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THEOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL ESSAYS . Essays Ecclesiastical and Social . Reprinted , with Additions , from the Edinburgh Review . By W . J . Conybeare , M . A ., late Fellow of Trinity College * Cambridge . Longman . The Man Christ Jesus . By the Rev . Robert Craig , A . M ., Rothesay . Edinburgh : Thomas Constable and Co . Essays Ecclesiastical and Social . —Mr . Conybeare is a thoroughly clever writer , and the popularity of his Essays is not to be wondered at . But we cannot give him the praise due to great depth of thought . His celebrated , we may almost say famous , Essay on Church Parties is the most remarkable instance we ever saw of a man unconsciously sawing off the bough on which he sits . He seems himself scarcely to have made up his mind whether the divisions whiuh he reveals and satirises are creditable or discreditable , useful
or dangerous , to his Church . At one time he tells us that the three parties —High Church , Low Church , and Broad Church—are a triple cord which cannot easily be untwisted , and neither of the strands of which ought to be cut ; that the object of every wise Churchman should be to keep each of the main schools of opinion from extravagance on the one hand , and stagnation on the other ; and that the existence of counteracting parties is a check providentially operating for this end . But afterwards he winds up thus : — While civil discord thus convulses the Church , many of her children are falling away from her , and abandoning the distinctive doctrines of Christianity . We have already noticed the diffusion of infidel opinions among the lower classes ; but the mischief is not confined to them . The highest ranks and most intelligent professions are influenced by scepticul opinions to an extent which , twenty years back , would have seemed incredible . It is true that as far as the upper classes are concerned , the last half century ( taken as a whole ) has been characterised by a reaction against the fashionable scepticism of the preceding age . But In England the tide turned ten or fifteen years ago , and the current is now running in the opposite direction . This state lias been caused the
of things , as far as the upper clasnes are concerned , directly by dissensions of the Church . " When doctors differ , who shall decide ? " is the expression of an almost inevitable scepticism . These unnatural hostilities must cease if we are ever to reconvert the Pagans of the factory and the Pantheists of the forum . How , indeed , caa wo hope to move them if we are unable to answer that most ol > viou » retort of the unbeliever , " I will hearken when you Christians can agree upon the lessons which you want to teach mo . " And how can -we answer this , h » t . y * , T Z ledging a substantial unity of faith , and an absolute identity of holiness , in _ uiQjmaa * of endless diversity of opinion ? ?' Oh , what are the things w 0 . " * , " „ Vhntwe Leighton , " compared with the great things of God ! " Suroly U is " « " » * ** should agree to differ about Provenlcnt Grace and Surplice Prwwlimg , and turn „ true battle whioh is raging round us ; a battle not between AngUouw XihoianV We nor even between Popery and Protestantism , but between *¦««» « " h believe that the end is sure , and that Truth will conquer . But who can say nowmany ages of defeat may precede that final victory ? „ . „ : „ mvtnh 1 am In the fin * place the divisions in the Church arc , no > * £% » ££ * £££ the only . ca « , < J of the spread of j ^^^ ^^^^^^^^
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amamit , > and > yet subdued to calm and reverence as . by the sublime things to b a < £ « finjfi'omithatisummitit Sachva writer is Thomas-Cariyle . It is an-idle question to ask whether his books will be read a century hence : if they were all burnt as the grandest of > Suttees . on . his funeral pile , it would be only like cutting ' down an oak aft »» fvit » t . acorttS !> have sovrnt afforest . For thereis hardly a > superior or active , mind of this generation that has not been modified by Carlyle ' s writing s ; there has hardly been an English book written for the last ten or twelve years that would not' hare been . different if Carlyle hajpl not lived - The character-of > his influence is best seen in the fact that many of the men who have the . least agreement with his ? opinions are those to whom the reading of Sartor Resartus was an ; epoch in the history of their minds . The extent of hi& influence may be best seen in the fact that ideas which were startling novelties ^ when , he first wrote them are now become common-places . And we think few men will be found to say that this influence on the whole has not-been for good . There are plenty who question the justice of Carlyle ' s estimates of past men and past times , plenty who quarrel with the exaggerations of the Latter-Day Pamphlets , and-who are as far as possible from lo&king-for an amendment of things from a Carlylian theocracy with the " greatest man , " as a Joshua who is to smite the wicked ( and the stupid ) till the going down of the sun . But for any large