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Xittnintt,
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Pritics are not the legislators, but the...
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Ther e is one " sign of the times" very ...
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Proudhon's new book, La Revolution Socia...
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THE OLD AND NEW THEOLOGY. Lectures and M...
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Ar01706
Xittnintt,
_Xittnintt ,
Pritics Are Not The Legislators, But The...
_Pritics are not the legislators , but the judges aad police of literature . They do not make laws—tney interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
Ther E Is One " Sign Of The Times" Very ...
Ther e is one " sign of the times" very significant to tliose who notice it , we mean the admission made in so many orthodox quarters that the Church is not adequate to its office in this age . A spirit of discontent has entered the very sanctuary . Not only do we , who disavow the dogmas on which the Church is founded , disavow the Church , as incompetent to its task 5 hut even among those who accept the dogmas there are unmistakeable signs of a revolutionary spirit . What a phrase is that now becoming current , " the Church of the Future ! " It has been said , and with pardonable exaggeration , that the title of the celebrated pamphlet , by Sieyes ( given to him , let us add , by Champokt ) Qu _' est ce que le Tiers 4 tat ? Tout . Qu _' a-t-il ? Rien—was a revolution in itself ; and undoubtedly it _expressed in an epigram the whole meaning of that struggle . In like manner we may say the phrase " The Church of the Future' * indicates that the Church of the Present is drawing towards its end .
Among the most vigilant of those who ask , " "Watchman , how goes the night ? " is the British Quarterly Review , the last number of which opens with an article on " The Christian Ministry to Come , " wherein hope is held out that by dexterous management the Church may once more escape the threatening perils . The writer draws an ingenious parallel between the scepticism of our day and the Julianism of early history . He thus states , and fairly states , the main positions of the enemy : — " With a large class of writers and their admirers , just now , the received doctrine is , that the Christian ministry is about to be superseded altogether by the
teachers of philosophy . These parties differ somewhat in their notion as to the place which should be assigned to the Christian religion , as compared with other religions ; but they are agreed in their judgment that no religion is to be accounted as having more of a divine origin than another , except as it is found to include , and that purely as a matter of natural history , more of divine truth than another . This is in substance the judgment of some who still linger within the pale of modern Unitarianism , and is the avowed and settled doctrine of many who , with more consistency and honour , have ceased to desire a place among professed Christian sects of any description .
"As we have intimated , one of the characteristics of this school is , that it aims to put an end to the special claims of Christianity by superseding it . The days of * this ancient religion must be numbered , because these new teachers are not prepared to give us something better in its stead . They profess themselves competent to derive all the religious knowledge necessary for man , and all the religious knowledge to be reasonably expected by man , from the primal laws of man ' s nature , and from the relations of his nature to his fellows , and to the universe . Their mission is not simply to destroy , but to fill up the void they would create with something more worthy . In their theosophy , there is , as they conceive , a positive grandeur , to which it behoves them to do worship—a refinement and a beauty , with which they profess to be much enamoured . They sometimes rise , accordingly , into strains of eloquence and poetry in the exposition and defence of their conceptions . "
It is not new , he says ; it is only the revival of an old quarrel which the Church managed to silence ; and his argument is both ingenious and ingeniously argued . If he has omitted one consideration , and that the most important of all , we who venture to remind him of it , can well understand how to him its real significance is disguised by the belief that Science and Scripture can be " reconciled . " The difference , however , between the conflict of the Church with Philosophy in Julian's age and our own , is almost infinite , owing to the fact that in those days it was , so to speak , the conflict of Opinion with Opinion—in our days it is the conflict of Opinion with Science . It is truly said in another part of this Review : —
" The infidel publications of the present day aro not so offensive as were those of forty or fifty years since ; but it is beyond doubt that publications of that description are more numerous , and of a much more influential description now , than they have ever been in our history . " Rut the danger to the Church does not lie in the improved tone of its assailants ; because in that case the Church-defenders would only need to improve their tone to restore equality . Apropos to thc change of tone , how different is that of periodical criticism from what it was some years ago ! In an article on " Lord Jeffrey " in this British Quarterly there is an excellent survey of the history of Periodicals , especially with reference to the Edinburgh Review , well worth reading , the more so as it rectifies some popular errors about thc " influence " of that Review .
In the article on " Pre-Raphuelitism , " the purport of thc new school i . ingeniousl y shown to be very analogous to that of the Lake School of Poetry . The writer is , however , bent on illustrating only the excellencies both of Wor uh worth and tho P . It . 15 . ' s ; probably because adverse critics have been equally one-sided . Of the various analogies noted in this urtiele , wc can find room only for the following : — " It is another point of similarity between Wordsworth and the
Pro-Raphaelucs , thnt this lbnehieSs for detail has manifested itself especially iu their case , us in J > 1 H » in extreme accuracy and minuteness in all matters pertaining to vegetation . J ho very essence of the Wordsworthiim innovation in literature , considered in onp ° _« _« ts aspects , consisted in this , that it tore men that were going to write poetry out _<> f _rejoms and cities , and cast thorn on tho green lap of Nature , forcing them to mimic the breath of the ploughed earth , and to know tho leafage of the different lorost trees , and to gaze in dank cool places at tho pipy stalks , and into tho coloured cups of weeds and wild flowers . Richness in botanical _ullusion is perhaps _mo one peculiarity that pre-eminently distinguishes tiie English poets alter , from
Ther E Is One " Sign Of The Times" Very ...
