The Press.
London, England, 1858-12-04 00:00:00

THE PRESS, DECEMBER 4, 1858.

- - -
given of their discovery is by any means circum-
gtantiated to such a po.int as. to silence scepticism.
But their best credentials lie in themselves. For
it is utterly impossible to conceive any one clever
enough to concoct such a work, producing an
autobiography .of Catherine 11., with so very
little of Catherine init.

METAPHYSICAL THEOLOGY.
The Limits of Religious Thought Eaamined.
lu Eight Lectures, preached before the Uni-
versity of Oxford, in the year 1858, on the
Foundation of the late Rev. John Bampton,
m.A., Canon of Salisbury. By Henry Longue-
ville Mansel, B.D. Oxford : J. H. and J.
Parker.

THE University of Oxford, and the Church at
large, are much indebted to Mr. Mansel for the
courage and ability with which he has laid the
axe of rigid logic to the root of the spurious phi-
losophy which, under the specious guise of free
inquiry, has, both in Germany and in this coun-
try, overgrown the simplicity and confused the
evidences of the Christian religion. He is
entitled also to the gratitude of scholars for
making a powerful effort to rescue the character
of the Bampton Lectures from the imputation of
mediocrity which recent performances have only
too justly deserved. The study of pure theology,
in its deeper principles, has been so long dormant
in both Universities, and the unmeditative tone
of the theological mind of the present day is so
unfavourable to logical investigation, that the
Bampton Lecturer in selecting for his subject
- The Limits of Religious Thought" had to face
the risk of unpopularity in Oxford and severe
criticism in the world of letters. These, how-
ever, have not daunted him ; and now that his
performance is before the world, he has no rea-
son, we are sure, to regret having applied the
energies of his powerful and well-trained intellect
to the investigation of such an important and
pertinent theme. . . .

The assumption on which modern speculations
in religion have proceeded is that the human in-
tellect is capable of grasping the sum of neces-
sary truth, and therefore of sitting in judgment
upon Revelation, and determining its accuracy,
sufficiency, and pertinence to human life and cir-
cumstances. Out of this assumption are de-
veloped dogmatism on the one hand and
rationalism on the other. Both systems, how-
ever, have failed in attempting to construct a
philosophical theology. Rome, in adopting the
one, would destroy the free action of the intel-
lect; Germany, in adopting the other, destroys
the very principle of submission to accredited
revelation, which is the whole basis of our
theology. The one results in superstition, the
other in infidelity. Plainly, then, there is a
defect in both, and it becomes necessary to
search for the clue which shall point out their
weakness, and set us in the right direction of in-
quiry for the certainty after which, notwith-
standing all our boasted light, we are groping.
This is what the Bampton Lecturer has at-
tempted—with how much success we have yet to
examine. Ills purpose is to pursue, in relation
to theology, what Kant essayed in relation to
metaphysics—viz., " How are synthetical judg-
ments a priori possible?" (p. 7). And he thus
states his thesis in other words :

Does there exist in the human mind any direct faculty
of religious knowledge, by which, in its speculative exer-
cise, we are enabled to decide, independently of all external
revelation, what is the true nature of God, and the manner
in which He must manifest Himself to the world ; and by
which, in its critical exercise, we are entitled authorita-
tively to decide for or against the claims of any professed
revelation, as containing a true or a false representation of
the Divine nature and attributes? And if it can be shown
that no such faculty exists, but that the conclusions arriv eil
at in this respect are gained indirectly, by transferring to
the region of theology judgments which properly belong to
another province of human thought, there then arises a
second inquiry—namely, what cautions are necessary to he
observed in the process of transferring, and what is the
value of the judgments when transferred? The moral and
theological writings of Kant and his followers are so far
from furnishing a satisfactory answer to these questions
that they rather seem as if they had been written expressly
for
the Purnlse of reversing the method carried out with
such good effect in relation to metaphysics.—(p. viii.

