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Stevenson may bear the impress of predecessors, there is a sunniness in this little volume which is all its own; and which makes the few hours spent in its company refreshing and delightful. In spirit we pass over the quiet river penetrating the simple country life; we revel in the deliciously humorous picture of the Royal Nauticals who

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are all employed in commerce during the day; but in the evening, voyez vous, nous sommes serieux."

Having got thus far it is impossible not to read the volume tenderly to the end, rejoicing that there is yet an author who can view life with such delicate and philosophic merriment. And in the end when the voyagers come "back to the world" we cannot but regret that the spell is broken, that we too must come back to the world from our brief holiday of the spirit and say farewell to the joyous Cigarette and Arethusa.

Life in the Mofussil: or the Civilian in Lower Bengal. By an ex-Civilian. London: C. Kegan Paul and Co. 1878.

This is a record of a few years passed in the Indian Civil Service in Lower Bengal. It is written pleasantly enough, though perhaps a little superficially. It abounds in amusing anecdotes, some of which strikingly exemplify the absurdity of engrafting European manners and customs on an Eastern population. For instance, there is a long account of the difficulty attending the introduction of a uniform suit of clothing into a convict prison. The Hindoo in

mates protested against it on the ground that they were forbidden by their religion to eat in a garment with a seam in it; and the Mohamedans on the ground that they were commanded by theirs to cover their heels with their garment when they prayed, and the jacket was not long enough for the purpose. Possibly our English prisoners would not calmly acquiesce if they were ordered to assume the "dhotee" of the Hindoo, or the flowing robe of the Mohamedan. Trial by jury does not seem to have been more successful.

"There is a story that on the occasion of the first trial by jury in the Patna district, the judge, who was somewhat proud of his fluency in the vernacular, made a long and elaborate charge to the jury of seven members, pointing out that the decision rested with them, and that it was only his business to explain the law, ending up with the usual form, And now, gentlemen of the jury, what is your verdict?' The seven jurymen all stood up, put their hands palm to palm, the attitude of respect assumed by natives in the presence of a superior, and replied with one voice, Jaise huzoor ke rai,' which is, when interpreted, 'Whatever your highness thinks right!' Somewhat discouraging this."

The long descriptions of the business transacted in the law courts become very wearisome. Much of this might with advantage have been omitted from such a work as the present.

THE

UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE.

AUGUST, 1878.

CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Ir is now, according to the only extant narrative, 1837 years since certain Cypriot and Cyrenian Jews, involved in some unexplained manner in the troubles that arose as to the lapidation of Stephen, arriving at Antioch, addressed their arguments to the Hellenising Jews resident in that Syrian city. The small church at Jerusalem that held to the doctrine of the Apostles sent the Levite Barnabas to instruct new disciples. Barnabas called in Paul of Tarsus, who had himself become a sudden convert to the new opinions which he had been commissioned by the Sanhedrim to extirpate. In the ancient capital of the Greek Kings, amid a small knot of foreign Jews, was first uttered that word which has been adopted as a title of common brotherhood by great part of the Aryan race. The whole hierarchy of the Catholic Church, its purpleclad cardinals, its royal and apostolic Emperors and Kings, its infal lible Vicar, have been developed from the disciples who were first called Christians at Antioch.

It is important, alike to those who hold that Christianity is a religion, not only of Divine origin,

but founded on and permeated by direct Divine revelation, and to those who hold that in every form of faith there is a blending of error with truth, and a reflection of the social and tribal instincts of race and of age, to inquire gravely into the position which this faith of eighteen centuries' growth occupies in face of the positive knowledge attained by civilised Europe in this nineteenth century. The inquiry proposed is not one into the spiritual nature of the religion. It is not one as to the historic basis, as regards any evidence producible as to the facts relied on as fundamental to its doctrines. It is not even one as to its moral influence on those who profess, and on those whose oppose, its dogmas. On each of these momentous questions impartial statement of what is actually known is a desideratum. It is the aim of the following pages to inquire into the philosophy, rather than into the religion of the Christian faith; to examine the form, and the influence of the form, rather than the intimate nature and Divine doctrine, of Christianity; to search what changes have occurred in that form, tending

to bring it more thoroughly into unison into the progress of scientific truth, or the reverse; and to inquire how far the mental proportions of a group of Hellenistic Jews can adequately occupy the vast canvas of human faith and morals.

