North British Review. JULY, 1866. ECCE HOMO AND MODERN SKEPTICISM. [We give this favorable criticism upon this remarkable book from the North British Review, and may in a future number give a far less favorable critique upon it from the British Quarterly, many points in which are fairly and strongly put. The authorship of the anonymous book has been attributed to Mr. Gladstone, but whether with good reason or not we are unable to judge. the water, and, republished by a Boston house here, is being very rapidly and extensively circulated.-EDITOR ECLECTIC.] The work has attracted unusual attention across Ir is not too much to say that the great conflict, even of distinctively Chris. tian faith in the present day, must be more and more, not with Theism or Deism, but Atheism itself, and Atheism of no common order-not an Atheism that revolts cultivated men by its coarseness and alienates earnest men by its levity, but Atheism allied with manly and courageous science; Atheism contending for its right to a warm glow of * Ecce Homo: A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ. Macmillan & Co. 1866. NEW SERIES-Vol. IV., No. 1. Old Series Complete in 63 vols. spiritual feeling; Atheism speaking humbly of Nature as the great teacher; Atheism courting poetry as the fountain of all pure delight. And when we speak of Atheism, we do not mean, of course, the positive denial of a God, for all the intellectual skepticism of the day is learning true modesty, and asserting its own ignorance, rather than denying anything. Nay, many of the most learned and eminent men, whose teaching is morally and spiritually, as we believe, though not intellectually indistinguishable from Atheism-because they take the utmost pains to extinguish trust in the love of a personal Father-earnestly deny the imputation of intellectual Atheism, which they feel to be an absurdity. Thus a distinguished man of science, to whom the world has much reason to be grateful, and by the side of whom the most eminent men may feel their inferiority, Professor Huxley, has recently been teaching working men that "there is but one kind of knowledge, and but one method of acquiring it; "that that kind of knowledge makes "skepticism the 1 highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardonable sin " -all faith being described as "blind which accepts any thing on any kind of authority but that of scientific experience. He describes the true religion as "worship, for the most part of the silent sort,' at the altar of the Unknown and Unknowable," and proclaims "justification, not by faith, but by verification," as the gospel of modern science. But Professor Huxley warmly repudiates Atheism as being at least as absurd as Polytheism, though it is clear that he does so on the intellect ual ground of the marvellous unity and order of nature; for all his teaching is expressly directed to extinguish the spiritual instinct of trust, regarding the spiritual world from which Christ took the veil as a vacuum, and the kingdom of God within us, which he came to rule, as a kingdom of dreams. We should be very sorry to ignore a distinction to which the persons most concerned attach any importance, and it is obviously unfair to use a term supposed to convey moral opprobrium, of any one who rejects it for himself. But as regards the only aspects in which we care to discuss the matter at all, an absolute rejection of the principle of spiritual trust is a denial, not indeed of the God of the universe, but of the God of the human soul, and will work therefore as a total eclipse of God in all moral and spiritual concerns. Again, we find in the present day a school, as we fear we must call it, growing up, of refined, discriminating, and at least, for the purpose of intellectual and poetic nuances, very delicate criticism, the most modern tendencies of which we may take as represented by the writer, said, we believe truly, to be a young man just starting on his intellectual career, who criticised Coleridge in the last number of the Westminster Review. This school of thought, taking its departure from a spirit and purpose as different as possible from that of the men of pure science, indeed, expressing an almost supercilious contempt for the mob, expresses also a joy unspeakable, which its members pet in themselves, in gazing on the delicate *See the remarkable 66 'Lay Sermon," first read by Professor Huxley to a working-class meeting, on Sunday evening, at St. Martin's Hall, and published in the Fortnightly Review for the 15th January. coloring and beauty of those spiritual petals which the natures of the gifted few, who are favored by fine soil and finer culture, put forth here and there, to distinguish themselves from the "dim common populations." Yet they too describe the Christian faith as an enthusiasm which is evidence only of rare moral possibilities in man, not of any God of unfathomable love. If this school is to gain ground, we shall have even "the wonder and bloom of the world" turning against God, and preferring to trace their descent downwards to a root of clay, instead of upwards to the eternal glory of the heavens. Now, when highminded scientific men set up their altar at Charing Cross to a not only Unknown but "Unknowable" God, and the democratic secularists of the Westminster Review sacrifice their radicalism for the sake of an alliance with an intellectual aristocrat almost an intellectual "exquisite"-only because he has disburdened