our arms every where to receive, to embrace, religious character are altogether number. and to hold fast that which is positively less. What a fine exercise here to dispose good. No one indeed is called upon to en- all this into harmony for a soul vast enough ter at all upon this region of many strange to embrace its whole extent, and wise enough voices. Without a cool, clear head, and an to separate, with careful hand, the acccesopen sympathising heart, it is indeed much sary every where from the essential, the better for the British Christian to read his ephemeral from the eternal! But where Bible quietly at home, and do as many good is the man, we ask again, equal to the task? deeds as he can, before the roll of his short Shall a Churchman do the work? His eye earthly existence be closed. But if a man is not in the centre, and it is to be feared he will go as a spy into the land of the Canaan- will look at the whole matter through Episites, Canaanites though they be, he must copalian or Presbyterian spectacles; and bring back a true report, both of the land those will not only lend a false colouring, and of them that dwell therein. He must but marvellously distort the shapes of things. not only tell us that there are mighty men Shall a philosopher do the work? There there, sons of Anak, but he must also tell are very few men who deserve the name us that it is a land flowing with milk and in this island; and the chance is, that he honey. If a man will speak upon the sub- wants warm religious sympathy, and that ject of German theology, he must speak in his philosophy is too mechanical for the such a fashion that men may clearly per- theme. Shall a man of science do it? He ceive that he is in honest, reverent earnest is too dry, too square, too material. Shall, bound by a solemn oath to do justice to his in fine, the literary man do it? Here there theme: not conceiving the theme to exist might be some hope; but he is, for the most for the sake of exalting his folly, but him- part, too sparkling and too superficial to be self, for the sake of exalting the wisdom of a fit questioner of the oracle of Trophonius; the theme. Now with one solitary, and besides, his publisher tells him that nothing that nascent rather than full-grown excep- but an amusing novel, in three volumes, tion, (we mean Mr. Pusey,) there has as will sell. And yet we think that there is yet been no attempt made amongst us ra- one literary man in this country who could tionally, quietly, philosophically, and with do this, and might do it well, if he would a deep, reverent, all-embracing spirit of love, discard some extravagances. We mean to develope the Fate of Christian faith and Carlyle, for Coleridge is dead. feeling and life in Germany. It will not The views which we have thus tentativedoto marshal forth a long array of neologic ly, as it were, thrown out on the subject of heresies, piercing with a thousand wounds German Christianity, have been suggested (Falstaff-like) the body of a warrior who is by the republication of Stilling's works in already dead, or only half alive. This style the uniform edition whose title we have preof criticism, which raises up the mummies fixed. The career of this singular individual of dead Titans, that the learned gentleman offers to the European reader something of may display his wonderful prowess in cut a psychological, much of a religious, very ting off all their heads at one blow, is a little of a literary interest. What Stilling poor affair-very, very negative, as Göthe wrote did indeed, amid the barrenness of the would have phrased it. All criticism that last century, succeed in vindicating for itdoes not go forth from a creative re-concep. self no disreputable position in the elegant tion and reorganization of the thing criti- literature of the day. But much that the cised, (to which a principle of sympathetic Germans admired in those days of their vitality in the critic belongs,) is worse than first awakening from a long lethargy, they nothing and vainly. It is an ill-natured, or have now discovered to be very childish at least an idle bird, picking at berries which and very weak, the mere froth and drivel it cannot eat. But where is the man to be of a fermenting imagination, indicative of found within the wooden walls of these three motion and incipient life, but without stable kingdoms who shall gird his loins worthily organization, without the ripeness of health to the task of writing such a critical history -to a sound English taste altogether unof the Christian religion in Germany? A palatable. Stilling, however, at no time, work like this would exhaust every possible even when his literary reputation stood cycle, and exhibit every possible phasis of highest in Germany, aspired to walk forth religious insight of which the human intel- before the public in the harlequin glitter lect may reasonably be supposed capable. of a great wit and a clever writer. His The diversity of religious opinions in that wine was Muttergottesmilch and Lachrymæ country is greater than any thing that has Christi, not champagne. To speak the ever been exhibited in the history of man- truth, God never gave this pious tailor any kind; the different shades and variances off of those talents that are necessary to pro VOL. XXI. 19 duce the intellectual coruscations that de- the understanding, was, from