It would betray an uneasy consciousness of a conclusion disproportionate to its premises to shun such an inquiry. The truth of Christianity is not to be dissevered from its history. To trace the origin of its cardinal formulæ must be of essential service to any one who inquires into their authority and weight. That statement of the problem which derives the great Aryan creed of modern times, in its full integrity, from the teaching of a small band of brethren, the first of whom were provincial, and the later associates foreign, or Hellenising, Jews, involves difficulties well nigh insuperable to the candid student. And the more deep may be the conviction that the Divine or supernatural element has to be appealed to, in order to solve the problem, the more fundamental is the necessity to show the ground on which such an appeal is based. To say that the failure to trace any main feature of the system to its human and natural source is a proof of its Divine origin, is to negative the highest functions of human intelligence. Whatever be the profound truth or absolute wisdom that has become concrete in the formulæ we may investigate, it can only become intelligible and authoritative by being faithfully traced to its source. that foundation rests the claim to human acceptance of every form of monotheistic religion.

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By tracing a doctrine to its source is not to be understood the mere citation of details which, on sufficient or insufficient evidence, are asserted to be historic. It is possible to admit all the positive

statements of the narrative of the New Testament, and yet to fail to trace the connection between the occurrence, as set forth, and the formal dogmas associated with the statement. What is desired is to

trace, not the tradition of belief in facts, but the origin and interdependence of positive dogma.

It is of course impossible, within the limits of anything but a work of considerable magnitude, to investigate the corpus of the formal teaching of modern Christianity, and to refer the several elements to their respective cradles. All that can be now attempted is to inquire into a few of the main positions on which the entirety of the case ordinarily presented by the theologian depends. An inquiry of this nature, if impartially conducted, ought to be hailed with equal sympathy by the honest apologist and by the honest assailant of theological dogma.

In the minds of the earliest Christians, according to the brief account given by the historian of the apostles, two main elements, or classes of opinion, must have been present. Of these, the first was the Semitic element; which is most distinctly apparent in the first and in the third Gospel, and in the epistles bearing the names of Peter and of James. The second is the Aryan or Pagan element, which is implied by the use of the term Hellenist, which so often becomes apparent in the epistles of Paul, and which, under the well-known form of Alexandrian Judaism, is so fully and so eloquently manifest in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Of the existence of these two strands of thought, as distinct as are those of the warp and the woof of a woven fabric, there can be no question. And the inquiry now before us may be said to consist in the tracing of any particular strand to its original spindle. Is any

dogma, couched in language taken from Semitic doctors, so purely Aryan in its essence that error and confusion must arise from attributing it to a Jewish origin? Is any dogma, essentially Aryan or Pagan in its origin, now a portion of formal Christianity? And, if so, how was it imported into a faith professedly founded by Jews?

Questions of this nature bristle beneath the feet of the student. They may be divided into two great groups those of doctrine, and those of rite. In each of these the task of tracing the descent of Catholic orthodoxy from the teaching and the witness of the twelve chosen apostles at Jerusalem, is one that encounters difficulties of a very formidable nature. And it cannot be denied that the general failure to acknowledge the existence of these difficulties, and the consequent ignoring of the necessity of any attempt to explain them, is due to the prevailing ignorance, at once absolute and contemptuous, of the habits of thought of those people of whom the apostles formed a part, whom they directly addressed, and whose modes of language they exclusively employed.

