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of these contradictions themselves; he treats them as if they were supremely interesting in themselves, as if we had never heard of them before, and could never hear enough of them now. Spinoza touches these verbal matters with all possible brevity, and presses on to the more important. It is enough for him to give us what is indispensably necessary of them. He points out that Moses could never have written, "And the Canaanite was then in the land," because the Canaanite was in the land still at the death of Moses. He points out that Moses could never have written, "There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses." He points out how such a passage as "These are "the kings that reigned in Edom before "there reigned any king over the children "of Israel," clearly indicates an author writing not before the times of the Kings. He points out how the account of Og's iron bedstead-"Only Og the king of Bashan remained of the rem"nant of giants; behold, his bedstead

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was a bedstead of iron; is it not in "Rabbath of the children of Ammon?" -probably indicates an author writing after David had taken Rabbath, and found there "abundance of spoil," amongst it this iron bedstead, the gigantic relic of another age. He points out how the language of this passage, and of such a passage as that in the Book of Samuel-"Beforetime in Israel, "when a man went to inquire of God, "thus he spake: Come and let us go "to the seer; for he that is now called "Prophet was aforetime called seer”— is certainly the language of a writer describing the events of a long-past age, and not the language of a contemporary. But he devotes to all this no more space than is absolutely necessary. He, too, like the Bishop of Natal, touches on the family of Judah; but he devotes one page to this topic, and the Bishop of Natal devotes thirteen. To the sums in Ezra-with which the Bishop of Natal, "should God, in His providence, call him to continue the work," will assuredly fill folios-Spinoza devotes barely a page. He is anxious to escape from

the region of these verbal matters, which to the Bishop of Natal are a sort of intellectual land of Beulah, into a higher region; he apologises for lingering over them so long: non est cur circa hæc diu detinear: nolo tædiosâ lectione lectorem detinere. For him the interesting question is, not whether the fanatical devotee of the letter is to continue, for a longer or for a shorter time, to believe that Moses sate in the land of Moab writing the description of his own death, but what he is to believe when he does not believe this. Is he to take for the guidance of his life a great gloss put upon the Bible by theologians, who "not content with going mad "themselves with Plato and Aristotle, "want to make Christ and the Prophets

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go mad with them too,"—or the Bible itself? Is he to be presented by his National Church with metaphysical formularies for his creed, or with the real fundamentals of Christianity? If with the former, religion will never produce its due fruits. A few elect will still be saved; but the vast majority of mankind will remain without grace and without good works, hateful and hating one another. Therefore he calls urgently upon Governments to make the National Church what it should be. This is the conclusion of the whole matter for him; a fervent appeal to the State, to save us from the untoward generation of metaphysical Article-makers. And therefore, anticipating Mr. Gladstone, he called his book "The Church in its Relations with the State."

Thus Spinoza attempts to answer the crucial question, "What then?" and by the attempt, successful or unsuccessful, he interests the higher culture of Europe. The Bishop of Natal does not interest this, neither yet does he edify the unlearned. His book, therefore, satisfies neither of the two conditions, one of which literary criticism has a right to impose on all religious books: Edify the uninstructed, it has a right to say to them, or inform the instructed. Fulfilling neither of these conditions, the Bishop of Natal's book cannot justify itself for existing. When, in 1861, he heard for

the first time that the old theory of the verbal inspiration of Scripture was untenable, he should, instead of proclaiming this news (if this was all he could proclaim) in an octavo volume, have remembered that excellent saying of the Wise Man: "If thou hast heard a "word, let it die with thee; and behold, "it will not burst thee."

These two conditions, which the Bishop of Natal's book entirely fails to fulfil, another well-known religious book alsothat book which made so much noise two years ago, the volume of Essays and Reviews-fails, it seems to me, to fulfil satisfactorily. Treating religious subjects and written by clergymen, the compositions in that volume have in general, to the eye of literary criticism, this great fault-that they tend neither to edify the many, nor to inform the few. There is but one of them-that by Mr. Pattison on the Tendencies of Religious Thought in England-which offers to the higher culture of Europe matter new and instructive. There are some of them which make one, as one reads, instinctively recur to a saying which was a great favourite-so that Hebrew moralist whom I have already quoted tells us -with Judah Ben-Tamar: "The impudent are for Gehinnan, and the modest for Paradise." But even Dr. Temple's Essay on the Education of the World, perfectly free from all faults of tone or taste, has this fault-that while it offers nothing edifying to the uninstructed, it offers to the instructed nothing which they could not have found in a far more perfect shape in the works of Lessing. Mr. Jowett's Essay, again, contains nothing which is not given, with greater convincingness of statement and far greater fulness of consequence in Spinoza's seventh chapter, which treats of the Interpretation of Scripture. The doctrines of his Essay, as mere doctrine, are neither milk for babes nor strong meat for men; the weak among his readers will be troubled by them; the strong would be more informed by seeing them handled as acquired elements for further speculation by freer exponents of the speculative thought of Europe,

than by seeing them hesitatingly exhibited as novelties. In spite of this, however, Mr. Jowett's Essay has one quality which, at the tribunal of literary criticism, is sufficient to justify it-a quality which communicates to all works where it is present an indefinable charm, and which is always, for the higher sort of minds, edifying;-it has unction. From a clergyman's essay on a religious subject theological criticism may have a right to demand more than this; literary criticism has not. For a court of literature it is enough that the somewhat pale stream of Mr. Jowett's speculation is gilded by the heavenly alchemy of this glow.

