BOOKS.

CHRISTIANITY AS A SYSTEM.* THE last volume published by Dr. Newman "as a contribution towards a uniform edition of his publications" affords the critic an opportunity, vibich, however often repeated, need never give rise to repeated criticism, of making a fresh attempt to estimate one of the most individual and typical minds which has set its mark on English thought in our day. The group of "Discussions and Arguments" which the author has here selected for republica- tion strikes us as of very unequal value, and we intend to notice only what appears to us valuable. There may be occasions when the critic should attempt a negative work, but the authors who throw on him the burden of setting a limit to the intellectual sympathy they excite are certainly very few, and no one will in-

Diwoosions and Argwnenta on Variosu Sigmas. By J. II. Newman. London:

Pickering. elude Dr. Newman among them. There is in the minds of most. readers a background of condemnation towards his whole tone of mind, from which criticism has to detach some space for sym- pathy; all that is left untouched is given up to this condemnation.. To attend only to what is strong should be the aim of one who judges the exponent of an unpopular creed.

Not that it is directly as the exponent of an unpopular creed that Dr. Newman speaks in the volume which gives rise to these remarks. The majority of the essays here collected were published before he joined the Church of Rome; the essay to which we would mainly direct the attention of the reader, "Holy Scripture in its Relation to the Catholic Creed," was one of the Tracts for the Times

published in 1838. But Romanists must contemplate the republi- cation of these earlier writings, even when they contain expres- sions of disapprobation directed against the Roman Church, with unmixed satisfaction. The path which leads from the point of view of the tract we have mentioned, to Rome, is not a very devious one, and those who are led so far gain a view of their ultimate abode that is full of attraction. An illogical mind might go so far and no farther, but an illogical mind will hardly take much interest in these writings at all. Indeed, it is, in the first place, as to an example of the strength of the logical intellect, that we would direct the reader's attention towards these " Discussiosr and Arguments." A perfect style is a merit which the most red- hot Protestant would hardly deny Dr. Newman, but we do not remember ever to have seen this connected with the rigidly logical character of his mind. And yet how much of all the grace of his- luminous and temperate utterance is implied in the fact that every word is relevant ! There must be some more subtle, charm in writing which enchains the most dissentient reader, but perfect relevance is so rare that we are convinced any argument which is governed by it appears to one who understands,. and yet does not examine it, to possess some merit besides relev- ance; the mere rejection of what is not to the purpose gives a simplicity and directness to style which an illogical reader appre- ciates and misconceives, taking it for common-sense or good taste, or the mere beauty of unadorned truth. Let such a one try to express his own ideas in the same simple style, and the difference will be sensibly felt. What seemed so easy, so almost inevitable, will be felt to be unattainable by any effort. "Masters in art are known by what they accomplish, masters in style by what they omit," says Schiller, and that severe negative science which con- demns error, while it makes no pretence to judge of truth, has no, small share in the omission which makes the master in style.

Take, for instance, the essay we have cited, in which Dr. New- man consistently narrows his aim to prove that the objections to a ritualistic system developed from the Scriptures lead the objector to protest against a doctrinal system derived from the Scriptures, an essay which the reader, while disagreeing with almost every line, and even considering some of it rather trivial, may still read with the same kind of satisfaction as that with which he glides onwards on a rapid and steady stream. What opportunities for rhetoric the author leaves behind him on the right hand and on the left! Every turn opens a vista which might be followed up into excited declamation, yet there is not a vehement word, not a rhetorical turn, through the whole essay. What has ex- cluded Such expressions? Mainly the steady retention of a single goal of thought, and the unwavering design of progress towards it. The need of making every sentence a step in a journey leaves no time for excursions to fine points of view, and florid outbursts of admiration. This kind of simplicity is one that an unlogical- mind appreciates, but can hardly produce; it is unnatural for such a mind to abstain from all expression of irrelevant feeling, and nothing that is unnatural is graceful.

