inference too often drawn from the less numerous but necessarily more prominent instances of apparent failure, looking at the subject in the light of Scripture promises, and allowing the possibility of exceptional cases, we maintain that these failures ought really to be traced to deficiencies and faults in the training itself.

Generally, we may say these deficiencies and faults are traceable to a want of reality in the training.

Instruction in the truths of religion has been given as a mere part of the education of the child, without any distinct effort being made to convince that these truths concern him personally even in his earliest years. There has been-the fault is one common in secular and religious instruction alike-a feeling that at present the child cannot understand all this, but that if he learns it almost by rote in the days when we can make him learn it, he will remember and understand and live by it when our hand is withdrawn from him. Now the memory of One who bade His disciples "Suffer the little children to come unto Him, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of Heaven," should convince that a child who can understand anything at all can understand as much of the eternal truths of God as he needs to understand for his own salvation. Trust and love and obedience may have their place in all reality in his little heart, and for the concerns of his little life. The effort, then, should have been to show him this: and thus, God by His Eternal Spirit working within the soul, to plant the principle of life; and not with great labour to fasten a few facts in the memory, trusting that in afteryears the memory would minister them to the heart. For, taught thus, exactly as we used at one time to teach the cases and moods of a grammar, the lessons of Holy Writ leave no impression on the life. The mind rejoices to throw them off, and the man is left perhaps further from God than those to whom even the name of a God is unknown; to them the truth would be fascinating by its very novelty -to him it is but a twice-told tale.

Or, it may be, while there has been care given to educate on sound and sensible principles, there has been some want of truth in the educators which undid the work as fast as it was done. The home example would not at first sight have been set down as bad, but there have been inconsistencies between the profession and the practice, which, marked and re

membered by none more than by the youngest, have led from distrust of part to disbelief of all. What may be called social hypocrisies are common enough even among professedly religious people, and the readiness with which the little ones see through them should speak plainly enough of the evil which they may bring with them. An extra exertion to please one from whom something is looked for a suppression or even a concession of opinions, which at other times are fearlessly expressed, because to such an one they would be dis tasteful-a manifest anxiety to stand well in such a quarter at any price,-these find their excuse in the wish to do the best for the chil dren's temporal welfare, and too frequently are done, it is to be feared, at the cost of their spiritual health. Or the small consideration shown for a poor Christian beside the scru pulous attention which is paid to the rich or the noble, belie so loudly the teaching of Christianity, that, even if the fault be absent from those to whom the child looks for in struction, it needs, when seen at all, some timely and wise antidote if it is not to begin a fatal work.

The religious practice of the parent, it should. be remembered, is the climate in which the child's spiritual health is matured. The food may be the best, given in the best proportions and at the best times, but if the air which the soul breathes is bad, the very food may produce disease rather than health; and the climate itself may be in the main healthful, but if it has its east winds and its chilly fogs, it can. not be looked upon as quite free from danger to tender or weakly lives. And religious prac tice must be judged not by its rules or its profession, but by its spirit. This plainly is the only sound judgment which can be formed of it; and this is uniformly the way in which the child judges it.

There have been thus two principal lines laid down, in which the causes of what is regarded as the failure of religious education may for the most part be sought. But it should not be thought that in every family where there has been failure, one of these causes must have existed alone. Their spirit should be noted, rather than that they should be taken as absolute laws. Indeed, the law on which they are framed must be looked to here. also more than the words of the laws them. selves. Where we fail, it may be asserted, in this thing is where we miss reality.

Hence too, we may add, arises that cause of

failure which, distinct from those sketched above, is perhaps quite as common-the unnatural restraint to which the young are often subjected. There are some to whom happiness would almost seem to involve an approach to ungodliness, and mirth in any form to be a snare of the Evil One: that these should teach joyous, laughter-loving little ones to love religion is what no reasonable person would expect. But we most of us need to bear in mind the differences which exist between youth and age. The services which may be real to the one are unreal to the other: that which the one finds a pleasure, the other dreads as a wearisome burden, and this naturally, as a consequence of youth, and from inability to understand, rather than from an inherent sinful disinclination.

We rejoice in the Day of Rest because then at least we can rest, if for nothing else; to them it is irksome to put aside the week's thoughts and toys, because rest is not needed. We can find thoughts and meditations to which we are glad to give ourselves; they have in themselves no occupation for the Lord's Day. Care is therefore needed here lest present weariness should grow into future dislike; care is not taken, and the natural result follows. The long services and the longer sermons are still inflicted, because it is thought that children need to be trained to them: silence and idleness are still the chief marks of home Sundays, because the children disturb their elders, and no fitting occupation can be devised for them: and in the end the man keeps only too well the threat of the boy, treats public worship as the burden which it has been made to him, and rejoices only in the idleness which as of old the Lord's Day still brings him.

