BOOKS.
MR. MAURICE'S NEW SERMONS.*
THERE are two charges whiCh have been habitually made and recently repeated in high quarters against the author of this book, which must have no doubt, as most very wide-spread im- pressions have, some sort of reason for them, even if a bad one,— first that lie is an enigmatic teacher,—it was at his writings that Mr. Disraeli is supposed to have pointed in his recent Oxford speech when he said "Chaos is come again,"—and next that he sacri- fices the severity of Christian truth to his own amiable feelings. Perhaps there is nothing in the fact that this impression is gene- rally made upon those who only dip into Mr. Maurice's writings, really inconsistent with the different impression upon others who, like the present reviewer, have studied them earnestly for many years—that his expositions of revelation are considerably more literal, and have a far keener and severer edge for the conscience of the day, than those of the strictly orthodox theologians with whom he is contrasted. We have been much struck with these characteristics in reading the volume before us, which seems to us to overflow with his characteristic power, and also with that peculiar manner which makes him seem to men who live in a different world of thought, and who, like Mr. Disraeli, probably take an interest in revelation at all chiefly because respect for its ideas has a practical importance in opening the -Oyster of life,—to be a preacher of enigmas. For our parts, we should account for the difficulty which is so frequently felt in understanding one whose preaching comes nearer to that of the Bible itself than any other English divine, precisely by the extraordinary power exercised over Mr. Maurice's mind by the very words of the Bible. He sees the thoughts and sees the visions it contains without that indirect reference to modern ideas and modes of speech which most readers now expect, and the effect of which is to produce a sort of compromise between the spiritual atmosphere of the Biblical writers and the secular atmosphere of our own. In short, he preaches in a plane above that of the historical and scientific difficulties with -which men's minds are now filled, and in a key too severe for comfortable men to understand without an effort. If we were to get hold of a Hebrew prophet or a Christian apostle now,—even a St. John, to say nothing of a St. Paul,— there can be no sort of question but that everybody would think he was the most unsatisfactory and ambiguous of preachers, while epigrammatic writers would say that in his addresses "chaos had come again." Still it is a defect that Mr. Maurice sympathizes so little with the modern attitude of mind, though it is very likely a defect absolutely involved in his greatest powers. He oftens needs a translator of his appeal to then's spirits into the language of those modern intellectual hesitations in which we think and converse. But this is a defect which he shares with the writers whom he interprets, to whom our critical and scientific difficulties and our secular comfortableness of mind were an unknown world. Mr. Maurice's criticisms of the Bible are criticisms conceived in the spirit of the Bible, and not in the spirit of modern perplexities, which he only sees dimly swaying in the plane beneath him. What the people who com- plain of him really miss in him is the want, which the ordinary orthodox critics aim at applying, of a recast of the Bible which shall suit our ordinary habits of mind, fall hit° such a scheme as our systematic thinkers can make out, and enable us to embrace without altering the principles of our every-day morality. This is not our complaint, for no man, we believe, could teach us to understand the Bible who should adapt the dialect, we had almost said the slang, of secular philosophy to the revelations of the Old and New Testament. But we cannot help often regret- ting that Mr. Maurice so often passes clean over the difficulties which torment the most honest minds of the present day, either because they do not affect his own mind at all, or because he believes the only way to answer them is to override them by the weight of greater spiritual evidence.
