BOOKS.

FRA.NCIS WILLIAM NEWIdAN'S PI:CASES OF FAITH..

THIS is a book that will excite much attention, and will most pro- bably occasion a good deal of comment, but which it is impossible to pass in silence. The author is conspicuous from his literary re- putation, his position as a Professor ot the London University, and his close family relationship to a man more celebrated than him- self. The work is remarkable for its literary qualities, and still more as the history of a deeply religious as well as restlessly in- quiring mind. 'It is not, indeed, so rich in peculiarities as the con- fessions of some religionists, but it is sui generis in its spirit. The Phases of Faith is a species of mental autobiography, in which the author traces the workings of his own mind, the na- ture of his doubts, the successive steps and range of his inquiries, till, beginning with some passing objections, partly suggested by others, he has landed at last in a sort of religious sentiment, differ. ent from all that has hitherto been classed under the common name,

of Christian. The manner in which this is done renders it one of the least offensive, but therefore perhaps one of the most danger- ous assaults upon theological Christianity, and indeed Biblical reli- gion, that has ever been made. The coarseness of Paine and his imitators or predecessors, the flippant meekezy of Voltaire and his

school, shocked instead of attracting; those writers made no con-

verts who were not by nature of the class of "soothers." Hume and Gibbon 'were less offensive in the expression of their scepticism ; but they were obviously so unreligious—they cared so little for the communion they had left or the privileges they had rejected—they' had so much of the cold indifference of mathematical or material' philosophy, mingled perhaps in Gibbon with a dash of sensualism —that they excited no sympathy in their readers. They might hasten the conclusions of a philosophical tyro and shape or con-

firm the careless doubt of the wellbred man of world ; but their'

evil effects upon the religious mind of their own generation was slight, their influence since has been mostly that of a genius which subdued the reader to a pupillage, rather than of any direct argu- ments that convinced him.

With Mr. Francis Newman, on the contrary, the sympathies of the religious reader are more likely to be enlisted, from the reli- gious tone of the author's mind. He started with a natural vene- ration, not only for the " persons " (as we somewhat strangely call it) of the Godhead, and a profound belief in the Trinity, but also for the doctrines of the Church of England, and the Articles in which they were supposed to be set forth. When scruples that could not be smothered, though only reaching to doctrines disputed among Christians, shut him out from the hope of the Anglican' priesthood, the religious feeling was seal so strong in him that he joined a missionary enterprise to Persia, and only returned from Bagdad on business connected with the mission. When his doubts)

ascended to the root of Trinitarian Christianity, he still tried: to find a solution, though his love of truth impelled him on 173.

the logical and mental conclusion, whatever it might be. Even now, when he has rejected every received notion of Christianity, there is in Mr. Newman a spirit of genial love towards all men,

and an unctuous revelling in his own religious sentiment, unlike any other writer. The American Theodore Parker has something similar to it ; but his is rather a richness of the intellect than a.

warmth of feeling. Parker is impressed by the magnitude of creation, the greatness of the Creator, the varied powers of the human soul, the possibility of Borne milennium, such as Coleridge

and Southey fancied in thew younger days, as did many others in that iera for shaking old opinions ; but he wants the unction of Newman—that wide-embracing geniality of feeling which is some- times called " rpiritual /eve."

The author divides his work into Periods,—meaning stages of be lief, or rather disbelief; and of these periods he reckons seven. They generally take their title from the leading religions subject that oce impied the author at the time,—as the third. period is headed"

viauamAbandoned as neither Evangelical nor-True "; but sometimes they indicate the subject more broadly, and once the title is rather chronological,—" My Youthful Creed." For the convenience of

general arrangement the division is useful, as well as for furnishing resting-points to the reader: the arrangement, however, might

have been more distinctly marked by the religious stages we have already indicated, at least in the earlier period. The fifth epoch is the only one that seems to us truly to embrace the whole sub-

ject of the chapter in the title, which is "Faith at Second-hand

found tohe Vain." The general scope of the argument is this— The more important Scriptural writers do not claim infallibility or inspiration ; and itthey did, it is seen from internal evidence that they had not got it : it follows that if there were a revelation of the kind that theologians maintain, we should not get the revels: -don itself, but the Biblical writer's ided of the revelation. The fourth period—" The Religion of the Letter Renounced "—stands next in comprehensiveness to "Faith at Second-hand " : in it Mr. Newman subjects the books of Scripture to criticism like that to which Beaufort and Niebuhr submitted the Roman history, giving reasons for rejection as he goes along. An extract will inclieate the mode of doing this, and what is of more consequence, the man- ner and feeling of the writer, so far as these can be shown in In small a space. "In this period I came to a totally new view of many parts of the Bible ; and, not to be tedious, it will suffice here to sum up the results.