We have spoken thus far only of the family. The same accusation is being made even now against the Church. We are told that Sundayschools have failed to add to the number of Church worshippers: and there are no doubt instances, numerous enough, in which the children are thus forsaking the paths in which their fathers walked. The same causes probably operate here also. The child has never been drawn to the forms or the doctrines of his father's Church by the bond of reality, but has rather been repelled by injudicious instruction and unnatural restraint. If he is not lost in the world as a practical unbeliever, the craving after spiritual food leads him away to seek in other folds that

which he believes it to be impossible to find where he has been brought up. The associations of youth mark one place as that in which he will find, not comfort, but constraint; and looking for comfort in religion, he seeks and finds it where he can find freedom also.

And it is this thing-comfort-which is to be found and is sought by the soul of man in religion. Some there are-as we have said— who seem to find in their religion only discomfort. We may hope these are Christian men, and that they themselves "shall be saved; yet so as by fire:" but that their work in education can "abide" in the day when those whom they have educated are free to ` choose for themselves cannot be expected. It is those who have the power to adapt themselves to the young who can do a lasting work with them in anything; and in religion such self-adaptation is most necessary of all. Those who possess it, and who possess with it a firm faith in that which they teach as able to become a comfort and a help to all, even the youngest, may both add to the number of their proselytes though such would scarcely name them thus and keep them from year to year.

It may be well to assert here that which has been implied in what has already been said, viz., that merely to accustom the mind or the body to the words and ways of religious conversation and worship, will be found to be not "training up a child in the way in which he should go" at all; but often, from the senseless way in which it is attempted, it will have the very opposite effect. It needs but to remember where the result of school-life is found, to be convinced of this. It is not the routine of school, or the lessons which for the time the memory made its own, which we carry with us into the world, but only the effect of these things, in the power which we have acquired of giving ourselves steadily and with method to any work which presents itself, and of applying our minds to it in the best way. And often the thing more valuable even than this, which, as we look back upon our school-days, seems to be the only thing we gained from them at all, will be found in the spirit of the school itself, which unconsciously we drank in. We learnt our school's way of thinking of men, and of dealing with men, and we went out, known perhaps by our very manner as men from such a school, but the stronger nevertheless for being so. This was but the bywork of those early days, with which boys and boys' thoughts had far more to do than masters and their teachings; but

how deep a mark it has left upon us, compared with that which some thought our real work! Is it not possible-has not indeed the attempt been successfully made-that the spirit of a school should be made religious, and yet lose neither its reality nor its hold upon the young? And is it not possible also, on the other hand-is not indeed the thing seen too frequently-that the rules of a school should be cast, even ostentatiously, upon religious principles, and the school itself governed by decidedly religious men, and yet its spirit be so bad that few could pass through it uncontaminated?

It may be said that we thus deny the ability to educate to any but to those who are naturally gifted with the power to adapt themselves and their teachings, both in manner and in matter, to the minds of the young; that it is unreasonable to look for this power in more than a few ; and yet almost all have in some form the charge to educate. We assent that this is a natural gift, but we deny that there are few who possess at least the power to acquire and perfect it. It is the natural want of a parent, necessary for the work of that place in which his Maker has set him, and though possessed in larger measure by some than by others, is rarely, from the very nature of the case, not more entirely absent from any than is parental love itself. But like all other natural gifts it

needs to be perfected by care and practice; and it may be, and perhaps often is, so much neglected as to seem entirely absent. And it may be added that it follows the natural law in being least easily acquired in advanced life, or where most neglected. Some indeed possess it so largely, that the very fulness of the gift to them seems to put out of sight its existence in a lower measure in others-and these are thus plainly called of God to a special work for Him; but because all cannot stand first, there is surely no excuse for any to set aside entirely that which each at some time in life ought to find a use for.

In truth, to cultivate the power of interesting ourselves in the young, of thinking for the moment as they think, and setting our own thoughts before them in such a form as they may best understand and realise them, is to keep, as regards part of God's family, the rule which bids us "look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." It needs to look out of self, and at no little pains to exert ourselves for the good of others, and that in the way which, though the best for them, may not be the easiest for ourselves. But surely he has yet learnt but little, who, taking upon him to teach others, finds this a strange and unac. customed lesson for himself.

