To the form of Christianity which we are considering, Mr. Newman further objects that the asserted perfectness in the character of Christ is wholly imaginary; and, if he were physically human, intrinsically incredible. As the first of these allegations is simply an expression of the author's personal distaste, and is not otherwise supported than by the statement that, for his part, he prefers Fletcher of Madeley (himself, we presume, a disciple), to Jesus of Nazareth, it admits of no reply beyond an expression of surprise at an estimate so singular. Even the vagaries of Rousseau led him to no such eccentricity of scepticism; and amid doubt of every authoritative claim, he closed the gospel with the acknowledgment that Jesus "lived and died like a God." Certainly, if Dr. Fletcher of Madeley does really appear to our author a perfect man, he must and will (whether the fact be recognised or not) so far assume in his mind the function of Christ, as to furnish the richest moral elements to his conception of God. But for ourselves we must confess a difficulty,-unfelt perhaps by Mr. Newman, but common to all dependent minds,in standing quite alone in admiration, and trusting our absolutely solitary perceptions, as we should those in which thousands of brethren joined with us, and declared the light of heavenly beauty to lie upon the very spot which it paints for us. The established power of a soul over multitudes of others,-its historic greatness,-its productiveness, through season after season of this world, in the fruits of sanctity, must inevitably enter as an element into our veneration: and scarcely do we dare, by free homage of the heart, to own the trace of God in another's life, till we find our comrades in sympathy with us. Till then, we feel as though we might be magnifying our idiosyncracies, and throwing over the universe the speck or tint of our own eye. Therefore it is that no private person, even though he more intensely stirs the distinctive affections of our narrow individuality, can ever come into just comparison with Christ, or become the object of that broad and trustful reverence which rather draws the soul out of itself, than drives it more closely inward. We know there must be a limit to this dependence; and we honour from our hearts those who, from clearness of eye and courage of soul, can be first disciples of any prophet of God. But

even they do not contemplate remaining alone; they live on the concurrence of the future, though not of the present and the past, and attest the ideal need of sympathy to faith. Between the boldness of him who interprets the future exclusively by himself, and the dependent temper of those who correct and confirm themselves by reference to the past, we will not attempt to adjust the balance. But Fletcher of Madeley does not tempt us to sever ourselves from the common consciousness of Christendom. Mr. Newman, in treating of this topic, advances a logical criticism to which we can by no means subscribe :

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"It is not fair to ask (as some whom I exceedingly respect do ask), that those who do not admit Jesus to be faultless and the very image of God, will specify and establish his faults. This is to demand that we will presume him to be perfect, until we find him to be imperfect. Such a presumption is natural with those who accept him as an angelic being; absurd in one who regards him as a genuine man, with no preternatural origin and power. If by sensible and physical proof the orthodox can show that he is God incarnate, it will be reasonable to assume that he is a perfect specimen of moral excellence, and after this it will be difficult to criticize. But when sensible proof of his immaculate conception and of his Godhead is allowed not to exist, and maintained to be abstractedly impossible, I have no words to express my wonder at that logic, which starts by acknowledging and establishing his simple manhood, proceeds to presume his absolute moral perfection, throws on others the task of disproving the presumption, and regards their silence as a verification that he is God manifest in the flesh."-P. 211.

In spite of these startling expressions of wonder, we must persist in presuming Jesus to be perfect, till shown to be imperfect. We derive our estimate of him wholly from the picture presented in the gospels, purified certainly by some critical clearances, defensible by canons of internal evidence, and so long as this picture presents no moral imperfections, we must decline supplying them out of the resources of fancy. In presuming Christ to be perfect, we simply refuse to suppose a drawback on what we see from what we do not see, and insist on forming our judgment from the known, without arbitrary modification from the unknown. No doubt Jesus, as a being open to temptation, was intrinsically capable of sin but this, as a