The "cautions" are found by our learned
author to lie in " the limits of religious thought,"
Which he has undertaken to expound. The pur-
Pose of his book ill • these limn id

he himself tells us that the principle laid down
by the late Sir William llamilton in his " Philo-
sophy of the Unconditioned "—viz., " that the
" capacity of thought is not to be constituted into
"the measure of existence, and that the domain
" of our knowledge is not necessarily co-exten-
" sive with the horizon of our faith,"—is identical
with what is enforced in these lectures. What
Sir W. Hamilton expounded so philosophically
as a theory, Bishop Butler, a century before,
had acknowledged in practice, and exemplified
with singular felicity in his " Analogy." Mr.
Nlansel, in thllowing both, takes the surest pre-
cautions against errors on either side.

We thus see the aim and scope of our authors
work. A high and noble aim it is ; and never was
effort of the kind more needed, for while Rome,
as the highest type of the Dogmatists, presents for
the acceptance of our belief the new doctrine of
the Immaculate Conception, many of the leading
writers on the Continent, and some at home, are
largely, though perhaps sometimes imkierceptibly
to themselves, under the influence of that rash
spirit of speculation which till lately was the pre-
dominant phase of German theology. So much
is this the case that writers who are not actually
engaged upon theology, but are pursuing the
totally different paths of history and criticism, are
nevertheless insensibly working in the interest of
a foregone philosophical conclusio-:. Strauss laid
down the canon, that whatever is supernatural is
necessarily unhistorical; and Hegel laid down a
theory of progressive development, which Vatke
and Baur have adopted. Any writer who com-
mences an inquiry on either of these principles will
find himself fast on the way to the most advanced
conclusions of the theological school. And even
those who, without seeing the conclusions, incau-
tiously assume the premises, will exhibit in their
writings, more or less directly, the dangerous
leaven.

But we must proceed to give a more detailed
account of these masterly Lectures. The first
lays out the subject, tracing the peculiarities of
dogmatism and rationalism as methods of reli-
gious philosophy, and exposing the errors of
each ; and as a right comprehension of this is
necessary to an intelligent following of the
author's subsequent argument we will give his
philosophical discrimination of the two in his own
clear language :
I do not include under the name of dogmatism the
mere enunciation of religious truths as resting upon
authority and not upon reasoning. The Dogmatist as
well as the Rationalist is the constructor of a system;
and in constructing it, however much the materials
upon which he works may be given by a higher autho-
rity, yet in connecting them together and exhibiting
their systematic form it is necessary to call in the aid
of human ability. Indeed, whatever may be their actual
antagonism in the field of religious controversy, the two
terms are in their proper sense so little exclusive of
each other that both were originally employed to denote
the same persons—the name dogmatist or rationalist
being indifferently given to those medical theorists who
insisted on the necessity of calling in the aid of

rational principles to supposo or correct the conclusions
furnished by experience. A like signification is to be
found in the later language of philosophy, when the
term dogmatists was used to denote those philosophers
who endeavoured to explain the phenomena of expe-
rience by means of rational conceptions and demonstra•
Lions, the intelligible world being regarded as the coun-
terpart of the sensible, and the necessary relaticns of the
former as the principles and ground of the observed
facts of the latter. It is in a sense analogotu to this that
the tern; may be most accurately used in reference to theo-
logy.• Scripture is to the theological dogmatist what
experience is to the philosophical. it supplies him with
the facts to which his system has to adapt itself. 1t con-
tains in an unsystematic form the positive doctrines which
further inquiry has to exhibit as supported by reason-
able grounds and connected into a scientific whole.
Theological dogmatism is thus an application go* reason to
the support and defence of pre•exisling statements of
Scripture.
Rationalism, on the other hand, so far as it deals with
Scripture at all, deals with it as a thing to he adapted to
the independent conclusions of the natural reason, and to
be rejected where that adaptation cannot conveniently be
made. By rationalism, without intending to limit the
name to any single school or period in theological contro-
versy, I .neon generally to designate that system whose
final test of truth is placed in the direct assent of the
human consciousness, whether in the form of logical deduc-
tion, or moral judgment, or religious intuition—by what.
ever previous process those faculties may have been raised
to their assumed dignity as arbitrators.t The rationalist,
as such, is not bound to maintain that a Divine revelation
of religious truth is impossible, nor even to deny that it
has actually been given. He may admit the existence of
revelation as a fact—ho may acknowledge its utility as a
temporary means of instruction for a ruder age—he may
even accept certain portious as of universal anti pet manent
authority. Dot he assigns to some superior tribunal the