• Phases of Faith; or Passages from the History of My Creed. By Francis Wil- liam Newman, formerly Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. Published by Chapman.

"The first books which I looked at as doubtful, were the Apocalypse and the Epistle to the Hebrews. From the Greek style I felt assured that the former was not by John,* nor the latter by Paul. In Michaelis I first learnt the interesting fact of Luther having vehemently repudiated the Apocalypse ; 80 that he not only declared its spunousness in the Preface of his Bible but solemnly charged his successors not to print his translation of the Apocalypse without annexing this avowa],—a charge which they presently disobeyed. Such is the habitual unfairness of ecclesiastical corporations. I wasafter- wards confirmed by Neander in the belief that the Apocalypse is a false pro- phecy. The only chapter of it which is interpreted—the seventeenth—appears to be a political speculation suggested by the civil war of Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian ; and erroneously opines that the eighth Emperor of Rome is to be the last, and is to be one of the preceding Emperors restored—probably Nero, who was believed to have escaped to the Kings of the East. As for well guessed to be the production of Apollo?, I now saw. quite a different the Epistle to the Hebrews, (which I was disposed to believe Luther had genius in it from that of Paul, as more artificial and savouring of rhetorical culture. As to this the learned Germans are probably unanimous.

"Next to these, the Song of Solomon fell away. I had been accustomed to receive this as a sacred representation of the loves of Christ and the Church; but after I was experimentally acquainted with the playful and extravagant genius of man's love for woman, I saw the Song of Solomon with new eyes, and became entirely convinced that it consists of fragments of love-songs, some of them rather voluptuous. "After this, it followed that the so-called canon of the Jews could not

=tee to us the value of the writings. Consequently, such books as and Esther, (the latter indeed not containing one religious sentiment,) stood forth at once in their natural insignificance. Ecclesiastes also seemed to me a meagre and shallow production. Chronicles I now learned to be not credulous only but unfair, perhaps so far as actual dishonesty. Not one of the historical books of the Old Testament could approve itself to me as of any high antiquity or of any spiritual authority ; and in the New Testa- ment I found the three first books and the Acts to contain many doubtful and some untrue accounts, and many incredible miracles. "Many persons, after reading thus much concerning me, will be apt to say, 'Of course, then, you gave up Christianity ?'—Far from it. I gave up all that was clearly untenable, and clung the firmer to all that still appeared sound. I had found out that the Bible was not to be my religion, nor its perfection any tenet of mine : but what then ? Did Paul go about preaching the Bible ? nay, but he preached Christ. The New Testament did not as yet exist : to the Jews he necessarily argued from the Old Testament ; but that 'faith in the book' was no part of Paul's gospel, is manifest from his giving no list of sacred books to his Gentile converts. Twice indeed, in his Epistles to Timothy, he recommends the Scriptures of the Old Testament ; but even in the more striking passage (on which such exaggerated stress has been laid,) the spirit of his remark is essentially apologetic. Despise not„ oh Timothy,' is virtually his exhortation, the Scriptures that you learned as a child. Although now you have the Spirit to teach you, yet that does not make the older writers useless ; for "ever' divinely-inspired writing is also profitable for instruction, &c'' In Paul's religion, respect for the Scrip- tires was a means, not an end. The Bible was made for man, not man for the Bible.

"Thus the question with me was, 'May! still receive Christ as a Saviour from sin, a Teacher and Lord sent from heaven • and can I find an adequate account of what He came to do or teach?' And my reply was, Yes."