the English poets before , Wordsworth- There is , indeed , a closer attention throughout to all the appearances of Nature—the shapes and motions of the clouds , the forms of the hills and rocks , and the sounds and mystery of the seas and rivers ; but , on the whole , one sees very clearly that Wordsworth ' s advice to be true to nature has been interpreted , for the most part , as an advice to study vegetation . And so it is , in a great measure , with the Pre-Raphaelites . With them , also , vegetation seems to have become thus far synonymous with Nature , that it is chiefly by the extreme accuracy of their painting of trees , and grass , and waterlilies , and johquils , and weeds , and mosses , that they have signalized their superior
attentiveness to Nature ' s actual appearances . Not , by any means , that they deceive the public into a belief of their attention to Nature by a trick of extreme care in botanical objects alone ; for the same accuracy that distinguishes the Pre-Raphaelite studies of vegetation , will be found to distinguish their representations of all physical objects whatever that are introduced into their pictures ; but that necessarily , when a man resolves to observe accurately , he confirms the habit by peering with exaggerated interest into the secrets of such sweet little things as violets , and ferns , and bluebells , and that it is in the representation of these pets of vegetation that attention to Nature ' s finer minutiae is most easily discernible . "
Proudhon's New Book, La Revolution Socia...
Proudhon _' s new book , La Revolution Sociale , is the weakest he has yet written ; but it is not so deficient in purpose as shallow critics have complacently proclaimed ; and those who think Louis Napoleon was wise in permitting its publication do not see beyond their noses , for a more complete nullification of that pretended saviour of society has not been written . It is true that Proudhon shows how the conp-d ' etat was inevitably successful , owing to the condition of France ; but has not the fact demonstrated that ? It is true that Proudhon deduces from the success of the conp-d'etat his favourite conclusion of the incompetence of Government ; but whoever reads his book with attention will read the most biting and profound scorn for Louis Napoleon and his party , not
bursting forth in declamation , but settling down into the minds of men , there to operate as no declamation can . Among the noticeable things in the volume is what may be called the philosophy of the history of 1848—51 . While bestowing earnest and deserved approbation upon the men and motives of the Provisional Government he shows their governmental incompetence ' , and particularly insists upon their mistake in forming an alliance with the Church , summing up with this phrase— - " Without a revolution in the Church there can be no republic in the State . " The dominant idea of this volume is one we wholly accept , That the Revolution of the Nineteenth Century is a Social not a Political Revolution , and that no change of dynasty or form of government can solve the pressing problem .
Very different in form , in purpose , and in style is Victor Hugo ' s passionate diatribe , Napoleon le Petit , seven thousand copies of which have already been sold , many of them furtively circulating in France , where the effect must be tremendous . It is very eloquent , very incisive , very declamatory , very passionate . Images , epigrams , rhetoric , facts , history , morality , all are brought forward to increase our hatred and contempt—if that be possible—for the most unmitigated scoundrel who , since the Roman emperors , has played a great part in public life—a scoundrel who has not only every vice , but not a single redeeming trait , moral or intellectual .
But in reading this book , as in thinking of France since December , we are more saddened by the complicity of France than by anything that can be said of this miserable adventurer . It is quite clear that he is no Coriolanus , to say , " Alone I did . it . " The Army that gave him the material force ; the Church that blessed his crimes , and gave him moral force ; the Monied Classes , the Magistrates , and Functionaries , who welcomed his despotism , and called it Order—the utter abnegation of all moral Conscience in the thousands who servilely applauded—there lies the grief . Loathe this bad man—bad intellect , bad heart , as utterly as you may ; he is but a specimen of individual immorality ; there is something far more saddening in the widespread immorality of a nation !
The Old And New Theology. Lectures And M...
THE OLD AND NEW THEOLOGY . Lectures and Miscellanies . Ry Jlenry James . Rcdfield : New York . ( 8 KCON l ) AltXICT . H . ) The most marked phenomenon in tho development of _religious thought , as that subject disposes itself in broad masses beforo the historic eye , is , we conceive , tho gradual and progressive tendency from outwards inwards , or as tho Germans say , from thc objective to the subjective . Tho bond oi sympathy waa sli g ht betweon Man and the antique Gods ; it is tho distinctive characteristic of Christianity to make that bond intimate , immediate , and vital . Tho Gods lived apart from man . Christ wus the living identification of God and man .
Marked as this distinction is between tho Ethnic and tho Christian Religions we may trace one little less decisive between tho Catholic and tho Protestant forms of Christianity , and again between Iho Protestant nnd the Spiritualist ( or by whatever name you choose to designate the New Reformation now working flu . destruction of dogmatic , Christianity ; the orthodox name it Infidelity . ) Wo arc not writing a treatise ; we aro onl y indicating certain points of view from which tho render may survey this question al . leisure ; brevity " m therefore imperative .
Catholicism was not onl y objective in its ritual , but eminently ho in its spirit . It _porsonified Religion in tho Church . . It made grace vicarious . Christ was fhe vicar of God Lo man—the Mediator ; the Priest was tho vicar of Christ—the Mediator also . Man was to believe , not to think ; to _obey , not to participate . The Protest against this proceeded from the dogma that Christ lived m Man ; that man wus immediately connected with God ; that he was bound to think and to participate ; his " soul was the tabernacle . We havo ropoatedly illustrated this _contract in our columns , aud liftvo
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 21, 1852, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_21081852/page/17/
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