1187

right of determining what is essential to religion, and what
is not,: he claims for himself and his age the privilege of
accepting or rejecting any given revelation wholly or in
part, according as it does or does not satisfy the condi-
tions of some higher criterion to be supplied by the human
consciousness.—(pp. 4.5.)
Long as this extract is, it will repay the
readers attention as unfolding to him the two
great lines of ,religious thought and the branch
of religious philosophy to which these eight lec-
tures are directed. It is clear that Revelation has not
given us a complete system of scientific theology;
whether such could have been given consistently
with the existing laws of human thought is ques-
tionable, but since it is not given, it must be con-
structed by human interpretation of what is
revealed. And it is, as Mr. Manse! shows, in
attempting such a construction that dogmatism
and rationalism exhibit their most striking con-
trasts. It is not our author's purpose to prove
both of these systems wrong, but only the ex-
cessive straining of them ; and it is to correct this
that he desires to ascertain with more definite-
ness the limits of man's thought. Since human
conceptions are unavoidable in theology, there is
need of some principle to determine their
proper place in it, and that principle is involved
in the author's investigation. With great ability
he shows that the first and chief object of criticism
is not religion itself, but the human mind in
relation to religion. A direct criticism
of religion, as such, involves a previous construc-
tion of a philosophy of the Infinite. The ques-
tion is whether the powers of human thought
admit of this. One answer is in the failure of
all who have attempted it, but as that is only
partially conclusive the resort must be to first
principles, so far as analogy will allow us to
get at them. And with marvellous clearness
does Mr. MANSEL follow out his inquiry, pro-
ceeding from the ground already descnbed at
such length to show the mazes of contradic-
tion in which both systems involve themselves,
and the necessary failure of all attempts to con-
struct a metaphysical theology. Thence he
passes on to show the impossibility of construct-
ing a rational theology, and, further, that our
religious knowledge is regulative, not specula-
tive, and, finally, that no explanation is possible
of those difficulties which arise from the univer-
sal laws of human thought; that such difficul-
ties are inherent in our mental constitution, and
form part of our training and discipline in this
life; and that the office of philosophy is not to
give us a knowledge of the absolute nature of
God, but to teach us to know ourselves and the
limits of our faculties. We have no space for a
fuller analysis. We have shown the importance of
the inquiry, both as to subject matter and as to
time—we have shown at sonic length the
author's starting point—we have indicated the
line that he has taken and the point that
he has reached. But at the risk of length
we cannot withhold one or two passages of
great merit which show the author's rhe-
toric to be no way inferior to his logic. Here
is a splendid exhibition of the absurdity of
those who seek for a metaphysical exposition of
Clod's nature and attributes :
They want a truer, a juster idea of the Deity as He is-
than that under which He has been pleased to reveal Him-
self; and they call on their reason to furnish it. Fools, to
dream that man can escape f►om himself, that human
reason can draw aught but a human portrait of God ! they
do but substitute a marred and mutilated humanity for
one exalted and entire ; they add nothing to their con-
ception of God as He is, but only take away a part of their
conception of man. Sympathy, and love, and fatherly
kindness, and forgiving mercy have evaporated in the
crucible of their philosophy ; and what is the caput
',tortuous that remains but only the sterner features of
humanity exhibited in repulsive nakedness ? The God
who listens to prayer, we are told, appears in the likeness
of human mutability. Be it so. What is the God who
does not listen but the likeness of human obstinacy? Do
we ascribe to Him a fixed purpose? Our conception of
a purpose is but human. Do we speak of Him as
continuing unchanged? Our conception of continuance is
human. 1)o we conceive Him as knowing and deter-
mining ? What are knowledge and determination but
modes of human consciousness? And what know we of
consciousness itself but as the contrast between sun
cessive mental states ? But our rational philosopher stops
short in the middle of his reasoning. He strips off from
humanity just so much as suits his purpose, and the
residue he maketh a god—less pious in his idolatry than
the carver of the graven image, in that he does not fall
down unto it and pray unto it, but is content to stand
afar off and reason concerning it. Aod why does he retain
any conception of God at all but that he retains some
portions of our imperfect humanity ? Man is still the
residue that is left; deprived indeed of all that is amiable
in humanity, but, as the darker features which remain,
still man. Man in his purposes, man in his inflexibility

which he has undertaken to - The our- I auth superior
authority. But be assigns to some to the -
I in. humanity, but, as the darker features which remain,
Pose of his book is to illustrate these limits; and • The hallos' are ours. st4ll man. Man 111 Ins purposes, man in his inflexibility,

