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

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 thought. 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 this 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-

646

tact of the spiritual with the outward world.
He writes :

Scripture language may thus be truly said to belong to
an intermediate world different at once from both the
visible and the invisible world, yet partaking of the nature
of both. . . . Yet it does not follow, if we acknow-
ledge the limits of human faculties, that our ideas of
spiritual things become wholly indefinite. There are
many symbols and images of them in the world without
and below.

In anticipation of the objections which may
be urged to this train of reasoning or reflec-
tion, he says :

The course of speculation which has been adopted in
this essay may seem to introduce into Scripture an
element of uncertainty. It may seem to cloud truth with
metaphysics, and rob the poor and uneducated of the sim-
plicity of the Gospel. But perhaps this is not so. Whe-
ther it be the case that such speculations introduce an
element of uncertainty or difficulty into Scripture or not,
they introduce a new element of truth. For without the
consideration of such questions as that of which a brief
sketch has been here attempted, there is no basis for
scriptural interpretation. We are ever liable to draw the
meaning of words this way or that, according to the theo-
logical system of which we are the advocates ; to fall
under the slavery of an illogical logic, which first narrows
the mind by definitions, and then wearies it with far-fetched
inferences. Metaphysics must enter into the interpreta-
tion of Scripture, not for the sake of intruding upon it a
new set of words or ideas, but with the view of getting rid
of metaphysics and restoring to Scripture its natural
sense.

An opponent might, not unfairly, urge Mr.
Towett to carry forward his ideas o their
legitimate conclusion, and apply to the Gos-
pels those principles of interpretation, or of
speculation, whish he has applied to the
Epistles of St. Paul. In that case, Mr. Jowett
would probably suspend his judgment on
certain passages in the narratives relating to the
miraculous occurrences described, but would
insist on the spiritual character and spiritual
influence of the New Testament, as facts from
which there could be no appeal, and which
were infinitely more important than any of
those points which casuistry might dispute.
Let the sceptic (we can imagine Mr. Jowett
urging) reason or cavil as he may, he never
can get rid of the New Testament, or shake
that spiritual communion which it establishes
between God and man. While the Gospel
lives in the soul of mankind, while it satisfies
their aspirations, and meets their wants, it
can no more matter what are the outward
evidences of particular facts connected with
it, than it can matter what is the chemical
composition of that water which it has been
found by experience quenches the thirst and
conduces to the health of man.

The philosophy of Mr. Jowett is, indeed, an
off-shoot from the philosophy of Berkely.
We live in our perceptions of what is external
to us, not in the external world itself. The
principle is applied emphatically to religion,
which is the life of the soul; and Faith is a
belief, not in the evidences of sense, but in a
perception of what is appropriate to the wants
and wishes of the spirit—the secret sympathy
between the thirst of the soul, and the element
held forth for its gratification.
This philosophical theology is a subject for
calm discussion, not for newspaper notice.
We have merely endeavoured to give our
readers some idea of the two very remarkable
works on our table. For our own part, we should
have been better pleased had both Mr. Stanley
and Mr. Jowett (and especially the latter)
taken a narrower view of their editorial duties,
and restricted their dissertations, and even
their notes, to points strictly elucidatory of
their text. The dissertations of Mr. Jowett
might have formed a valuable collection of
theological essays, but are not in their general
scope so immediately connected with the
Epistles of St. Paul as to require any kind of
incorporation with his text; and we are inclined
to think that they will, except to those highly
meditative minds which can calmly look down
upon every kind of speculation with perfect
serenity and uhclouded judgment, impede the
circulation, and perhaps detract from the
repute, of his work. The speculations of the
theorist and the reveries of the metaphysician
are in our opinion rather inconsistent with,
than consonant to, the strict duties of an
editor.
It is doubtful how far metaphysical theology
can ever be useful. Even the mind delights
to claim some kind of relationship with God
through the medium of sense, and to make
munitlsst His Goodness and Perfections by rest