works as its Latin terms are with his Greek language. Baron Bunsen may admire that creed as little as Jeremy Taylor* and Tillotson did, without necessarily contradicting the great Father to whom it is ascribed. Still more as a philosopher, sitting loose to our Articles, he may deliberately assign to the conclusions of councils a very subordinate value; and taking his stand on the genuine words of Holy Scripture, and the immutable laws of God to the human mind, he may say, either the doctrine of the Trinity agrees with these tests, or, if you make it disagree, you make it false. If he errs in his speculation, he gives us in his critical researches the surest means of correcting his errors; and his polemic is at least triumphant against those who load the Church with the conclusions of patristic thought, and forbid our thinking sufficiently to understand them. As the coolest heads at Trent said, "Take care, lest in condemning Luther, you condemn St. Augustine;" so, if our defenders of the faith would have men believe the doctrine of the Trinity, they had better not forbid metaphysics, or even sneer at Realism. The strong assertions in the " Hippolytus," concerning the freedom of the human will, may require some balance from the language of penitence and of prayer. They must be left here to comparison with the constant language of the Greek Church, with the doctrine of the first four centuries, with the schoolmen's practical evasions of the Augustinian standard which they professed, and with the guarded but earnest protests and limitations of our own ethical divines, from Hooker and Jeremy Taylor to Butler and Hampden. * Liberty of Prophesying, pp. 491-2, vol. vii. ed. Heber. Burnet's Own Times. Letter from Tillotson at the end. On the great hope of mankind, the immortality of the soul, the "Hippolytus" left something to be desired. It had a Brahmanical, rather than a Christian or Platonic sound. But the second volume of "Gott in der Geschichte " seems to imply, that, if the author recoils from the fleshly resurrection and Judaic millennium of Justin Martyr, he still shares the aspiration of the noblest philosophers elsewhere, and of the firmer believers among ourselves, to a revival of conscious and individual life, in such a form of immortality as may consist with union with the spirit of our Eternal Life-giver. Remarkable in the same volume is the generous vindication of the first Buddhist Sakya against the misunderstandings which fastened on him. a doctrine of atheism and of annihilation. The penetrating prescience of Neander seems borne out on this point by genuine texts against the harsher judgment of recent Sanscrit scholars. He judged as a philosopher; and they, as grammarians. It would be difficult to say on what subject Baron Bunsen is not at home; but none is handled by him with more familiar mastery than that of liturgies, ancient and modern. He has endeavored to enlarge the meagre stores of the Lutheran Church by a collection of evangelical songs and prayers.* Rich in primitive models, yet adapted to Lutheran habits, this collection might be suggestive to any Nonconformist congregations which desire to enrich or temper their devotions by the aid of common prayers. Even our own Church, though not likely to recast her ritual in a foreign mould, might observe with profit the greater calmness and harmony of the older forms, as compared *Gesang- und Gebet-buch. Hamburg, 1846. with the amplifications which she has in some cases adopted. Our Litany is hardly equal to its germ; nor do our collects exhaust available stores. Yet if it be one great test of a theology, that it shall bear to be prayed, our author has hardly satisfied it. Either reverence or deference may have prevented him from bringing his prayers into entire harmony with his criticisms; or it may be that a discrepance, which we should constantly diminish, is likely to remain between our feelings and our logical necessities. It is not the less certain, that some reconsideration of the polemical element in our Liturgy, as of the harder scholasticism in our theology, would be the natural offspring of any age of research in which Christianity was free; and if this, as seems but too probable, is to be much longer denied us, the consequence must be a lessening of moral strength within our pale, and an accession to influences which will not always be friendly. But to estrange our doctrinal teaching from the convictions, and our practical administration from the influence, of a Protestant laity, are parts of one policy, and that not always a blind one. Nor is doctrinal narrowness of view without practical counterpart in the rigidity which excludes the breath of prayer from our churches for six days in seven, rather than permit a clergyman to select such portions as devotion suggests and average strength permits. It did not fall within the scope of this essay to define the extent of its illustrious subject's obligations (which he would no doubt largely acknowledge) to contemporary scholars, such as Mr. Birch or others; nor was it necessary to touch questions of ethnology and politics which might be raised by those who value Germanism so far as it is human, rather than so far as it is German. Sclavonians might notice the scanty acknowledgment of the vast contributions of their race to the intellectual wealth of Germany.* Celtic scholars might remark, that triumph in a discovery which has yet to be proved, regarding the law of initial mutations in their language, is premature.† Nor would they assent to our author's ethical description of their race. So, when he asks, "How long shall we bear this fiction of an external revelation?" that is, of one violating the heart and conscience, instead of expressing itself through them: or when he says, "All this is delusion for those who believe it; but what is it in the mouths of those who teach it?" or when he exclaims, "Oh the fools! who, if they do see the imminent perils of this age, think to ward them off by narrow-minded persecution!" and when he repeats, "Is it not time, in truth, to withdraw the veil from our misery; to tear off the mask from hypocrisy, and destroy that sham which is undermining all real ground under our feet; to point out the dangers which surround, nay, threaten already to ingulf us?" there will be some who think his language too vehement for good taste. Others will think burning words needed by the disease of our time. They will not quarrel on points of taste with a man who in our darkest perplexity has reared again the banner of truth, and uttered thoughts which give courage to the weak, and sight to the blind. If Protestant Europe is to *One might ask, whether the experience of our two latest wars encourages our looking to Germany for any unselfish sympathy with the rights of nations? or has she not rather earned the curse of Meroz? † So the vaunted discovery of Professor Zeuss, deriving " Cymry" from an imaginary word, "Combroges," is against the testimony of the best Greek geographers. escape those shadows of the twelfth century, which, with ominous recurrence, are closing round us, to Baron Bunsen will belong a foremost place among the champions of light and right. Any points disputable, or partially erroneous, which may be discovered in his many works, are as dust in the balance, compared with the mass of solid learning, and the elevating influence of a noble and Christian spirit. Those who have assailed his doubtful points are equally opposed to his strong ones. Our own testimony is, where we have been best able to follow him, we have generally found most reason to agree with him; but our little survey has not traversed his vast field, nor our plummet sounded his depth. Bunsen, with voice like sound of trumpet born, Well feign the sons of Loyola the scorn Which from thy books would scare their startled fold. And Time his long-lost centuries unrolled; My lips but ill could frame thy Lutheran speech, That envious Eld's vast interval defied; |