Before we refer to the finer criticisms which give so deep an interest to these lectures, let us attempt to make Mr. Maurice understand how the very literalness of his readings of the Bible and the absence of criticism in the modern and lower sense of that term, seem to us to diminish the power of his sermons. Mr. Maurice says in his preface most truly that unless the Word of God means something more than the Bible, unless it is what St. John tells us it is, an eternal Word in constant communion
* The Gospel of the Kingdom of God. A. Course of Lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke. By F. D. Maurice, Ineumbent of Bt. Peter, Yore West. Loudon and Cambrid3e Macmillan and Co. with the hearts of men, no amount of external evidence will ever make a mere book which professes to contain a record of reve- lation of much weight to man. The Bible derives all its value from the living Word of whom it tells us something fresh, and who in His turn authenticates that revelation in the heart of man. This we hold to be profoundly true, nor do we find any difficulty in ac- cepting Mr. Maurice's assertion in general that" if the Gospel is a divine message to mankind, it cannot depend for the proof of its veracity, for its influence over men, upon any theories about the composition of the books which contain it, upon any arguments about their authenticity or inspiration, upon any definitions which we can give of the words Authenticity and Inspiration. A Gospel to the poor, a Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven, never did make its way, never could make its way, to the hearts, consciences, and reasons of those for whom it was intended by any such process." No doubt this is so to a great 'degree. It is the moral and spiritual testimony in men's hearts to the whole chain of reve- lation which carries it home to those who are absolutely in- capable of discussing questions as to the authorship of this book, or the discrepancies between two narratives of the same event, or the variety of language, tone, and drift given by two Evangelists to the same discourse, or the correctness of the Hebrew philosophy attributing a specific disease to a specific calm. But granting this,—accepting the truths of God's con- stant government, of His revealed righteousness, of His com- munion with man, of His revelation through the Hebrew prophets, and of the Incarnation of His Son, as proved by the echo which the conscience or spirit of man gives to the long chain of acts and words in which these truths are proclaimed, this independence of external historical evidence and scientific criticism cannot possibly extend to the details of history. If one and the same narrative seems to involve historical con- tradictions,—or even great inconsistencies not absolutely con- tradictions,—we cannot say that its spiritual power should override for us the weight of those contradictions or inconsistencies. Its spiritual power may be, and probably is, due to sources wholly independent of historical accuracy. Yet Mr. Maurice never seems to feel the weight attaching to such difficulties. Take the strong discrepancies between St. Matthew's and St. Luke's account of the birth and infancy of our Lord,—discrepancies which are by no means reconciled, but increased, by the complete silence of the other two Evangelists as to any of the facts named. Does Mr. Maurice wish us to say to ourselves, "When I read this ac- count of the birth of our Lord my conscience tells me that the fart was precisely as narrated, without troubling myself with any historical investigation of the discrepancies ?" Because if he does mean this, we naturally ask ourselves which narrative ?- the narrative which makes Bethlehem (or at least not Nazareth) the previous residence of our Lord's parents and Nazareth a place of temporary refuge after the flight into Egypt, or the narrative which makes Nazareth their previous residence and knows nothing of the flight into Egypt at all ? Such discrepancies cannot but make thinking men believe that this part of the story was very imperfectly known to the writers, and directly this is admitted we cannot help say- ing that the facts (at least so far as they are misnarrated by either or both Evangelists) cannot be part of the divine message to us, since nothing erroneous can be divine. And to men in such a condition of thought Mr. Maurice's very beautiful sermons on the assumption that all these facts are truly narrated, without any attempt to sift the evidence, must lose much of their force. Historical error or insoluble discrepancy between two accounts is at least, we take- it, a sure negative test disproving the divine accuracy of one at least of the histories. But Mr. Maurice takes no account of this negative test, and we doubt whether he believes in it. Or again, take the Sermon on the Mount as reported by St. Matthew and St. Luke, with very considerable variations both of language and moral drift. Mr. Maurice notices the differences, and ap- parently believes that both versions were really given by our Lord,—deducing some very fine Christian teaching from St. Luke's—which seems to us the less consistent and the less com- plete of the two, if they are really two accounts of the same sermon. But he does not give us any reason for his apparent belief that long discourses, travelling in a direction so nearly parallel, marked by so much significant difference amid so much verbal sameness, are accounts of different discourses, and not different accounts of the same. Here, again, it is surely no unreasonable criticism to say, "I believe one of these discourses, or