that He is the Truth-the Truth regarding all that awful mystery which hems me in on every side, and in which my own heritage and portion are-and therefore, whatever I may find in the eternity on which I have to enter, I must find Him there; His tenderness, His faithfulness, His love, yea His Jehovah being that one enduring anchorage which is beyond limitation, and above accident and change and time? Will a man who has heard this voice call its utterances truths regulative but not speculative? Will he have room for such a distinction as that? Will he not promptly echo the Apostle's words, We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us understanding, that we may know Him that is true; and we are in Him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life?' We have thus delivered our protest against the main point of Mr. Mansel's philosophy, and have expressed ourselves strongly, both because we condemn it in itself, and because we greatly dislike its possible results. We dread and deprecate, more than most things, an orthodoxy based upon scepticism; an enforcement of the whole of a received system on the special ground that our ignorance of all things disqualifies us to refute, and therefore disentitles us to reject, any part of it. When a man has once made up his mind to adopt this principle, he has indeed no sort of religious difficulty, nor can he by possibility encounter any. It might avail for any and for every form of religion. It can combine the most universal doubt with the most entire conformity; and we are mistaken if it be not compatible with at least enough of zeal to make a good persecutor. In writing thus, we must not be supposed to be sketching Mr. Mansel himself. He is clearsighted, and, we should think, temperate enough to understand a controversialist's right to point out what seems to him the inevitable result of a position, without being taken as asserting that it is arrived at in every man who announces his occupation of that position. We should be ready to believe, even if VOL. LX. NO. CCCLIX. 575 we did not see beautiful indications of it in the Bampton Lectures, that there is much in Mr. Mansel of a far higher tone than the main body of his speculation; and if we have not paused on the great merit of many passages in this book, it has been because, while Mr. Mansel stands in no need of our commendation, it is more respectful to him, as well as our readers, to keep our attention fixed on the more important issue between us. But while we disown any imputation on Mr. Mansel himself, we cannot but hint to him that, be the merits or demerits of his religious and philosophical system what they may, he has not dealt quite fairly by those who are opposed to it. His notes are interesting and instructive as such a vast body of quotation from such a variety of writers could scarcely fail of being -but we think they minister to a vicious appetite in the modern English mind-the appetite for grouping the most varying objects in one whole, which have no element in common, except some felt diversity from ourselves. The result of this, on an estimate of writers who bear in any way on religion, is that all get debited with the most unbelieving utterances of any. Mar heinecke must be answerable not merely for Hegel but for Strauss. This is surely not very fair. We object, indeed, to estimating any one man by his worse utterances instead of his better: we would measure Mr. Mansel rather by the beautiful and pious passages of the Bampton Lectures, than by the discussions of the Infinite; and even Hegel is entitled to the benefit of aspirations of his which cannot be said to run away from Christian Truth. At all events, let him, when quoted, be rightly translated. When he calls the combination involved in the title God Man, ungeheuer, he does not, as Mr. Mansel represents him, call it monstrous.-(Mansel, p. 159.) So far as the passage goes, its language is that of reverent admiration, and the idea of the God Man is styled vast, amazing. Mr. Mansel, if he wrote in German, might have used the adjective ungeheuer in the same connexion himself. PP In parting with Mr. Mansel, let us resume a comparison which we made at the outset, between himself and Bishop Hampden. We then contrasted the somewhat superfluous horror of the University of Oxford at the Bampton Lectures of Hampden, with the complacency with which it received the far more alarming Bampton Lectures of Mansel. Our purpose at present in referring to this again is not to renew the comparison. That comparison had reference merely to the degree in which the two writers diverged, or seemed to diverge, from the prevailing sentiments of the Christian Church. Otherwise, though there may be matter in the one to call up the thought of the other, there is no ground of comparison whatsoever, their subjects being totally different. Mr. Mansel's subject is the relation of the logical faculty to transcendent Truth; Bishop Hampden's the relation of existing exercises of that faculty to the substance of revealed Truth. Many who do not share in the morbid