rting
the gospel scheme, and falling short of the dogmatic teaching of the
revelation of God.

The causes and character of the philosophical movement of free thought in
the church will now be clear. We stated that there had been also a
critical tendency. A stricter analysis would probably subdivide the
critical movement into two; viz. a philosophical form of it which examines
facts,(986) and a literary one which examines documents.

This philosophical movement differs from the former, in that it neither
approaches the subject of inquiry from a lofty speculative point of view,
which is intended to furnish a solution of the mysteries of nature and
revelation; nor seeks by means of the intuitive reason to penetrate
beneath the doctrines of ancient teachers, and discover the absolute truth
after which they were striving. It rather disbelieves in the possibility
of the attainment of absolute truth by the human mind, and regards all
truth to be relative to the age in which it was expressed.(987) Like the
former movement it possesses a method; but one which is tentative and
critical, not speculative; empirical, not _a priori_; founding its
knowledge on history, not on philosophy. The mode of investigation is
probably indirectly a result of the teaching of Hegel, as that which was
before described was the result of the rival schools contemporary with
him; but it is the adoption of Hegel's method, and not of his philosophy.
In this respect it may be regarded as a critical tendency rather than a
philosophical; but one which is critical of the truths and religious facts
of revelation, and of its doctrinal teaching, and not merely of the
documents which record it.

Hence, when applied to revealed religion, in examining the teaching of the
scripture writers, it does not attempt, as the former school, to raise the
mind to a level with that of the writers, in order to apprehend the
eternal truth which was revealed alike to their intuition and to ours; but
it throws itself into the circumstances of their age, so as to understand
their meaning; and tests it by the altered conceptions which the progress
of ages has given to the world. Thus the inquirer not only asks what the
writers meant, but views the truth which they taught as relative to their
own age; and regards the office of criticism to be, to discriminate in it
that which is conceived to have been temporary and local, and that which
applies to all time. This school thus resemb