles, stand upon the four gospels only. One thing is quite clear about it, which is in no way dependent upon these fragmentary, conflicting legends of unknown date and authorship, and which consequently is not affected by any doubts that affect them; and that is, that the Resurrection was believed in the earliest age of Christianity. The faith in the revival and reappearance of Jesus was, from the first, the faith of the Christian Church. The mark of the second century is upon many things in our Gospels, but the Gospel of Jesus and the Resurrection,' is quite certainly not a thing of the second century. We have documentary evidence of this in Paul's indubitably genuine first Epistle to the Corinthians, from which it appears that this belief was the belief of the age; some were then living, (Paul himself one of them,) who believed that they had seen the risen Christ. Now this is evidence, so far as it goes. It is evidence, perhaps, of a too vague and general sort to be satisfactory. We feel that we must know more about it before we can place very much reliance upon any thing that Paul believed he had seen. It may have been that the day Paul saw Jesus was when he was caught up into the third Heaven, (whether in the body or out of the body he never could ascertain,) and heard unspeakable words in the unknown tongue of that locality. There is no saying how it was still it is evidence of something; we stand here upon historical ground; we have got a clear reality; we know, as matter of history, that the belief of Christ's reappearance after death was coeval with the birth-time of apostolic Christianity."

Let us now compare with this general and undiscriminating classification of the evidence of the founders of the Christian Church under one category, the correct discrimination and lucid statement of their differences by Strauss:

The

"Here however occurs a diversity which seems to make what occurred to Paul, useless in explaining those earlier appearances. Apostle Paul had present to his mind the belief that Jesus was risen and seen by many persons, as the faith of the sect which he persecuted ;—

he had only to receive it into his own conviction, and through the plastic power of imagination to make it his own. The older disciples had only the death of the messiah as the fact before them; the belief that he was risen they could not receive from himself; for, according to our view of the matter, they had first to create it for themselves, a mental process which seems above all comparison more difficult than that which the apostle Paul at a subsequent period passed through."-§. 138, p. 890.

Nothing can exceed the candour and clearness of this statement: it shows us, to use Strauss's own true and strikingly appropriate description of himself, the calmness and coldbloodedness with which he undertakes the most apparently dangerous operation. For surely nothing can be more difficult than to build up the mythical view on the firm historical ground on which we are now standing.

But we feel we should be doing justice neither to the Lecturer nor the subject if we failed to point out one feature of the work, which belongs entirely to the English Author, and throws a softening and beautiful tinge over the whole, (the more strictly scientific nature of Strauss's work not admitting its introduction,) and this is the constant recognition of the subjective and eternal truth of Christianity, whatever may be decided concerning its objective realities.

"The Gospel is all true-true to our heart of hearts, whatever becomes of its framework of local and literal imagery, as the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan are true, though we find no place for the literalities of those divine fictions anywhere in our tables of chronology. It is all truth, heaven sent, God inspired truth-whoever they may have been that took pen in hand and wrote it down for us. Here it is: we have no need to vex ourselves overmuch with anxious questions about how it came to be; it is, it has been, it will be truth, most profound: beauty most meekly graceful; goodness most winning; love most lovely; the resurrection and the life of poor, sick, fallen, down-trodden humanity."-p. 15.

The Germans have not failed to perceive, that though as a citizen of a civilized community, each man has a right to assert for himself a perfect freedom of thought and utterance, yet every one who ventures into the region of science, gives up his right of capricious individual judgment, and if he refuses to believe anything, must show that it is because it contradicts the fundamental laws of thought; or if he declares that he cannot hold any other form of belief than his own, he must show the inherent necessity of his mode of thought. Therefore they would not grant to Mr. Harwood his position :

"I have a clear logical right to say, I know nothing whatever about the matter, have not the means of knowledge; the whole thing is buried in the past, and I cannot exhume it: I cannot, on the one hand, discover the undiscoverable, nor can I, on the other, believe the unbelievable."

."—p. 95.

Strauss has said with much point, that whereas supernatural orthodoxy believes all things are possible with God, Historical Rationalism holds, that all things are possible by chance; and may we not add that mythical anti-supernaturalism holds, that all things are possible by the elective affinities of mind? At least this seems to us the only rationale we can extract from the following statement of the fact of Jesus having founded Christianity, though he contradicted all the then prevalent notions of the Jewish Messiah, and his advent seemed, in a mysterious way, connected rather with the total annihilation of the Jewish polity, than the fulfilment of the predictions concerning the long promised glory of Israel.

"The Spirit of God in man works by law, but we cannot always, in our theories, reduce its workings to law. We cannot tell how it was, or when it was, that Jesus of Nazareth first felt the movings of that inspiration, which is ever its own divinest commission; but he was so moved, inspired, commissioned; he knew that he was God's Messiah. And fishermen and publicans, some few, came to know it too. Again, we have no particular account that we can rely upon, how this was, only we know in general that faith inspires faith, conviction works conviction; whatever a true man believes, he is sure to find some other true men to believe with him. So it was with these Galileans. They knew Jesus of Nazareth to be God's Christ; they were sure of it; long intercourse with him had made it a conviction, a faith to live and die for."

In taking leave of these Lectures, we feel obliged to record the mournful conviction that they have strengthened within us, that to popularize is to dogmatize; that the thinkers are few, and do not become more numerous by the crowd of disciples which they collect around them; so seldom is it that philosophy realizes her own problem, and teaches men to reflect. We consider it therefore as a necessary consequence, that the pulpit will long resound with the echo of a more dogmatic faith than that for which the closet speculation furnishes a scientific foundation, and that the Public Meetings of the so-called Philosophic, will long be warmed by an "enthusiasm of negation," while the solitude of the thinkers is perplexed by doubt.

C. L.

ART. III.-INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSES DELIVERED IN MANCHESTER NEW COLLEGE, AT THE OPENING OF THE SESSION 1840. Literary and Scientific Department, 5 Lectures; Theological Department, 3 Lectures. Simpkin, Marshall & Co., and J. Green, London.

In the year 1786, an Academical Institution was established in Manchester, with the design of affording a learned Education to Dissenting Ministers, and of opening to such of the laity as might be desirous of a liberal culture the opportunities of Knowledge without the trammels and restriction of party Religion. There was only one Body of men in the Kingdom from whom a design so nobly conceived could have proceeded,— the Presbyterians of England. With them alone it was not matter of Conscience to restrict the opportunities of Learning to a denominational Section of the Christian world, or to call by the generous name of Education the dogmatic inculcation of "foregone conclusions."

This Institution continued to exist at Manchester, with a limited sphere of usefulness, until the year 1803, when circumstances connected with the Theological department occasioned the removal of the Institution to York. During the thirtyseven years of its existence, Manchester College York, as it was called, thus combining in that historical Designation its birthplace and its existing locality, was chiefly known as the Academical Institution in which the Unitarian Ministers of England received their higher training, as well in Scientific and Literary as in Theological Education. It was the principal nursery from which that religious Body derived their Teachers and Pastors. With the Candidates for the Unitarian Ministry some lay students were mingled in the common undergraduate course of a Collegiate Education, and in the less strictly professional studies of Theology. These however were always few in number, and belonged to the same section of the religious world. With nothing exclusive or sectarian in its own spirit or constitution, it was thus, from the temper of the times, exclusively used by a small religious body, and even by them very rarely for any other purposes than for the professional supply of their Churches. The Education afforded to the Divinity Students, and their maintenance during the term of their College residence, were for the most part gratuitous, the expense being borne by the Unitarian Body throughout the kingdom. In such circumstances