5 FEBRUARY 1870, Page 20

PRITCHARD'S HULSEAN LECTURES.*

IT is refreshing to find a man of exact and profound science at work in a field where hitherto little but spurious and shallow

learning has been employed. The reconciliation of the "schemes of nature and revelation" has often proved a subject too tempting for the weaker brethren to leave alone, although so difficult that both " schemes " have had for the most part to deplore their friends,—foolish peacemakers, who only made the war worse. When, however, we find a man illustrious in the scientific world,—a president of the Astronomical Society, a Hulsean lec- turer, and the preacher-in-ordinary (as he may almost be called) to the British Association,—seriously engaged upon the subject, we feel that we may expect an argument worth real attention. Nor does a peruial of Mr. Pritchard's writings disappoint this expectation. He takes for his motto Pascal's beautiful saying, "Nature is an image of Grace," and endeavours to amplify it into a scientific demonstration. But he sees in it a thought beyond analogy and a likeness closer than any figure or image, and he chooses the word "continuity" to express the presence and develop- ment of the very same laws and method of action in spiritual things

with which he is so familiar elsewhere. He holds not only that the Scriptures, properly interpreted, fall into an entire harmony

with science, but that the cardinal principles which so clearly pervade them as doctrines are quite perceptibly traceable in the natural world as laws. Thus "I have endeavoured," he says, "to show how the great scheme of redemption may be regarded as a grand continuation, or rather as the divine climax, of that system of intervention and vicarious suffering which not only pervades the natural world, but without which merciful alleviation that world would become a scene of hopeless misery. Butler, as is well known, has already shown the same thing, under the idea of analogy, which I here present under the thought of gradation or continuity. I then proceed to show how faith in the Redeemer is a grand continuation also, or rather is a divine climax, of that principle of trustfulness in each other which forms the very cement of the social fabric. Lastly, I have given my reasons for repre- senting the restoration or sanctification of man's moral character through communion with God, as in the main a sacred extension of that Imitative Principle acting through association which it has pleased God to implant in our nature for many wise and moral purposes, and which in this case he adorns with His especial grace."

Taking his stand then on his own more special study, he rebukes in the name of science, on the one hand, the shallow impatience which from the infinitesimal fragment of human

experience declaims against the possibility of miracle, and on the other, "the suspicious timidity of the clergy regarding science and scientific men." Thus "When I think of the scheme of nature, so far as it is comprehended by us in this 19th century, my mind at once reverts to the grand, majestic, ceaseless march of tho sun with all that host of material sys- tems which he holds together under the influence of his power. To us men, measuring as we must measure by our earthly cycles and by our tiny units of space, this stately march of the solar universe seems uniform in its rate, and definite in the point towards which it tends. But surely this uniformity of rate and this straight definite line of progress are only apparent, and rise solely from the incalculable sweep of the cosmical • Analogies in the Progress of Nature and Grate Four Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge (being the Hulsean Lectures for 1867), to which are added Two Sermons preached before the British Association in 1866 and 1867, by the Bev. C. Pritchard, ILA., F.B.S. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, and Co. curve in which this universe moves, and from more terrestrial time, as yet too brief to observe a deflection. Wait with the patience of God, and this vast universe will have visited other regions of the infinitude of apace; new, and it may be inconceivable circumstances, will have inter- vened; new combinations of other forces will have been introduced; and the rats and the line of the stately progress will all be changed. And as it is impossible to indicate at what point of its cosmical orbit this Uni- verse may not enter into new circumstances and be subject to new forces thus giving rise to hitherto unknown resultants—to Miracles, if you please to assign to them that name—so it seems illogical to say that the occurrence of such results during any particular era of the world's exist- ence is inconceivable. So this earth and all that is on it and surrounds it, this nature, as we call it, is after all changeful in its constancy, and various in its uniformity. Constant and uniform alone in this, that it is under the care of God, with whom alone is ' no variableness neither shadow of turning.'"

And again, on the other hand, "How unnecessary and how suicidal is that timidity, not to use a stronger term, with which many religious persons, and, I regret to add, some divines among us, receive the successive disclosures of the constitution of natural things which of late years have come upon us in thick abundance.

All, of course, turns on what is the "proper interpretation" of the Scriptures, and to help on a more scientific view of this and its general acceptance, without at all departing from the path of orthodoxy is the task which our scientific preacher has set himself.

We may say at once that Mr. Prichard seems to us to have gone further towards success in this direction than any other author of avowed " reconciliation " schemes. Probably this is because be approaches the subject from the scientific side, and knows so well that "the stars in their courses" must fight for truth, and cannot have their orbits shifted to suit human diffi- culties and criticism. Rather he feels that these difficulties will become resolved and adjusted amongst themselves in time, and that the study of the "stars in their courses" may suggest a mode and tone of interpretation and criticism which will keep the spirit of the Bible whole, though they may break its letter here and there to do so. "May I be permitted to say," he writes, "that if the progress of knowledge shall, on a calm and impartial review, induce theologians somewhat to modify, here and there, a popular, or hasty, or merely human interpretation of one or two portions of the Divine Revelation, I am quite sure that, with this increase of intelligent perception of the will of God, there must be associated the exaltation of our reverential love of His Word. At least, I, for one, have found it so."

Yet if in one place with a fine frankness he surrenders publicly for instance, the literal interpretation of the Mosaic cosmogony,— while suggesting Hugh Miller's hypothesis of bard-like visions as an alternative,—in other places he claims an authority to interpret the facts of Nature into harmony with such revealed doctrines as Salvation by faith which it will be hard for many to refuse him.

To form a fair estimate of Mr. Pritchard's position, his four British Association sermons and the Hulsean lectures should be read consecutively. The first embody his main theme of the general continuity of nature and revelation,—while the second series treats in detail one important section of it, viz., "The con- tinuity of slowness of progress as a law of created things."

