Theophilus, actually doubted whether the so-called commentary was really from the pen of that writer. Lardner says: "Whether those commentaries which St. Jerome quotes were really composed by Theophilus may be doubted, since they were unknown to Eusebius, and were observed by Jerome to differ in style and expression from his other works. However, if they were not his, they were the work of some anonymous ancient." But if they were the work of an anonymous ancient after Eusebius, what becomes of Dr. Tischendorf s "as early as A.D. 170?"
Eusebius, who refers to Theophilus, and who speaks of his using the Apocalypse, would have certainly gladly quoted the Bishop of Antioch"s "Commentary on the Four Gospels," if it had existed in his day. Nor is it true that the references we have in Jerome to the work attributed to Theophilus, justify the description given by Dr. Tischendorf, or even the phrase of Jerome, "_qui quatuor Evangelistarum in unum opus dicta compingens._" Theophilus seems, so far as it is possible to judge, to have occupied himself not with a connected history of Jesus, or a continuous discourse as to his doctrines, but rather with mystical and allegorical elucidations of occasional pa.s.sages, which ended, like many pious commentaries on the Old or New Testament, in leaving the point dealt with a little less clear with the Theophillian commentary than without it. Dr. Tischendorf says that Theo-doret and Eusebius speak of Tatian in the same way-that is, as though he had, like his Syrian contemporary, composed a harmony of the four Gospels. This is also inaccurate. Eusebius talks of Tatia.n.u.s "having found a certain body and collection of Gospels, I know not how," which collection Eusebius does not appear even to have ever seen; and so far from the phrase in Theodoret justifying Dr. Tischendorfs explanation, it would appear from Theodoret that Tatian"s Diatessaron was, in fact, a sort of spurious gospel, "The Gospel of the Four" differing materially from our four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Neither Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, or Jerome, who refer to other works of Tatian, make any mention of this. Dr. Tischendorf might have added that Diapente, or "the Gospel of the Five," has also been a t.i.tle applied to this work of Tatian.
In the third chapter of his essay, Dr. Tischendorf refers to apocryphal writings "which bear on their front the names of Apostles" "used by obscure writers to palm off" their forgeries. Dr. Tischendorf says that these spurious books were composed "partly to embellish" scripture narratives, and "partly to support false doctrine;" and he states that in early times, the Church was not so well able to distinguish true gospels from false ones, and that consequently some of the apocryphal writings "were given a place they did not deserve." This statement of the inability of the Church to judge correctly, tells as much against the whole, as against any one or more of the early Christian writings, and as it may be as fatal to the now received gospels as to those now rejected, it deserves the most careful consideration. According to Dr.
Tischendorf, Justin Martyr falls into the category of those of the Church who were "not so critical in distinguishing the true from the false;" for Justin, says Tischendorf, treats the Gospel of St. James and the Acts of Pilate, each as a fit source whence to derive materials for the life of Jesus, and therefore must have regarded the Gospel of St.
James and the Acts of Pilate, as genuine and authentic writings; while Dr. Tischendorf, wiser, and a greater critic than Justin, condemns the Gospel of St. James as spurious, and calls the Acts of Pilate "a pious fraud;" but if Dr. Tischendorf be correct in his statement that "Justin made use of this Gospel" and quotes the "Acts of Pontius Pilate," then, according to his own words, Justin did not know how to distinguish the true from the false, and the whole force of his evidence previously used by Dr. Tischendorf in aid of the four Gospels would have been seriously diminished, even if it had been true, which it is not, that Justin Martyr had borne any testimony on the subject.
Such, then, are the weapons, say the Religious Tract Society, by their champion, "which we employ against unbelieving criticism." And what are these weapons? We have shown in the preceding pages, the _suppressio veri_ and the _suggestio falsi_ are amongst the weapons used. The Religious Tract Society directors are parties to fabrication of evidence, and they permit a learned charlatan to forward the cause of Christ with craft and chicane. But even this is not enough; they need, according to their pamphlet, "a new weapon;" they want "to find out the very words the Apostles used." True believers have been in a state of delusion; they were credulous enough to fancy that the authorised version of the Scriptures tolerably faithfully represented G.o.d"s revelation to humankind. But no, says Dr. Tischendorf, it has been so seriously modified in the copying and re-copying that it ought to be set aside altogether, and a fresh text constructed. Glorious news this for the Bible Society. Listen to it, Exeter Hall! Glad tidings to be issued by the Paternoster Row saints! After spending hundreds of thousands of pounds in giving away Bibles to soldiers, in placing them in hotels and lodging-houses, and shipping them off to negroes and savages, it appears that the wrong text has been sent through the world, the true version being all the time in a waste-paper heap at Mount Sinai, watched over by an "invisible eye." But, adds Dr. Tischendorf, "if you ask me whether any popular version contains the original text, my answer is Yes and No.