1188 THE PRESS, DECEMBER 4, 1858.

man in that relation to time from which no philosophy,
whatever its pretensions, can wholly free itself, pursuing
with idomitable resolution a preconceived design, deaf
to the yearning instircts which compel His creatures to
call upon Ilim. Yet this, forsooth, is a philosophical con•
ception of the Deity! more worthy of enlightened
reason than the human imagery of the Psalmist—" The
eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears
are open to their prayers."—p. 17.
We have not space for more. We trust this
is enough to show the claim that these lectures
have to the careful study of the Christian philo-
sopher. It is many years since a volume of such
merit was offered to the public, and a calm
persusal of itslcontents in print confirms us more
and more in the admiration we conceived for them
when we heard them from the lips of the gifted
lecturer himself. If the munificent benefactions
of good old Canon Bampton had produced no
other fruit than these noble arguments against
the tendencies of a false philosophy, founded on
a wrong estimate of the power of the human mind,
the wisdom of his bequest, and the choice of his
trustees, would have been fully vindicated.

A Handbook for !Travellers in Kent and

Sussex.
A Handbook for Travellers in Surrey, Hampshire,
and the Isle of Wight.
London : Murray.

THE tourists who annually migrate to one or
other of the watering-places that lie on the south
coast, between the glaring and windy heights of
the North Foreland and the soft Italian climate
and dark sea-worn precipices of Falmouth or
Dawlish,—when they are tired of watching the
waves rippling over the sand, or of being " nearly
caught " by the tide in rounding some treache-
rous headland,—when esplanades, second year's
novels, and molluscous animals, alike become
tiresome,—may now, thanks to Mr. Murray,
hire their donkey or pony chair, or " tittupy "
Brighton steed, and start to explore the interior
of the country, with some chance of seeing the
church, mansion, market-cross, or beacon-hill, of
which they are in search, and with a reasonable
prospect of leaving unnoticed no object of interest
on the route. Few persons, we should imagine,
who have much to do, whether as residents or
travellers, with the southern counties, will fail to
provide themselves with one or more of these
useful volumes, which compress all reliable in-
formation into a moderate compass, treat all
places with the same impartiality, and leave
public-spirited town councillors and all other
Little-Pedlingtonian celebrities to their natural
oblivion.

It would be difficult to prescribe beforehand
what portion of England would present the most
interesting study to a traveller or topographer,
for each has its peculiar characteristics. Perhaps
the student of local character and the student of
antiquities would each be disposed to select a
different region. The former would prefer loca-
lities where the old races still flourished with
least admixture of a foreign element, and where,
in agricultural districts at least, modern improve-
ments had made themselves least distinctly per-
ceptible ; and he would, therefore, choose the
graziers of Yorkshire, the dales-men of Westmore-
land, the mountaineers of Wales, or the rough
hill-men of Derbyshire and the Lancashire moors.
But the antiquarian would bend his steps in a
different direction. The part of England which
lies nearest to the Continent has naturally suf-
fered more change than the northern and north-
western divisions, and here the influences of in-
vasion, conquest, migration, medieval industry,
and modern social life have swept like floods over
the land, each partly submerging the relics of its
predecessors, and each leaving behind it some
deposit of its own peculiar civilization. The
Phoenicians in Cornwall, the ancient Britons all
along the coast, the Romans in Kent and Sussex,
—the barons of the middle ages wherever they
could build a castle,—in the latter county the
manufacturers of a subsequent period,—have all
left their mark on the rocks, plains, hills, or forests
of Southern England.