If we look, for example, at the very form of a Christian church, with its altar tomb, or its several altars, standing in a cemetery, and paved with the memorials of the departed, we have a type, not only directly opposed to that of a Jewish temple or synagogue, but of the most offensively and sacrilegiously hostile aspect, from a Semitic point of view. No feature of the ancient law is more distinct than the horror it inculcates of defilement by contact, even the most remote, with the relics of mortality. To touch a bier, a tomb, a fragment of human bone of the size of an olive, involved a defilement, which it required a special purification, and

the lapse of a definite period of time, to remove. The sacrifice of the red heifer is commanded, in the Pentateuch itself, as preparatory to the purification of those defiled by contact with the dead; and the special rules by which the oral law designated the details of the preparation of the water of separation, and the whole ritual of defilement of this nature, show how deeply this part of the law of Moses entered into the very life of the Jew.

Had the apostles, or their Master, taught that the purity thus enjoined by the law of Moses was a matter of idle ceremony not thereafter to be regarded, it might have been difficult to understand how such an innovation could have been proposed or tolerated by any pious Jew; but a sequence of doctrines, now absent, would have existed. From the commencement to the close of the New Testament not a hint occurs of the possibility of so tremendous a revolution as this must have appeared to the Jew. On the other hand, the most recent investigations of the catacombs at Rome not only enable us to trace the normal type of the Christian church to that of these subterraneous sepulchral recesses, but show how a species of legal organisation was permissible to the early Christians (even when the open observance of their faith was prohibited) as forming associates in those existing confraternities which were held in honour in ancient Rome, and which still exist in every Italian city. The Pagan origin of the whole altar rite of Christianity is patent; but the connection of that rite with the teaching or the practice of any writers of the New Testament is more than obscure. Down to the close of the Acts of the Apostles, Paul is represented as declaring his adherence to "the customs of the

fathers," and the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews prohibits the abandonment of the synagogue, though the sense of the Greek is, no doubt purposely, obscured by the translators. There can be no reasonable doubt that neither Peter, nor John, nor Paul would have willingly entered a basilica such as Constantine erected, even to shun the pain of martyrdom.

A reference to such a total and unexplained contrast between the Christianity of the New Testament and that which emerged from the persecutions of the Roman emperors under the fostering care of Constantine, should be enough to show that the mere arbitrary reference of a rite or of a doctrine to a Jewish law or custom cannot be satisfactory, except to those who will be satisfied with anything they wish. to hear. In times when ignorance was profound, any opinion that could be supported by citation from some father of the Church was held to be adequately proved. As the study of history has advanced, and as we have become aware, not only of the profound ignorance of the early theological writers, but of much of the laws, customs, and popular life with which they were unacquainted, it becomes evident that the basis of the entire corpus of formal Christianity has to undergo a searching revision. Not, by any means, that it is to be assumed to be false; but in order that that assumption, either for or against, should be replaced by critical and honest investigation. Unless this is done the endurance of the superstructure is a question only of time, and apparently of no long time.

The first question that arises as to the genesis of Christian dogma is as to the real relation which it bears to the law of Moses. As to this, it is to be observed that the

usual assumption is not prima facie probable. The filiation of the Christianity of the fourth century with that of the twelve apostles is, to say the least, obscure. Judaism has no representative, such as was the early Essene, in the Aryan churches. And yet the primary, sweeping, unhesitating assertion that the Jews misunderstood their own Law and sacred books, and that the Christian doctors, few of whom could even read the Hebrew character, or knew the number of the tractates comprising the Oral Law, thoroughly comprehended the books of which they had translations, underlies every attempt at theological argument. A petitio principii so universal is probably without a parallel. Nor is it only on such as the second Moses (Ben Maimon) that the reproach of ignorance as to the main study of a life is so readily levelled. The first and the third Evangelist, in those passages in which they represent their master as insisting on the immutability of the Law, must be expurgated or explained away, before the assumption of the Catholic theologian as to his own true reading of the ancient Scripture can have elbow room breathing space.

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The first point to which we have to call attention as an instance of the opposite meanings attached by Christian and by Jewish doctors to a Jewish book is one which might à priori have been thought of little importance as a religious question. In a certain state of ignorance it is a matter which might be regarded as historically obscure. With the advance of our knowledge of written history, and of existing monuments, as well as of the natural history of our planet, it becomes obscure no longer. It is a matter as to which no doubt is possible, except in the wholly

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