CANON MacCOLL'S RIPON LECTURES.* Tats is a very delightful book,

and very far indeed from one the interest of which will be confined chiefly to professional theologians. Canon MacColl is master of a very winning and easy style, has studied theology earnestly, read largely in general literature, conversed with the most thoughtful men of his own generation, and gathered up the results of all this reading and conversation in a mind that has no feeble grasp of its own. There is nothing technical or formal about these lectures, and yet there is nothing in them of the seeker after popularity,—nothing that derogates from the dignity, or that attenuates the mystery, of the great subject with which he deals. Instead of explaining away Christianity or Christian dogma, he makes us see throughout how much greater are the thoughts of God than the thoughts of man,— how, while they open and stimulate and elevate our thoughts, they remain mysteries when all has been done that can be done to remove the veil from the countenance of God, and yet mysteries which draw us upwards instead of down- wards, which prevent us from ignoring the many inexplicable elements in our own nature, and compel us to grow in the direction of what is most spiritual in us, instead of in the direction of what is most selfish.

But this is not a volume whose whole drift can possibly be explained and criticised in any newspaper. All we can hope for is to make it clear how much our readers will find in it of food for the intellect and the spirit. It is an awakening as well as an elevating book. Take, for example, this remark on the language in which St. Paul speaks of the "whole creation" as having groaned and travailed until the redemption, which the death of Christ upon the cross procured for man, was secured for sentient nature also :-

" We are now considering suffering as apart from sin—the existence of pain in the animal world. In this connection it is important to bear in mind the view which St. Paul gives us of the world in relation to the Mediator. In a passage already quoted, he represents the whole creation as sharing not only in man's misery, but likewise in his redemption. And in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Colossians he tells us that Christ's Atonement embraced the universe ; not only the human race, but the whole intelligent and sentient creation, visible and invisible. I understand this to mean that the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of God is the copula that bridges over the chasm which had divided the Creator from the creature, thus making them in a manner at one with each other, the creation through all its series becoming a partaker of the Divine Nature by means of the In- carnation. Now, if this be so, may not the moral discipline of man, his perfection through suffering, find its analogue in the animal creation At first, brute force seems to have it all its own way. It is not a survival of the fittest that we behold, but rather of the strongest, the most ruthless, the most cruel. But watt a little, and you shall see that even in the animal kingdom ' the meek,' in spite of all appearances, `shall inherit the earth.' It is in the nature of violence to defeat itself, partly by the recoil of its own force and partly by raising up against it forces that shall eventually destroy it. It is so among men. Power created and sustained by violence is doomed. The old dominions that relied en force alone were short-lived, chasing each other like breakers on a beach. It is so also in the animal world. The animals that rely on violence alone for their existence are disappearing, and the meek and useful are taking their place. Nor is this all. The very qualities which seemed to make the meek easy victims are precisely the qualities which have conduced to their survival- • Christianity in Relation to Science and Morals a Course of Lectures delivered in Ripm Cathedral on the Nicene Creed. By Malcolm MaeColl, /LA., Canon Residentiary of Ripon, and Rector of St. George's, City of London. London Rivingtons. social qualities which have been developed by the discipline of suffering, and have made them more than a match for their oppressors. Thus we see that even in the animal world the battle is not in the long-run to the swift and strong, but to the gentle and long-suffering. The meek shall inherit the earth ; the Cross shall overcome the sword. The law of vicarious sacrifice has thus its place in the lower creation, which exhibits its martyrs dying for the amelioration of the race. The suffering of the animal world may therefore be less purposeless and arbitrary and cruel than it seems at first sight." (pp. 33-35.) That means, we take it, that those creatures which suggest to us a shadowy anticipation of human meekness,—for true meekness. is surely a moral quality which cannot be conceived without a.

self-determined character and will,—are destined to survive those creatures which suggest to us a shadowy anticipation of human cruelty and revengefulness. But it is a great question_ whether the survival of the former can be called in any sense a blessing to them,—at least until their human masters have been redeemed from those moral deformities by which for the most part they are still disfigured. We have the greatest possible doubt,. whether "possessing the earth" in the sense in which camels, horses, and mules possess it,—their owners and taskmasters being what they still are,—is not a much harder fate than being.

driven off the earth like the beasts of prey. Still, we recognise, the originality and troth of Canon MacColl's principle. Only, to our mind, the blessing for the meeker tribes of creatures.

must tarry, till their drivers and owners have earned it for themselves. While we are on this subject, we may remark on_ another view which is contained in Canon MacColl's lectures in relation to the animal world, a view in favour of which_

he quotes the confirmatory opinion of Mr. Alfred Russell. Wallace, namely, that animal pain is more or less of an illusion, and not a reality (p. 36 and note), or at least that

the absence of the imagination and forecasting element which_ predominates in human pain, deprives animal pain of the keenest of its pangs. We sincerely hope that it may be so,.

but this seems to us a view of which it would be so exceedingly pleasant to be convinced, that men are far too likely to.

accept it on the most purely conjectural evidence. If we. are any judges at all of the signs of suffering in other creatures, it is impossible to doubt that the hare's shriek under terror of death is a shriek of anguish, and nothing can.

be less adequate than the grounds on which Canon MacColl's "pious opinion" is held. Would not an observer of a different species, not liable to hysterics, watching a hysteric fit in man,.

be very much inclined to find in hysteric laughter the evidence that there was positive enjoyment rather than_ suffering in this most painful condition P We confess that we feel the greatest dread of these highly a priori arguments

to prove that animal suffering is unreal. The only purpose for which they are likely to be used is a very dangerous one,.

