THE BOOK CRITIC.

NATURAL THEOLOGY THE GIFFORD LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH IN 1891, BY PROFESSOR SIR G. G. STOKES, Bart. Adam & Charles Black, London and Edinburgh.

WE remember being present at a meeting of the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association, at which there was a learned and abstruse discussion as to the possible relations between the ether and ponderable matter. Lord Rayleigh, Sir William Thomson, and others spoke, and the discussion passed into the hands o minor men. The meeting became somewhat listless, until suddenly every one was on the alert. The more eminent the listener was, the keener was his attention. A quiet, modest, unassuming, elderly gentleman had risen, and was speaking in the quietest possible manner, and every one listened as if his words were golden. We have never seen such reverence and respect paid to a living man. We ask our neighbour who is the gentleman? The answer was, "Professor Stokes." A little later we got from that gentleman, himself a Senior Wrangler, some account of Sir G. G. Stokes and his work, and an emphatic statement that the work of Sir G. G. Stokes was not excelled by that of any physicist in the present century. Here, then, is a man who is regarded with reverence for his character and work by such men as Sir William Thomson, whose name is a power in the scientific world. What has he got to say on questions of Natural Theology? Has his science led him away from faith? Has his study of law and necessity led him to deny freedom? Has his wide and accurate knowledge of the order of the universe led him to ignore or to deny a personal God, origin, and goal of everything that is? No! Sir G. G. Stokes is a living proof of the fact that science is not hostile to faith; that the most profound knowledge of science is compatible with the deepest personal religion.

In writing his present work, Sir G. G. Stokes has found himself greatly hampered by the terms of Lord Gifford's will. His own words are, "I have felt myself very much cramped by the provisions of the will." For Lord Gifford had directed the lecturers "to treat their subjects as a strictly natural science .. without reference to or reliance upon any supposed special, exceptional, or so-called miraculous revelation." It was rather hard that he should find himself brought up so frequently by this invisible barrier, and it is interesting to watch how he deals with it :

"If I may conjecture," says Sir G. G. Stokes, " from the language of the bequest, taking one part with another, I should imagine that there may have been something of a revulsion in his mind from teaching of perhaps too narrow a character, of a kind in which wide conclusions are drawn from particular expressions, and that he might not object to an examination, in their broad features, of some things asserted on the strength of what professes to be a revelation from God to man, so far, at least, as to inquire whether they so fall in with what our reason approves as to receive confirmation thereby."

So Sir G. G. Stokes has been enabled to examine the reasonableness of what professes to be revealed, and we may be thankful. It would have been a calamity had the lecturer been prevented from giving us his views of the origin of life, the origin of man, the reasonableness of creation, and the reasonableness of resurrection.

The most valuable part of these lectures is, without doubt, that which treats of the subjects in which Natural Theology and Physics meet. Of special value is the insistence on the view that looks on the laws of nature as "God's mode of working." The lecturer, as we should expect, has no sympathy with that attitude of mind which is manifested by some theologians and by some men of science, and may be described

as the belief that the more of law we have in the universe, the less of God we have, On the contrary, he holds and illustrates with great power that law and order reveal God, and are His modes of working. He here enforces the valuable lesson taught by Bishop Butler, which both theologians and men of science have been so slow to learn. This is the main value of his book, and the lesson is summed up in the section where he sets forth the "change of views as to relations between science and religion." He illustrates by a reference to geology, and to the Nebular hypothesis. We quote the latter:

"There was a time when the adoption of the Nebular hypothesis was looked on with suspicion, as indicating at least a tendency towards atheism. But now, the discovery of the gaseous nature of the nebulæ, or at least of the matter belonging to them, from which the light comes, the scrutiny of the stars and heavenly bodies generally, by means of the telescope and spectroscope, and the comparison of the results obtained with information derived from experiments which can be made in the laboratory, seem to indicate a sort of relationship, combined with differences among the various stars, &c., a sort of order of sequence which leads us strongly to regard the stars as formed by an evolutionary process from some anterior condition of matter. This, however, merely indicates that the regular operation of ordinary natural causes, such as we can see around us and can study, may have extended backwards far beyond what at first sight we might have been disposed to imagine."

As neither law nor order are self-explanatory, the more we can trace of them in the past history of the universe, and the wider we can show their working, the more emphatic is the testimony they bear to the eternal power and wisdom of the living God. J. IVERACH, D.D.