himself of God, it is time for Christians to reflect somewhat seriously how they have managed to combine against them-first, the aristocracy of science, most worthily represented by Professor Huxley-explaining, as we have seen it said, between the bursts of music selected from Haydn's Creation, that, in the beginning, the Spirit "of the Unknown and Unknowable" brooded on the face of the waters, saying, "Let light be, and light was "-next, the men of the working class secularists themselves, who went in numbers to hear Professor Huxley's eloquent and thoughtful skepticism-finally, the aristocracy of poetic feeling, as represented by the intellectual critic, who, for this purpose only, was permitted to recommend, in an able democratic Quarterly, a higher appreciation of those "remote, refined, intense feelings, existing only by the triumph of a few over a dead world of routine, in which there is no lifting of the soul at all." Of course, the true shortcomings among Christians, which render these strange phenomena possible, must be rather spiritual than intellectual; and the answer can be found in books at all only so far as the intellect reflects the deficiencies, and can therefore at times detect the deficiencies of our spiritual nature. But to this extent the author deur and truth; but then he began by founding a dynasty-that is, by the use of influences a thousand times more vulgar-to rivet his hold on the imagination; and he attempted, even with this aid, infinitely less; never putting forward any of Christ's imperious claims to purge the secret thoughts and hearts of his disciples, by spiritual principles the most subtle and the most universal. Christ commenced a reign infinitely more powerful in practical life than that of any dynasty of kings, or all the dynasties of all the kings of earthly empires, by the mere unsupported assertion of his authority during a year or two of obscure life. His word established itself, and this for centuries after his ignominious death. The question is to what to ascribe this wonderful reign of one, who, if the skeptics are right, without any pretence to supernatural power, proceeded on a false method, and asserted an illegitimate claim. "The improver of natural knowledge," says Professor Huxley, in the name of men of science, "absolute of Ecce Homo will give us, at least, a partial reply to our question. It is long since we have read any book that has treated the Christian faith in a more comprehensive and more truly Christian spirit, alike in relation to the claims of science, the wants of the great masses of the people, and to the more delicate graces and bloom of spiritual culture. We do not say that we think his point of view always as strong as it might be, or his adjustment of the many complex and difficult issues raised between the modern or "relative" spirit, and the eternal revelation of God, always satisfactory. The book was not written to answer the questions we have asked, but to satisfy the writer's own mind as to what Christ claimed to do, how far he can be said to have accomplished it, and by what means. But with the instinct of true culture, he has necessarily discussed this matter with all the hostile tendencies of the modern skepticism full in his mind; and where he has not precisely met them, he has given us the means of seeing how he would meet them in his modes of state-ly refuses to acknowledge authority as ment. We think that we can best convey our strong sense of the power and truthfulness of his book by bringing out, with this able writer's help, the true attitude of Christian faith, so far as we can clearly determine it, in relation to the skepticism of science, which finds the Christian faith an illusion, the skepticism of secular industry, which finds the Christian faith practically inoperative to help it, and the skepticism of aesthetic refinement, which finds the Christian faith in "the absolute" far too clumsy and unmanageable an instrument for the delicate discrimination of the modern "relative spirit." There is no point more powerfully brought out in Ecce Homo than the absolutely regal character of Christ's spiritual legislation, the infinite height from which it descends upon the hearts of his disciples, searching their most secret motives, and yet, though with an entire absence of any visible machinery for frightening or bribing them into compliance, having an unparalleled success in revolutionizing the morality, and at least as completely the religion, of ages. Mohammed, indeed, as our author points out, established a faith quite as successful; and no doubt a faith not without gran such." And he labors to show that all that is solid in our intellectual, moral, and spiritual life, is built up on a gradual experience of facts, and a temper that vehemently challenges authority (moral no less than intellectual), and will accept nothing which it has not proved for itself. In other words, Professor Huxley maintains that the method of the inductive sciences is the only method by which any human creature can arrive at any sort of truth. If he is right, there are but two alternatives for explaining the power of Christ's inward legislation. Either it must have been legislation only in name, and be really the result of a series of accurate moral experiments, which our Lord only appeals to other human beings' experience to confirmexperiments on the practical value of mercy, justice, purity of heart, the power of prayer, and