a pious apprehension of things, purified and enlightened by knowledge; "* and he proceeds to argue against its being founded on an historical acquaintance with Christianity. The shadowy meaning of the sentence I have quoted, escapes in any attempt to grasp it. Yet this fact may not be universally admitted. He who does not think clearly himself, whose conceptions are vague and inconsistent, is not sensible of the want of definiteness or meaning in what he reads. He attaches some unformed notions to words, that in fact convey no coherent ideas; and may regard himself, in consequence, as a profound thinker, able to comprehend what even wise men cannot.

I will give one other extract from the article by De Wette, just quoted, in which he describes what the "new rational theology" has yet to do.

"The new rational theology must accomplish the solution of the problem of producing a living recognition of faith in its independence of metaphysical and historical knowledge; so that finally, without resolving the events in the history of Jesus into what is merely ideal, it may cause them to be received in their ideal significance, as conveying ideas of faith; not resting the truth of Christian faith, as if it were a duty so to do, upon common, naked, historical truth; but confining the his

* "Es ist die grösste und fruchtbarste Idee der neuern Theologie (und deren Geltendmachung ist die Hauptaufgabe meines theologischen Lebens), dass die Glaubenslehre keine Metaphysik, oder doch nur soviel davon enthalten darf, als zur klaren Verständigung des Glaubens nöthig ist; dass ihr Wesen nicht in wissenschaftlichen Sätzen, sondern in dem wissenschaftlich gereinigten und erleuchteten frommen Bewusstseyn besteht." See an article by De Wette on a work of Olshausen in the first number, for 1834, of Ulmann and Umbreit's "Theologische Studien und Kritiken," p. 137.

torical proof to the few essential events, leaving the rest open to free inquiry. Especially let it renounce what has hitherto been customary, the poor and unscientific appeal to miraculous evidence. Its last office is

to make the might of the community of Christians again effective, and to plant faith in living power in the living life." *

The profession of belief in what one does not believe, on a subject so momentous as Christianity, if it do not benumb and gradually destroy the moral feelings, necessarily produces a bewilderment of mind, that renders all objects of religious faith indistinct and uncertain; that mistakes and misnames them, and gives occasion to dreamy speculations, that appear as much out of place amid the reasonings of clear-minded men, as would the spectres of a diseased imagination, were they to become visible in the living world around us. Thus it has been with the teachers of the new school of infidelity, that calls itself Christian. An intelligent believer can read but a little way in their writings, without finding that they do not mean what he means by Christianity; though

* "Die neuere rationale Theologie muss die Lösung der Angabe vollbringen, den Glauben in seiner Unabhängigkeit von metaphysischer und historischer Wissenschaft zur lebendigen Anerkennung zu bringen, und zwar in letzterer Hinsicht so, dass sie die Thatsachen der Geschicte Jesu, ohne sie ideal zu verflüchtigen, in ihrer idealen Bedeutung, als Träger von Glaubensideen, geltend macht; die Wahrheit des christlichen Glaubens nicht (etwa wie ein Recht) auf die gemeine, nackte, historische Wahrheit gründen, und den historischen Beweis auf die wenigen wesentlichen Thatsachen einschrankt, während sie die Untersuchung der übrigen frei gibt. Insbesondere verzichte sie auf die bisher gewöhnlicher so kleinliche und unwissenschaftliche Führung des Wunderbeweises. . . . . . Sie mache endlich wieder die Wichtigkeit der christlichen Gemeinshaft geltend, und pflanze den Glauben in lebendiger Kraft in das lebendige Leben.” Ib. pp. 151, 152.

it may be more difficult to ascertain what is intended, or with what pretence the word is used, as significant of their belief. Sometimes it may seem, that the writer receives the essential doctrines taught by Christ, though not upon his authority. Sometimes, that he regards. Christian morality and Christian feelings as right, and to be applauded. Sometimes he may appear to be affected by a single aspect of our faith; to view it, for example, as a system that enlarges men's charity, and vindicates the claims of the poor and oppressed, though this conception of it is perhaps oftener adopted for popular declamation, than with any operative sense of the obligations it imposes. And sometimes the notion seems to be, that the religious sentiment is natural and universal; that it has manifested itself under different forms, always, however, enveloped in mythology, fable, and superstition; that Christianity is the best form in which it has appeared, and that, therefore, it is to be respected; it being, at the same time, understood, that Christianity is no permanent thing, but must, with the advance of men, go on improving, and divesting itself more and more of its historical relations.