JOHN C. WOOD.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Now they that would sail between Scylla and Charybdis must be furnished, as well with the skill, as prosperous success of navigation; for if their ships fall into Scylla, they are split on the rocks; if into Charybdis, they are swallowed up of a gulf."-Lord · Bacon on "The Wisdom of the Ancients."

TRANGE and sad as it is, it is nevertheless true, that among the multitude of those who profess to call themselves Christians, there are not a few who, while professedly avoiding the Scylla and Charybdis of Semler and of Strauss, are yet attempting the impossible task of finding some middle course, where they may be able securely to retain the unbelief to which

they cling. The" Rationalism" of these theorists displays itself chiefly in four prominent forms, which refer respectively to

The cardinal doctrines of Christianity, The miracles of the New Testament, The Divine authority and historic verity of the Old Testament, and

The plenary Inspiration of both Testaments as the written Word of God.

These we propose briefly to examine.

I. Beginning with the first, we observe that this doctrinal Rationalism has itself three varieties. The first looks upon our Lord as a mere Man, in knowledge deficient and partial, in judgment necessarily fallible, however eminently good and wise; and its professed aim

is to separate His mistakes and those of His followers from that so-called "absolute religion," which it is alleged constituted the sum and substance of His teaching. The second teaches that Christianity is a sentiment, not a dogma. The third rejects certain doctrines particularly obnoxious, as being the results of mere Jewish prejudice, which it is imperative on our more enlightened reason to cast away; 1. The first of these opinions is strenuously maintained by all those who, like Newman and Parker, profess to admire the essence of Christianity, while they utterly discard its authority. A single example may suffice.

"Did Jesus lay any stress on this watery dispensation of baptism? Then we must drop a tear for the weakness. If it came from Him, we can only say, There is no perfect guide but the Father. It is apparent that He shared the erroneous notion of the times respecting devils and possessions; but He never set up for a Teacher of physiology. The acceptance of this error is no impeachment of His moral and religious excellence, more than His ignorance of the steam-engine. . . . . He was mistaken in His interpretation of the Old Testament, if we may believe the Gospels. But if He supposed those earlier writers spoke of Him, it is but a trifling mistake, affecting a man's head, not his heart. He is said to be an enthusiast, who hoped to found a visible kingdom in Judea, and to return in the clouds; and certainly a strong case may be made out to favour the charge. But what then? Even if the dull Evangelists have not thrust their fancies into His mouth, it does not militate against His morality and religion. How many a saint has been mistaken in such matters!"*

To the same effect, though without the same condescending patronage to the Son of God, is the language employed by Dr. Colenso in his attempt to convince us that Christ's knowledge of the Pentateuch was not greater. than that of "any other devout Jew of that day." "Why should it be thought that He would speak with certain Divine knowledge on this matter, more than upon other matters of ordinary science or history ? "+

Whether this language be not in the highest degree offensive, I am not now concerned to inquire. I am content simply to affirm that it is in the highest degree illogical. The pietists of this school may, if they please, reject the claims of Jesus Christ as a Divinely commis

*Theodore Parker's "Discourses on Religion."

+ Colenso's "Pentateuch Examined." Part I.; Pref. xxxi.

sioned Teacher, but then by that rejection they expose the fraud of their own claim to the Christian name and character. Or, on the other hand, they may, with the Jewish Rabbi, accept the Galilean Peasant as a "Teacher come from God;" but then they must desist from the folly of attempting to teach their Teacher, and pretending to enlighten Him whose Name and office have been revealed by His own lips, and sealed by signs and wonders, "The Light of the world!" They may pretend to be the patrons, or they may profess to be the disciples, of the Lord Jesus, but they cannot be both at once. They cannot pity the mistakes and smile at the superstitions of Jesus of Nazareth, and yet pretend to believe the very foremost of all His claims. They must either renounce their pretence to the possession of an absolute religion," or renounce the pretence to discipleship of the Great Prophet of God, commissioned to guide our feet into the way of peace. This mongrel Christianity, with apostolic phraseology for ever on its lips, is in truth as much less honest, as it is more revolting, than open and avowed unbelief.

