ability and literary skill. In the lecture Dr. Cunningham deals with the Confession of Faith in a calmer and more historical manner, but points out with hardly less decision its obvious errors and exaggerations (1) its disproved theory of creation; (2) its intolerance in the power which it assigns to the civil magistrate in religion; (3) its doctrine of the non-salvability of the heathen; (4) its extreme Calvinism. He thinks it impossible to read the clause about reprobation in the third chapter of the Confession "without a shudder." In contrast to a creed "so full of metaphysics and ecclesiastical learning," he places the simple credo of the Apostolic Church, "I believe that Jesus is the Son of God;" and he asks, finally, whether any Church has a right to exact a creed like the present-" so wide in its range and so minute in its details"-of any of its office-bearers? He is unable to see how a Church "could exist without some consensus of belief," and he would therefore neither abolish the Westminster Confession, nor attempt to revise it, but leave it alone, as an "old documentmonument of seventeenth-century piety," changing the formula of subscription, or, in other words, the relation of the Church to a document the contents of which so many have ceased to believe, and which are in part capable of disproof: a "This was done," he says, 66 some twenty or thirty years ago "-(only twelve years ago, or in 1865?)-" in the Church of England, and it might be done now in the Church of Scotland. We have two formulas-the one prescribed by Parliament, the other by the General Assembly; the former generally used at the ordination of elders, the latter at the ordination of ministers. The first is the looser, and it only, I believe, is legal, as the General Assembly had no right to alter the terms of admission to the Church fixed by the State. But I should like to see a formula looser still, in which the subscriber, while giving a general adherence to the Confession, did not pledge himself to every detail. If this were done, the Church would at once recover her vitality and vigour, theological learning would revive, and young men of intellectual power would join the ministry." There can hardly be any doubt that the line indicated by Dr. Cunningham is the only line in which it is possible to move in the matter of creed subscription in Scotland. Unless the present Churches are to break up altogether into a species of Congregationalism-a by no means unlikely result in the event of disestablishment, for which all the Dissenting Churches are loudly clamouring-it is inevitable that the existing creed-bonds which. bind all the Presbyterian Churches must be relaxed; and they can only be relaxed in the direction of a general declaration, to be substituted for the existing formula of subscription. This was the line of relaxation, as may be seen from Dr. Lee's Life,* urged upon the Duke of Argyll and other statesmen by Dr. Lee and * Vol. ii. pp. 250-257. myself in 1866. There was then some faint hope that the question of admission to the Church would be taken up in its most comprehensive aspect, both as regards the creed required of the minister and the choice desiderated by the people; and that a Royal Commission might have been appointed to deal with the whole subject. But the opportunity passed away; and the popular aspect of the subject has been dealt with, under less happy auspices, in a manner known to the world. Churches nowadays miss their opportunities sadly-a bad sign of what is awaiting them in the future. The reins of policy are apt to fall into earnest but feeble hands, that contrive, amidst much noise of their own external activities, to keep the ecclesiastical machine going. Better hands do not like the soil of ecclesiastical politics. Much of the higher faith of the world is outside of the Churches altogether, and the pettiness of the conflicts within them—ritualistic and doctrinal alike-is becoming generally repulsive to intellectual men. None can tell what may come of the present movement of thought in Scotland. The results are in the meantime incalculable. But one thing may be safely said, that none of the Churches, as they now exist, will make much capital out of the movement. English writers that survey it from a distance are apt to estimate the chances now of an Established Church, and now of the Free Church, as they see the liberal flag blowing from the ramparts of the one or the theological halls of the other. This is all imagination. The current of free thought is running deep and sure in all the Churches, even within softened and exclusive precincts where it makes no noise at all. It will make its way towards the light by-and-by, from all quarters of the ecclesiastical horizon; and the Church which will have most chance may possibly not be any of the present organizations, but a Church more excellent-because at once more liberal and catholic-than any of those now existing. VOL. XXIX. 2 P JOHN TULLOCH. THE GREEK SPIRIT IN MODERN LITERATURE. Poems. By MATTHEW ARNOLD, D.C.L. Macmillan & Co. Essays in Criticism. By the same. Macmillan & Co. Culture and Anarchy. By the same. Smith, Elder, Studies of Greek Poets. By JOHN ADDINGTON HE Duke of Argyll has observed that it seems a law of modern ideas that every utterance of genius must in some limited time be turned into nonsense by exaggerating imitators. It is perfectly true; and though some such remark may have been made before, it is original in its present form, because it has a special application to this period of competitive literature. The writing business is overstocked; too many people want to live by it, and they are always trying to snatch subjects and catchwords from each other. No sooner has some leader secured an idea than he is to be observed, like the duck with the frog in Mr. Riviere's picture last year, pursued by quacks, and vainly endeavouring to get away, to assimilate and re-issue his acquisition in peace. Professor M. Arnold's use of the words Greek and Hellenism in his earlier essays, and in "Culture and Anarchy," was highly suggestive, and involved a set of capital distinctions. He invented a good phrase for one of the great divergences of spiritual thought and intellectual habit. He made a vigorous appeal