I say Yes as far as concerns your soul"s salvation." If these are enough for the soul"s salvation, why try to improve the matter? If we really need the "full and clear light" of the Sinaitic Bible to show us "what is the Word written by G.o.d," then most certainly our present Bible is not believed by the Religious Tract Society to be the Word written by G.o.d. The Christian advocates are in this dilemma: either the received text is insufficient, or the proposed improvement is unnecessary. Dr.
Tischendorf says that "The Gospels, like the only begotten of the Father, will endure as long as human nature itself," yet he says "there is a great diversity among the texts," and that the Gospel in use amongst the Ebionites and that used amongst the Nazarenes have been "disfigured here and there with certain arbitrary changes." He admits, moreover, that "in early times, when the Church was not so critical in distinguishing the true from the false," spurious Gospels obtained a credit which they did not deserve. And while arguing for the enduring character of the Gospel, he requests you to set aside the received text altogether, and to try to construct a new revelation by the aid of Dr.
Tischendorf s patent Sinaitic invention.
We congratulate the Religious Tract Society upon their manifesto, and on the victory it secures them over German Rationalism and English Infidelity. The Society"s translator, in his introductory remarks, declares that "circ.u.mstantial evidence when complete, and when every link in the chain has been thoroughly tested, is as strong as direct testimony;" and, adds the Society"s penman, "This is the kind of evidence which Dr. Tischendorf brings for the genuineness of our Gospels." It would be difficult to imagine a more inaccurate description of Dr. Tischendorf s work. Do we find the circ.u.mstantial evidence carefully tested in the Doctor"s boasting and curious narrative of his journeys commenced on a pecuniary deficiency and culminating in much cash? Do we find it in Dr. Tischendorf s concealment for fifteen years of the place, watched over by an invisible eye, in which was hidden the greatest biblical treasure in the world? Is the circ.u.mstantial evidence shown in the sneers at Renan? or is each link in the chain tested by the strange jumbling together of names and conjectures in the first chapter?
What tests are used in the cases of Valentinus and Basilides in the second chapter? How is the circ.u.mstantial testimony aided by the references in the third chapter to the Apocryphal Gospels? Is there a pretence even of critical testing in the chapter devoted to the apostolic fathers? All that Dr. Tisch-endorf has done is in effect to declare that our authorised version of the New Testament is so unreliable, that it ought to be got rid of altogether, and a new text constructed. And this declaration is circulated by the Religious Tract Society, which sends the sixpenny edition of the Gospel with one hand, and in the other the shilling Tischendorf pamphlet, declaring that many pa.s.sages of the Religious Tract Society"s New Testament have undergone such serious modifications of meaning as to leave us in painful uncertainty as to what was originally written.
The very latest contribution from orthodox sources to the study of the Gospels, as contained in the authorised version, is to be found in the very candid preface to the recently-issued revised version of the New Testament, where the ordinary Bible receives a condemnation of the most sweeping description. Here, on the high authority of the revisers, we are told that, with regard to the Greek text, the translators of the authorised version had for their guides "ma.n.u.scripts of late date, few in number and used with little critical skill." The revisers add what Freethinkers have long maintained, and have been denounced from pulpits for maintaining, viz., "that the commonly received text needed thorough revision," and, what is even more important, they candidly avow that "it is but recently that materials have been acquired for executing such a work with even approximate completeness." So that not only "G.o.d"s Word"
has admittedly for generations not been "G.o.d"s Word" at all, but even now, and with materials not formerly known, it has only been revised with "approximate completeness," whatever those two words may mean. If they have any significance at all, they must convey the belief of the new and at present final revisers of the Gospel, that, even after all their toil, they are not quite sure that G.o.d"s revelation is quite exactly rendered into English. So far as the ordinary authorised version of the New Testament goes-and it is this, the law-recognised version which is still used in administering oaths-we are told that the old translators "used considerable freedom," and "studiously adopted a variety of expressions which would now be deemed hardly consistent with the requirements of faithful translation." This is a pleasant euphemism, but a real and direct charge of dishonest translation by the authorised translators. The new revisers add, with sadness, that "it cannot be doubted that they (the translators of the authorised version) carried this liberty too far, and that the studied avoidance of uniformity in the rendering of the same words, even when occurring in the same context, is one of the blemishes of their work." These blemishes the new revisers think were increased by the fact that the translation of the authorised version of the New Testament was a.s.signed to two separate companies, who never sat together, which "was beyond doubt the cause of many inconsistencies," and, although there was a final supervision, the new revisers add, most mournfully: "When it is remembered that the supervision was completed in nine months, we may wonder that the incongruities which remain are not more numerous."