the vastness of their intrenchments in the Devil's
Dyke and in Mount Caburn near Lewes. The
steep conical summits of the chalk hills near
Andover in Hampshire still show, in their green
slopes and deep fosses, where the sheep are
peacefully feeding, relics of the long chain of
fortresses that witnessed the struggle of the
Belgte and the Celtic tribes for the dominion of
the " Weald" and the " Gwent," and testify by
their numerous barrows to the energy with
which it was maintained. The ponderous stones of
" Kit's Coity House "—the legendary resting-
place of the British chief Katigern,—that over-
look the windings of the Medway, are but the
centre of one of those long avenues of monu-
ments, which, like Carnac in Brittany, formed
the great cemetery of the Belgian settlers ; and
the curious pits, filled to the top with flints,
which line the brow of the neighbouring chalk
hills, may still contain the bones of British
chieftains.
The Roman dominion left more civilized and
not less durable traces. The vast extent and
massive ramparts of Richborough, Reculver, and
Lymue, inclosing many acres, and, though in
ruin, still so solid as to seem rather the work
of Nature herself than of men's hands ; the walls
of Anderida, that yet command the low shore of
Pevensey ; the walls of Portus Magnus at Dor-
chester, and of Clausentum at Bittern, near
Southampton,—attest th est rength of their power ;
—while at Silchester, Calleva, the ancient capital
of the Segontiaci—once as large as old London,
and still showing the lines of rectangular streets,
and the seats of an oval amphitheatre in its
green concentric circles,—witnesses to the firm
hold and thorough colonization they had estab-
lished over the land. To the security and
civilized nature of their sway, testimony is borne
by the numerous villas and stations, which lined
the Watling or Stane streets, or studded the
valley of the Medway. The bricks and tiles
from their walls often appear imbedded in the
masonry of some of our more ancient churches ;
while the degree of luxury which they implied
is shown by such remains as the pavements at
Bramdean and Bignor, where Medusa still stares
with petrific visage, Hercules struggles with An-
tteus, Ganymede soars to heaven on his eagle,
and Cupids fight with the net, trident, and shield
of the gladiatorial arena.
The prevalence of the Saxon rule in Sussex is
shown by the terminations of names occurring on
the south coast, such as Angmering, Tarring, &c.;
and some remarkable Saxon churches, as
Sompting, Swanscombe, and part of the church
in Dover Castle, still remain ; but most of the
more curious are still, probably, buried beneath
the soil ; though relics of glass and pottery,--
the cups out of which the Teutonic colonists
drank, the ornaments wherewith they decked
themselves, and the weapons they used in war,—
have been dug out of the barrows of Osengal and
Gilton.

