the facts into that pattern, yet in other places, when assailing the divine claims of the Old Testament, he declares that the Hebrew Jehovah, as worshiped by this eminently religious people, and as described by this extraordinary religious genius, is a being "more cruel than Odin or Belus!" this people so wondrously gifted in appreciation of religious truths believed doctrines concerning God's government that "Epicurus would have rejected as blasphemy!" What a "religious genius" this must be, raised up in this barren age, to deliver us from errors which we have learned from teachers "whose thought the world has not yet mastered!"

But the character of Christ is a yet greater stumbling-block in the path of this progress theory. To this, as to every other false system of religion, it is the great rock of offense. It admits what we should call superhuman excellence in Christ; that his ethics and philosophy were the highest ever taught on earth, and that his character incarnated his precepts. He styles him "the greatest soul of all the sons of men;" "eighteen centuries have passed since the sun of humanity rose so high in Jesus; what man, what sect, what Church has mastered his thought?" Jesus "at one step goes before the world whole thousands of years." Now for these eighteen centuries the human mind has been advancing steadily into every province of thought, and if all religious ideas are natural growths of the mind, why have they never risen higher than they stood eighteen centuries ago? But it is for another reason that we allude to Mr. Parker's theory of Christ. Instead of being a most harmonious character, the highest type of human nature, his theory compels us to picture him as the most monstrous being that ever lived on the earth, a perfect chaos of contradictions.

We have already shown how Parkerism necessitates the strange conclusion, that this being of transcendent wisdom was guilty of inconceivable folly in the choice of his disciples and laying plans for the dissemination of his doctrines. But there are more monstrous contradictions than this to be harmonized. Imagine it to be possible to disentangle the miraculous accounts from the Gospel narratives, and ascribe them all to the superstition of Christ's followers, and further imagine the teaching disentangled from the works, and so far from proving him a teacher of "absolute religion, nothing less, nothing more," these teachings will not allow us, on Mr. Parker's theory of his character, to believe him to have been even an honest man. All the documents agree that he promised to rise from the dead; this is woven through all the sayings and writings, and even Mr. Parker tacitly admits that no critical surgery can remove this prediction. Was he deceived, or did he deceive? The

first supposition involves a pitch of fanaticism wholly inconsistent with that rounded harmony of character which the theory assigns him. The second supposition ruins his moral character, it makes a falsehood to be woven through his life.

In discussing the "limitations of Jesus," he says that "the only one at all affecting his moral and religious character is this: that he denounces his opponents in no measured terms; calls the Pharisees 'hypocrites' and 'children of the devil.' We cannot tell how far the historians have added to the fierceness of the invective, but the general fact must probably remain, that he did not use courteous speech." But the generous Mr. Parker benevolently adds: "Considering the youth of the man, it was a very venial error, to make the worst of it!" *

But there are most formidable difficulties that are not to be glossed over in this comfortable, nonchalant style. There is language in the Gospels for which the hot blood of youth is no excuse, language not only rash but blasphemous from any being that is human, and only human. A sage, in the modest confidence of wisdom, may profess to teach the truth, but it is only as a seeker to his fellowseekers; the greater his knowledge the greater his ignorance; the vaster the horizon which walls in the known, the vaster the walledout unknown. Hence the wisest of the Greek sages stands in history a modest seeker, and declares at the end, "All I know is that I know nothing." What a contrast here between Socrates and Christ! Christ is never seen seeking, doubting; when we first see him he has found. He never acknowledges ignorance, never owns incompetence to answer the most difficult questions, though often rebuking the spirit'in which they are propounded. Socrates modestly asks help from his weak disciples as he goes groping on; Christ stands selfsupported. Socrates is ever praying for light, and is humbly, earnestly following a twilight glimmer when last we see him; Christ stands erect in the broad sunshine when first we see him. Socrates painfully reasons out conclusions; Christ summarily announces truths. Socrates professes only to infer; Christ professes to see. A man may profess to have found the truth; but what would it be for a man, a Socrates, to say, "I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE?" What would it be for Socrates to say, "My Father is greater than I?" Christians have been troubled at this saying, but what blasphemy would it have been in Jesus's lips if he were only the son of Mary! Think of the wisest, holiest of the sons of men crying out, No man cometh unto the Father but by ME;" "He that confesseth ME before nen, him will I confess before my Father;" standing up Discourse, p. 291.

before his kindred dust, and saying, "I am the bread of heaven;" "Take My yoke upon you and learn of ME; for I am meek and lowly in heart." Christ claims to be not only a Teacher of truth, but THE TRUTH incarnate; holds himself up before the race as a model character; claims divine authority. Now if Christ is to be ranked, as Mr. Parker ranks him, with Socrates, Confucius, Paul, Luther, eminent religious teachers and philosophers; if he were a mere human creature like them, then these claims convict him of arrogance and blasphemy so awful that language cannot furnish an appropriate epithet; it is a crime so dark as to stand forth in solitary enormity on the historic page. And this crime was committed by him whom Mr. Parker believes the purest being that earth has seen, a teacher of "absolute religion, absolute morality!"