the beginning light us in the epiphany of eminent literary to the end of his long religious career, characters. But He gave him something moved only by a deep inward emotional equally good, perhaps better; a deep under- necessity; happy, indeed, on all occasions, current of pure Christian emotion, flowing to find a reconciliation with the argument. perennially through the holy caves of most ative intellect, but living and growing by reverent thought. Perhaps, indeed, the the law only of its own organization. To French have perverted our notions with him religion, pure Christian emotion, was regard to the true nature of genius; for the atmosphere of his spiritual existence.with them a "bel esprit " has always been To him Christian piety was an inward exa man of quick wit and lively fancy. With perienced fact, more certain than any matter this national notion in his head, the Abbê of outward occurrence that was ever settled doubtless asked the celebrated question, by the evidence of the most unexceptionable -"Est agréé un Allemagne peut avoir witnesses. To him the Christian revelation d'esprit ?" and notwithstanding all that has was a sun, to which, by an instinct like that been advanced to the contrary, we think he of the sun-flower, his spirit unfailingly turnwas entitled to receive the answer he ex- ed. He fulfilled the celebrated condition pected. The Germans have no claim to of Hume, being conscious in his own peresprit, as the French understand it; (neither son of an eternal miracle. To such a man had the Greeks, for what we call a man of the most magniloquent wisdom of the neologenius, they, by a much more sensible gists was but the noisy prate of ignorant phrase, called ang supus, a man of a sound and presumptuous boys. healthy nature;) but the Germans have a What Stilling opposed to the doctrines of national claim to a talent, not perhaps so the theologists we shall see anon more par entertaining, but more loveable than esprit, ticularly. In the first place, however, it we mean Gemüth, the poetry of quiet, pure may be interesting to hear from his own emotion. When this capacity is developed mouth a description of his adversaries, overin a state of high and energetic potency, we charged of course in some points, as these see no reason why it should not be entitled, things will always be; but true in the gen. as much as the fervid brilliancy of wit, to eral character, and drawn from the life.the designation of genius; and if so, then The following passage is a description of Stilling is certainly a moral and a religious his early theological studies, by the princ genius of a high order; for in no man, per- pal interlocutor in one of Stilling's Chrishaps, was Christian emotion ever developed tian Dialogues of the Dead.* in a state more pure, more delicate, and more sensitive. In the simple and natural outpouring of this emotion consists his great and original merit as a writer. Pious edification, not literary amusement, was his aim. He had no time, no inclination, to wander into the land of romance, seeking combats with imaginary monsters. The one, living, many headed hydra of neology seemed too strong for the continued exertions of a man whom Nature had never moulded for a Hercules. and "I am the son of a preacher in Germany. My father was a good orthodox man, who believed all that was in the Bible and in the symbolical books, and wished me to believe the same. I followed his wish faithfully, did every thing that he asked me to do, and be lieved everything without any rational ground of conviction. This unanimity of sentiment, however, lasted only till I came to the University; for I also was destined for the church, and my mother was looking anxiously for the day when she should see me, a learned theologian and a pious Christian, preach my first sermon from my father's pul pit. To the University therefore I went, with the full expectation of learning a science, and returning with such a panoply of unanswerable evidences of Christianity as would stop the mouth of every gainsayer. I hoped no longer to be a child, but a strong man in the faith. Vain hope! The doctors who publicly expounded the divine law, seemed secretly to be giving themselves every possible trouble to excite in my mind suspicions against the Bible. The Old Testament consisted of mere popular legends of the Jews, silly fables, and uncertain traditions: Moses was a wise man certainly, and a great law. Scenen aus dem Geister-Reiche. Werke, The position of Stilling, in reference to neology, was very simple. He believed with his heart what Baludt and Lemler denied, or attempted to deny, with their head. Hamann and Herder and Richter, Jacobi the Faith-philosopher, and many other profound thinkers and noble-minded men, took up the same position: yea, even the Professor of the Categories, after pulling down the ancient Egyptian architecture of ontology, and cosmology, and theology, reserved to himself the right to charm up a shape of divinity from the deep ethic substratum of the soul. But these men worked conscious ly and systematically. Stilling, while he seemed to be busy with an architecture of ii. p. 55. giver, but also a great cheat, at least, to a tradictory evidence of reality, that whatsosimple man it seemed almost impossible to ever I had deemed false is true, and all that reconcile his doings