Besides a style of remarkable fascination, from its perfect sim- plicity and the absence of all thought of writing, the literary cha- racter of this book arises from its display of the writer's mind, and the narrative of his struggles. The theological or religious opinions, or whatever else they may be called, have not so much novelty as some may suppose. Even those which seem the most original might be traced to German sources. The entire criticism on Genesis, &c. may be found in Bauer; that on the Gospels, in Strauss. The somewhat lame and impotent conclusion winch Mr. Newman comes to, might probably be traced to Fichte or his disciples,—that man is a revelation to himself; that he must not look outwardly but inwardly, to find God; that the agreement between man's conscience and the thing revealed is the true test of the latter ; and that even if man had an alleged revelation made to him running counter to his conscience, the last should be the criterion of the first. We do not mean to say that Mr. New- man claims any originality for his views ; nor do the mere views constitute the literary feature of the book, although he has tersely popularized that German philosophy which consists in bringing revelation as well as the evidences of revelation to the test of reason :* he has also alluded to Bauer, and mentioned Strauss by name : still we do not think he brings forward so fully as he might have done the direct influence which certain books probably had in forming his opinions. For an example of what we mean, we may refer to the manner in which Gibbon traces his boyish conversion to Romanism to the books he had read, and which he so well characterizes.

In addition to the religious and metaphysical interest of Phases of Faith, it contains some more tangible biographical matter, in in- cidental pictures of the writer's career, and glimpses of the ;iliena- tions and social persecutions he underwent in consequence of his opinions. It also contains several sketches of characters he met with ; one of them, well enough known, is his own bro- ther. The elder Newman is introduced when the author was at college, and first shaken by doubts.

"Here also, as before the EN-angelical clergy whom I consulted were found by me a broken reed. The clerical friend whom I had known at school wrote kindly to me, but quite declined attempting to solve my doubts ; and in • Other quarters I soon saw that no fresh light was to be got. One person there was at Oxford who might have seemed my natural adviser : his name, character, and religious peculiarities have been so made public property, that I need not shrink to name him—I mean may elder brother, the Reverend John Henry Newman. As a warmhearted and generous brother, who exer- cised towards me paternal cares, I esteemed him and felt a deep gratitude ; as a man of various culture and peculiar genius,I admired and was proud of him ; but my doctrinal religion impeded my loving him as much as he de- served, and even justified my feeling some distrust of him. He never showed any strong attraction towards those whom I regarded as spiritual persons ; on the contrary, I thought him stiff and cold towards them. Moreover, soon after his ordination, he had startled and distressed me by adopting the doe- "If the date of the Apocalypse is twenty years earlier than that of the fourth Gospel. I now feel no such difficulty in their being the composition of the same Writer."

trine of baptismal regeneration ; and in rapid succession worked out views which I regarded as full-blown Popery.' I speak of the years 1823-6 : it is strange to think that twenty years more had to pass before he learnt the place to which his doctrines belonged. " In the earliest period of my Oxford residence I fell into uneasy collision with him concerning episcopal powers. I had on one occasion dropt some- thing disrespectful against bishops or a bishop—something which, if it had been said about a clergyman, would have passed unnoticed : but my brother checked and reproved me—as I thought, very uninstructively—for want- ing reverence towards bishops.' I knew not then and I know not now, why bishops, as such, should be more reverenced than common clergymen; or clergymen, as such, more than common men. In the world I e ted pomp, and vain show, and formality, and counterfeits; but of the

as arises own kingdom, I demanded reality, and could not digest legal fictions. I saw round me what sort of young men were preparing to be clergymen ; I knew the attractions of family livings ' and fellowships, and of a respectable position and undefinable hopes of preferment ; I farther knew, that when youths had become clergymen through a great variety of mixed motives, bishops were selected out of these clergy on avowedly poli- tical grounds : it therefore amazed me how a man of good sense should be able to set up a duty of religious veneration towards bishops. I was willing to honour a Lord Bishop as a Peer of Parliament ; but his office was to me no guarantee of spiritual eminence. To find my brother thus stop my mouth, was a puzzle, and impeded all free speech toward!' him. In fact, I very soon left off the attempt at intimate religious intercourse with him, or ask- ing counsel as of one who could sympathize. We talked, indeed, a great deal on the surface of religious matters; and on some questions I was over- powered and received a temporary bias from his superior knowledge ; but as time went on, and my own intellect ripened, I distinctly felt that his argu- ments were too fine-drawn and subtile, often elaborately missing the moral points and the main paints, to rest on some ecelesiastitical fiction • and his conclusions were to me so marvellous and painful, that I constantly thought I had mistaken him."

On the author's return to England from his Eastern mission a difference arose between the brothers, as explained in the following passage.