Unction Spinoza's work has not; that name does not precisely fit any quality which it exhibits. But he is instructive and suggestive even to the most instructed thinker; and to give him full right of citizenship in the Republic of Letters this is enough. And yet, so all-important in the sphere of religious thought is the power of edification, that in this sphere a great fame like Spinoza's can never be founded

without it. A court of literature can never be very severe to Voltaire: with that inimitable wit and clear sense of his, he can never write a page in which the fullest head may not find something suggestive: still because, with all his wit and clear sense, he handles religious ideas wholly without the power of edification, his fame as a great man is equivocal. Strauss treated the question of Scripture Miracles with an acuteness and fulness which even to the most informed minds is instructive; but because he treated it wholly without the power of edification, his fame as a serious thinker is equivocal. But in Spinoza there is not a trace either of Voltaire's passion for mere mockery or of Strauss's passion for mere demolition. His whole soul was filled with desire of the love and knowledge of God, and of that only. Philosophy always proclaims herself on the way to the summum bonum; but too often on the road she seems to forget her destination, and suffers her hearers to forget it also. Spinoza never forgets

his destination: "The love of God is "man's highest happiness and blessed"ness, and the final end and aim of all "human actions ;-The supreme reward "for keeping God's Word is that Word "itself—namely, to know Him and with "free will and pure and constant heart "love Him :" these sentences are the keynote to all he produced, and were the inspiration of all his labours. This is why he turns so sternly upon the worshippers of the letter, the editors of the Masora, the editor of the Record— because their doctrine imperils our love and knowledge of God. "What!" he cries, "our knowledge of God to depend "upon these perishable things, which "Moses can dash to the ground and "break to pieces like the first tables of "stone, or of which the originals can "be lost like the original book of the "Covenant, like the original book of the "Law of God, like the book of the "Wars of God!...which can come to us "confused, imperfect, miswritten by copyists, tampered with by doctors! "And you accuse others of impiety! It 64 is you who are impious, to believe that "God would commit the treasure of the 66 true record of Himself to any substance "less enduring than the heart!" And his life was not unworthy of this elevated strain. A philosopher who professed that knowledge was its own reward— a devotee who professed that the love of God was its own reward, this philosopher and this devotee believed in what he said! Spinoza led a life the most spotless, perhaps, to be found among the lives of philosophers; he lived simple, studious, even-tempered, kind; declining honours, declining riches, declining notoriety. He was poor, and his admirer, Simon de Vries, sent him two thousand florins-he refused them: the same friend left him his fortune -he returned it to the heir. He was asked to dedicate one of his works to the magnificent patron of letters in his century, Louis the Fourteenth ; he declined. His great work, his Ethics, published after his death, he gave injunctions to his friends to publish anonymously, for fear he should give his

name to a school. Truth, he thought, should bear no man's name. And, finally,-" Unless," he said, "I had "known that my writings would in the "end advance the cause of true religion, "I would have suppressed them-ta"cuissem." It was in this spirit that he lived; and this spirit gives to all he writes not exactly unction-I have already said so,-but a kind of sacred solemnity. Not of the same order as the Saints, he yet follows the same service Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not.

Therefore he has been, in a certain sphere, edifying, and has inspired in many powerful minds an interest and an admiration such as no other philosopher has inspired since Plato. The lonely precursor of German philosophy, he still shines when the light of his successors is fading away: they had celebrity, Spinoza has fame. Not because his peculiar system of philosophy has had more adherents than theirs; on the contrary, it has had fewer. But schools of philosophy arise and fall; their bands of adherents inevitably dwindle; no master can long persuade a large body of disciples that they give to themselves just the same account of the world as he does; it is only the very young and the very enthusiastic who can think themselves sure that they possess the whole mind of Plato, or Spinoza, or Hegel at all. The very mature and the very sober can even hardly believe that these philosophers possessed it themselves enough to put it all into their works, and to let us know entirely how the world seemed to them. What a remarkable philosopher really does for human thought, is to throw into circulation a certain number of new and striking ideas and expressions, and to stimulate with them the thought and imagination of his century or of after-times. So Spinoza has made his distinction between adequate and inadequate ideas a current notion for educated Europe. So Hegel seized a single pregnant sentence of Heracleitus, and cast it, with a thousand striking applications, into the