The whole form one argument in favour of the thesis that "when properly interpreted the scriptures are not antagonistic to the revelations of human knowledge." The conditions of interpre- tation should be, to take into account (1), the progressive cha- racter of the light of revelation ; (2), that the divine procedure in communicating light to man has uniformly been such as to have respect to the capacity of his recipient, and also to communi- cate no knowledge which man by the use of his endowments could discover for himself ; (3), that the divine method and procedure have been exceedingly leisurely and slow.

With these for his postulates, Mr. Pritchard devotes all his ingenuity and zeal, and neither of these is small, to showing in his British Association sermons,—(1), the continuity generally of the schemes of nature and revelation, as already briefly indicated in the extract given above ; (2), the analogy of intellectual pro- gress to religious growth ; (3), the continuity of the human with the divine (the climax being the Incarnation) ; and (4), the "tes- timony of science to the continuity of the divine thought for man," chiefly as shown in the preparation for man's appearance, exhibited in the geological deposits, and even so far back as the nebular epoch of our planetary system. We confess that this last argument seems to us somewhat of a two-edged sword, and might make for that bite noire of orthodoxy, Darwinianism, almost as well as for Mr. Pritchard's thesis.

The Hulsean Lectures draw out with great beauty and force of expression the argument from the "leisureliness" of the Divine action as exhibited in the slowness of the creative, the intellectual, and the moral processes, to the conclusion that though "all things

continue as they were" to the eye of hasty observation, yet the Lord may not in fact be delaying His coming, nor His kingdom be making no progress. We are greatly tempted to quote several passages strikingly fine and impressive, especially from the descriptive picture of the great geological coal formations. (p. 11, et seq., Hulsean Lectures); or, again, from the glowing story of the "beauty and the joy of life," through and by means of which the edifice of the natural world has been built up. (p. 22). Bat our limits forbid us to give our readers more than the following con- cluding sample of Mr. Pritchard's style of thought and language. He is completing his demonstrated protest against the doctrine that Christianity is any slower or more halting in its work than any other act of God :— " They who are familiar with the gross and predominant pollution of the heathen world, they who read the terrible description which St. Paul gives of it in his Epistle to the Romans, and then compare those appall- ing sins with the present moral condition, sad though it be, of the more highly civilized portions of the world, cannot, I think, fail to thank God and take ()enrage when they view the progress of Christianity, slow as it has been. They who confine their survey to the habits of men in the narrower circles which surround their own homes may in the weakness of their hearts be ready to despair. One small boat on an inconspicuous lake in a narrow corner of the world, once sufficed to contain the whole Christian Church. Can any one venture to number those who now in their hearts bow to the name of Jesus ? Put the matter to the test, can you, after all your despondency, think of any one familiar spot in this fair land of ours, within a radius shall I say of ten miles, or of five, or even of a single mile, where you cannot find the blessed light of a Christian example ? I confess, I cannot. In all the polished philosophic writings of ancient times you cannot find so much as the word which expresses the thought of ' sin ' or of 'holiness' in reference to God. Is there a village now within the civilization of Europe where those words in the pregnancy of their meaning may not be heard as surely as the Lord's Day returns ? True, it required the force of Christianity during some nineteen centuries to abolish slavery ; but it is abolished, or it is hiding its head in the shame of stealth. It required many hundred years for the establishment of a hospital in Christendom ; but hospitals are estab- lished, and they abound. It required more than double that period to evolve the idea of a Sunday school, yet they are more numerous now than the villages of England. It seems to us late in the day of Chris- tianity, when John Howard first understood the exceeding breadth of his Lord's words, • I was sick and in prison, and ye visited me.' I presume there is scarcely a prison in Europe now unvisited by some rays from the light of Christian charity. It seems late in the day for Christians to have understood their Lord's command, Go ye forth into every nation, and make disciples for me—never- theless late as is the day, the municipal revenues of the richest city in the world would not suffice to maintain the Christian missions of the present hour. It is too true that as yet the sword is far from beaten into the sickle—nevertheless wars cannot now be undertaken on the wanton grounds urged for their excuse during even the last few centuries ; and when they are undertaken there is now at least the semblance, and I believe the reality, of searching for every expedient which may alleviate the cruelty of the result. The respect for human life, as the life of a man redeemed, as the life of one not beyond the reach of the Spirit of Christ, is increasingly felt by the families and govern- ments of every state in Europe ; assuredly it is the case amongst our- selves. I will attempt no farther detail lest I weary you. While I have been speaking, the daily scenes with which you are familiar, the recollection of the importunity with which you are assailed for the aid of your purse, or for the aid of your thoughts and of your personal exertion in the cause of Christ, forbid you to despair that the Christian faith is either stagnant or effete."

We have said that it is evidently one main object with Mr. Pritchard throughout all his writings now before us to remove the excessive prejudices of the clergy against science, by exhibiting to them their own orthodoxy in alliance with loyalty to and famili- arity with the most recent developments of science. We happen personally to know that this object of his already progresses towards attainment, and that the influence of these very sermons is producing a most gratifying effect upon certain of precisely the class at which he aims. Emollit mores, nee sinit esse (tam)feros. No better work in the interest of the ultimate stability of the Church could well be undertaken "in the present distress," and we heartily wish Mr. Pritchard continued success in his labours. The full appreciation of them, by the way, on the part of his ecclesias- tical superiors seems chiefly shown by a determination not to interfere with them by calling him to any active professional duties. To outsiders such treatment of a man who can write and preach as Mr. Pritchard does is somewhat perplexing, in these days of so much talk about the sad superfluity of "literates."