DR. MARTINEAU AND THE UNIVERSITY HALL CIRCULAR.
ITO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—The passage which you cite from the University Hall Appeal would be fairly open to your criticism, if it contained nothing to qualify the phrases on which you lay stress, and used those phrases in the sense which you give to them. I admit with regret that it allows of your interpretation, and in the present looseness of theological conception, is not unlikely to receive it. But I submit that it is consistent with another, involving the very truth which you suppose it to deny. It says : " God is manifest, not in miracle or special revela- tion, but in law and in the ever-widening experience of the conscience ; not in the arbitrary selection of individuals or nations as special channels of grace, but in the free communication of himself, through the life of reason and the spirit, and, under lower or higher forms of faith, to all his creatures." In the first of these antitheses, " Not in miracle, but in law," reference is evidently made to the physical order of Nature ; and in the second, ".Not by special revelation, but in the ever-widening experience of the con- science," reference is made to the provision in human con- sciousness for spiritual apprehension. The one looks for God's field of self-revelation in the natural world ; the other, in the moral world; and the same thing is said of both,—viz., that the revelation takes place, not only without breach in the constitution of either, but in virtue of the constitution of both. And when " special revelation " is opposed to the " ex- perience of the conscience," it evidently means revelation, foreign and external to the conscience, given as an exceptional privilege at the cost of the natural and moral order, like the Law launched upon a stiff-necked race on the lightnings and thunder of Sinai. The word " special " is used in the sense of " non-moral :" and the thing denied is not the revelation, but this specialty.
This second antithesis is repeated, with the expression varied, in the next clause, " Not in the arbitrary selection of individuals or nations as special channels of grace, but in the free communication of himself, through the life of reason and the spirit, and under lower or higher forms of faith, to all his creatures." What is the theory here disclaimed ? Plainly, the idea that the " grace " which gives us peace with God is some- thing magical, not homogeneous with the life of our own spirit, but needing to be begged or borrowed from trustees (priests or
rites) of another system of things. And what is the faith approved instead P That in all of us God's free spirit appeals to our free spirit to love what he loves, and shrink from the sin against which he warns ; and that in proportion as we listen and yield, we shall more nearly see him as he is, and grow into his likeness. This witness of his spirit with our spirit is that which makes all of us children of God, and is the supernatural feature in the life of man, laying him open to the revealing touch of the Supreme Inspirer. But does this universality of function prevent it from being " special" in degree P On the contrary, its variation in degree is precisely the provision for its energy in all ; for it is ever the higher soul that lifts the next below, and turns its better love from potential to actual ; so that the spirit of God passes through an indefinite hierarchy of human ranks to its purest intensity in the Prince of Saints. There is, therefore, no doubt thrown upon the " specialty " of revelation to each recipient, provided you let its flash reflect itself on other hearts, and open there also the passages of diviner life : or upon its " uniqueness,' provided you mean, not "what never can appear again," but only " what never was known to appear before." If any one charged this doctrine with providing too much revelation, I could understand him : but to treat it as providing too little, and even negativ,ing it in toto, appears to me an extraordinary mistake.
Having said thus much in regard to the particular point at which your criticism touches me, I leave to more competent interpreters of the proposed experiment the general defence of its circular of appeal, and the further exposition of its. design.—I am, Sir, &c.,
[We are delighted to receive Dr. Martineau's disclaimer of what we still regard as the more natural interpretation of the circular, especially considering that it ignores altogether the faith in human immortality, without the supplementary light of which on the meaning of the word "person," Theism is very apt to take a purely abstract and unreal form.—En. Spectator.1
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