Two Predominating Systems of Philosophy.

7

most curious of literatures. To arrest the human spirit on that slope was impossible. However, as orthodoxy was still the law of the exterior life, and even of the most of consciences, it was believers who first essayed biblical criticism. Vain illusion, which proves at least the good faith of those who undertook that work, and the fatality which drags the human spirit, once set on the ways of rationalism, to a rupture with tradition, which at first it avoids."-Etude d'Histoire Religieuse, pp. 135-137.

This march of critical science in history is a phenomenon of high significance. The laws of cautious, inductive investigation which have effected such marvellous discoveries in physical science, have been applied with equal enthusiasm and success to the domain of historical research. Vast treasures have been unearthed from their hiding-places in distant regions, and heaped together for the analysis of the scholar. New mental appliances for the study of human history have been discovered, and rapidly improved, such as the comparative sciences of ethnology, philology, and mythology. And inductive science, with its rigorous probation, its contempt of prescriptive authority, and its slow tentative processes, has doubtless cleared away much of the legendary mist which hung over the ancient traditions of every land and people, and illumined for us in many places the actual scenes of the early life of man. There is now a science of history. That science allures many of the noblest minds of our time, because of the intrinsic nobleness of the study, which is the study not of matter, hut of man; and every European literature is continually enriched by master-works of historical criticism.

There are, moreover, two systems of philosophy which have exercised predominating influence on the intellectual movements of our age, and which combine to place the philosophy of history, based upon historical criticism, as the culminating science which crowns and completes the monument of human knowledge. These are-positive philosophy, and the ideal pantheism of Hegel. Without some knowledge of these two systems and their transcendent influence on modern thought, we cannot compre

Some topics are discussed in the long notes, that might have claimed a place in the text they annotate. They are consigned to the inferior position they now occupy from the desire to relieve the general reader of the more scholastic argumentation which they contain, and which is tiresome to all, even students who are "to the manner apt." In a quarterly journal their admission at all was only possible on such terms; and their original form determines their present. I hope, however, the notes may receive the same attention and kindly criticism as I pray for the whole book.

A REVIEW OF

“LA VIE DE JÉSUS”

OF M. RENAN.

THIS book has created deep and wide-spread interest alike on the Continent and in our own country. The theme of the book is one of transcendent importance. Whilst it controverts and repudiates everything supernatural or miraculous in the history of our Lord Jesus Christ, and tanto magis His proper Deity, it reconstructs for us His history, denuded of His Divine glory, with a most cunningly exquisite grace, in accordance with the stern conditions of the soi-disant high criticism of our

2

Tendencies of Modern Opinion.

hard or flippant dogmatism would revolt. And issued in our country at a time when so many clerical harbingers have been labouring to unsettle the Christian faith of their countrymen, and to prepare the way for this beautiful Avatar of modern infidelity, we do not conceal from ourselves the welcome it will receive, the evil it will work. We purpose accordingly to subject this book to a grave, prolonged, and searching criticism. We do so not only because of the seriousness of the occasion which we deem the publication of this book to present,—M. Renan's authority, the truth imperilled, and the insidiousness of the danger, conspiring to augment its gravity,but also because this book resumes within itself, and exhibits in a palpable and luminous form, certain tendencies of our age which we desire to signalise to our readers, as without an acquaintance with these tendencies it is impossible to interpret the extraordinary religious phenomena of the present time, and especially to explain either the conception and elaboration of such a work as the "Vie de Jésus" by a scholar like M. Renan, or the éclat that has hailed its appearance. The first of these general influences which are flowing like currents over the educated mind of Europe is the result of what is called in France la renaissance religieuse, "the religious revival.” In every country of Europe a glorious contrast presents itself between the earnest, glowing, it may be struggling, religious vitality of the present century, and the cold, frivolous, atheistic formalism of the last century. In England, the growth and fervour of Methodism, the spread of Puseyism, and the kindling zeal of evangelical Churchmen, bear witness to this truth. The Pietism of Germany and the Free Churches of Switzerland, give the same testimony. The revival and ascendancy of ultramontanism in Catholic countries, however, give the most astonishing proof of the new spirit that animates the nineteenth century. The powers of the priesthood are exalted, the churches and confessionals are thronged, and a very much deeper feeling of superstitious attachment

"La Renaissance Religieuse."

66

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to the Papal Church and her ministers prevails among the masses of the Catholic countries (with, perhaps, the exception of Italy) than could have been dreamt of last century or in the beginning of this. Now, let it be understood that the true explanation of this fact is to be found in the revulsion of the human soul from the blank atheism which the Propaganda of wits and philosophers diffused among the people of Europe before and during the French Revolution, and the awakening of the religious sentiment, which may for a time be obscured, but which never can die. Eloquently and truly has Emile Saisset set forth this truth :-" So long as our earthly life never yields us perfect happiness, so long as there is in man, together with his reason which meditates upon the mysteries of eternity, an imagination which can realise them in anticipation, a heart which trembles in presence of the Unknown, and that mysterious and profound disquietude which no reasoning can wholly allay, religion will be the most sublime sentiment of the human heart and the most powerful force in social life. These are truths of all times and places. Let any one, therefore, now carry himself back to the moral state of France after the storms of the Revolution: if he thinks of the venerable religious customs of the people which were violently broken down,-of that religious sentiment which is yet stronger than these customs, crushed by tyranny,―of a clergy, which scepticism had enervated, recovering in the midst of persecutions the virtues of the early Church and the sympathies of the people; if he thinks of the many illusions that had vanished, of the many hopes that were disappointed, of the blood that was shed, of the many unforeseen ills that had fallen, and were now irreparable, then, reviewing all these causes, I am confident that this great movement of la renaissance religieuse which has left its literary date in the "Génie du Christianisme," and its political date in the Concordat, will give him no cause of astonishment."*

* "De la Renaissance Religieuse," page 264 of “Mélanges d'Histoire,