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ture stood far aloof from limiting mechanical notions of canonicity and inspiration. In his hands inspiration became something quite general and unimportant; indeed, scarcely more than mere authenticity; not a quality arbitrarily determining the worth of a given writing by its position in a certain class or catalogue, but rather itself a matter to be proved, and depending on the purity and originality of the witness borne in each special case to the redeeming principle primarily revealed to the "Christian consciousness." 1 Thus the "Christian consciousness" became amenable to individual consciousness; and Schleiermacher reverted from his theoretical profession of "absolute dependency" to the practical exercise of freedom. His contempt for the Old Testament is well known; and the liberality of his "consciousness," however professedly Christian, emboldened him to deal summarily with many portions of the New, including Ephesians with the Apocalypse and other books ranked among the "Antilegomena." His remarks on the Epistle to Timothy first drew attention to the apocryphal character of the pastoral letters; the Essay on Luke (1817) was an important contribution to the discovery of the true principle of the composition of the gospels; the paper on the testimony of Papias tended in the same direction; and it may be said generally that these three essays, though in many particulars inexact and incomplete, led the way to the certain establishment of three valuable inferences,-first, that pseudonymous writings exist in the New Testament; secondly, that the synoptical gospels were formed by a gradual aggregation of pre-existent materials; thirdly, that the oldest and

1 Schleiermacher sides neither with the theory of original perfection, nor simply and unreservedly with that of prospective perfectibility; he supposes a principle of perfection to have been miraculously inserted midway in the career of humanity, which later human effort is to develope and effectuate. This is evidently a concession to conventional supernaturalism entirely irreconcileable with his general view as to miracles.

2 Theol. Works, 2nd vol.

most authentic part of these materials are the didactic "sayings" or doctrinal core, around which the rest of the narrative is grouped. The very inconsequence of Schleiermacher, his hesitation between new things and old, his unwillingness to quit the central notions of Christian belief, combined with the diplomatic dexterity with which he contrived to conceal the ideas of modern philosophy under the vesture of ancient symbolism, temporarily drew within his influence a whole generation of theologians, many of whom were far more strictly orthodox than himself; and among his followers may be reckoned many of extreme liberal as well as of orthodox views; even Strauss, as having attended his critical lectures on the life of Jesus, delivered in 1831 in Berlin, may be regarded as his debtor. Of the others ranking as his disciples some leaned to moderation and hesitation, as Lücke, Ullman, Olshausen, Neander; others realised more effectually the inheritance of learned independence, such as Credner, Gieseler, Hase, Bleek, Thilo, De Wette. And while the sentimental and subjective tendencies of Schleiermacher degenerated in Neander into a subserviency to religious feeling, which, under the nickname of "pectoralismus or "pectoral theology," obscured the clear issues of learning, and lowered the tone of criticism to that of pious platitude, the more rationalising followers of the master,-Gieseler, Lücke, and especially De Wette, carried on with vigour and general impartiality the critical studies commenced by Eichhorn, though still not without certain hesitations and sentimental leanings in favour of customary symbolism. And indeed the whole of this theology, based in the sense of Schleiermacher on consciousness, assumed a consciousness more or less warped by the education of tradition; so that there was throughout a latent tendency to reaction, which, like the grain of millet unobserved by the transformed genius in the Arabian story, threatened to reverse at any moment the attitude of the parties, and

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to reinstate the Genie of unreason in the very crisis of the victory of its opposite.