2. The second variety of Doctrinal Rationalism characterizes the school of Schleiermacher. It consists simply in a mysterious, undefined reverence for the Person and character of the Redeemer. It has been clothed with much beauty of sentiment, and has not been without its use as a natural protest against the dry, formal orthodoxy, as well as against the critical follies of the older Rationalists within the Lutheran churches. But in alleging that dogmas have been the chief bane of true religion, and that spiritual Christianity shrinks from the touch of logical definitions, it asserts a principle fatally opposed to the truth of the Gospel.

For how can there be deep reverence for our Lord without submission to the truth and wisdom of His own repeated sayings? But if the Gospels are credible at all, it is clear that our Lord does strongly insist on the acceptance and belief of certain distinct and definite truths. He calls Himself "The Way, the Truth, and the Life." Here truth takes precedence of even life itself. "We must first climb the steep hillside, and gaze from the mountain-top upon the glorious landscape spread around and beneath us, before the joy and exhilaration of spiritual life can take possession of our souls." Eternal life is solemnly declared to consist in the knowledge of God the Father,

and of Jesus Christ whom He has sent. But "No man knoweth the Father save the Son, and He to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." The grand cardinal question, therefore, is still, "What think ye of Christ ?" Is He a mere Man-Dr. Colenso's "devout Jew❞—or the eternal Son of God, by whom all things were created, and by whom they are still upheld? Is He a fit Object for the pity and patronage of Theodore Parker, or is He the perfect Exemplar and the atoning Sacrifice?

Those very dogmas which the former class of Rationalists reject as trivial mistakes and prejudices, and which these sentimental Rationalists, through their dread of barren orthodoxy, shrink from defining, are laid down by Him whom they profess to reverence, as truths to be credited on His authority, at the peril of being disowned for His disciples. That He was the Messiah promised from the first;* that His mission was supernatural and Divine;† that He claimed, in the fullest sense, Divine honours; the Divine truth of all His teaching; the existence of evil spirits;|| the vicarious nature of His atonement;¶ the general resurrection and judgment;** His own glorious return and its object.tt On these, as on many kindred topics, we have in the express words of our Lord, a clear, distinct averment of great religious truths, which every disciple is bound to receive on His authority. All professions of reverence must evidently be inconsistent, if not insincere, so long as we attempt to evade this simple test of the genuine disciple, and endeavour to steal away, in a mist of our own raising, from a hearty submission to these true sayings of God.

"Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words ?"

"Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins."

"That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father."

§ "My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me. The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works."

"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning."

"The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." "The bread which I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

** "All that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation."

†† "Then shall ye see the Son of Man, coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." "I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may

be also."

But this phase of unbelief is so insidious, and its prevalence so common, even where its very existence is often unsuspected, that we may be excused for exposing it a little more fully.

"On close inspection, it will, I think, be found that the dislike of clear, dogmatic statements is only a disguised form of opposition to the truths which those statements embody. If, for instance, a man believes in the existence of One Supreme Being, he has no objection to saying explicitly that there is One God. . . . . Yet to say that there is one God, is to make an essentially dogmatic statement. Every man who makes that statement intelligently, knows that it has a tremendous bearing on the belief of millions, alas! of the human race at this very moment. Yet the man makes the statement for the simple reason that he has no doubt of the truth which it embodies. If, then, he presently hesitates to say that Jesus Christ is truly God as well as truly Man, or that the death of Jesus on the cross was a propitiatory offering for human sin, it is, I apprehend, because he does not believe the truths which are thus stated in human language. . . . . Unbelief decries dogma, not be cause dogma is really an impediment to faith, but because it is faith's true and trusty friend. The real crime of dogma is, that it treats as settled and certain that which unbelief would fain regard as doubtful or false. If you believe a thing to be true, you have no objection to saying so. And when Christianity is warned not to be dogmatic, it is irresistibly implied that, however beautiful she may be, she must not assume to be absolutely true.”*

"Why is the great dogmatic prologue, whose precision no council ever rivalled, and no philosophy ever surpassed, prefixed to St. John's Gospel? Simply because it is the one Divinely. given point of view which co-ordinates all the elements of the problem in that life." "Abrogation of dogma in the supposed interest of morality, has always ended in the abrogation of morality. A free handling of dogma in any age has always ended in a very free and easy handling of the moral law. Like the serpent whose sting is followed after a season by paralysis setting in from the opposite side to that upon which it has been inflicted, the anti-dogmatic spirit strikes Christianty upon

"Some Words for God: being Sermons preached before the University of Oxford." By H. P. Liddon, M.A. (Riving tons, 1865). Sermon VI., pp. 176-178, on "The Conflict of Faith with Pride of Intellect;" a sermon excellent beyond all praise.