Nor are the revisers by any means free from doubt and misgiving on their own work. They had the "laborious task" of "deciding between the rival claims of various readings which might properly affect the translation,"
and, as they tell us, "Textual criticism, as applied to the Greek New Testament, forms a special study of much intricacy and difficulty, and even now leaves room for considerable variety of opinion among competent critics." Next they say: "the frequent inconsistencies in the authorised version have caused us much embarra.s.sment," and that there are "numerous pa.s.sages in the authorised version in which... the studied variety adopted by the Translators of 1611 has produced a degree of inconsistency that cannot be reconciled with the principle of faithfulness." So little are the new revisers always certain as to what G.o.d means that they provide "alternative readings in difficult or debateable pa.s.sages," and say "the notes of this last group are numerous and largely in excess of those which were admitted by our predecessors."
And with reference to the p.r.o.nouns and other words in italics we are told that "some of these cases... are of singular intricacy, and make it impossible to maintain rigid uniformity." The new revisers conclude by declaring that "through our manifold experience of its abounding difficulties we have felt more and more as we went onward that such a work can never be accomplished by organised efforts of scholarship and criticism unless a.s.sisted by divine help." Apparently the new revisers are conscious that they did not receive this divine help in their attempt at revision, for they go on: "We know full well that defects must have their place in a work so long and so arduous as this which has now come to an end. Blemishes and imperfections there are in the n.o.ble translation which we have been called upon to revise; blemishes and imperfections will a.s.suredly be found in our own revision... we cannot forget how often we have failed in expressing some finer shade of meaning which we recognised in the original, how often idiom has stood in the way of a perfect rendering, and how often the attempt to preserve a familiar form of words, or even a familiar cadence, has only added another perplexity to those which have already beset us."
MR. GLADSTONE IN REPLY TO COLONEL INGERSOLL ON CHRISTIANITY
IN the early days of the _National Reformer_ there was some reason to believe that, despite his enormous work and his utterly differing views, Mr. Gladstone was not unfrequently a reader of some of the papers appearing in its columns. Later there was on one occasion a very remarkable piece of evidence that, whilst considering as "questionable"
the literature issued from the publishing office of the late Mr. Austin Holyoake, the veteran statesman did not pa.s.s it without notice. I do not know if Mr. Gladstone has, during the last dozen years or so, had time or inclination for similar acquaintance with the utterances of advanced Freethought in this country-though his critique on a recent novel gives affirmative probability-but it is clear that he watches heretical utterances across the Atlantic; for in the _North American Review_ for May, Mr. Gladstone-intervening in a correspondence going on between the Rev. Dr. Field and Colonel R.G. Ingersoll-takes up his pen against the eloquent American. I have hesitated very much as to publicly noticing the North American Review article, for my personal reverence for Mr.
Gladstone is very great. I know how very far from one another we are on questions of religion, and believing that the religious side or bent of Mr. Gladstone"s mind is stronger than any other feeling influencing him, I can conceive that I may offend much in any criticism, however respectfully worded. Yet I am sure that Mr. Gladstone"s high position ent.i.tles all he says to most attentive audience, and my duty to those in the Freethought ranks who trust me compels me that I should tender some words of comment. I venture to hope that the view of duty Mr Gladstone has felt inc.u.mbent on him may prevail on my side to prevent any appearance of impertinent interference.
It is not proposed to deal here with the points in controversy between Dr. Field and Colonel Ingersoll, or with the ease as between Mr.
Gladstone and the Colonel. All that will be ventured on is a brief comment, from my own standpoint, on some of the positions adopted by Mr.
Gladstone, writing as a Christian believer.