The fact is that Mr. Parker is afraid to follow his doctrine to its logical consequences. When he denies the supernatural in Christ, he must also logically deny the integrity of his moral character. Mr. Newman sees this, and faces the consequences fearlessly. Starting where Mr. Parker does, in the denial of the supernatural in Christ, he arrives at the legitimate and inevitable conclusion that Christ was guilty of "egregious vanity," "crookedness of conscience and real imposture," "blundering self-sufficiency,” “combined error and arrogance;" that the evangelists have given us what "seems to be the picture of a conscious and wilful impostor," "a vain and vacillating pretender."* Now why does not Mr. Parker march up to these consequences? Why does he tether his common sense as soon as it comes to the edge? Can it be that this hero of

free thought, this champion of the "forlorn hope of the world," feels his courage fail as this specter starts before him? Why else does he stop here and paint such an unimaginable chimera, and call it Christ? Vast and unparalleled wisdom selecting dolts, fools, and fanatics to convey its lessons! Absolute morality committing high treason against the great God! And this is the theology which is to reconcile religion and common sense!

As Mr. Parker denies all revelation, except in that accomodated sense in which Cosmos and the Principia may be called revelations, what account has he to give of the deep craving of this human child to hear from its Father, the long prayer for light that rolls up from all the literature of the heathens? He throws our Bible down among the Shasters and the Vedas, and what does he give us instead? He puts out the lights that God has kindled, and what torch has he to give us? None; bare, chill negation is all he offers us. How we came here we know not; he tells us that we cannot know; whither • Newman's "Phases of Faith," third edition, chap. 7 FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XI.-30

we are going we know not, only as far as our eyes can see! No light from beyond, no prayer-hearing God; a cold, inflexible, absolute compressing us in its iron arms; but no Father to hold our infant hand as we totter on in the first steps of this mysterious being! A plan of salvation! Man needs none, he must save himself, if saved at all. Forgiveness! It is an impossibility; there is none in the universe. There is no help or hope for a being who has violated law, but to work out the penalty; no mercy in God's government. The cross, whose light and heat stream through human history; in whose radiance we thread safely the labyrinths of Providence, or at least see how we may one day do so; the cross toward which, in all lands, human hearts turn and open as flowers to the sun; the cross is dragged down, and what is reared in its place? Nothing. Parkerism tells us we need nothing. God never spoke to the race. He never commissioned prophet, apostle, or Redeemer to reveal his will. Not a word of sympathy for the suffering race has ever dropped from the brazen heavens. We behold the noblest of the sons of men straining their eyes and ears, to catch a gleam, to hear a sound from the other world, and Mr. Parker looks on and sneers at their weakness! Plato said: We must wait patiently until some one, either a God, or some inspired man, teach us our moral and religious duties, and, as Pallas, in Homer, did to Diomed, remove the darkness from our eyes."* And again, expresses the strangely mysterious hope, that "there had existed in the immense past some people who had possession of a true philosophy by divine inspiration, (ἔχ τινος θείας ἐπιπνόιας ἀληθινὴ φιλοσοφία, or that they might perhaps now exist in some obscure part of the barbarian land," but Mr. Parker looks with serene indifference upon the gift for which Plato longed. All those glimmering traditions of primitive revelation, whose scattered embers the noblest of the heathen sages gathered together from far lands, with painful toil, and blew for a little light, and over the feeble sparks shouted, crying, "Ha! I have seen the fire," this apostle of absolute religion spurns with his foot as lying legends or childish superstitions. Absolute religion-that which every man can discover for himself this is all we have or can have; and he is weak in the head or diseased in the heart who asks for anything more. Who is this that so comfortably draws infallible conclusions where Plato and Cicero failed, and cried for aid in despair? Who is this that enters the sacred cell of Socrates, and as the childlike sage sits on the bedside, with his disciples at his feet, listening tearful and breathless, while the sun yet lingers on the mountains, Plato, Ed. Stalb. I. Alcib., 150, D. Rep. Lib. vi, 499 B. C.

as he gives them the reason of the hope that is in him, by weaving together the vague and distorted traditions of primitive revelations, singing them as a swan-song,* to keep his heart strong in that fearful hour? Who is this that enters and sneers at the scene that is graven on the heart of the world? Let it change our indignation. to pity, as we see that it is he who "drops a tear for the weakness" of Jesus Christ!

ART. VIII. EXCURSUS ON THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT.

THE topic proposed is, confessedly, one of extreme delicacy. For this reason, probably, it is rarely introduced into the pulpit, and almost as rarely finds its way into either the fugitive or permanent literature of the Church. Ministers and authors alike shrink from the task of descanting upon an evil in respect to which both hearers and readers are known to be so very fastidious. And this reluctance is often increased by a doubt on the part of the speaker or writer, whether he have sufficient skill to treat the subject in such a way as not to offend even a correct religious taste. Timidity in one begets timidity in another. Afraid of being thought vulgar, or assuming, or officious, even the Christian watchman scarcely dares to lift up his voice, though the sword of the moral assassin is red with the blood of its victims wherever he turns his eye. And, in reference to this matter, it is to be feared there is much less courage now than there used to be. A perverted taste, or perhaps rather a false modesty, is stealing over society; so that what might once have been said without offending the most delicate ear, is now thought to be scarcely tolerable. Thus a monster vice stalks abroad, led on and ministered to by agencies almost everywhere at work; and yet the Christian pulpit and the Christian press are either wholly silent, or speak in tones so feeble or so indistinct that they are barely heard, and of course little felt.

To point out all the evils that result from the sin of lewdness, would be too great a task for any human being. Omniscience only can determine how much misery and wretchedness it has introduced among the sons and daughters of Adam, or to what extent it connects itself with the destinies of the unseen world. That it is a very great evil the wise and good must deeply feel and readily admit. But we are inclined to think that when the black catalogue of human * Phædo 84 D. E. 107, et seq.; cf. Cicero, ubi sup.