with common honesty. I deemed true is a lie!".... And as to the Supreme Being, directly, at all In another passage the new opinions are events, God had nothing to do with the matter. All this they taught, not indeed totidem described more particularly in reference to verbis, but by such clear implication, that a their historical genesis from France. We man must have been stultissimo stultior not say historical, for we have already seen, that to perceive how the wind was blowing. The the inward germ of neology lay much deepprophetic books were called Hebrew poems, er. France was merely the outward occain which some past events were prophesied,sion. in an elevated style, as future; and not a few things, at first but dimly imagined in the King Louis XIV. of France, after him the mind of the bard, afterwards either actually Duke of Orleans, and then Louis XV. had, happened by accident, or admitted of a con- during the course of a hundred years, led the venient application to what did happen. French nation into a state of unexampled Christ was always mentioned with the great- luxury; a people sunk in licentiousness, and est reverence; but when one put himself to weakened by all the arts of over-refinement, extract the true sense of all their big hyper receives the unholy wit of a Voltaire as phi boles and vague eulogies, it appeared plainly losophy, and the sophisticated dreams of a that the Saviour of mankind was in their eyes Rousseau as religion; by this means a nanothing better than a virtuous, pious, and tional character arises, possessed of every wise man, who sealed his life and his doctrine charm by which the sensual outward man is by the death of a martyr.* That they called attracted, garnished too with all the formal many things in the Bible not fable but alle- equipments of a system, and glittering in an gory, was a piece of well-considered policy, intellectual polish that commands the attenand nothing more. After all this evaporation tion even of thinking men, and wins the apnothing solid remained of Christianity but probation of all cultivated minds. the morality, and this indeed seemed to be! the aim and essence of all theological learn. ing, everything else being a matter of absolute indifference. Do what the moral law commands, and then believe any thing you please, or, if you please, nothing at all! This is the sum of the theology that the learned professors taught me; and indeed it is quite plain, that as soon as the Bible becomes a common old chronicle, one believes either nothing at all, or only so much as reason can comprehend. We have, it is true, a clear anticipation of a God, but he remains a stranger to us; we are utterly ignorant of his relationt o man. We anticipate immortality, but what that immortality shall be, we have not the most remote conception. We feel ourselves free; but when we examine this freedom minutely, we appear to be bound to an iron necessity, and yet are bound to do what we cannot do. Such was my curriculum of the logical study! I had conscience enough not to enter the church. I devoted myself to literature and philosophy; read Helvetius, Hume, and Shakspeare twenty times through; the Greeks and the Romans were a world in which I lived. I expounded morality, but how I practised it, discase and rottenness soon proclaimed. I spoke from the professional chair of the true, the good, and the beautiful; but took no cognizance of the existence of such a thing as religion. I lived to see the great triumph of humanity in the universal diffusion of liberty and equality. And now I find myself suddenly in this other world, convinced by the uncon "And yet Christ represents himself without equivocation as the only begotten Son of God, who was with the father before all worlds. Could a virtuous, pious, and wise man have said this, knowing that it was false ?"-Note by Stilling. "Hence came it that our German nobility, high and low, considered France as the exclusive school of refinement, cultivation, and good manners, The strong language of the Germans was laid aside, and French became the language of the higher classes. French adventurers, French friseurs, and French nondescripts of all kinds became the chosen instructors of our royal and princely youth, and not seldom French milliners officiated as the gouvernantes of our princesses, countesses, and fashionable young ladies. The national character of the Germans, and with it religion, were thrown into the lumber-room. "Our literati and learned men now joined the great march of improvement, and the theologians especially felt themselves called upon to come forward. They had a difficult part to play; they chose the system of acCommodation; they exerted all their abilities to establish a reconciliation between Christ and Belial; each party was to concede some. thing, and meet the other half way. Christ was to give up the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, Belial the most offensive vices, and both united should acknowledge no fundamental law of religion but morality; for in this all were agreed, that good morals must be publicly taught; as for the practice of morals, that was a matter betwixt every man and his own conscience, and the philosopher was not called upon to examine too curiously into the quality of individual action. This Christo-Belial system was par honneur de lettre