world of modern thought. But to do this is only enough to make a philosopher noteworthy; it is not enough to make him great. To be great, he must have something in him which can influence character, which is edifying; he must, in short, have a noble and lofty character himself, a character-to recur to that much-criticised expression of mine-in the grand style. This is what Spinoza This is what Spinoza had; and because he had it, he stands out from the multitude of philosophers, and has been able to inspire in powerful minds a feeling which the most remarkable philosophers, without this grandiose character, could not inspire. "There is

no possible view of life but Spinoza's," said Lessing. Goethe has told us how he was calmed and edified by him in his youth, and how he again went to him for support in his maturity. Heine, the man (in spite of his faults) of truest genius that Germany has produced since Goethe-a man with faults, as I have said, immense faults, the greatest of them being that he could reverence so little-reverenced Spinoza. Hegel's influence ran off him like water: "I have "seen Hegel," he cries, "seated with "his doleful air of a hatching hen upon "his unhappy eggs, and I have heard "his dismal clucking.-How easily one "can cheat oneself into thinking that 66 one understands everything, when one "has learnt only how to construct dia"lectical formulas!" But of Spinoza, Heine said: "His life was a copy of "the life of his Divine kinsman, Jesus "Christ."

Still, the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus was deemed by Spinoza himself a work not suitable to the general public, and here is Mr. Trübner offering it to the general public in a translation! But a little reflection will show that Mr. Trübner is not therefore to be too hastily blamed.

Times are changed since Spinoza wrote; the reserve which he recommended and practised is being repudiated by all the world. Speculation is to be made popular, all reticence is to be abandoned, every difficulty is to be canvassed pub licly, every doubt is to be proclaimed; information which, to have any value at all, must have it as part of a series not yet complete, is to be flung broadcast, in the crudest shape, amidst the undisciplined, ignorant, passionate, captious multitude. "Audax omnia perpeti

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Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas :" and in that adventurous march the English branch of the race of Japhet. is, it seems, to be headed by its clergy in full canonicals. If so it is to be, so be it. But, if this is to be so, the Editor of the Record himself, instead of deprecating the diffusion of Spinoza's writings, ought rather to welcome it. He would prefer, of course, that we should all be even as he himself is; that we should all think the same thing as that which he himself thinks. desire, although all might not consent to join in it, is legitimate and natural. But its realisation is impossible; heresy is here, it is pouring in on all sides of him. If we must have heresy, he himself will admit that we may as well have the informing along with the barren. The author of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus is not rre unorthodox than the author of the Pentateuch Critically Examined, and he is far more edifying. If the English clergy must err, let them learn from this outcast of Israel to err nobly! Along with the weak trifling of the Bishop of Natal, let it be lawful to cast into the huge caldron, out of which the new world is to be born, the strong thought of Spinoza! MATTHEW ARNOLD.

MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE.

FEBRUARY, 1863.

A VISIT TO LÜTZEN IN OCTOBER, 1862.

PART I.

BY HERMAN MERIVALE.

THE BATTLE TO THE DEATH OF
GUSTAVUS.

THE Battle of Lützen, 1632, still constitutes one of the most interesting chapters. in military history, notwithstanding all the gigantic additions which the annals of the last and present century have made to it. Though not precisely one of the "decisive" battles of history, for it occurred just half-way in the period of the Thirty Years' War, yet it was, in truth, the turning-point of that contest: up to that day, the event in debate was the annihilation of one party by the other; after it, the terms of separation only. To the soldier it is memorable as the last field in which the old system of tactics-that inherited from the ancients by the men of the "Renaissance"--was fairly pitted against the modern; for the modern military art may be truly described as a development only of that introduced by Gustavus Adolphus. But it is more famous as the occasion of victory and death to one of the few leading spirits of the world's history-one of the few in whom nobleness of heart and purpose, and pre-eminence of genius, were so fused together as to constitute the true character of the hero.

It was well, no doubt, for a curious posterity, that an action of this importance occurred in a civilized period, and No. 40.-VOL. VII.

in the heart of much-enduring and much-writing Germany, the home of "la nation écrivassière." But the result is nevertheless somewhat perplexing. The literature of Lützen would alone furnish out a small catalogue. The presses throughout Germany, France, and Italy, seem to have gone to work simultaneously and immediately on the receipt of the news. "Flying sheets," containing professed descriptions of it, swarm in every library. Preachers, Protestant and Catholic, improved the occasion from a thousand pulpits, and every one of them, that could afford it, resolved that the world should not lose the benefit of his pious eloquence. Then the caricaturist and the ballad-monger got hold of it, whose fugitive but sometimes authentic hints must be studied in the bulky republications of modern antiquaries. Nor did the interest cease when the graver class of authors came on the stage. Political historians, religious historians, dynastic historians and genealogists, topographers, biographers, all had something to say on So renowned a catastrophe, and everyone was in duty bound to add something new, of fact or speculation, to what had been ascertained by his predecessors. Next, in the last century, followed the herd, of German professors and other literates, whose quaint little Latin dissertations in quarto darken so many a question, and deepen so many a paradox. These attached themselves, by predilection, to

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