The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1861-02-19 00:00:00

THE CHITH.OH IN DASHER.

How often, at differen—t times, and under varied Mr'
outnatmices has this cry been raised. It has ever and
anon been the watchword for these who simpered te
represent the worthy lieges of Her Majesty in Pettit-
moot ; the tonal of alarm calling upon the sapper/me
of time-honoured institutions to rally round the standard
of a National Establishment, and the too-often repeated
by-word of those who are not only without the pale,
but opposed to the Unwell of England. But while fres
without the enemies of the church have often dealt
severe blows which have tended to weaken in some
degree the superstructure and visible pert of thie
glorious erection, they have never attempted *
undermine and sap the foundations; her incomparable
liturgy, and her articles they have not dared to *mil.
No ! it has unhappily been left for her sons—those
within her wallv who should have been the first to stand
forth boldly in behalf of her interests, end guard sio
with the keenest jealously, the sacred truths committed
to their keeping—to pro; agate those destructive tenets,
which, if not speedily and promptly checked, may Is
future years undernsinv her very foundations,
and be th• means of arresting, for a Mao
at least, the onward progress of true and vital
religion. To those of our readers who are at all sea.
versant with the subject, we need hardly say we allude
to the so-called " Oxford Essays." Not from without
will the Church of England be obliged to surrender.
Her open and avowed enemy idle can cope with, WI
mired not fear the result. But the writers to whom we
allude are her worst enemies—while they conform in
her endowments and live uimn her revenues, they are at
the same tinie seeking by all means in their power to
weaken and prostrate her; and snake her, not as she is
now, the ark of divine truth, but the temple of a per.
visaed religion—neither Christitn, Maliewined, esee,
even indecd, Pagan ; but so latitudinarian, aa to em-
brace some of the doctrines of the two latter withiut
the true and beart-purifying truths olthe former. WOW,
thankful to dud that the.. almost deistical works bans
been so unanimously and strongly condemned by the
leading clergymen of the metropolis, and that the atten-
tion of the Bishop of London, and other dignitaries of
the Church lies been called to the subject. We me.
not, in our li,uile,h space, only give an outline of the
teuets put forth by the seven writers of the Onferd
Essays ; but this will give our readers an idea of the
danger to the cause °, truth which such enemies militia the
Establishment am likely to do it not at ones sea.
damned and silenced. The Lor:dcus Review in a mask
notice of this work says :—Dr. Temple lends off with
ail essay on the education of the world. He •••tne to
teach that every man is a law to himself; that an miter
and obligatory rule of belief is no longer • concdneive
directory, and that, "bed revelation been delayed till
now, amiurolly it would have been hard for us to recap
nisi His divinity; for the faculty of faith bee turnedj.
wards, and cannot now accept any outer numilestatiess
of the truth of God." The whole drift of this intro.
ductory essay is to detach man from the Bible as •
positive revelation and fined rule of faith and life, sal
to give the reason authority to deal with it as Payne
have dealt with it, regarding it and using it as •
nose of was." It is no longer the master bat*.
servant.

The second essay is by Dr. Williams,f of St. David's
College, Laineeter. It is an advance on Dr. Temple's
in audacity as well as dogma. He proceeds to show
how every historic truth or miracle may be evaporated
into a transcendental myth. Ni. predecessor having
unsettled the authority of the rcred record, he endea-
vours to prove that it is no reliable history but •
colle.ition of mists, metaphors, and even mistakes. His
actually alleges the destroying angel in Egypt W6B
merely • host of Bedouins, who cleverly entered the
houses of the Egyptians and slew the first-born, while
weepiog households were so stupid that they neither
resisted the murderous attack nor pursued the peer-
fully retiriug Bedouins! All the glory of the arra%
0810,(IT, and all the allrions to it, on 114 occasion of
the sublimer rite of Christianity, are thus swept away,
and the Great Redeemer and his disciples have raised
a sacrament, and made references, which have no
better foundation than a road of marauding and blood.
thirsty Arabs. If Dr. Williams, states a far, the
autiior ef Christianity and the apostles have assumed as
literal and authentic history what is not so. Mr.
Wiliam, steadily, and, to all appearance, deli-
berately, ripe the very foundations of • divine
revelation. Let his conclusions blooms the ad 3
tion of the clergy of Englund, and the week
utterances of its many pupils, and the poor peasant •
no longer have an anchorage ground for his heart, nor
a hope beyond life's stormy day from which we eau
draw down sunshine, and taste the earnest and an-
ticipate the joys of the everlasting rest.
Baden Powell, less in so many words, but in tor of
thought, and feeling, and reverence, carries all revela-
tion mil of the atmosphere of the superhuman. He
taxes his ingenuity to its utmost strength in order to
prove what we may fairly describe r • new way of
demonstrating an endless series of links, without •
staple in the throne of Deity, and an eternal SUCCIIIIike
of fathers and mothers without a Creator-Parent.
The last and not the least mischievous paper is by
Professor Jowett. With hini we admit the indefensible
' stress which has been laid on isolated tear, but the
deity of the Redeemer, the atonement, justification,
regeneration and good works ; the fruits of them. and
• judgment to come, and the resurrection of the body,
are great truths that crop up from all churches and
confessions, and have secured a conatteria in newly all
ages, such as renders them n fixtures that cannot be
taken down. So frighteued is the learned professor at
the danger of interpretation, that he practically and
suhstantially dissuades his readers from coming to any
definite apprehension of the meaning of any part of On
Bible. Ile says discoveries may be made in Egypt or
Nineveh in geology or physiology, that will contradict
the statements of the Scriptures, as ordinarily road and
understood by mankind, and that therefore it is beet to
leave it unexplained, so that we may adopt it to the new
discoveries as they arise. The rear is, throughout, an
ingenious plea for shutting up the Bible as an unintel-
ligible collection of obsolete writuigs, to which it ic salad
to attach no uicaning.