Early in the article, stating his own position, Mr. Gladstone says: "Belief in divine guidance is not of necessity belief that such guidance can never be frustrated by the laxity, the infirmity, the perversity of man alike in the domain of action and the domain of thought." The whole effect of this sentence is governed by the meaning attached by the writer to the words "divine guidance." If the meaning intended to be conveyed by the word "divine" includes the a.s.sumption of omnipotent omniscience for the person or influence described as divine, and if "guidance" means the intentional direction of the human by the divine to a given end, then it is not easy to understand how this can be intelligently believed, and yet that the same believer shall at the same time believe that laxity or infirmity on the part of the individual guided may "frustrate" the guidance, that is, may counteract it, nullify it, or overcome it. That mental infirmity in the individual may be irremediable by Deity is a proposition which challenges the a.s.sumed omniscient omnipotence. That fallible human perversity may be more powerful than omnipotent intent is a contradiction in terms. If the affirmer of divine influence regarded the "divine" person as creator, and the individuals guided as created results, then the infirmity, i.e., insufficient capacity of the created, must have been intentional on the part of an omniscient, and the "guidance" would be illusory, in that the "divine" must, even prior to creation, have planned and predesigned the frustration of his own guiding effort by means of this infirmity.
Perversity on the part of the created individual, whether originated purposely by the creator or developed in spite of the omnipotent guider, such perversity, sufficient in activity to frustrate the active intent of omnipotence, involves wholesale contradiction on the part of, or utter confusion in the mind of, the believer. According to Mr.
Gladstone, the "divine" may guide the individual to think x, intending the individual to think x, but knowing that the individual cannot (from infirmity) think x, or will not (from perversity) think x, and therefore the divine purpose is frustrated: the "divine," i.e., the omnipotent being, is not only unable or unwilling to cure the infirmity, or to overcome the perversity, but is actually the cause of the fatal infirmity or perversity. That Mr. Gladstone honestly believes this is manifest, but I venture to deny that such honest belief can be accepted as the equivalent for accurate thought. It may be the equivalent for a state of mind, which, existing amongst millions of human beings in diverse races, is yet consistent with the wide prevalence of ir-reconcileable faiths, and with faiths irreconcileable with fact.
Alike in thought and action, Mr. Gladstone believes the divine guidance may be frustrated by human perversity, and thus possibly explains to himself why it is that the Christian Governments of Europe have, in this close of the nineteenth century, literally millions of men constantly ready for the work of killing those who belong to the common family of "Our Father which art in heaven."
Taking up the words of the questioning challenge by Colonel Ingersoll to Dr. Field "What think you of Jephthah?" Mr. Gladstone writes: "I am aware of no reason why any believer in Christianity should not be free to canva.s.s, regret, or condemn the act of Jephthah. So far as the narration which details it is concerned, there is not a word of sanction given to it more than to the falsehood of Abraham in Egypt, or of Jacob and Rebecca in the matter of the hunting (Gen. xx, 1-8, and Gen. xxiii [this is a misprint for xxvii]); or to the dissembling of St. Peter in the case of the Judaising converts (Gal. ii, 11); I am aware of no color of approval given to it elsewhere. But possibly the author of the reply may have thought that he found such an approval in the famous eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the apostle, handling his subject with a discernment and care very different to those of the reply, writes thus (Heb. xi, 32): "And what shall I say more? for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthah: of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets." Jephthah, then, is distinctly held up to us by a canonical writer as an object of praise. But of praise on what account? Why should the reply a.s.sume that it is on account of the sacrifice of his child?"
I submit that to condemn the voluntary human sacrifice by Jephthah to Jehovah, it is necessary to condemn the Bible presentment. A believer in Christianity who condemned the act of Jephthah would in this necessarily condemn also the devotion to the Lord of a human being and the carrying out the vow by actual human sacrifice. But Leviticus xxvii, 28 and 29, authorises such a vow, and enacts the result in precise language.
Kalisch, writing on this ("Leviticus," Part I, p. 385), says: "The fact stands indisputable that human sacrifices offered to Jehovah were possible among the Hebrews long after the time of Moses, without meeting check or censure from the teachers or leaders of the nation."
Mr. Gladstone correctly enough maintains that the Bible gives no more sanction to the conduct of Jephthah "than to the falsehood of Abraham in Egypt." I quite admit that this is accurately stated, but G.o.d frequently described himself as the "G.o.d of Abraham;" Abraham is pictured as being in heaven; special promises were made to Abraham; and if these were not as sanctioning his conduct, they nevertheless were marks of approbation without blame of that conduct. In ordinary cases where reward is given it is not unnaturally a.s.sociated with the narrated conduct of the person rewarded. Abraham and Jephthah stand on much the same footing on the question of readiness to offer human sacrifice, except that in Jephthah"s case the initiative is with him. In the case of Abraham, the initiative is from the Lord.