THE FIRM FOUNDATION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. BY JOSEPH AGAR BEET, D.D. Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School Union, London. Multum in Parvo; a book which in a few pages sets forth a great and weighty argument in a style perfectly clear and easily understood is surely a great boon. Dr. Beet has conferred a benefit not merely on the Wesleyan Methodist Church and her teachers, he has made all the Churches a debtor to him. We have read the little book with great interest, and the chapters from the fifth to the end more than once with increasing admiration and appreciation of their terseness, thoroughness, and power. How well the historical argument for the truth of Christianity is set forth need scarcely be said, for Dr. Beet has already showed his mastery of this department of apolegetics in his Fernley Lecture. Of the first four lectures we cannot speak with so much confidence. We are not sure that Dr. Beet's definition of religion is adequate : 'Religion is such conception of the unseen as makes for righteousness." Does not the term "conception " here limit religion to the intellectual sphere of human nature? Is the word "conception" to have its purely logical meaning? If so, then we shut religion out from the emotional and the volitional, and also from that part of the intellectual nature of man which cannot be included under the term conception." But Dr. Beet does not, perhaps, intend to use the word in this rigid sense. Again, why limit the object of religion to "the unseen "? May not an object seen be also an object of worship? We are afraid that the distinguished author, in his anxiety not to take anything for granted-mindful, perhaps, of Mr. Matthew Arnold-has given us a definition of religion which is quite inadequate.

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Again, Dr. Beet says,

"The facts just noted compel us to believe that the universe has a source other than itself, a source in every way superior to anything derived from it, and therefore intelligent. And this is all that we mean by a PERSONAL GOD. This term asserts only that that which dis

tinguishes man from the lower animals has a superior counterpart in the Great Source of animals, and man, and the universe."

We should like to know how much is included in the term "intelligence as here used by Dr. Beet? Usually, writers on Theism mean something more than intelligence when they speak of a personal God. Certainly Lotze in that chapter of the Microcosmus, in which he deals with "personality," includes a great deal more than "intelligence." Does Dr. Beet include in intelligence selfknowledge, self-guidance? Is intelligence conscious of itself and of its own purpose? For Dr. Beet knows that there are in current use such phrases as "unconscious intelligence," "unconscious will," and a number of other phrases of similar import by which men seek to obtain all the results of conscious intelligence without committing themselves to the Theistic view of the universe. On these grounds we venture to submit to Dr. Beet that when we speak of a personal God we mean something over and above that he affirms. We are persuaded that Dr. Beet's little volume has before it a great career of usefulness, and our remarks are directed towards those parts which to us seem somewhat defective, with the hope of making the book still more effective than it is. It is so very good that we desire to remove some barriers to its usefulness. JAMES IVERACH, D.D.

VILLAGE SERMONS. BY R. W. CHURCH. Macmillan, 1892. THIS Volume belongs to the school of the plain sermons of Keble and Mozley in their parochial discourses, but appears to reach a higher standard of power and excellence. Reality, honesty, sincerity are here, as elsewhere, the leading notes of Dr. Church's teaching. Moral instructions are pressed home with a white intensity of subdued feeling, and a whole-hearted desire to be thorough and honest towards God and His flock; and the style is that of a master-simple, frank, luminous, pure. But there are some points missing. Some will notice a certain lack of the emotional and dramatic element, especially looked for by less educated congregations. Country people often hide behind a stolid exterior a lively flow of movable feeling, and even of romantic sentiment-not least in the west of England-a survival, maybe, of the days of their fathers. There is a vein of deep moral emotion in Dr. Church's sermons, but it is kept under not too little restraint from an oratorical point of view. We miss, too, the smell and taste of the meadows and woods. The familiar surroundings of the farmer and agricultural labourer would have supplied a Kingsley or a Spurgeon with homely analogies and local illustrations, whereas these sermons might have been as appropriately preached in town as in country. Christ's own teaching and preaching in the city and in the Galilean fields varies in style and colouring with its respective environments. There is, too, an entire absence of quotation, yet the English poor love hymns and sacred songs, and a few verses here and there sprinkled appositely would have pointed a sharper moral and adorned a brighter tale.

The most eloquent sermon in the book we take to be xiii., "The Work of the Spirit"; the most pastoral and affecting, xxxii., "The Farewell"; not the least searching, xxxi., "The Perfect Light of God," and xix., "The Consequences of Unbelief"; the most direct and aggressive, vi., "The Danger of Delay." Passing on to a more detailed examination, in Sermon v. (John ii. 1, 2), on the trite subject of Christ's presence at Cana, after treating felicitously Christ's willingness" to be with us in these familiar things which make up the course of our day, and which to many are so full of happiness-our morning and evening meal, our visit to our friend, our social talk with a neighbour about our common interests, the pleasure we receive from a walk, an interesting book, the sight of a beautiful country, the sound of music "—the preacher

regards the miracle as an example of “turning the weaker into the stronger, the common into the precious. And is not this the type of the wonderful way in which Christ deals with the souls of those who put themselves into His hands? He makes the water wine. A sinner turns in weakness and fear from his sins, hardly hoping that he can ever become fit for heaven, hardly hoping that his infirmity will ever be healed. . . . . And in time, according to such an one's faith and earnestness, the old man begins to be destroyed and the new man to be formed in him. The water is made wine." One misses here the thought of the possibility of instantaneous conversion. Yet the water was not gradually precipitated into wine. The process, though the phases may, or may not, have been a whole series of complicated changes fringing into one another in exquisite order in the eye of heavenly law Himself, was as quick as a flash of light through the firmament. So spiritual transformations may be rapid or slowly developed, according to the order of the Spirit, as He willeth.