set-off against the positive evidence of holiness, no more proves actual imperfection, than the mere capacity for goodness in the wicked, proves their actual perfection. How can character ever be estimated but by the phenomena through which it expresses itself in the life? and how can these be set aside by abstract considerations respecting the rank and parentage of the moral agent? According to our author, we are to distrust our own moral perceptions, and believe apparent beauty to be real deformity, until a physical proof of Godhead is superadded: and we are, in this instance, to contradict his own rule, that spiritual discernment requires no voucher from external miracle. We are at a loss to conceive in what way a superhuman physical nature could tend in the least degree to render moral perfection more credible. The classifications of Natural History are not to be obtruded upon Religion; and gradations of excellence to be merged in distinctions of Species. Christ had the liability to sin, not because he was human, but because he was free; and whatever presumption of imperfection arises hence, would have arisen no less, had he been an angel of the highest rank. All souls are of one species: or rather, are lifted above the level where diversity of species prevails ;_so as to range not with Nature but with God. The same Laws, the same Love, the same Will, the same Worship, pervade them all, and make them of one clan: nor is there any portion of the series whence a perfect sanctity might not be evolved with equal possibility and with similar result. It is strange that Mr. Newman should stipulate for the immaculate conception, as a condition of believing any exalted character in Christ; and should forget that the gospel which makes him diviner than all the rest (that of John), knows nothing of the miraculous birth, and teaches, apart from all physical conditions, the very doctrine now the object of remark. That the apostle Paul never dwelt on the earthly life of Christ; that no relics, no holy coats, and other results of tender and human affection for an historical personage, appeared in the first age, proves no more than that the expectation of the near Advent withdrew the mind of the early Church from the Past to the Future, and kindled a faith too dazzling for quiet retrospection. The personal object however, though placed in

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the imaginary scene before, instead of among the realities behind, was still the same. And as soon as the anticipation of his re-appearance faded away, the eye of the Church, unable to quit the image, changed its direction, and sought him where alone he was to be found, in the fields of Palestine and the courts of Jerusalem; and thenceforth enthusiastic hope was replaced by historic reverence. Indeed the stories of the Birth and Infancy with which two of the Gospels open, show that the retrospective attitude of faith had already been assumed. It is vain to quote Paul against this view, and in favour of an estimate which reduces the earthly life of Jesus to common-place." If to him the Christ above was the "Ideal of glorified human nature,"-heavenly before his birth, heavenly after his death-how, in the intermediate ministry on earth, could Paul, like Mr. Newman, suppose him quite common and undivine? If the history of that ministry failed to support the impression of the Pauline ideal, how could the Apostle's theory escape the most formidable difficulties? It was the same Jesus that had presented himself in both spheres: and the unity of the character must be preserved by those whose veneration is directed towards him in either. Paul's imagination descended from Christ in heaven to Christ on earth; ours ascends from Christ on earth to Christ in heaven; and ends with enthroning him where Paul first knew him. Whichever path of transition be taken, the moral conception of the Person must be the same; having on him the traces of that ideal perfectness in the faith of which both theories terminate. The acceptance of Christ, therefore, as the moral image of God, appears to us to be strictly involved in the Pauline Gospel, and to be quite as compatible with a human as with an angelic rank.

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Mr. Newman objects in conclusion against this version of Christianity, that it attempts to combine incompatible conditions, to save free Criticism without sacrificing Authority and that there is "something intensely absurd in accepting Jesus as the Messiah, and refusing to acknowledge him as the authoritative teacher, to whose wisdom we must pay perpetual, unlimited, unhesitating homage" —(p. 212). Now we fully concur with our author in rejecting all notion of an absolute oracle, to whose dicta

we are submissively to bow: nor do we know of any general proposition which we should think it right to accept merely on the word of Jesus. We further allow, that this withdrawal from him of the oracular function probably is at variance with the Jewish conception of Messiah's office. But we deny that it is at variance with the Christian conception of a moral type of Divine Perfectness. The most faultless administration of life, the most saintly communion with God, the divinest symmetry of soul, may surely co-exist with limited knowledge: and sinlessness of Conscience does not require Omniscience in the Understanding. To be no great scholar in Chaldee, and ill-read in the Court-annals of the Seleucidæ, and consequently make mistakes about the book of Daniel, and not see what is invisible in the destinies of the Roman empire;- how does this hinder the exercise of pure affection and the life of holy faithfulness? Goodness is qualitative; knowledge is quantitative: and throughout every variety in the quantity, immaculateness is possible in the quality. In the power natural to the higher soul over the lower, in the silent appeal which the beauty of its holiness makes to the struggling and feeble will, there is indeed an exercise of authority, and of the only kind that is ultimately possible: but it involves no intellectual dictation, and is indeed consistent with none: it gives not a true proposition to our assent, but a divine object to our perception: and while the moral and spiritual intuition are reverently engaged upon the person, leaves the logical understanding free play among all ideas. Mr. Newman is fond of drawing the distinction between the spiritual and the intellectual in the case of ordinary men. No one demonstrates more convincingly the independence of religious insight on all conclusions of the scientific judgment and states of objective knowledge; protests more strongly against every demand of right belief in matters external as a test of nearness to God; or better shows the open communion of the Father of lights with his children in proportion to their purity of heart, irrespective of the culture and correctness of the mind. Why is this to be true of the disciples, and false of the Master? With what consistency is the Spirit of God made indifferent to intellectual conditions in the one case, yet tested by infallibility in the