the negation of these (for no inductive experiment can be of any force till it has tried both alternatives)— or it must have been a misleading power, succeeding by the inherent slavishness of human ignorance, and the undermining of which is the great desideratum of our day. Now, that Christ's legislation is not of the first kind, no one who has the faintest insight into it will dream of as serting-assuredly no one who reads the delineation of it given in Ecce Homo: "In defining as above the position which Christ assumed, we have not entered into controvertible matter. We have not rested upon single passages, nor drawn upon the fourth Gospel. To deny that Christ did undertake to found and to legislate for a new theocratic society, and that he did claim the office of Judge of mankind, is indeed possible, but only to those who altogether deny the credibility of the extant biographies of Christ. If those biographies be admitted to be generally trustworthy, then Christ undertook to be what we have described; if not, then of course this, but also every other, account of him falls to the ground. "When we contemplate this scheme as a whole, and glance at the execution and results of it, three things strike us with astonishment. First, its prodigious originality, if the expression may be used. What other man has had the courage or elevation of mind to say, 'I will build up a state by the mere force of my will, without help from the kings of the world, without taking advantage of any of the secondary causes which unite men together-unity of interest or speech, or blood relationship; I will make laws for my state which shall never be repealed, and I will defy all the powers of destruction that are at work in the world to destroy what I build? "Secondly, we are astonished at the calm confidence with which the scheme was carried out. The reason why statesmen can seldom work on this vast scale is that it commonly requires a whole lifetime to gain that ascendency over their fellow - men which such schemes pre-suppose. Some of the leading organizers of the world have said, I will work my way to supreme power, and then I will execute great plans.' But Christ overleaped the first stage altogether. He did not work his way to royalty, but simply said to all men, 'I am your king.' He did not struggle forward to a position in which he could found a new state, but simply founded it. "Thirdly, we are astonished at the prodigious success of the scheme. It is not more certain that Christ presented himself to men as the founder, legislator, and judge of a divine society, than it is certain that men have accepted him in these characters, that the divine society has been founded, that it has lasted nearly two thousand years, that it has extended over a large and the most highly civilized portion of the earth's surface, and that it continues full of vigor at the present day." Nor is this method, whether true or false, unique. Certainly the application of it by our Lord is infinitely bolder and more successful than in any other era of human history; but it seems probable that all great constitutive and organizing influences spring into life in the same way, by the aid of an authority coming more or less from above; that nations are born out of the moral impulse given by a single commanding personality, instead of being joint stock companies voluntarily associating for civil purposes; that civilizations are crystallized, fixed, and broken up through the vibration of a single wave of moral conviction; in a word, that societies are governed, as societies, not by scientific generalizations from particular experience, but by subduing moral principles, that, once uttered, seize upon the conscience, and inform the body politic with a living spirit. It seems nearly certain that all great past revolutions are traceable, not to correct inferences duly tested, but to discoveries of a higher life (whether human or superhuman), which is no sooner discerned than it brings the heart into captivity, and justifies itself, not "by verification," but "by faith." Now, compare this with Professor Huxley's teaching, and we may gain some glimpse into the true attitude of Christian faith towards the spirit of modern science. Mr. Huxley states his own view very clearly. All knowledge, he says, is of one sort, proceeding from the observation of natural facts to a study of their order, and breaking into what he calls religion at the point wherever (for the time, that is) the effort of the mind to pass the bounds set to natural knowledge fails: "I cannot but think that the foundations of all natural knowledge were laid when the reason of man first came face to face with the facts of nature; when the savage first learned that the fingers of one hand are fewer than those of both; that it is shorter to cross a stream than to head it; that a stone stops where it is unless it be moved, and that it drops from the hand which lets it go; that light and heat come and go with the sun; that sticks burn away in a fire; that plants and animals grow and die; that if he struck his fellow - savage a blow he would make him angry, and perhaps get a blow in return, while, if he offered him a fruit, he would please him, and perhaps receive a fish in exknowledge, the outlines, rude though they change. When men had acquired this much were, of mathematics, of physics, of chemistry, of biology, of moral, economical, and political science, were sketched. Nor did the |