one not precisely the same as either, but which is the true original of each, to have been de- livered by our Lord, but I cannot think that where both versicas fail to have an equal power over my conscience I am bound to seek about until I find a meaning equally divine for each alike.". Again, to take a case of modern scientific per- plexities, Mr. Maurice notices and, as we understand him, accepts the demoniacal origin of epilepsy and other diseases as assumed - by the Evangelists. He should, we think, have tried to Answer the difficulties which thinking men cannot but feel on the sub- ject. Did not the Evangelists limit that assumption, chiefly to diseases directly and terribly affecting the mind, not even in- cluding fevers which do affect the mind in the delirious stages? But do not modern medicines and other physical remedies often prove as effective in diseases of the brain which affect the mind as in diseases which do not? How, then, can we suppose that a disease like epilepsy, which is treated and frequently cured by zinc or nitrate of silver, is more due to the influence of a spirit of evil' than the delirium of fever which is treated and cured by nitre or quinine? If the Evangelists had known what we know, would they not either have attributed all physical diseases directly to evil spiritual influences, or none ? We put these diffi- culties in no spirit of cavilling, but because Mr. Maurice seems to us to pass too high over the lower perplexities which harass thinking men in reading their Bibles and his lectures. There can be .no doubt that the solution of these difficulties would not cause any one to believe who had not the Spiritual evidence for revelation in his heart. But there can also be no doubt that this class of difficulties does withhold many who really have that evi- dence from yielding to it. They say, "How can we, if we wish ever so much, believe on high questions men who have made blunders on lower and simpler matters?" It would be some- thing if the errors,—so far as there are errors in Scripture on these subjects,—were simply admitted ; for then we should be more at ease to consider the higher evidence than we can be while in doubt how far our teachers admit or deny errors that we think we see. It would be something, too, even if our teachers would simply tell us, without asking any authority for their opinion, what their view is, or how far they are really themselves in doubt. We suspect that Mr. Maurice holds much more with the ancient, than the modern and scientific, view of these matters. But even then why not say, "I feel as much difficulty as any one in reconciling these historical inconsistencies, and also in bringing modern scientific discovery into harmony with the old spiritual theory of certain exceptional diseases, but I cannot help feeling the spiritual evidence too strong for me in both cases ?" If he were to say so much even, there would be none of that perplexed questioning as to his mode of conceiving these things, which distracts our attention from the noblest passages of his sermons.
We have devoted far more space than we wish to a compara- tively slight characteristic of Mr. Maurice's book, one, indeed, which derives-the great importance it has for us entirely from the great power and depth of the substantive part. If we did not feel his teaching so true, and his interpretation of the higher side of Revelation so luminous, it would matter little whether he put his own thought in clear relation to the lower intellectual difficulties of the day or not. The great power of this volume,—as of most of his volumes,—but of this more than most, is the vividness with which it constantly keeps before the reader's mind the truth that every act and saying of our Lord's, as of His prophets and apostles, is intended to act upon human nature not by admonitions, not didactically, but byunveiling to them the true character of God and the actual laws of His spiritual world. Instead of mere " regu- lative " truths such as Mr. Manse! discovers in Revelation, Mr. Maurice teaches us to find not only the key to its lessons, but the whole spiritual power of those lessons over the heart of man, in the fact that Revelation enables us to share the very life of Goa by disclosing to us the deepest principles of His own nature. The power of this method, which in our time Mr. Maurice alone has adequately applied, in interpreting Scripture can only be understood by those who have applied it practically to many books of the Bible. In fact it constantly illuminates con- texts that seemed before fragmentary and utterly disconnected, and turns a chapter of divine enigmas into a rounded and perfect illustration of spiritual laws. Its power over the conscience is still greater than its power as a method of interpretation. Moral law, that is, what the Germans call the mere "categorical imperative," is, by itself, as St. Paul says, a mere schoolmaster to bring_ us to ask for the strength to obey. But law which is part of the very spirit of God and of His Son, by whom it was not only obeyed but lived, and which is inseparable from thodivine life of which it marks the features, gives us strength in the very act of mani- festing itself to our consciences. If we can see its claim on us
at all we know that we see also the power on which we can fall back. The light and the strength are one. Wo have only to surrender ourselves to the laws of the divine World as we do to the laws of the physical universe. The spiritual nature is, then, no less mighty than the physical. We have only to avail ourselves' of its creative powers, not to enhance them.