Again, how large a moral element is there in logic as unwaver- ing as Dr. Newman's! The essay to which we direct the reader's attention presents us with a specimen of intellectual justice worth studying on this sole account, if on no other. For instance, it is directed against those who deny that an ecclesiastical system is contained in the New Testament, and look upon this system as the invention of men. It need hardly be said what was and remains Dr. Newman's judgment on this point,—the whole sacramental system to men who feel with him is Christianity. Yet where could those who attack it find their argument put more forcibly than in the following extract (pruned and rearranged, we allow), from Dr. Newman's own words?-

" There is not a single text in the Bible enjoining infant baptism. . . Our Lord did not use social prayer, and his directions about private prayer, with the silence which He observes about public, might be plausibly adduced against it. There is no text in the New Testament which enjoins us to ' establish ' religion (as the phrase is), whereas our Lord's words, My kingdom is not of this world,' may be interpreted to

discountenance such a proceeding The words in which the Eucharist is spoken of by St. Luke and St, Paul in no respect introduce that meaning which the Church hal put on them. There are texts in the New Testament actually inconsistent with the Church system of teaching. What can be stronger against the sanctity of particular places, nay, of any institutions, persons, or rites, at all, than our Lord's declaration that 'God is a spirit, and they that worship him must wor- ship him in spirit and in truth '? or against the Eucharistic sacrifice than St. Paul's contrast in Heb. z. between the Jewish sacrifices and the one Christian atonement ? or can baptism really have the gifts which are attributed to it in the Catholic or Church system, considering how St. Paul says that all rites are done away with, and faith is all in all ? The tone of the New Testament is unsacramenta4 and the impression it leaves on the mind is not that of a priesthood and its attendant system."

This impression, Dr. Newman proceeds to say, ought not to be relied upon,—still, could those who do rely upon it state their belief in simpler and more direct words than his own ? And is it a small thing to be able to state the view of an opponent in terms he would accept ?

This is the strength of the logical mind ; it is simple, and it is, in a certain sense, just. We cannot say that Dr. Newman fails to exhibit its weakness. The temptation of logical thinkers is to lose the sense of proportion, thus inverting the error of ordinary men, who in their perception of the importance of a particular view fail to perceive its irrelevance to the question at issue. In this respect Dr. Newman appears to us the complement of a great teacher who has just passed away from us, and did apace permit, we think light might be thrown on the character of both by com- paring the teacher who is too much absorbed in premisses to spare attention for inference with the teacher who finds inference so congenial an intellectual exercise that all premises are with him relegated to the distant background of his mind. Our present aim, however, is to touch upon the assumption which lies at the bottom of Dr. Newman's reasoning, and to suggest the reasons why those who hold it do not go on to his conclusion.

This assumption is that Christianity contains a definite "creed, revelation, system, or whatever name we give it" (p. 127), some- thing of which we may assert that it says this and this; a thing by itself, an assemblage of dogmas and precepts, which however closely connected with our moral nature, yet may be contemplated apart from it, the connection between the two, indeed, being mysterious and miraculous. The existence of this abstraction Dr. Newman does not pretend to prove. He simply sets up a supposed alternative, which he labels "Latitudinarianism," and of which he says that it is out of the question for every serious mind, i.e., "that every man's view of Revealed Religion is acceptable to God if he acts up to it; that no one view is in itself better than another, or at least that we cannot tell which is the better." (p. 129.) This path he assumes, unanswerably, in our opinion, to be a mere cul-de-sac, and supposes that the traveller thus rebuffed must accompany him on his own. He carries his hearers with him, he assumes, in taking it for granted that there is a definite cluster of doctrines to be disentangled from Scripture, if you have only patience enough to set about it. His concessions of the difficulties we shall have to encounter are to us amazing in their candour. The reader has had a specimen in his concession to the anti- ecclesiastical opponent, let him take the following as a specimen of the arguments which he provides for the anti-scripturalist :— " Though the Bible be inspired, it has all such characteristics as

might attach to a book uninspired It is as if you were to seize the papers of leading men in any school of science which were never designed for publication, and bring them outin one volume. (p. 146.) You would have many repetitions, many hiatuses, many things which looked like contradictions, you would have to work your way through hetero- geneous materials, and after your best efforts there would be much hope- lessly obscure ; and, on the other hand, you might look in vain for some particular opinions which the writers were known to have held, nay, to have insisted on." (p. 147.)