Mr. Gladstone, again, accurately says that there is no more sanction given to the act of Jephthah than is given to the trick and deliberate falsehood by which Jacob cheated blind Isaac out of the blessing intended for Esau. That is so; but, according to the Genesis narrative, G.o.d practically endorsed the fraud when he not only declared himself the G.o.d of Jacob, but by his prophet declared that he loved Jacob and hated Esau (Romans ix, 13). When the cheater is loved and the cheated hated, it is scarcely straining the text to a.s.sociate sanction of the act with the love expressed for the the conduct of the person rewarded.
The narration as to Jephthah is of a distinct bargain between Jephthah and the Lord, and a bargain made under spiritual influence, or, to use Mr. Gladstone"s words, under divine guidance. The text is explicit (Judges xi, 29, 30, 31):
"Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he pa.s.sed over Gilead, and Mana.s.seh, and pa.s.sed over Mizpeh of Gilead, and from Mizpeh of Gilead he pa.s.sed over unto the chil-dren of Ammon. And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord"s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering."
After this vow the Lord does deliver the children of Ammon into Jephthah"s hands, and Jephthah-who says: "I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back"-in return keeps his part of the agreement, "and did with her according to his vow." And yet Mr.
Gladstone writes that there is no reason so far as he is aware, to prevent a Christian from condemning this act of Jephthah. No reason, except that the condemnation must include the condemning of the practice of such vows generally, though specially enacted (Leviticus xxvii, 28, 29):
"Notwithstanding no devoted thing, that a man shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, both of man and beast, and of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is most holy unto the Lord. None devoted which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed but shall surely be put to death"-
and must also involve the express condemnation of the particular bargain a.s.sented to and completed alike by Jephthah and by "the Lord."
With the challenge as to Jephthah, Col. Ingersoll asked Dr. Field "What of Abraham?" and this, too, is taken up by Mr. Gladstone who says of Abraham: "He is not commended because, being a father, he made all the preparations antecedent to plunging the knife into his son. He is commended (as I read the text) because, having received a glorious promise, a promise that his wife should be the mother of nations, and that kings should be born of her (Genesis xvii, 6), and that by his seed the blessings of redemption should be conveyed to man, and the fulfilment of the promise being dependent solely upon the life of Isaac, he was nevertheless willing that the chain of these promises should be broken by the extinction of that life, because his faith a.s.sured him that the Almighty would find the way to give effect to his own designs"
(Heb. xi, 16-19). But the text is surely clear on this. Abraham is praised because he offered up Isaac, that is, that he was ready and willing to offer a human sacrifice to "the Lord" similar to that which was actually offered by Jephthah. Jephthah"s sacrifice was voluntary; Abraham"s uncompleted sacrifice was undertaken in obedience to the pressure of temptation by G.o.d.
Mr. Gladstone observes that "the facts... are grave and startling," and he might well write thus if he had before him any record of the case of a man tried in the United States for the murder of his son. The man imagined and believed, as Abraham is stated to have imagined and believed, that he heard G.o.d command him to kill his son as a sacrifice; the man obeyed what he believed to be the divine command. While Abraham only "took the knife to slay his son," the American actually killed his child. On the trial the jury found that the man was insane; that the imagined divine command was delusion; that what the man claimed to be an act of faith in G.o.d was an act of human insanity. Mr. Gladstone says that Abraham"s faith "may have been qualified by a reserve of hope that G.o.d would interpose before the final act," that is, that the interposition would come before he, like Jephthah, actually killed his child as a human sacrifice to the Deity who tempted him. The Bible text gives no support to Mr. Gladstone"s qualifying theory. Genesis xxii, 1, 2, says:
"G.o.d did tempt Abraham.... And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of."
Without hesitation, Abraham, according to the narrative, takes his son to the place, binds him to the wood, and deliberately prepares to carry out the sacrifice. Abraham either deceives the men (verse 5) and misleads his son (verses 7 and 8), or Abraham did not believe in the consummation of the sacrifice, and in the latter case the faith for which he is praised would be no more than hypocritic pretence. Nay, the text expressly represents G.o.d as affirming that Abraham was ready to carry out the sacrifice of his son (verse 16):
"By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son."