But, sometimes, we find a system drawn out by one of the professed Christians of whom I speak, and it may be worth while to look at a single example, one of the most elaborate, to see what resemblance it has to Christianity. It is just forty years since Schleiermacher, one of the most noted of the modern German school, published his work "On Religion." In a tone of pretension very foreign from the common character of intelligent men, he professes to have written it, not "through any determination of his judgment," but through "a divine call," a "heavenly impulse." It is a system of pantheism, wrought up in a highly declamatory style, in which

the language often soars beyond meaning, and in which there is scarcely an attempt at what may be called reasoning. Religion, according to him, is the sense of the union of the individual with the universe, with Nature, or, in the language of the sect, with the One and All. It is a feeling; it has nothing to do with belief or action; † it is unconnected with morality; their provinces are different; it is independent of the idea of a personal God. § The idea of a personal God is pure mythology. || And the belief and desire of personal immortality are "wholly irreligious," as being opposed to that which is the aim of religion, "the annihilation of one's own personality," "the living in the One and All," "the becoming, as far as possible, one with the universe." The writer whom I have quoted, partook of the sacrament on his death-bed, as a Christian. We may have a striking apprehension of the relation in which his system stands to Christianity, if we imagine the words of Jesus struck out from the Gospels, and his teachings substituted in their stead.

Schleiermacher, in his treatise, ** introduces a glowing eulogy on Spinoza, commencing with an apostrophe ; "Offer with me a lock of hair to the manes of the holy, the wronged Spinoza ;" and, in this eulogy, he pronounces him to have stood "alone and unapproached, because he was full of religion and of a holy spirit." About the same time, Paulus, another German theologian of about equal note, published the first edition of the collected works of Spinoza, in his preface to which he says, that "the superstitious and ridiculous horror of the atheism, so called, of Spinoza, was shaken off by his countrymen

* See particularly pp. 48, seqq., 4th ed. 1831. † pp. 53, 54. ‡ pp. 21, seqq. § pp. 110, seqq. || p. 59. ¶ pp. 118, seqq.

**

pp. 47, 48.

earlier than by the intelligent elsewhere." To deny the atheism of Spinoza, is merely to contend, that the word is not to be used in its common and established sense; and, such being the case, it may strike us as a marked expression of character, in a pretended Christian divine, to talk of a superstitious and ridiculous horror of atheism.

The disciples of the new school are in Germany called Rationalists or Naturalists. In the last edition of the "Conversations-Lexicon," a work extensively circulated in that country, there is an article on "Rationalism and Supernaturalism," in which the writer, after having asserted the victories of Rationalism over "the authority of revelation," and predicted its final complete triumph, thus concludes:

"But, notwithstanding that Rationalism has obtained a decided victory over Supernaturalism on scientific ground, yet, on the other hand, it wants much of having attained its full scientific developement. Especially, it is still deficient, though much has been done, in a wellgrounded psychological proof of the religious nature of the human spirit, and in clearly establishing the psychological powers on which religion in man is dependent."

It follows, that what religion is, and especially what that is for which the name of Christianity is assumed, must be wholly undefined.

The writer adds one more sentence: "The work of David Frederic Strauss, entitled 'The Life of Jesus critically treated,' (2 vols. 1835, 1836,) must give rise to a sharp contest between Rationalism and Supernaturalism, as it has already called forth many writings in opposition to it."

Few products of the new German theology have excited so much attention as this work of Strauss, the