as it is
P haps the " Forest Ridge;'
high and irregular tract countryof
which stretches
up from Fairlight in a north-
the neighbourhood of Horshamwenthas direction
. to
witnessed
the.. most remarkable changes, both of
' civilization. Forming, as geologists tenlaltulirs,epaarl
of the land first upheaved from the sea,
once probably the playground of reptiles
it
of 18
ap-
palling magnitude, of iguanodons and hylme.
sauri, whose bones have been discovered imbedded
in the soil of Tilgate Forest. Tropical plants,
with wavy branches, the food of these •
animals, covered the surface that lininesse
now produces in
many parts nothing but heath and wild juniper.
The details of the alterations by which itenani
b
fit for the abode of man we have, of course,e
means of knowing, but at an early period it no
a.
no doubt, covered with woods which, at a later
stage of their growth or of that of their ,successors,
sheltered and
the the savage, with his wattled but
painted skin, who immediately preceded first
Roman invasion. But of the Roman dominion
few, if any, traces are to be found immediately
within its circuit. It formed, however, we may
imagine, the north-western outpost of the king-
dom which )Ella founded in 477, and looked over
the marshes which then separated it from Kent
to the next Saxon kingdom, with which, in that
rude and dark period, before the introduction of
Christianity by Wilfrid of York, there was bat
little intercourse.—The same hills, at a later
time, witnessed the march of Harold's troops to
their defeat at Hastings, and its trees probably
yielded timber to form the lofty roofs Of
the Abbey which the Conqueror erected as
a thank-offering for his victory. But the district
contained other productions besides timber to
make it populous and important. In the bed of
the. mighty river which, in the pre-historical
period, was the bath of the mighty monsters of
geology, vegetable and animal decomposition pro-
duced iron ore. At what period, however, this
deposit was first worked is quite unknown.
Roman relics and coins have been discovered in
the cinder-beds which are formed from the scoria
or refuse of the furnaces, but from the use of
iron which Caesar mentions it is probable that
the ore was to a certain extent worked by the
earlier inhabitants . Whether the Saxons con-
tinued to work it is not so clear, the earliest
mention of Sussex iron-works occurring in 1266,
in a grant by which Henry 111. empowered the
town of Lewes to tax the Weald iron for the
repair of the walls after the battle. Edward 11.,
when he marched on his Scotch expedition, shod
his horses with nails and shoes of Sussex iron.
A cast-iron monumental slab of the fourteenth
century remains in I3urwash Church, over the
tomb of one "Joan Collins," probably an "iron-
mistress " of the period. Banded guns of wrought
iron, of Henry Vl.'s time, now in the Tower,
were made in Sussex ; and the first cast-iron and
bored guns were made at Buxted, in the same
county. Through the middle ages and the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the woodland
heights of Sussex, now so quiet and rural, puffed
out smoke by day and flared to heaven at night,
like Dudley or Wolverhampton, and the Sussex
Dryads, whose trees had attracted the manufac-
turer, as coal does now, mourned, as Drayton says in
his Polyolbion, with " grievous groans" for thein-
creasing destruction of their leafy honours. We
are indebted to the Sussex iron for the balustrades
round St. Paul's, weighing about 200 tons, which
were cast at the Gloucester furnace at Lamber-
burst. In 1724 the iron manufacture was con-
sidered the chief interest of the country; but
the woods did not grow fast enough to supply the
consumption, and it was found cheaper to make
use of those districts where iron and inexhaustible
fuel are found nearer together. Thus the Sussex
ore began to be less and less disturbed, and the
Ashburnham furnace (mark the name)—always
celebrated for the excellence of its iron—was, la
the last century, the last place at which the trade
was carried on. .

Then came the Norman conqueror, and how
firmly he planted his foot, may be seen, not only
from the buildings he has left—the stern square
towers and low-browed arches which domi-
nate Rochester or Canterbury, or from mounds of
irregular stonework at Pevensey or Guildford—
but from the local territorial divisions which
Sussex still preserves. In other counties, as Sir
F. Palgrave (quoted in the Handbook) has
pointed out, we find " hundreds " and " lathes,"
denoting irregular dispersion of tribes, and gradual
consolidation of authority under various lords ;
but in Sussex alone is any trace of systematic
division apparent. The " rapes " which are pe-
culiar to it, and of which there are six, each ex-
tending from the northern border of the county
to the coast, and having each a frontage, so to
speak, towards the sea, show that the land was
partitioned by actual measurement—by the
rope,—and that the conquerors neglected in the
process all the circumstances of occupation which
might previously exist. Each rape has within it,
generally not far from the shore, some strong
military post, which formed the citadel of the
district, as well as an available harbour at the
southern extremity, forming a sort of high road
to Normandy. Thus we find in East Sussex the
rapes of Hastings, Lewes, and Pevensey; in
West Sussex those of Arundel, Bramber, and
Chichester ; and each of these appears in Domes-
day-book under a military commander.
Of all the districts into which physical geo-
graphy would divide the southern counties, per-

Both these volumes are in general compiled
with extreme accuracy. We have noticed, how-
ever, a few exceptions to this remark in the case
of the Handbook for Surrey, which may as well
be pointed out. At pp. ix. x. of the Introduc-
tory section, the architectural antiquities of the
county are enume ; but, among these, there
is no mention of Ham-house, or of Bay nards,
though we learn front the descriptions in fine
routes where they occur that the one is ".a
" old James I. mansion, which has been lade if

Thus Kent at a very early period exported
chalk to Zealand, and the pits whence it was
dug, principally along the banks of the Thames
and Medway, were afterwards supposed to be the
lurking places where the Britons concealed
themselves during the Danish ravages. British
fortifications crown the heights of Cissbury
and Chanctonbury in Sussex, and display