othing to say to
'Ecclesiastical Christianity,' by which strange phrase is meant the
Christianity of the Apostles and Evangelists. He will not even hear of a
future life with its hopes and fears [27:1]. He will purge the Gospel of
all 'dogmas,' and will present it as an ethical system alone. The
extreme beauty, I might almost say the absolute perfection, of Christ's
moral teaching [27:2] he not only allows, but insists upon. 'Morality,'
he adds, 'was the essence of his system; theology was an after-thought.'
[27:3] And yet almost in the same breath he adopts as his 'two
fundamental principles, Love to God and love to man.' He commends a
'morality based upon the earnest and intelligent acceptance of Divine
Law, and perfect recognition of the brotherhood of man,' as 'the highest
conceivable by humanity.' [27:4] He speaks of the 'purity of heart which
alone "sees God.'" [27:5] He enforces the necessity of 'rising to higher
conceptions of an infinitely wise and beneficent Being ... whose laws of
wondrous comprehensiveness and perfection we ever perceive in operation
around us.' [28:1] All this is well said, but is it consistent? This
universal 'brotherhood of man,' what is it but a 'dogma' of the most
comprehensive application? This 'Love to God' springing from the
apprehension of a 'wondrous perfection,' and the recognition of an
'infinitely wise and beneficent Being,'--in short, this belief in a
Heavenly Father, which on any showing was the fundamental axiom of our
Lord's teaching, and which our author thus accepts as a cardinal article
in his own creed,--what is it but a theological proposition of the most
overwhelming import, before which all other 'dogmas' sink into
insignificance?

And what room, we are forced to ask, has he left for such a dogma? In
the first portion of the work our author has been careful not to define
his position. He has studiously avoided committing himself to a belief
in a universal Father or a moral Governor, or even in a Personal God. If
he had done so, he would have tied his hands at once. Very much of the
reasoning which he brings forward against the miraculous element in
Christianity in answer to Dr Mozley and Dean Mansel falls to the ground
when this proposition is assumed. His arguments prove nothing, because
they prove too much: for they are equally efficacious, or equally
inefficacious, against the doctrine of a Divine providence or of human
responsibility, as they are against the resur