nature , those points of difference are quite incidental . Tt is not as a . theorist , but as a great and beautiful human nature , that Carlyle influences us . You may meet a man whose , wisdom seems unimpeachable , since you find him entirely in agreement with yourself ; but this oracular man . of unexceptionable opinions has a green eye , a wiry hand , and altogether a Wesen , or demeanour , that makes the world look blank to you , and whose unexceptionable opinions become a bore ; while another man who deals in what you cannot but think " dangerous paradoxes , " warms your heart by the pressure of his hand , and looks oct on the world with so clear and loving an eye , that nature seems to reflect the light of his glance upon your own feeling . So it is with Carlyle . When he is saying the very opposite of what -we think , he says it so finely , with such , hearty conviction-r-he makes the object about which we differ stand out > in such grand relief under the clear light of his strong and honest intellect- —he appeals so constantly to our sense of the manly and the truthful —that ; we are obliged to say "Hearl hear ! " to the writer before we can give the ^ decorous " Oh ! oh ! " to his opinions . Much twaddling criticism has been spent on Carlyle ' s style . Unquestionably there are some genuine minds , not at all given to twaddle , to whom his style is antipathetic , who find it as unendurable as an English lady finds peppermint . Against antipathies there is no arguing ; they are misfortunes . But instinctive repulsion apart , surely there is no one who can read and relish Carlyle without feeling that they could no more wish him to have written in another style than they could wish Gothic architecture not to be Gothic , or RafFaelle not to be Raffaellesque . It is the fashion to speak of Carlyle almost exclusively as a philosopher ; but , to our thinking , he is yet more of an artist than a philosopher . He glances deep down into human nature , and shows the causes of human actions ; he seizes grand generalisations , and traces them in the particular with wonderful acumen ; and in all this he is a philosopher . But , perhaps , his greatest power lies in concrete presentation . No novelist has made his creations live for us more thoroughly than Carlyle has made Mirabeau and the men of the French Revolution , Cromwell and the Puritans , "What humour in his pictures ! Yet what depth of appreciation , what reverence for the great and godlike under every sort of eai * thly mummery ! It is several years now since we read a work of Carlyle ' s seriatim , but thisi our long-standing impression of him as a writer we find confirmed by looking over Mr . Ballantyne ' s Selections . Such a volume as this is surely a benefit to the public , for alas ! Carlyle ' s works are still dear , and many who would like to have them are obliged to . forego the possession of more than a volume or two . Through this good service of Mr . Ballantyne ' s , however , they may now obtain for a moderate sum a large collection of extracts—if not the best that could have been made , still very precious ones . To make extracts from a book of extracts may at first seem easy , and to make extracts from a writer so well known may seem superfluous . The em&arras de rickesses and the length of the passages make the first not easy ; and as to the second , why , we havo reread these passages so often in the volumes , and now again in Mr . Ballantyne ' s selection , that we cannot suppose any amount of repetition otherwise than agreeable . We will , however , be sparing . Here is DAVID , TOE HKBBEAV KINO . On the whole , wo make too much of faults ; the details of the business hide the real centre of it . Faults ? The greatest of faults , I should say , is to bo conscious of none . Headers of the Bible above all , one would think , might know bettor . Who is called there " the man according to God ' s own heart ? " David , the Hebrew King , had fallen into sins enough ; blackest crimes ; there was no want of Bins . And thereupon the unbelievers sneer and ask , Is this your man according to God ' s heart ? The sneer , I muflt say , seems , to mo but a shallow one . What are faults , what arc the outward details of a life , if the inner secret of it , the remorse , temptations , true , often-baffled , never-ended struggle of it , bo forgotten ? " It is not in man that walketh to direct his stops . " Of all acts is not , for a man , repentance the moat divine ? The deadliest sin , I say , were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin;—that is death ; the heart so conscious is divorced from nincority , humility , and fact ; is dead : it is " pure" as doatl dry sand is pure . David ' s life and hiatory , aa written for us in thoso Psalms of his , I consider to bo the truest emblem over given of a man ' s moral progress and warfare here below . All earnest souls will over discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is good mid best . Struggle often buttled , sore baffled , down as into entire wreck 5 yet a struggle never ended ; over , with tears , repentance , true unconquerable purpose , begun anew . Poor human nature ! la not a mam ' s walking , in truth , always that : " a succession of fulls ? " Man can do no other . In this wild clement of a Life , ho has to struggle onwards ; now fallen , deepabased ; and ovor , with tears , repentance , with bleeding heart , ho has to rise again , atrwggjo again still onwards . That his struggle he a faithful unconquerable one s that is the question of questions . Iri'another way how excellent is this on TUB WORTH OF FORMUI * AS . "What ; wo' call «• Formulas" are not in their origin bad 5 they are indispensably good . Formula is method , habitude , found wherever man in found . Formulas «