The quotation is surely a wonderful example of candour and courage, but what we would dwell upon is this. It is evident that according to ordinary principles of interpretation, the analogy suggested between the papers of leading men in any wheel of science never designed for publication, and the New Testament, breaks down, when the New Testament is supposed to yield a dogmatic system. You could not seize upon Fara- day's correspondence, and construct from it a system of chemistry. It would be valuable to thoae readers, and to those only, who had independent means of information as to the subject-matter which it concerned. A half-sentence, a torn scrap of a letter, may be a sign-post to one who can follow it out, who can make his own experiments, and treat what he finds written as matter for veri- fication. If, on the other band, the only faculties which are to be employed on this fragmentary correspondence are the attention, the memory, and the power of deduction, whatever else we make of it, we shall never make a theory of chemistry. It is not merely

that we shall not have sufficient material for such a theory ; we shall not have the right kind of material. The communications addressed by thinkers to those who share their interests and have some practical knowledge of their investigations, are not the kind of communications which those who approach the study from without can ever frame into that organic body of connected ideas which is what Dr. Newman means by a system.

"Of course not," he would say. "The whole point of what I am urging is, that we must call in the aid of miracle to account for a result which no one I am addressing denies. The Bible, we all assume, contains a definite system of dogma, in spite of an aspect which is unsystematic and undogmatic ; this I do not attempt to prove, the mere statement of the Latitudinarian alternative- throws us back upon it. I only attempt to prove that you do no more violence to the prima facie aspect of Scripture in finding ritualism there than in finding dogma ; we only carry on the- reasoning which finds the Atonement in the New Testament a little further, when we find Episcopalianism there." This is what he does my, in much better words, but we are obliged to condense them, and therefore to make them our own, in order to give the- reader that aspect of his teaching which we wish to bring forward. Our comments on it must start from the admis- sion that it is perfectly consistent. Or rather, this very assertion of the consistency of such a mode of thought is. the chief part of what we have to say about it. This is the path which leads to Rome. There are many resting-places by the- way, there are long tracts of the journey during which you have your back to your goal, or during which it is hidden from you ; but. if you go steadily on, you find yourself at Rome as certainly as. glacier-water sooner or later reaches the sea. We do not regret- that the logical spur which drove so noble a mind to an abode we think dangerous to spiritual health is applied to few. "It is better," in his own words, "to be inconsistent, than to be consistently wrong." (p. 112.) It is better that the veil we interpose betweea our souls and God should be thin and torn, than that our tapes- tried chamber should show a continuous web by the light of our own little taper. But it would be beat of all that the soul should not do violence to the intellect in order to hear the voice of God, and it is well therefore that we should see where a logical. mind must end its journey, if it starts from the assertion that "men. want a dogmatic system." (p. 138.) Men do want a dogmatics system. That temptation to idolatry which, changing its form with every age, keeps through them all the same evil—a substitute- for God—in our day assails the spirit not through the senses, but through the intellect. That voice with which God speaks to genera- tion after generation, "impossible Ii mdconbaitre, facile It dtouffer,"- needs arduous attention, a difficult and painful defiance to the soli- citations of sense, a patient waiting in regions where only moral distinctions hold good, and where, therefore, a large part of the instincts we habitually encourage will find themselves in a strange- land. And from age to age, therefore, the mere earthly nature- tries to find some cheaper substitute for this demand, and seeks to. handle a thing rather than to listen to a person. An infallible church, or an infallible book, a "creed, revelation, system, or whatever name we may give it" (p. 127), something which,. assuring men "that what seems to them true is true" (p. 133), shall save them from the responsibility of seeing that what seems. must in all cases be judged of by that faculty in us which takes. holdof what is—such a system, however cumbrous it may be, is- a relief, as an escape from the burden of confessing that God not- only spoke to a little group of persons in Judtea 1,800 years ago, but speaks now to all. But was this the demand which Christ pro- posed to respond to? Nothing is to us more marvellous than the- manner in which the moment people have made an abstraction, which they call "Scripture," they lose the very meaning of the speakers whose individuality they have thus submerged.