for accuracy and clearness, and therefore for truth. He appealed to conscience and morals in favour of intellectual rectitude, and threw new light on the duty of moderation, and the exercise of impartial judgment. And so he led on to many profitable meditations on the intellectual excellences of the Hellenic race, as exemplified by their even-tempered and clear-sighted "views," or manner of contemplating all things. He said less than we, in our Hebraic or Anglo-Christian way, think he should have said, of those inventive powers and brooding dreams of imagination, which were the immortal forces of the Greek spirit. We think these were the actual gift of God to the Greek race, and therefore we speak of them as divine-tentatively it is true, but with real meaning. If a man's notion of God is a stream of tendency, or that which makes for righteousness, he cannot well form an idea of spiritual gift, and must consequently, we think, rather underrate the value and the source of Greek art and poetry. If you do not believe in any Divine Person, you can hardly feel or call sculpture or verse divine. And understanding and admitting all the beautifully expressed distinctions between Hebraism and Hellenism, we must point out that the most brilliant of Greeks was exactly like a Hebrew, or any other man, when he came to choose between right and wrong. The search of what is Divine, whether by inventive thought and aveμoèv opórnua, or by the universal and infallible method of right-doing, is, so to speak, Hebraic; because it is search for the One Good and the Father of Spirits; and unquestionably all the Greeks best worth knowing sought the Divine in those ways, according to their lights. We wish Professor Arnold would give us some studies on Greek art. A little labour of new and refreshing character would enable him to do it in a manner worthy of his reputation. And true Hellenism is incomplete without fair knowledge of sculpture; for that and the theatre were absolutely connected, and inseparable, in the eye and mind of Athens. The severe groupings and tableaux of high tragedy were living bas-reliefs, "spirantia signa," like Virgil's Parian statues. A man who does not care for picture and sculpture cannot judge a race, who spent their days in looking at them, so well as if he did. It seems strange that those who study the Dionysiac theatre should never think of the Games, or that men who labour to understand the mind of Eschylus should seem never to suspect that Pheidias had any mind. Nevertheless Hellenism and Hebraism, according to the doctrine of the first inventor of the terms, is a capital expression, supported by most choice writing, and unfolded with a refined description of fun quite peculiar to its accomplished author. Then it gets popularized, and is pressed into the service of agnostic polemics. Hebraism is absolutely identified with Christianity, and Hellenism used against both. And as the literary world has now satisfactorily accomplished its task of talking down Christianity, its more benevolent members are quite anxious to let us unfortunate dogmatists down easily, and allow us something suited to our mental phase. We, or the next generation, are promised some kind of Hellenic system of poetic nature-worship -we may take off our hats to a returning Jupiter instead of an overthrown one. Heine's or Schiller's ironies about the gods of Greece are provisionally offered, with a bland air of conviction, which may afford us some amusement, if it is not fruitful of comfort. But the fact is that we have been so accustomed to take St. Paul's view of Mars' Hill, that it is very difficult to take the Mars' Hill view of St. Paul. This is undoubtedly the mental habit of the present period. Agnosticism (according to the definition of those whose natural or acquired ingenuity enables them to distinguish it from atheism) is the recognition of an unknown God, as unknowable and non-existent. It considers St. Paul indeed a babbler, and we cannot. Nothing can be more charming than Hellenism as a literary habit: but it does not fully account for Greeks and their doings as described by themselves. If they are to be imitated, we are led into the consideration of what they did do, and what came of it, and what is to be thought of it; and here we are forced over the marches of the province of morals. You cannot go on long regarding Greeks as pure "Hellenists," or beautiful ideal children, if ever you read a book of Thucydides. We must regret that Professor Arnold's view of "Hebrew history" differs so very far from that of his revered father; but one cannot be surprised if their opinions about the Corcyrean sedition or the Melian massacre diverge as widely. In reading Thuc. iii. 81-85, one certainly forgets that man is "a naturally gentle and simple creature, showing traces of a noble and divine nature," and we Christians think that that passage confirms our doctrine of human corruption and the curse that is on the earth. But we hold, and Professor Arnold nowhere denies, that Greeks had Hebrew or English conscience about right and wrong that they did one or the other knowingly, and fared accordingly, and reasoned from what they did to how they fared. And therefore, while it is quite right to draw distinctions between the Greek or habitually intellectual, and the Hebrew or habitually moral, views or habits of mind, it is incorrect to construct a Hellenic view of Hellas, as if its life had ever been purely literary, and its morals, character, and real history could all be left out. It is still worse to construct a literary and artistic system without morals, and then call it a system of life, which young people ought to adopt in the nineteenth century. This was the attempt of the later Renaissance. Men who did not believe in Christ thought that Athens and Pericles had produced great art because they did not believe in Him; and that their own genius, backed by luxury, and unrestrained by moral considerations, would enable them to revive the glories of Eschylus and Pheidias. It is not for us to blame them, or at least to condemn them; they tried with all their hearts, having lost hold on the Christian faith, to be as the best heathen they knew. What we know is that that * Culture and Anarchy, p. 153. |