declared that they were all independent and no one responsible for what another said, but the reviewer treated them as associated thinkers sending forth their manifesto.

The first Essay was the keynote to the whole. It reduced the teaching of the Hebrews to the level of that of Greece and Rome. Its idea of a colossal man to be educated was taken from Auguste Comte, and its main results were simply monotheism and the principle of purity, the latter probably borrowed from F. W. Newman. The second Essay subjected the Hebrew annals to the remorseless criticism which had been applied to Gentile histories. The words are put into the mouth of Bunsen, but it is Teucer discharging his arrows behind the shield of Ajax. While Dr Temple reduced the national position of the Hebrews to the level of the Romans, Dr Williams reduced the outward authority of the Bible to the level of Livy. In the third Essay the whole supernatural element is eliminated from belief. The fourth makes the gospels not perfectly genuine and authentic. Many things may be taken allegorically, such as the transfiguration and the opening of the eyes of the blind. While the facts are not admitted, the ideas remain. This is called ideology. The fifth makes the Mosaic cosmogony the speculation of some Hebrew Descartes or Newton. The seventh expands and illustrates the principle of the first.

From one end of the book to the other the same process goes on. Facts are idealised, dogmas are transformed. ' Creeds are discredited as human and provisional. The authority of the Church and of the Bible to establish any doctrine is discarded; the moral teaching of the Gospel remains. The book contains fatal concessions distorted into specious apology, and of these the strongest instances are in Dr Temple's Essay. The result of the whole is that the literature of the Bible is made provokingly unreliable. The Bible is reduced to the position of the Apocrypha.1 The Essayists have discarded the veracity of the oracles, and yet think that mankind will consult them for the poetry of

1 In criticising this article, Dean Stanley ascribed to the writer a malignant or sinister intention. This was afterwards withdrawn

the responses. Scientific criticism has undermined the whole framework of doctrine, and just as old polytheism ended in the visions of Neo-Platonism, so to Christianity is left nothing but the Christian life.

The claim of the Westminster Review to identify the position of the Essayists with its own, alarmed orthodox churchmen of the two great parties. An article in the Quarterly Review1 increased the excitement. The logical ultimate of the Essays was pronounced to be infidelity if not atheism. Dr Temple's religious tone was pleasing but feeble. The plaintive utterances of Jowett were earnest and often loving, but Powell's atheism was scarcely veiled. Wilson's laxity and scepticism were open, while the flippancy of Williams was daring. All of them had abandoned the Church's ancient position of certainty and truth. The last six developed the errors which existed in germ in the first. Wilson was asked if he followed Strauss in explaining some things ideologically, why he did not follow him in all. If we do not take the Bible record of an ancestral head we lose St Paul's argument that in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. The writers were more or less infidels, sceptics, atheists, and were guilty of moral dishonesty in retaining the status and emoluments of clergymen of the Church of England.

This article was followed by one in the Edinburgh Review, which was intended to calm the troubled sea. The combination was condemned as leading to misapprehension and inimical to the just consideration of the subjects discussed. Moreover the book was too negative. In old times such books were written in Latin, but here as in the case of the second Essayist we have the conclusions of German theologians thrown in the face of a public which

'Jan. 1861. S. Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford.

2 Notwithstanding the hard things said against Powell it is ascertained that a few days before his sudden death he preached, worshipped and communicated in St Andrews, Well Street, where he usually attended. So unconscious was he of atheism that he had just asked permission to deliver the Bampton Lectures. Stanley's Essays p. 65.

3 April 1861. By Dean Stanley at that time Prof. of Eccles. Hist. at Oxford.

have never heard of such things before. Powell's Essay had no direct relation to the others, and ought with Goodwin's to be treated as practically defunct. Dr Temple's was in substance a sermon preached at Oxford, and heard with approbation and enthusiasm. The subject was Christ's having come in the fulness of time, and the only fault of the argument was that it was as old as St Paul. The dangerous tendencies of Pattison's Essay could only be discovered by the lens of the microscope used for detecting heresy. The tone of Williams was flippant and contemptuous.1 Wilson's defence of a National church was powerful yet often rash. But taking the volume as a whole it really contained nothing new. It was no new Christianity, no new reformation, and no new religion. It made no statement of doctrine or fact, with the possible exception of a few words, which had not been repeatedly set forth by divines, some of whom are regarded as luminaries of the Church. The Essayists admit no precise theory of inspiration, but there is none in our formularies. They only speak of the inspiration of devout souls, never of supernatural dictation. Another question raised by the Essays was the relative value of the external and internal evidences of Christianity. A reaction had set in in favour of the internal, and the Essayists had thrust the pendulum back, it may be with too violent a swing. In spite of all the declamation which has been made against the book, no one has been able to point out in the Essays a passage which contradicts any of the formularies of the Church. In this respect there is no collision at all to be compared with that which exists between the High Church party and the Articles, the Low Church party and the Prayer Book.