There is a striking passage in Baxter's Narrative of his Life aruP Times in which he contrasts the impression made upon him by the Popish system in his youth and age, the earlier view being that it was separated from that which seemed to him true by important differences of doctrine, whereas in later years he was assured" that- their misexpreasions, and misunderstanding us, with our misunder- standings of them, hath made the difference in these points to. appear much greater than it is, and that in some of them it is next to none at all." Something deeper than any doctrine, he felt, was the fatal element in that which he calls poison, though. his language is much less clear and satisfactory when he speaks of what it was, than of what it was not. The words have been re- called to us in perusing this tract of Dr. Newman's, which seems- to us the exhibition, through the transparent medium of an accurate logic, which excludes" misunderstandings and misexpressions," ot what Baxter meant by the "Church tyranny and usurpation" which he ascribed to the Romanists as the source of their aliena- tion from truth. We may carry on the quotation from Baxter also, as a fit introduction to the last which we give from an author so different from him in most respects : — "At first I thought Mr. Perkins well proved that a Papist cannot go beyond a Reprobate, but now I doubt not but that God bath many sanctified ones among them, who have received the true doctrine of Christianity so practically that their contradictory -errors prevail not against them to hinder their love of God, but are like a conquerable dose of Poison which Nature doth over- -come." The following passage, we think, will illustrate that later belief of Baxter's, and show how it is possible to associate the word 4' faith" with a dogmatic system, and yet have a wonderfully clear perception of what faith means. After quoting the passage in which Christ asks his disciples, "Will ye also go away ? " and Peter's answer, Dr. Newman goes on (p. 250) :— " Observe on what ground he put it, 'Lord, to whom shall we go?' He did not bring forward evidences of our Lord's mission, though he knew of such in abundance. This was not the evidence on which he rested personally, but this,—that if Christ wore not to be trusted, there was nothing in the world to be trusted ; and this was a conclusion repugnant both to his reason and his heart. He had within him ideas of greatness and goodness, holiness and eternity—he had a love of them— he had an instinctive hope and longing after their possession. Nothing could convince him that this unknown good was a dream. Divine life, eternal life, was the object which his soul, as far as it had learned to realise and express his wishes, supremely longed for. In Christ he found what he wanted Christ's ways might be dark, his words often perplexing, but still he found in Him what he found nowhere else,—a

realisation of his inward longings. Thou hast the words of eternal Ho might have misgivings at times, he might have permanent and in themselves insuperable objections ; still, in spite of such objec- tions, he saw that in Christ which was positive, real, and satisfying. He -saw it nowhere else."

How dreary a message would be the so-called Gospel, if it came to teach us that the instincts which led Peter to Christ would lead us elsewhere ! Whereas to his mind Christianity meant a sur- render to the highest part of his being, a following-out of the conviction that truth is the most satisfying of all experience, to our minds it is to mean the residuum of assent which remains when you have subtracted all that has to be said against "a Scrip- ture obscurely gathered from history, and a dogmatic system cbscurely gathered from Scripture." If this is all we have, let us -make the most of it. Let us bring forward evidences of our Lord's mission, if we, unlike St. Peter, have nothing to do with our Lord himself. But let us ask ourselves if in that process anything but a break-down in our logic prevents us following Dr. Newman to Rome. There is, we believe, only one coherent system of Dogmatic Christianity.