The Press. — London, England, 1855-07-07 00:00:00

Jutt 7, 1855. she excited. There was some dignity in her position when she appeared as a persecuted Queen, but after " the bill " was dropped, and she accepted an allowance of 50,0001. a year, she had no longer a part to play. Her conduct in endeavouring to force an entrance into the Abbey on occasion of the coronation showed the infirmity of her judgment; and there can be little doubt that the mortification she expe rienced at being turned from the doors at which she successively applied for admittance, and the little support she met with from the people, hastened her death. Her funeral gave rise to the greatest mob-triumph ever known in thin country. In spite of police and soldiers, the procession was forced through the City, and the turbulent proceedings of that wet, gusty August day—described iu detail and with great animation by Dr. Doran—formed a fitting close to the unquiet and disastrous life of Caroline of Bunswick. The volumes are very readable—being full of anecdote, and quite impartial. The object of the author, indeed, seems to have been unly to produce a work which would be acceptable from the closeness of its facts and the liveli ness of its style. The Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthian:. With Critical Notes and Dissertations. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, M.A. Two Vols. London : Murray. The Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians, Romans. With Critical Notes and Dissertations. By Benjamin Jowett, M.A. Two Vols. London : Murray. THESE works have so much in common that it is evident they must have been produced in concert. In each case the Greek text of Lachmann is taken as the nearest approach to the authentic text of the three first centuries, and copious introductions, notes, and disqui sitions are added to explain St. Paul's posi tion at the time he wrote, and to elucidate his language and ideas. In one respect there is a difference in the plan adopted. Mr. Jowett gives a literal version of the text in English, on the opposite page to the Greek; while Mr. Stanley gives merely a paraphrase of the Apostles meaning at the end of each section of his discourse. The difference will not be much regarded by scholars ; but for general reference the plan of Mr. Jowett is the most desirable. His dissertations also are fuller than those of Mr. Stanley, though some will doubt whether this be an improvement, as he often wanders far from St. Paul, and enters largely into those controversies of the day which belong to what may be termed metaphysical theology. Of this we shall presently give some instances. The variations from the text of Lachmann are in each case trivial, and Mr. Jowett has sagaciously laid down the main principle on which that great scholar proceeded. It was to restore the text as it has been found to exist in the most ancient Greek and Latin MSS., and in the citations from St. Paul con tained in the early fathers. Thus, he takes fact as his basis, regarding all speculative readings and doctrinal considerations as of little account when opposed to ancient and independent authorities, and " the result has " shown," says Mr. Jowett, "that the most " ancient text is also in every other sense by " far the best." He argues that, as no scholar would be willing to accept the text of Sophocles or Thucydides as it 1%118 printed two centuries ago, no apology can be needed for laying aside the " Textus Receptus " of the New Testament. But, in limitation of this line of argument, it is to be remembered, that the text of the New Testament received the attention of men of profound learning at periods when comparatively little care was bestowed upon profane authors. Mr. Jowett, in stating the order in which the Epistles of St. Paul were written, assigns the first place to the two Epistles to the Thes salonians, then the Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans. Next, he ranks the Epistles of the Imprisonment, including under this term the Ephesians, Colossians. Philippians, and Philemon, and, lastly, the Pastorals. Read in chronological order, Mr. Jewett thinks there is discernible in the THE PRESS. Epistles a growth of Christian life—the result not of intellectual reflection, but of spiritual experience. It may be supposed, from what we have said of the plan of these books, that they are marked by original views and perfectly inde pendent thoug ht. In analysing the text, and even in commenting on it, the same freedom is exercised as in dealing with the text of any ancient author. We can conceive that some minds may at first be startled by this boldness, but the result is that it gives life and reality to every sentence of St. Paul, that it brings him into the region of certain history, and portrays his character and the circumstances of his life with singular dis tinctness and force. The style of the Apostle is ably set forth by Mr. Stanley in his intro ductory remarks : Unlike the style of regular treatises, the language of St. Paul's Epistles partakes in an eminent degree of the rough ness and abruptness of the most familiar letters, whilst it also labours with the fervour and vehemence of the moat impassioned oratory. Dictated for the most part, not written, his Epistles partake of the character of speeches rather than of compositions. He is in them the speaking prophet, not the silent scribe. He almost always conceives himself as " present in spirit," as " speakiug " to his readers face to face; his Epistle, in his mind, becomes himself, and through it he appears among them as Elijah before Ahab, as himself before Felix. Every sentence is aimed at some special object—is influenced by some immediate impulse— is lit up by some personal joy, or darkened by some per sonal sorrow or apprehension, For this reason it is neces sary, beyond what is required in ordinary writings, to keep constantly before us both the Apostle and his readers ; what they expected from him, what he expected from them, and what was the mood or association with which he dic tated, not merely the Epistle in general, but, so far as we can ascertain, each particular portion. Further, the Apostle's style is of that irregular and com plex kind which often requires an analysis of every par ticle of a sentence in order to exhibit its structure and purpose. In some respects its outward aspect closely re sembles that of two men, very different from each other and from him—Thucydides and Oliver Cromwell. In all three there is a disproportion between thought and lan guage, the thought straining the language till it cracks in the process—a shipwreck of grammar and logic, as the sentences are whirled through the author's mind—a growth of words and thoughts out of and into each other, often to the utter entanglement of the argument which is framed out of them. In the case of St. Paul there are also pecu liar forms of speech which he finds it impossible to resist, and which, whilst from their frequent recurrence they help to explain each other, almost always act with disturbing force on the sentences in which they occur. Such, for example, is his habit of balancing two parts of a sentence against each other—the joint produrt, as it were, of the Hebrew parallelism and the Greek syllogism