suspicion with which he was once regarded, and who confess themselves indebted to his book for much that is interesting and instructive, will yet, we think, admit that it is unsatisfactory. The question is an important one; it involves the whole of Dogmatic Divinity, a question from which it is difficult, therefore, to escape. For who has yet succeeded in disconnecting himself with dogma? Protest with as much vehemence as Mr. Maurice against limiting our knowledge of things, either in heaven or earth, to the measures of logical conception, and you will still find, if you think and speak at all, that logic has got in. The moment he begins to state, to explain, to define, to protest, the most determined anti-logician has subjected himself to logical laws. And, however mindful of the limited grasp of the universe which is assigned to those laws-however careful, therefore, not to identify Heavenly Truth itself with his or with any man's statements, explanations, definitions, and protestsone does not see how that Truth is to enter into the aggregate of life, how it is to pass from man to man, without statements, without expla nations, without definitions, without protests. Dogma cannot, therefore, be avoided. A thorough logician, who is also a well-read and sound divine, may do good service in pointing out its legitimate sphere, and the conditions under which it may be safely produced. Bishop Hampden has rather supplied us with the questions than furnished us with satisfactory answers. Mr. Mansel's peculiar gifts, and in the region of philosophy, at least, vast information, seem to us peculiarly to qualify him for such a work; and as beyond doubt he would start with a higher estimate of the lan guage of the creeds and the cume. nical formula than did Bishop Hampden, he would in this, as in one or two other respects, start, in our judgment, with a very great advantage over him. Since the foregoing remarks went through the press, Mr. Chretien's pamphlet has made its appearance. To us it is very satisfactory, inasmuch as, handling the whole matter very differently from ourselves, it corroborates with all the strength belonging to Mr. Chretien's reputa tion and ability, the ground which we have taken. Still more we rejoice in the author's announcement, not merely of dissatisfaction, but of 'increasing dissatisfaction with Mr. Mansel's Bampton ___Lectures.' — (Chretien, p. 40.) The italics are ours. The whole discussion is carried on by Mr. Chretien in a spirit altogether admirable, and professing to be no more than sug. gestive, his remarks are in that respect very valuable. While the pamphlet contains many an impor. tant remark on the general question of the search after truth, the discussion proper is, on the whole, confined to two great points, Mr. Mansel's distinction between Truths speculative and Truths regulative, and his views of the Absolute and the Infinite. On the former, Mr. Chretien and ourselves are altogether at one. But he has with great ingenuity, and with something better than ingenuity, worked out a position important in itself, and important too as a possible ground of mediation between Messrs. Mansel and Maurice, that on the former's showing there are 1859.] Mr. Chretien's Letter to Mr. Maurice. no such things as Truths speculative at all. We have not space to exhibit Mr. Chretien's reasonings, which, after all, will be best got by reading his short pamphlet; but they seem to us to convict Mr. Mansel of having made a division, "one of whose members is a simple blank.' His Truth speculative would seem unattainable by man, not only in his present state, but in any possible future one, if in any possible state man must be finite; unattainable by angels if they are finite; and irrelevant as thought of in the mind of God, if Truth be, according to Mr. Mansel and many others, but a property of conception. Mr. Chretien works out this question in a far higher spirit than that of the mere logician; but we are contented just now with calling attention to it, and his mode of handling it. And we say that his reasonings furnish a possible ground of mediation between Messrs. Mansel and Maurice, because we think the former might be got to acknowledge that while he can furnish no example of what he calls a Truth speculative, nay, can hint at no possible sphere in this or the other world for such a thing, he has all the while been meaning by Truth regulative, what other people mean simply by Truth, knowledge that is sound and sure as far as it goes, though subject in the mind which receives it to the limitations of that mind, and therefore, while true, never the whole truth, never, while a pure approximation to it, the perfect Idea which is in the mind of God, at once the ocean and the fountain of all Truth. On the other point, the Hamiltonian and Manselian position respecting the Unconditioned, in its special aspects of the Absolute and the Infinite, Mr. Chretien professes an indifference which our 577 foregoing remarks show that we are far from sharing. We cannot but feel it important to warn men against making a deep