—namely, to justify the inference that we need not seriously trouble ourselves about the apparent suffering to which we so often recklessly condemn the lower tribes of our fellow- creatures.

Amongst some of the finest passages in these thoughtful lectures is the following, on the gradual character of God's revelation to man, and especially on the impressive fact that the revelation of the moral law which governed the whole structure of Jewish society, so long preceded the origin of anything that could properly be called physical science :—

" I remarked a while ago on the fact that the great peril of polytheism made it necessary that the doctrine of the Trinity should be very gradually revealed. Did it ever strike you how wonderfully this process of gradual revelation characterises Ged's discipline of man adown the ages in secular as well as in religious. matters ? Look at the vast interval which separates the proclama- tion of the moral law from the modern discoveries of physical. science. Thus viewed, what a different meaning physical science• must have for those who suppose it to be the puzzling out of a riddle of which no human being has the key—to which, indeed, for aught we know, there may be no key—and for those who suppose physical science to be the knowledge of natural laws, which had been providentially withheld from us till the far more important knowledge of moral laws had been thoroughly impressed on us. If' the revelations of physical science had preceded those of moral law, what a pandemonium this world would have become. In the old days of Paganism, when the chronic relation of nation with nation, tribe with tribe, almost family with family, was a relation- of antagonism and self-seeking, the knowledge of the hidden forces of Nature, which man now enjoys, would have placed an instru- ment in man's power which would have tempted and enabled the race to destroy itself in internecine carnage. Therefore the moral law was proclaimed amidst the thunderings and lightnings of Sinai ages before man was allowed to learn the secret of the terrific forces which lay, like the spirits of Eastern fable, imprisoned around him. Man's conscience had to be educated, his affections

purified, his dominant selfishness to be subdued, before it could be safe to trust him with the knowledge and control of Nature's laboratory. Surely the remarkable fact that a law like the Deca- logue far preceded a sound knowledge of the laws and forces of Nature shows that Nature is under the government of a moral Being Who reveals her forces in the degree in which the know- ledge of them would be safe for man. It is in Christendom, where the law of the Cross on the whole prevails, that man has been allowed the knowledge of the potent forces of destruction which modern science has disclosed." (pp. 73-75.)

Yet, as an observer provided with acute senses and a keen judgment would have had in him all the elements fitting him for scientific discovery, one might reasonably have argued that scientific progress would be far advanced before the higher moral and social obligations had ever been recognised. Conscience is a much higher product of human nature than the power of observing and reasoning, and had not the development of the conscience been distinctly a work of revelation, the development of the scientific genius of man would surely have preceded instead of followed the develop- ment of his moral and social genius.

The lectures on the Trinity and the Incarnation are amongst the ablest and profoundest, and are as lucid as they are vigorous ; but we prefer in this journal to call attention to the striking lecture on the Resurrection. Take this, for example, on the mode of our Lord's resurrection as proclaimed by the Apostles to the world :— " And if they were not prepared for His Resurrection at all, still less were they prepared for the kind of resurrection which they immediately began to preach. It was unique. There was no precedent for it, nothing to suggest it, in their sacred writings or national traditions. The few examples of previous resurrec- tions in the Old Testament and in their own experience were simply returns to the previous life in all particulars, and they were, after all, only reprieves : the restored victims of death had to succumb again to the inevitable doom of mortal man. But Christ rose to die no more. Death hath no more dominion over Him' is the triumphant keynote of the Apostolic message to mankind. Nor was this all. His Body had undergone a mysterious change. It was no longer subject to the laws of matter. It appeared and disappeared suddenly, regardless of material barriers, and assumed different forms, not always recog- nisable. Whether the sceptic, then, regards our Lord's disciples as deliberate deceivers or as self-deceived, in either case it is against all reason and analogy that they should have invented an entirely novel and unheard-of resurrection for their Master. Their prime object was to make converts, and they would surely not have gone out of their way to make the cardinal article of the new religion harder of belief than it need have been." (pp. 205-206 )

To that we may add that " self-deceivers " especially,—and no one of the least importance now charges the Apostles with being deliberate deceivers,—would have been almost unable to deceive themselves by evidence so unlike that which men imagine under the influence of strong excitement. They might have imagined, perhaps, some vision of an indignant master denouncing Thomas for his hardness of belief ; but to have imagined a vision of one who actually invited the sceptic to thrust his hand into his side and be not faithless but believing, would have been contrary to all the instincts of an at once excited and self-distrusting community. Men who are trying very hard to convince themselves, are always exceedingly severe on those who decline to be convinced.

We have some difficulty in agreeing to Canon MacColl's principle that " nothing can be an article of faith now which was not an article of faith in the time of St. Paul." Surely it is not true that either the double nature in Christ's person, as Canon MacColl himself lucidly and subtly ex- pounds it, or the doctrine that baptism is a rite which may be administered adequately by one who is not even him- self a Christian, was explicitly and consciously held in the time of St. Paul. These are doctrines which it took time to elicit from the consciousness of the Church, and they may be even said to have been refined inferences from the thoughts and feelings and habits which the Church had cultivated.

We can hardly speak too highly of the admirable and lucid lecture on the Catholic Church. Indeed, the volume is so full of interesting and impressive passages, that we have found the greatest difficulty in selecting those which are most likely to attract our readers' attention. But this we can assure them, that there is not a dull page in the book, and that the theology it contains is, generally at least, as sound as the illustrations given of it are effective.