or dilemma. Or again, the unex2ected burst into doxology or solemn asseveration. Or the appropriation of the arguments of those against whom, or for whom he is pleading, to his own person—the " transferring " to himself " in a figure " what properly belongs to others. Or the long digressions, almost after the manner of Herodotus, suggested by a word, a reminiscence, an apprehension. Or the sudden rise into successive stages of flight, through the various stages of spiritual life, not halting till he reaches the throne of God. Yet farther, it has been attempted to follow out, not only the train of argument and the construction of sentences, but the image presented by each separate word. Never was there a truer description of any style than that which Luther gives of the style of the Apostle The words of St. Paul are not dead words ; they are living creatures, and have hands and feet. Each word has, as it were, a law, a life, a force of its own. It has grown up under the shade of some adjacent argument, or it has been tinged with the colouring of its Hebrew original, or of some neighbouring passage in the version of the Seventy, or has been animated with a vigour before unknown through the Christian and apostolical use to which it is now for the first time applied. And it propagates itself through new sentences, words, paragraphs, chapters grown out of it as out of some prolific seed of the natural world. Mr. Stanley furnishes a luminous introduc tion to each section of the text—comments closely and critically on the text itself—then supplies a paraphrase of the section gone through, and adds a dissertation on its spirit and the particular points with which it is con cerned. As it is impossible for us here to enter into detail, we must content ourselves with saying that the editor is always careful and conscientious. His first object is ever to give prominence to St. Paul himself; and, though there will be much difference of opinion, we apprehend, as to the soundness of his views on such points as the Gift of Tongues (i. 290)—where he manifests a lean ing towards the rationalistic school—there can be none as to his penetration, learning, and sagacity, or as to the value of his labours. The dissertations on the development given by St. Paul to the Greek word " Agape," and to the testimony borne in his writings to the character of our Lord, aro noble pieces of criticism. In the volumes of Mr. Jowett the teaching of German divines and philosophers is more conspicuous than in those of Mr. Staniey. It is not easy to give any adequate idea of a system of thought which continually eludes exact interpretation by the indefiniteness of its expression. Mr. Jowett's dissertations are always extremely eloquent, but they are often vague, and we are inclined to believe that he would himself resist any attempt to give pre cision to his language, on the ground that ideas dealing with spiritual subjects must from their very nature have so much of indefinite ness about them as to be incapable of that exactitude of expression which is natural to physical science. But so fur as we can com prehend the main principle of his philoso phical theology, it is, that religion is subjec tive and not objective ; that it lives in the spirit of man, not in the outward world ; and that more regard is to be had to the move ments and impulses of the mind, than to the evidences of sense, as the former is nearer to communion with God than the latter. Hence he attaches little importance to the evidences of religion, whether drawn from the natural world or from historical facts, in comparison with what is experienced iu the inward world, or spiritual nature of man. We do not suppose that he would himself agree in the justice of this definition, because, as we have urged, his scheme of thought is too elastic to admit of the bond of definition, but the above seems, u a general principle, a fair inference from his writings. The conversion of St. Paul, as related in the Acts, appears to an ordinary apprehension plainly miraculous, but Mr. Jowett writes : If we submit the narrative of the Acts to the ordinary rules ofevidence, we shall scarcely find ourselves able to determine whether any outward fact was intended by it or not. Such is, indeed, the impression at first sight conveyed ; but we must remember that this impression is gathered from an author to whom the distinction of the spiritual and super natural, which is so familiar to ourselves, Lad scarcely au existence ; who if he had been asked the question which we are now considering, would probably have replied : " Whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell." It must be observed, further, that the more objective cha racter given to the event in the Acts, compared with that implied in the allusions of St. Paul himself, is but such a difference as we might expect between the impressions made upon his own mind, and the colour that the circum stance would naturally acquire when conceived by another. And the wavering of the different accounts, which has been already dwelt upon, as it preventiour insisting on the details, so also forbids our attaching much importance to the external or objective character of the event Itself. We quote this passage as illustrative of the whole tendency of Mr. Jowett's teaching. He does not pretend to decide whether the narra tive of the conversion is to be read literally ; he allows it to be seen that his own impres sion is that it should not be so read ; but whe ther yes or no, he contends is of very little consequence, as it is with the spiritual iin pression conveyed, and the spiritual conse quences, that we are alone concerned. In the chapter on " Natural Religion," Mr. Jowett shows himself unfavorable to the argu ment of design, or of Final Causes, on the ground that it has the effect of dividing creation into details; it draws our attention to the minute and intricate mechanism of many of its parts. . . . It presents to us God exclusively in one aspect, not as a man, much less as a spirit, holding communion with our spirit, but only as an artist. We conceive of him as in the description of the poet, standing with com passes over sea and land, and designing the wondrous work. . . . Why should we use arguments about the Infinite Being, which, in proportion as they have force, reduce Him to the level of the finite, and which seem to lose theit force in proportion as we admit that God's ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts? The belief is strong enough without these fictitious sup porta ; it cannot be made stronger with them. While nature still presents to us its world of unexhausted wonders—while sin and sorrow lead us to walk by faith, and not by sight—while the soul of man departs t his life knowing not whither it goes—so long will the belief endure of an Almighty Creator, from whom we came, to whom we return. And, not only does Mr. Jowett set no value on outward evidences of any kind, but he deprecates attempts to reconcile by reasoning the apparent discrepancies of Scripture. To understand those discrepancies, he refers us not to sensible explanations, but to the cir cumstances of the time. He insists that to comprehend the language of fit. Paul we must live like him in " the twilight" caused by con-