The Tractarian movement was just commencing in 1833. My brother was tiling a position in which he was bound to show that he could sacrifice private love to ecclesiastical dogma; and upon learning that I had spoken at some small meetings of religious people, (which he interpreted, I believe, to be an assuming of the priest's office,) he separated himself entirely from my private friendship and acquaintance. To the public this may have some in- terest, as indicating the disturbing excitement which animated that i cause; but my reason for naming the fact here solely to exhibit the practical positions into which I myself was thrown. In my brother's conduct there was not a shade of unkindness, and I have not a thought of complaining of it. My distress was naturally great, until I had fully ascertained from him that I had given no personal offence. But the mischief of it went deeper. It practically cut me off from other members of my family, who were living in his house, and whose state of feeling towards 'me, through se. paration and my own agitations of mind, I for some time totally mistook."

By the time Mr. Newman had arrived at the fourth period of his religious progress and had renounced "the Religion of the Letter," he had suffered a good deal from social persecution him- self, and had found leisure to look back upon the time when he, as a zealous "Evangelical," had joined in the like persecution of others. Indeed, he says that one of the main results of his in- quiry has been to widen his-sympathies—to render them truly ca- tholic, instead of narrowly sectarian : at the time spoken of, he had seen enough to induce greater charity of feeling, and to seek a reconciliation with his brother.

"Well, I had been misjudged ; I had been absurdly measured by other men's creed : but might I not have similarly misjudged others, since I had from early youth been under similar influences ? How many of my seniors at Oxford I had virtually despised because they were not Evangelical ! Had I had opportunity of testing their spirituality ? or had I the faculty of so doing ? Had I not wally condemned them as unspiritual, barely because of their creed ? On trying to reproduce the past to my imagination, I Could not condemn myself quite as sweepingly as I wished ; but my heart smote me on account of one. I had a brother, with whose name all England was re- sounding for praise or blame ; from 'his sympathies, through pure hatred of Popery, I had long since turned away. 'What was this but to judge him by his creed ? True, his whole theory was nothing but Romanism transferred to England : but what then ? I had studied with the deepest interest Mrs. Schimmelpenninck's account of the Portroyalists, and though I was aware that she exhibits only the bright aide of her subject, yet the absolute excel- lencies of her nuns and priests showed that Romanism as such was not fatal into spirituality. They were persecuted : this did them good perhaps, or car- inly exhibited their brightness. So, too, my brother surely was struggling after truth, fighting for freedom to his own heart and mind, against church articles and stagnancy of thought. For this he deserved both sympathy and love : but 1, alas ! had not known and seen his excellence. But now God had taught me more largeness by bitter sorrow, working the peaceable fruit of righteousness ; at last, then, r might admire my brother. I therefere wrote to him a letter of contrition. Some change either in his mind or in his view of my position had taken place ; and I was happy to find him once more able not only to feel fraternally, as he had always done, but to act also fra- ternally. Nevertheless, to this day. it is to me a painfully unsolved mystery, how a mind can claim its freedom in order to establish bondage.

"For the peculiarities of Romanism I feel nothing, and I can pretend no- thing, but contempt, hatred, disgust, or horror. But this system of falsehoo4 fraud, and unscrupulous and unrelenting ambition, will never be destroyed while Protestants keep up their insane anathemas against opinion. These are the outworks of the Romish citadel : until they are razed to the ground, the citadel will defy attack. If we are to blind our eyes in order to accept an article of King Edward Y1. or an argument of St. Paul's, why not blind them so far as to accept the Council of Trent? If we are to pronounce that a man with- out doubt shall perish everlastingly' unless he believes the self-contradictions of the pseudo-Athanasian Creed, why should we shrink from a similar anathe- ma on those who reject the self-contradictions of Transubstantiation? If one man is cast out of God's favour for eliciting error while earnestly searching after truth, and another remains in favour by passively receiving the word of a church,. of a priest, or of an apostle, then to search for truth is dangerous; apathy 113 safer : then the soul does not come directly into contact with God and learn of him, but has to learn from, and uncontancadly.submit to, some external authority. This is the germ of Romanism ; its legitimate develop- ment makes us Pagans outright.'

There is some mention of Dr. Arnold, and a story told (page 132) about his rejection of the Gospel of Matthew, and his doubts about the authenticity of Mark and Luke : but we suspect that Dr. Arnold spoke hypothetically, whereas Mr. Newman understood him positively. Into this and other topics, however, we have not space to enter. We have given a sufficient account of the book to enable the reader to understand its scope and character, and decide for himself whether he will peruse or eschew it.