still to be designated" The Christian Doctrine of Religion' (Religionslehre); for it was not wished openly to affront the professors of revealed religion. In this arose the so-much bepraised enlightenment of these latter times, and the Neology of the Christian religion. "But let me not be misunderstood! I do "(4). That a truly repentant sinner, who to the constant purpose of progressive melioration of character adds the honest endeavour to indemnify all and each, so far as in him lies, for the evil that his sins, whether of pur. pose or carelessness, may have brought upon them; such an one has good ground of hope, that in the sufferings and death of Christ all his transgressions shall find such perfect remission as if they never had been not say that all these newfangled teachers, ues to exist in glory and blessedness, sole or the majority of them, had any clear pur- governor of the kingdom of God, at least pose of forming a league between Christ and among men, and worthy to be worshipped Belial-for most of them denied the existence of all. of the latter altogether-but the spirit of the age had with such a poisonous infection worked itself into the bone and marrow of these men, that they no longer saw biblical truths through a healthy medium; their French-educated moral principle found the most sublime doctrines of revelation, superstitious, ludicrous, and absurd-new reason took a jump over the circumvallation of old prejudices and the leading theologians of the Lutheran Church applied themselves pub-committed."* licly to that greatest work of all-A REVISION OF THE BIBLE. Here was the beginning of that great defection which Christ and his apostles, and above all St. Paul, had so clearly foretold; what awaits now but the man of sin, the incarnated Satan, to walk abroad, that by the sudden coming of the Lord he may be plunged into perdition? "* Let us now inquire shortly what ground Stilling took up against the Neologists, and by what circumvallation he fenced himself. We have already said, that his opposition to the intellectual scepticism of the age sprung from a deep emotional necessity of the inner man. He was a Christian by feeling and practical experience of the power of the Christian religion to purify and to sustain the soul. This consideration supplies us with the surest key to his creed. Not the curious speculation of Church orthodoxy, but the experienced efficacy of certain doctrines to satisfy certain cravings deeply rooted in the religious and moral nature of man, dictated to Stilling the following four essential articles of the Christian creed: "There are certain great Bible truths which form the foundation of the Christian religion, and are, in the proper sense of the word, the symbols (voda) of the true Christian. He who by a learned exegesis cozens these truths out of the Bible, may make of it what he pleases; but he has no vocation to put himself forward as a teacher of the religion of Christ. These symbols are, that (1). The natural tendency of human reason, when left to itself, is to depart ever further and further from true holiness, and from the knowledge of the truth, and to lead mankind into temporal and eternal perdition. (2). Every individual is bound continually to strive after a constantly increasing sanctification; and this by means of a firin and unremitted faith in Jesus Christ and his plan of redemption, an unceasing watchfulness and unwearied struggle against every sinful inclination, and constant prayer and Whatever the pious reader may think of these symbols of the Christian faith, he cannot fail to admire the liberal and catholic spirit in which they are drawn up. Not a harsh determination to exclude, but an anxious endeavour to include as many sincere inquirers as possible within the bonds of Christian fellowship, is here a regulative principle. If the doctrine of the absolute corruption of human nature, the necessity of regeneration ab extra, and the expiatory virtue of Christ's death, are laid down in terms that cannot fail to come in collision with the honest convictions of many Armin. ian and Socinian Christians of the present day, we must bear in mind that Stilling had to do with men who had converted Christianity into a pious-mouthed Deism within the Church, and he was by this situation neces sarily compelled either to give up Christianity altogether, or boldly and without mincing to assert its peculiar character as distinguished from the philosophy of Socrates or Epictetus. But how wisely on the other hand has the pious German kept free from those vain subtleties and unprofitable distinctions, disputa. tions of science falsely so called, with which the conceit and rashness of phantasy has in all ages perverted the simplicity of the faith delivered to the fathers! What an advance, for instance, from the bigotry of Byzantine faith, when an "eternally august" Theodosius or Justinian could define a Christian to be synonymous with an Athanasian, and stamp the minute differences between òros and OTOTÓKOS as the passport to heaven or hell! Not that Stilling was indifferent, or * Das Heimweh, Iter band, p. 663. Werke, vol. iv. † Χριστιανὸς ἐστὶ ὁ πιστευαν μιαν εἶναι θεότητα ἐν ἴση εξουσία τοῦ Πατρὸς, τοῦ Υἱοῦ καὶ τοῦ ̔Αγίου Πνεύματος the first words of the Basilicon. And in the Neγὰρ παρὰ τὰ εἰρημένα δυξάζων αἱρετικός ἐστὶ. These are mocanon of