The imperfect criticism denominated "abstract" by Baur added considerably in the hands of Schleiermacher and others to the mass of materials and surmises awaiting a final adjudication; its immediate issue was, however, little more than busy guesswork, striving to exhaust the range of possibility, and covering the whole field with a flimsy network of hypothesis. Freedom naturally engendered varieties of opinion, and indefinite conjectural activity was the order of the day during the period under consideration. Here we find Bertholdt confounding the Old Testament with the New, and carelessly closing with any random assumption, such as Aramaic originals of the Pauline Epistles, as well as a similar Aramaic original of the gospels, which, as he suggests, may very probably have been drawn up by the general apostolic body in Jerusalem; then there is Schott, never thoroughly consistent, save in repudiating unapostolical elements in the Canon; Schleiermacher, mingling free enquiry with pious prepossession, and insisting on the generally providential origin of the Canon, yet not in its character of a specific work, too many impure and human elements1 being obviously concerned in its composition; De Wette, too, similarly balanced between liberality and orthodoxy, and dodging the inevitable alternative, taking refuge when pressed on the sceptical side with the canonical authority which he had before treated as submissively awaiting the decision of criticism. Freedom, in short, was incomplete; everywhere it seemed clogged with hesitation and irresolution. Eichhorn's theory, making the three synoptical gospels derivative compositions, had done much to elucidate their origin and to place them in a new light; but its author, after re

1 Engendered by prejudice, failing memory, or love of the marvellous. But then Schleiermacher was indemnified for all these deficiencies in the synoptics by his implicit trust in the fourth gospel.

monstrating against reliance on tradition, proceeded to insist that these writings, in spite of the complicated circumstances of their origin, are nevertheless virtually the works of the apostolic authors to whom tradition ascribes them; that though Matthew's Gospel did not receive from the apostle its present extended shape, still it is rightly so named because founded on a gospel altered from the "original" gospel by Matthew. But how believe that apostolic eye-witnesses would have assumed so secondary a part as that of copying or modifying a set document; or that all the supposed intermediate changes and alterations could have occurred in the short time allowed by the hypothesis? And again, how, supposing the gospels in their present form to be really apostolical, are we to explain what became of them during the long interval preceding their apparent publication, or how, for more than a century, documents so important present a mere literary blank? In short, Eichhorn's hasty retreat to tradition savours more of prejudiced advocacy than judicial impartiality; and his apologetic plea is supported by the customary trivialities. Everywhere during this period we find perplexity and inconsequence; irresolute advance and busy insincerity; criticism painfully striving to appear orthodox, and orthodoxy unwittingly pioneering the path of criticism; each retracting with one hand concessions made with the other, and arriving at last at absolute arrest and self-refutation. Of this Credner's treatment of several New Testament books may be cited as an example. Here vacillation reaches its acme in absolute self-contradiction. Credner says that the fourth gospel is the only authentic one, the others having little comparative pretensions to reliance, and indeed containing much that is purely mythical. On the other hand, he tells us that the synoptics, though interpolated and corrupted, are based on original narratives of Matthew and Mark; while John must be admitted to have suppressed many miracles from

motives of policy, to have winked during his lifetime at the oriental passover observance which he knew all the while to be a mistake, and to have modified his narrative to suit his individual idea of Christ and his knowledge of Alexandrian philosophy! Out of the three pastoral epistles Credner contrives to carve three genuine and two spurious ones; so that the question as to genuineness is partly affirmed and partly denied; the letters are genuine and not genuine, and their impugners and defenders are both in the right! De Wette in the first edition of his "Einleitung," 1826, boldly took the side of free enquiry, arguing that true Christianity could never really suffer from the honest pursuit of truth. He thought himself far in advance of the far-fetched shifts of the "Urevangelium" when he proposed to substitute recollection in place of writing in order to account for the influence exerted by the several Evangelists over each other; but finding in the interval between his first and fifth editions that recollection was too precarious an expedient to account for the close verbal as well as material agreements in the gospels, he recurred to the idea of a direct use by one writer of the others. Here, however, he was again confronted by the difficulty which the recollection theory was devised to avoid, namely, the differences; and was thus driven back to the notion of intermediary links and collateral sources of information. He was at first inclined to admit that something must be allowed for free invention and literary individuality; but in the meantime the historical or "tendency theory" of the Tübingen School made its appearance; and De Wette, though himself doubting the genuineness of Matthew, denying Mark's connection with Peter, and designating the author of "Luke" as a "Paulinist, drew back in dismay from the precipice before him, censuring the proposed explanation from literary or party purpose as "endangering the credibility of the gospel history."

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