fashion themselves-as Paths do , as beaten- Highways , leading towardVeome sacrtd or hign , objeot > whither many , men are bent Consider UU One- mszv * nH ? <** ' h * at * frft ; earnest-impulse , finds out a way of doing somewhat—were it of 'utteringyhis soul's reverence for the Highest , were it but of fitly saluting his feUtxw-man . v An inventor was needed to dothat , a poet ; he has articulated the dinwstruggling , thought that ; dwelt in . his own and many hearts . This is his way of doing ; that ^ t hese , are his footsteps , the beginning of a " Path . " And now-see : the- second man travels naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer : it is the easiest method . In the footsteps of his'foregoer ; yet with improvements , changes where such seem good , ; at all events with enlargements , the Path ever vridening itself as more travel it ; till . at last there is a broad Highway whereon the whole world may travel and drive . While there remains a City or Shrine , or any Reality to drive to , at the farther end , the Highway shall be right welcome ! When the City is gone , we Trill forsake' the * Highway . In this manner all Institutions , Practices , Regulated Things in the world have come into existence , and gone out of existence . Formulas all begin by being full of > substance ; you may call them , the skin , the articulation into shape , into limbs and skrin , of a substance , that is already there : they had not been there otherwise ; Idols , aa we said , are not idolatrous till they become doubtful , empty for the worshipper ' s heart . Much as we tali against Formulas , I hope no one of us is ignorant withal of-the high significance of true Formulas ; that they were , and will ever be , the indispensablest furniture of-our habitation in this world . Finally , this characteristic passage tempts us : — THE APES OF THE DEAD SEA . Perhaps few narratives in History or Mythology are more significant' than that Moslem one , of Moses and the Dwellers by the Dead Sea . A tribe of men dwelt on the shores of that same Asphaltic Lake ; and having forgotten , as we are all prone to do , the inner facts of Nature , and taken up with the falsities and outer semblances of it , were fallen into sad conditions 1 — verging indeed towards- a certain faT deeper Lake . Whereupon it pleased kind Heaven to send them the Prophet Mttses , with an instructive word of warning-, out of which might hav « spruug " remedial measures " not a few . But no : the men of the Dead Sea discovered , as the valet-species always does in heroes or prophets , no comeliness in Moses ; listened with real tedium to Moses , with light' grinning ' , op with splenetic sniffs and sneers , affecting even to yawn ; and signified , in short ,. that they found him a humbug , and even a bore . Such was the candid theory these men of the Asphalt Lake formed to themselves of Moses , That probably he was a humbug ,, that certainly he was a bore . Moses withdrew ; but Nature and her rigorous veracities did not withdraw . The Men of the Dead Sea , whea we next went to visit them , were all " changed into Apes ; " sitting on the trees there , grinning now in the most wnaffected manner ; gibbering and chattering complete nonsense ; finding the whole Universe now a most undisputable Humbug ! The Universe has become a Humbug to tie Apes who thought it one ! There they sit and chatter , to this hour ; only I think , every Sabbath there returns to them a bewildered half-consciousness , half-reminiscence ; and they sit , with their wizzened smoke-dried visages , and such ¦ an air of supreme tragicality as Apes may ; looking out , through those blinking smoker-bleared eyes of theirs , into the wonderfulest universal smoky Twilight and undecipherable disordered Dusk of Things ; wholly an Uncertainty , Unintelligibility , they and it ; and for commentary thereon , here and there an unmusical chatter or mew : —truest , tragicaleat Humbug conceivable by the , mind of man or ape ! They made no use of their souls ; and so have lost them . Their worship on the Sabbath now is to roost there , with unmusical screeches , and half remember that they had souls . - Didst thou never , O Traveller , fall in with parties of this tribe ? Meseems they are grown somewhat numerous in our day .
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J ^ G& ewmZim&T TECT EBAPiEm . 3 ^
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 27, 1855, page 1035, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2112/page/15/
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