Tholius, tit. xii. c. 2, we have the same doctrine expressed in much stronger phrase: “ (3). He must believe in his heart, and . Ο μὴ δοξάζων τὴν ἅγιαν τριαδα ἐν μια θεότητι ισοδυναμού without wrath or doubting, that Jesus Christ from his resurrection to all eternity contin submission to divine influences. * Das Heimweh, vol. i. Werke, vol. iv. ούτε Χριστιανὸς λέγεται, αλλά ἄφρων ἐστὶ καὶ αἱρετικός xai aros Kai TipwoεITAL. In plain English, whoseever is not an Athanasian, is not a Christian.Judge not, that ye be not judged." From would have any Christian man to be indif- his own feelings he would never have dreamt ferent, to whatsoever is taught, or merely for a single moment of asking any other indicated in Scripture, of things however re- proof of Christianity than the instinctive asmote from human comprehension, and how- cent of his own feelings heavenward; but he ever barren of any practical results; bu that had been early forced out of his native circle partly his true Christian humility prevented of pious freinds; he had studied at a Gerhim from being hasty to dogmatise on these man university, he had met with Göthes and subjects at all, and partly his true Christian Herders, and been moved by the mighty incharity forbade him to cast a rash anathema fluences of thought that emanated from their against a dissentient brother, who, wih a neighbourhood; cold, cutting knives of Vol. few points of difference in matters properly tairean wit had early wounded his sensitive theological, was yet in the main an honest soul: being a German also he could not espractical Christian "fervent in spirit, serving cape from metaphysics, and the Leibnitzian the Lord." How often do we observe, and philosophy which moulded the minds of his in this country especially, that those who are cotemporaries, seemed to establish the harmost eminent for the profession of doctrines mony of the universe only at the expense peculiarly evangelical, are at the same time of the freedom, and therewith of the religious the most eminent in exhibitions of wrath pe-existence, of man. Poor Stilling! for twenculiarly bitter and malignant! How often ty long years had his pure Christian heart is superior piety only another name for supe- battled with the doubts of a head, not strong rior pride! The celebrated mystic prophet- enough to elicit truth out of its own workings, ess Bourignon (once well known in Holland but open always to see it when evolved by and Scotland), used to say "I am unable to the workings of another. For twenty long find one true Christian in the world; God years did the demon of determinism lie, like made me the first, and sends me out to create a night-mare, upon his soul, till at last the reothers." Henry Stilling (though both a mys- demption came. And whence did it come? tic and a prophet in his way) would have When the reader bethinks himself that Stilbeen the last man in the world to give utter- ling was born in the year 1740, and was thus ance to such a sentiment; he was the most a contemporary of Göthe and Immanuel humble and therefore the most tolerant of Kant, he will have little difficulty in perceivChristians, as Antoinette was perhaps the ing whence the redemption came. most arrogant and over-bearing. He warned Göthe it could not come, for this man had against no sin so much as censoriousness. little or no connection with the religious Putting Christianity altogether aside, he was world. Kant was the other great prophet of too deeply read in the strange lessons of the the age, and metaphysics, as every body human heart not to know, that that pride is knows, supplies the only που στω of theology. anything but the most dangerous which pa- This it does in two ways. It either reconrades in a coach and four, and a host of ciles faith and reason by showing, in a Thelivery servants. He knew that the heart of odice, their harmony and identity, which man is "deceitful above all things and des- was the fashion of Leibnitz; or it removes perately wicked;" and in the practical the necessity of reconciling them, by nicely knowledge of this truth, he was disposed to separating the domain of the sensible from place, if not a great part of Christianity itself, that of the supersensible, confining the actiat least the only soil in which Christian seed vity of reason to the one and giving up the could be sown. other exclusively to the dominion of faith; With regard to the evidences of revealed which was the effect of the Kantian philosoreligion Stilling is not likely to give satisfac-phy. Strange phenomenon indeed! that tion to any sound-headed British inquirer. In that philosophy which was set forward by its common with most German theologians, he author as an infallible safeguard against all is far more apt to dwell on the internal than on the external evidences of Christianity. So far indeed as our observation has gone there is such a radical difference between the German and the British mind in all matters of reflection, that it would be almost impossible to find two thinking individuals of the two nations who had arrived at a conviction of religious truth in the same way. The Englishman here, as in every other difficulty, arresting the practicality of his nature, builds a bridge to heaven; the German sails up in a balloon. Had Jung Stilling been left to It Platonic dreamings and theologic specula- |