but vital mystery seem a mere hopeless bewilderment by playing with the terms which express it. We cannot but ask them whether they were ever called to ascribe to God an infinitude, not merely of Power, Wisdom, Goodness, and Love, but of predicates of every kind, divine and not divine, compatible and contradictory, of which He is to be the subject? Mr. Mansel's statements of what is demanded by the idea of the Infinite amount to this; and this, we say, is a mode of glorifying God which was never required of us, and which, to speak the Truth, is not only no glorifying of Him, but cannot be adopted without profanity. Mr. Chretien is very solemn and earnest. One short passage, however, might almost seem intended for a joke. Speaking of Mr. Mansel's position as a preacher, he says, 'it required no small skill in a writer of a severely logical mind, to expand a continuous chain of reasoning which could not be fairly entertained without a suspense of judgment on the first truths of religion, and to append at the proper places passages of religious eloquence which should not be evidently out of place, as assuming the Truths which were to be proved.' We do not think Mr. Chretien intended to be satirical here, but to our minds the notion of this task of 'expanding a chain of reasoning,' &c., and appending at the proper places passages of religious eloquence,' which, too, though they are to be appended at the proper places, are not to be obviously out of place,' has all the effect of a joke. It is a joke, too, which has its moral, and that no unimportant one. F. G. Postscript.-We had supposed our task was finished; but the appearance of Mr. Mansel's rejoinder to Mr. Maurice imposes on us the necessity of saying a word or two more. As regards ourselves indeed we might rest on our oars, for we have professedly taken ground of our own; the objections which we have urged against Mr. Mansel's position, were our objections before Mr. Maurice's book appeared; and nothing that we have observed in the former's pamphlet bears materially on them. On the other hand, one of Mr. Mansel's criticisms, that on his opponent's reference to Kant, has been partially anticipated by ourselves. But as we have expressed a confidence in Mr. Mansel's temper which we now find to have been greatly misplaced, as our remarks on Mr. Chretien's letter gave utterance to a hope of mediation between the conflicting parties, which Mr. Mansel has since grievously discouraged, and as amongst extant specimens of misrepresentation we know none equal to his reply to Mr. Maurice, we must indicate the grounds of this disappointing and disheartening judgment. Writing very angrily, Mr. Mansel opens with the following:-' To some, indeed, of Mr. Maurice's charges I shall not attempt to reply at all. I do not think it worth while to enter upon a controversy in defence of the merely literary character of my lectures. Mr. Maurice, in his anxiety to leave no weapon of attack unemployed, has discovered that my style is in one place "bewildering," in another "jargon," in another "a wilderness of words," in another "vagueness," in another "slipslop," whatever that may mean.'-p. 4. Who has not presented to him here the picture of one who, determined seriously to wound, is glad to envenom the wound with as much superfluous outrage as may be? Now, will it be believed that scarcely one of the passages in Mr. Maurice's book, to which we are referred-and as Mr. Mansel gives us references, every reader can try the experiment for himself-partakes of the quality of literary criticism, criticism on style, in the ordinary sense of these words? A particular phrase, not necessarily viewed as Mr. Mansel's invention or peculiar property, is contrasted with living reality as 'school jargon.' With no mention of style at all, it is complained that a point which Mr. Maurice considered essential to the argument is left in vagueness.' So much for two of the alleged grievances. The rest we can leave to the reader who will follow our example of verification. Did time and space at present permit, we could, we think, show how utterly Mr. Mansel has misconceived his opponent's handling of Butler's Analogy. We must confine ourselves to a statement of the case. Mr. Mansel exhibits some discourse from Mr. Maurice, in which he thinks the latter is expounding Butler, and triumphs over its difference from that prelate. Mr. Maurice is endeavouring to show what he thinks a man, who, from causes never present to Butler's mind, can gain no satisfaction from the actual thesis of the Analogy, may yet gain from careful study of and meditation on it. Much more might be added; but we must content ourselves with these two inaccuracies of Mr. Mansel, at least as formidable, we think, as any of which he has been able to convict Mr. Maurice. These latter, if they be valid convictions, we are sure that gentleman will candidly acknowledge and correct. We have, in our hasty glance at Mr. Mansel's pamphlet, come across none that seem to have any material bearing on the main question. Both authors write severely. Mr. Maurice