In this book Mr. Maurice carries out his usdal method in in- terpreting the Gospel of Luke.. He finds the central idea in it to be the assertion of the actual kingship of the Son of God over the spirits of men. For example, he takes the Temptation in the closest connection with the declaration at the Baptism of Christ's divine Sonship, and regards all the individual temptations as those which would press upon a mind exalted by the certainty of God's perfect love and the prospect of a kingdom over men. "If thou be the Son of God," and the visions of power that supposition raises, is the key to the Temptation,—and the antidote is that perfectly filial spirit, which because it rejects all self-exaltation is alone fit to rule Again, the so-called Sermon on the Mount' is not so much a system of human duty, as a disclosure of the divine laws. Its most paradoxical parts, such as the apparent non-resistance principles, are not so much admonitions as expositions of the secret of divine victory over human sin : " Bless them that curse you, do good unto them that despitefully use you ; and unto him that smiteth thee on the right cheek 'offer also the other love your enemies, and do good and lend, hoping for nothing again,
and ye shall be children of the highest; for He is kind unto the unthankful and the evil. &c." This is not meant, primarily, says Mr. Maurice, to be a rule for external conduct, but as showing us how God Himself conquers our evil ; showing us the spiritual principle of God's treatment of evil. When Ho is rejected, He repeats His offers of love ; when prophet after prophet is stoned, He sends His Son ; in other words, Ho con- quers by sacrifice. And whatever the external law may be, and the necessary limits of civil government,—the spiritual essence of all true conquest of evil, wherever attempted, must be the same, that absolute self-sacrifice which overcomes evil with good.
Perhaps the most striking illustration of the power of the principle which Mr. Maurice carries into his subject to connect together apparently disconnected parables and sayings of our Lord, is in the series of parables and discourses recorded by St.
Luke in the thirteenth to the sixteenth chapters, all of which be takes as teaching primarily the approaching dismissal of the Jewish
nation from the trust they had latterly so much abused, the trait of spreading God's teaching to others. The parable of the Unjust Steward, of Dives and Lazarus, of the Prodigal Son, and the drift of all the interspersed discourses, are shown to be one great chain of meditation on the coming resumption for the benefit of the whole human race of the stewardship in which the Jews had failed simply because they did not care to share the pusposes of God while proclaiming His power. It is in the application of this thought,—the trial of the Jewish mind by the actual laws of the Kingdom of God,—that Mr. Maurice's deep insight tells. We know
of no sermon on that most common of all subjects, the parable of the Prodigal Son, which illustrates its meaning with anything like the power and beauty of the following passage :—
"The older son is in the field. He hears music and dancing. He asks what it means. He is told that his brother is come, and that his father has killed for hint the fatted calf. And he was angry, and would not go in ; therefore came his father out, and entreated km. And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment ; and yet thou never gayest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: but as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.' How plausible this reasoning sounds ! How perfectly invincible it must have seemed to this dutiful son! And yet, if we examine it, what does it come to but this ? I have been obedient., and I ought to be paid for my obedience. My brother has been disobedient. Why art thou glad that he has ceased to be disobedient? I see no cause for satisfaction in that. It causes me no delight.' Hero is that flagrant opposition between the Divine purpose and the purpose of those who had been called to be the ministers of His will and purpose, which our Lord has been detecting in all His dealings with the scribes and Pharisees. The father's joy is in the restoration of the lost. Yon have no such joy. You think the removal of their curse, of their sin, is an injury to you.' But is this consistent with the words, 'Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I .have is thine Thoroughly consistent. For what do those words signify but this ?—'Son, I have called thee to know my goodness and loving-kindness. I have called thee to be a dispenser of that knowledge to the children of men. I can give thee no greater treasure. I can make thee partaker of no higher bliss than my own. Thou wilt not have that ? Thou wishest for another kind of joy than mine? Well, if thou choosest it thou must have it. Thou must try what that selfish joy is worth ; whether it satisfies thee bettor than the husks which the swine oat have satisfied thy brother. But before thou formest that terrible resolution I will come out and entreat thee. I will urge thee to partake of my festival. I will vindicate thy right to it. I will conjure thee to enter into thy Father's blessedness. Thou dost enter it when thou ownest the outcast for thy brother, when thou makest merry and art glad because he was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.' So pleaded the Eternal Father by the mouth of Jesus with His Jewish people."
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