If Abraham only offered to kill his son as a sacrifice with the mental qualification that the offer would not be accepted, and that the sacrifice would not be exacted, then the Lord must have been misled into the swearing recited in the text.
Evidently Mr. Gladstone, himself a humane man and loving father, is not quite at ease in dealing with this part of Abraham"s history. He says (1) "that the narrative does not supply us with a complete statement of particulars;" (2) that "the command was addressed to Abraham under conditions essentially different from those which now determine for us the limits of moral obligations;" (3) "that the estimate of human life at the time was different;" (4)
that "the position of the father in the family was different: its members were regarded as in some sense his property." I rejoin (1) that to read into the text vital words of explanation which are not specifically expressed in the "divine revelation"-and to so read because without these words the text is incredible-is perilously near downright infidelity. And that, given the incompleteness of Genesis, the added explanation must vary with the intellect, training, and temper of the expositor, e.g. Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Spurgeon, or the man who killed his child in America, would fill up each imagined hiatus in very diverse fashions. (2) Mr. Gladstone"s argument can only be maintainable on the a.s.sumption that the limits of moral obligation were in the time of Abraham differently determined-for or by, "the Lord"-from such limits today, that is, that the "divine guide" is not immutable. (3) That to render this argument permissible on the part of a believer in Christianity it must be a.s.sumed that "the Lord" then estimated the value of human life differently from the manner in which he now would estimate it, because-unless "the Lord" was simply deceiving Abraham in the original direction and the subsequent swearing-"the Lord" concurred in and approved the proposed sacrifice by Abraham; as he also afterwards concurred in and approved the actual sacrifice by Jephthah. (4) [nvolves the a.s.sumption that the morality of family relation is now admittedly higher under modern civilisation than when specially regulated by "divine guidance."
3 "Capital and Wages," p. 19.
4 "Perversion of Scotland," p. 197.
Mr. Gladstone grants that "there is every reason to suppose that around Abraham in "the land Moriah," the practice of human sacrifice as an act of religion was in full vigor," and he does not fall into the error of ordinary Biblical apologists in pretending that the practice of human sacrifice was confined to "false "religions.
Mr. Gladstone fairly states that the command received by Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a human sacrifice was not only "obviously inconsistent with the promises which had preceded," but "was also inconsistent with the morality acknowledged in later times." I submit that this statement is really a condemnation by Mr. Gladstone of the divine command, in that it is a declaration that such a command would-in times later than Abraham, in fact, in our own times-be an immoral command. Here there ought not to be any question raised of changed conditions, for the command is from "the Lord," that is, from the a.s.sumed immutable, omniscient Omnipotent. Mr. Gladstone, it is true, contends that "though the law of moral action is the same everywhere and always, it is variously applicable to the human being, as we know from experience; and its first form is that of simple obedience to a superior whom there is every ground to trust." As in the article Mr. Gladstone has given no definition of what he means by morality, I have no right to go beyond his statement. Following Bentham and Mill, I should personally maintain the utilitarian definition of morality, i.e., "that that action is moral which is for the greatest good of the greatest number with the least injury to any." But this would not in any fashion fit in with Mr.
Gladstone"s contention, which in the case of a Russian, would make the act moral which is of simple obedience to the Czar, even though that act happened to be the knouting of a delicate woman; or in the case of a Roman Catholic would declare the act to be moral which was performed in simple obedience to the Pope, even though it were the applying the fire to the f.a.ggots piled round Giordano Bruno; or in the case of an English sailor would make the act moral done in obedience to the commander of his ship, even though it should be the placing a destructive torpedo in contact with a crowded vessel of an enemy; or in the case of an Irish constable, though the act should be the shooting, on the command of his superior, from the window of a Mitchelstown barrack, even though the result was the murder of an unoffending old man.
A FEW WORDS ON THE CHRISTIANS" CREED
TO THE REV. J.G. PACKER, A.M, INc.u.mBERER OF ST. PETER"S, HACKNEY ROAD
SIR,-Had the misfortunes which I owe to your officious interference been less than they are, and personal feeling left any place in my mind for deliberation or for inquiry in selecting a proper person to whom to dedicate these few remarks, I should have found myself directed, by many considerations, to the person of the Inc.u.mberer of St. Peter"s, Hackney Road. A life spent in division from part of your flock, and in crushing those whom you could not answer, may well ent.i.tle you to the respect of all true bigots. Hoping that you will be honoured as you deserve,
I am, Reverend Sir,