in his preface prepares his readers for the fact as regards himself. He will be considered justified in doing so or not, according as he succeeds or not in imparting his own convictions on the matter at issue. Mr. Mansel writes in undissembled anger; and so far it may be thought the combatants are on a par, except as regards the question, which struck the first blow. That Mr. Maurice did so is not so certain as it may seem on a hasty glance. Anyhow, we must urge on Mr. Mansel that there is some difference between the vehement indignation of the man who, justly or mistakenly, believes the foundations of Faith and Truth to be assailed; and that of the man who, rightly or mistakenly, thinking himself illtreated, allows no limit to the expres sion of his bitterness. We do Mr. Mansel the justice of believing that he will thank us for a fact which has escaped his observation-viz., that a sentence of Mr. Maurice's which he has twice held up to reprobation was withdrawn in the second and amended edition of the Theological Essays. SKETCHES FRAMED IN OLIVE WOOD. BETWEEN Marseilles and Nice you have the choice of three different modes of journeyingvetturino, steamer, or diligence. The first, besides being the most dignified and least fatiguing, gives the best opportunity for observing the country; but when that is not particularly interesting, and you, being robust enough for night travel, are anxious to proceed without delay, the unaristocratic diligence is excellent in its kind. The packets on the station, though small and with very poor accommodation, have been much run during late winters, owing to the alarm of brigands by land. But on the occasion calling for our decision, there was the Mediterranean tangibly before us, rough and threatening, while the brigands seemed a remote possibility, far less formidable in idea than a stormy passage by a miserable French coasting steamer. Besides though the diligence had not then as at present, on account of its having been so frequently stopped and robbed, a regular guard of gendarmes, there were not wanting amid our little party resolute hands ready to use on emergency the loaded weapons they carried. But no stirring adventure awaited us that gusty moonless night; and all of wayside scenery which appeared visible through the murk were wild rocky heights, brawling mountain brooks, dark shadowy ravines, solitary buildings, gaunt and grey, and hushed villages, with splashing fountains; carts, with dim lanthorns and bell-jingling horses, sometimes animating the dreariest parts of the road. When day broke, the white mists lying on the low grounds resembled glittering lakes; but as the sun shone out, the silvery veil lifted itself, more fully disclosing a wild hilly region, characterized by vast unenclosed orchard-like plantations, where cork-trees, with russet-brown stems stripped of bark, contrast with the pale-leaved olive, whose berries, transparent green, cornelian coloured, or glossy black, picturesque looking women in broad-brimmed hats and short red petticoats, were gathering into bas kets. Here and there on the stony soil primitive ploughs were at work in little cleared spaces, a donkey and bullock forming the team in one instance, contrary to that clause in the old Levitical law, Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together.' At Draguignan, with its prefecture, hotel, nursery gardens, bridge and noisy torrent, lying in a hollow, time is allowed for breakfast; then away rattles the cumbrous vehicle through groves of mulberry and olive, interspersed with pine-trees laden with large shining cones, till as you advance higher among the farstretching uplands, a darker green usurps the place of the ashen-hued foliage. Leaving Fréjus behind, with its many beggars, its jettyhaired, luminous-eyed inhabitants, and its Roman ruins, the stately aqueduct arches standing pre-eminent for beauty, you enter upon a stage of the journey as much dreaded by gay Parisian dames as were the dismal Shap Fells by London abigails of yore, when mailcoaches sounded their horns on the great northern road, and jaded post-horses drew up joyfully at oldfashioned village inns. On and on, ascending and descending, to climb upwards again, ledgewise winds the way, for nearly seven hours by diligence over the lonely Esterelsfamed in times past for wolves and banditti-some places recalling to mind the Newlands Pass between Buttermere and Keswick, only here, instead of simple green herbage, hill-sides and deep gorges are alike covered for miles with juniper bushes, purple heather tufts, scattered groups of pines, and thickets of arbutus, whose wax-like blossom, and fruit in every shade from light orange to deepest scarlet, greatly enlivens in these parts the otherwise sombre wintry tapestry of nature. Here you have a wide prospect, with' isolated houses perched up in bleak high-lying spots, reaches of dusty road, with laden cart or carriage toiling slowly along, and an occasional glimpse of the sea, with white-sailed vessels; there you are restricted to narrow glens, where peasants are digging |