The tempest caused by the Essays continued to rage. Petitions and protests were addressed to Archbishops and Bishops. The Bishops themselves issued a manifesto. Condemnatory resolutions were passed in both Houses of Convocation. Clever men exercised their ingenuity to find fitting names for the seven Essayists. They were 'the seven stars in the new constellation,' 'the seven extinguishers of the seven lamps of the Apocalypse,' 'the seven champions not of

1 A severer sentence was passed on Williams, but afterwards

Christendom,' and one parodying the title of a Greek play. 'The seven against Thebes' called the Essayists' Septem contra Christum, or the seven against Christ.' A rural Dean described the book as awful, avowing that he had not read it, and never would. Everywhere it was spoken against and preached against. It is recorded in the life of John Toland that a gentleman in Ireland who had ceased attending Church being asked the reason, said there was a time when he could hear something in the Church about Jesus Christ, but now there was no name heard there but that of one John Toland. So with Essays and Reviews. Bishops and curates, priests and deacons, made them the gospel for the day.

The next business was to refute them. Each party came forward with a volume. The first was called Aids to Faith,' edited by William Thomson, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol afterwards Archbishop of York. It was not a direct answer to the Essays taken in order, but Essays on subjects in which faith, as the title indicated, required to be aided. The first was written by Henry L. Mansel, Professor of Logic in Oxford, and afterwards Dean of St Paul's. He had chiefly in view what had been said by Baden Powell on miracles, which was that they had little value as evidence and even if believed could not be admitted to be interferences in the order of nature. The important question was their reality as supernatural facts. If this be denied, Christianity so far as it relates to the person or teaching of Christ is overthrown. This is so bound up with the miracles that they must stand or fall together. Christ appealed to miracles as the evidence of His mission. He must have known if they were really supernatural and if God has redeemed the world it is not incredible that miracles should have been wrought. The testimony of a person who works a miracle can reach to the supernatural. The objection from the uniformity of natural laws is not relevant. The uniformity only applies to certain classes of objects which have come under our observation. There are powers and properties of other objects which have not been observed. A special cause producing a special effect offers no antagonism to the general uniformity of nature. We have no right to assume the incredibility of a special cause. A personal free agent may influence the

is not to be judged merely from physical but also from moral grounds. We have to consider not only the physical phenomena but the religious nature of man and his relation to God. In revealed religion we expect something different from what we see in the ordinary course of nature.

Dr William Fitzgerald, Bishop of Cork, followed with a dissertation on Evidences.' He defended the apologetic literature and the external evidence in opposition to those who, like Coleridge, rested mainly on the internal. The despised school of Lardner and Paley was a natural growth in history. To answer the Deists it was necessary to consider the credibility of the first witnesses, and the value of the tradition by which their testimony has been handed down

The success of such preachers as the Methodists did not indeed result from argument in the way of external evidence, but in the adaptation of what they preached to the necessities and the cravings of the heart. This is a fact by itself. But it is also a fact that Christianity is presented to us in the New Testament as an historical religion. It has a basis in history, and can be proved by rational, that is, external evidence.

Dr McCaul, Professor of Hebrew, King's College London, and Rector of St Magnus the Martyr, took the subject of 'Prophecy' with a view to Rowland Williams' Essay. He maintained that the Hebrew prophets did predict future events. They had the gift of prognostication. The new translation of 'worship purely' for 'kiss ye the son,' and 'a mighty One' for the mighty God' were but the renewal of old cavils often refuted. A prophet was one sent by God to communicate a divine revelation to men. There are many predictions in the Old Testament made long before the events took place; Nahum foretold the destruction of Nineveh a hundred years before Nineveh was destroyed, Hosea and Amos threatened their country with the scourge of Assyria, when as yet the victorious Jeroboam was King of Israel. Micah predicted the fall of Samaria long before Samaria fell. The same prophet foretold the captivity in Babylon, and the return of the Jews to Canaan, when the Chaldeans were but an insignificant people. Isaiah predicted that they