From the parable of "The Unjust Steward" the lesson of whole-hearted thoroughness is driven home. "The world is served more perfectly, more wisely, more successfully than God. . . . . We are not talking, as the parable does not talk, of the right and wrong of what he did. The point is, that there were certain things to be done, and he did them. He had the sense to look forward and make ready."

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The preacher can be on occasion very straight and personal; thus in Sermon vi., "The Danger of Delay," Acts xvi. 30, "But what are you going to do to be saved who have not even the miserable cloak and shelter of an outwardly fair and decent life to screen you from the wrath of God against sin ? What are you going to do to be saved who openly break God's laws by gross and presumptuous sin? You who sin with a high hand in the face of heaven, you to whom all the world, all who know you, bear witness week after week that you are sinners, even in the eyes of men?"

As a whole, this volume will in no degree diminish Dr. Church's high reputation. A book more helpful towards reality of character, a better model of style to a young clergyman who wants to be a manly, simple, earnest sower of the Word of Life could not be found than this last and not least valuable offering of a gifted mind and a loyal soul to the serious endeavour of his day. J. F. VALLINGS, M.A.

CURRENT

ENGLISH

THOUGHT.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND THE TRUE RULE OF FAITH. (The Church Quarterly).— In the Book of Revelation, where the conflict of the Church with the world is described, and her fortunes, so to say, during the period of her probation foretold, 'we meet with that remarkable passage concerning Christ's two witnesses, of whom He says (Rev. xi. 1-12, R.V.), "I will give unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks, standing before the Lord of the earth." One class of interpreters, "the Futurists," suppose these two witnesses to be two persons who are to return to or appear in the world at some future date; but if, as seems very probable, the 1,260 days represent the whole period of the Church's probation, the present dispensation, then these witnesses who testify throughout the period must represent something enduring and constantly present in the world. We are not concerned, however, with the different views that have

been taken of this passage (Rev. xi. 1-12). We are not even obliged to insist upon the correctness of the interpretation that we here adopt. If the passage does not serve for a foundation of our argument, or a justification of the conclusion we shall arrive at, it will answer very well as illustrating the principle for which we are contending.

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It is, at any rate, a significant and undeniable fact that when Jesus Christ left the world, two witnesses for Him did arise in it. First, the Christian Church, the company of professing Christians. He said to His Apostles collectively, “Ye shall be my witnesses,” just as He had said to His disciples previously, and in anticipation, "Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid." It is equally certain that there is another pre-eminent witness for Jesus Christ in the world besides the Church. Along with the Church there grew up in the world “the Book"-the volume of the New Testament. He actually has said of the message which is the sum and substance of the New Testament's teaching, "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a witness to all the nations."

The Book of Revelation, interpreting itself, tell us that the candlestick, or lampstand, represents the Church, or a branch of it (Rev. i. 20). In the first chapter of this book seven candlesticks represent the whole Church. But if the two lamp-stands represents the Church, most appropriately will the two olive trees, from which through the golden pipes a continuous stream of oil flows in to feed the lamps (Zach. iv. 3, 12), signify the Holy Scriptures, the Scriptures from which, through the ages, as from a pure and never-failing fountain, the Church receives perpetually the material of her illuminating power.

And these two witnesses to the truth, each "prophesying," or proclaiming the Gospel to the world, though they lean upon and corroborate each other, yet are they separate and independent witnesses. It is true that the Church is, as the article says, the witness and keeper of Holy Writ, and that one principal ground on which we receive the books of the New Testament as the inspired Word of God is the witness of the whole Church to the fact. It is also true that the Holy Scriptures testify to the existence in the world of the visible Church, the kingdom of heaven upon earth, to her Divine origin and her office; but the fact that two witnesses bear testimony to each other's probity, and mutually corroborate one another, does not prevent them from being distinct and independent witnesses. The Holy Catholic Church is not the creation of the New Testament. The Church was established in the world and widely spread before the New Testament came into existence. On the other hand, though the New Testament is witnessed to by the Church, and though her Apostles and Evangelists were inspired to write the several books which we receive as canonical, yet the New Testament does not owe its existence in any sense to the Church. The Church never designed or proposed to produce such a book. Just as the Church grew up in the world, so the Book grew up. It is an independent creation. Though the work of different persons at different times, and with different objects, it has a great purpose pervading it—it is a unique book, and is as much a distinct creation of the Holy Spirit of God as is the Church herself.

It is not vital to our argument, as we have said, whether or no the passage in the Revelation applies to these two witnesses, the Scriptures and the Church. There, as a matter of fact, they stand together, the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Catholic Church, testifying to Jesus Christ and preaching together His Gospel to the world. It was intended that the world should have the united testimony of these two witnesses. But unhappily the event, as too often is the case, has not fully corre sponded with the good purpose of God.