own standpoint, which is, to take the most moderate ground, perfectly tenable for an English bishop.

This survey of the Primate's judgment has extended beyond the limits which in an ordinary case would have to be observed. But the present case is extraordinary. It remains to compare the pronouncements as to what is 'lawful' and what is unlawful.' It is ruled unlawful (1) to sign the cross in the Eucharistic absolution and benediction; (2) to 'mix' the chalice publicly; (3) so to perform 'the manual acts' that they should not be visible to the communicants. But it is lawful to use a chalice which has been mixed' before the service begins; to cleanse the vessels, after the service, before leaving the Holy Table; to take the eastward position throughout the service, provided that the manual acts are visibly done; to have the Agnus Dei sung during the communion of the people; to have two lights burning on the Holy Table through the celebration, though not required for purposes of light.

It will be obvious from this summary that what is permitted is far more valuable than what is prohibited; that, as the Times said, 'substantially the decision is in favour of the Bishop'; that those whom he, in this cause, represents have gained from a really spiritual court what they had never gained from a secular. But there is more to be said. Without dwelling on the admirable tone of the whole document-on its pacific spirit, its moral dignity, its judicial moderation of statement, its unostentatious exhibition of apposite and multifarious learning-we are specially impressed by (1) the courageous independence with which it reviews the ground traversed by previous decisions of the Privy Council, and gives due weight to evidence not then considered; and (2) by the consistently ecclesiastical line of its arguments, as witnessing to that historical continuity of the English Church which is ignored by popular Protestantism, and the assertion of which was a main principle of the Church revival movement of 1833. It is gratifying to find one eminent organ of educated opinion declaring that Archbishop Benson has secured 'the reputation of a great ecclesiastical judge, a judge great not only in ecclesiastical learning, but in impartiality, which has not generally,' it is added, been the distinction of 'ecclesiastics'; while an advanced Liberal periodical 2 has dwelt on his complete mastery of the literature of the subject' (which, indeed, was fully shown during the pleadings), his 'learning, judicial temper, admirable tact, and evident anxiety to be fair 1 The Spectator. 2 The Speaker.

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all round.' In a very few points, as we have intimated, we think this judgment open to respectful and honest criticism; but, taking it as a whole, we accept it with earnest gratitude, and heartily adopt the words with which the Guardian of November 26 introduced its comment 'The burden of a great anxiety was lifted from the Church of England' when her chief bishop had brought his great task to a close. To him we offer, with emphasis, the ancient ritual greeting, Ad multos annos. And although the clergy of the province cannot be under canonical obligation to his judgment until, at least, it is officially communicated to them by their diocesans, we are clearly of opinion that, in view of the merits of the case, and of the truest interests of the Church, those whom it concerns would do well to give full practical weight to the moral authority of a Court which, whatever may be said against the principle of its constitution, has at any rate presented itself before the Church of England as a genuine spiritual court, and has, in the full force of the words, acted up to that high character.

ART. II.-AUTHORITY IN RELIGION.

The Seat of Authority in Religion. By JAMES MARTINEAU, Hon. LL.D. Harv., S.T.D. Lugd. Bat., D.D. Edin., D.C.L. Oxon. (London and New York, 1890.)

IT is not difficult to understand some of the reasons for the interest which has been excited by the publication of Dr. Martineau's Seat of Authority in Religion. The deep learning and high personal character of the writer have in themselves a claim upon our attention and respect. The present is a time in which, to a pre-eminent degree, men are inquiring into the reasons for belief and the ground of morality. Many who are wondering what will be the end of the researches of one type of criticism on the sacred Scriptures are anxious to know the use made of it by a great thinker who accepts the most extreme conclusions of a particular school. Some of those who have parted company with orthodox Christianity, and are in doubt about the principles as well of morality as of theology, may hope to receive from so able a writer help in reconstructing a theory of belief and life. Nor will readers who look for learning, or vigorous thought, or power of illustration, or high-toned morality, be disappointed in those features of this remarkable book.

VOL. XXXI.-NO. LXII.

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I. We shall be able more clearly to point out why we think Dr. Martineau's opinions will fail to supply a form of belief which will be an effectual and permanent moral power, if we describe the contents of his book. It is quite impossible in a summary within the limits of a review to do real justice to the vast amount of matter crowded into more than 600 well-filled pages, but we shall attempt to give a true idea of the general argument and the grounds on which it

rests.

Dr. Martineau begins with the idea of God as seen in nature, in humanity, in history. The belief in a causality which implies a Divine power is, he tells us, primary and natural in man, is the result of the working of those of his faculties which distinguish him from the rest of the material universe, and affords an adequate explanation of the facts which the universe presents. It is therefore, at the outset, a strange thing that modern thought is increasingly tending to put aside the belief in the existence of God as part of the interpretation of the world. Thus primary and satisfying in itself, it is not in reality attacked by any of the chief results of the scientific investigations of recent times. The knowledge of the immense extension of the universe in space does not destroy the idea of God. When the cause is infinite, size and number make no difference, and wherever science has made discoveries law has been seen to work. Nor is the belief itself, as being independent of much traditional thought and many a fair dream, touched by our knowledge of the immense extension of the universe in time. Such an extension is necessitated by history and scientific research. The discoveries of remains of ancient civilization and of ancient art, the knowledge of the methods and rate of the growth of language, afford one group of facts which require an immense age for the world. The comparison by the naturalist of different forms of life, the inductions of the geologist, the reconstruction of the relations of species to species by physiology, the hypotheses which astronomical science demand concur in indicating the innumerable ages through which the world grew. It is not necessary, he says, for the present purpose to attempt to draw a clear line between what in this is established and what is conjectural, because while all in it affects the method of the effects which have been produced nothing in it affects the cause that is required. To find that cause, and to learn about it, we must look at the end which has been in view; and regarding the end we shall see that our new knowledge of the extent of

the universe in space and time only glorifies our conception of the Divine Cause of it all. So, too, the doctrine of modern science of the correlation and conservation of forces points to One who is behind all, and shows a Power that is Will and is possessed of Mind. The identification of the dynamical life of the universe with God differs from Pantheism in its assertion of His consciousness of objects which are by themselves unfelt, of the existence of experiences which cannot be predicated of Him, and of the fact that the whole is under the action of His will (pp. 1-36).

The consideration of humanity enriches the idea of the Supreme Cause. The word 'law' always retains the fundamental notion of conformity with rule, but the notion is continually enlarged as the observer considers different. grades of being. The inorganic and insentient world is unconsciously under its influence; animal life, acting by instinct, co-operates with law by action, but not by thought; man consciously accepts the law, and freely acts in accordance with it. Hence the action of man is moral. Moral judgment is always of a person, never of a thing. It regards the motives, not the methods or the effect, of an act. It praises a motive only when there is a possibility of a different choice. Since it judges by the inward spring, not by the external action, it comes from within ourselves, not from the experience of others. Conscience, therefore, the intuitive distinction of the better from the worse, cannot be developed from the consideration of public self-interest. As little can it be explained as self-interest that is private. Self and mankind are alike its servants. Nor are the changes of moral feeling among different people at different places and times incompatible with regarding conscience as an objective authority. Such conflicting judgments can easily be explained if conscience is the sense of what is better and worse in the inward springs of action on the facts that are known. Thus the external authority of which conscience speaks demands the existence of God, the selection which conscience dictates implies a Will possessed of preference, new springs of life and conceptions of a height previously unattained declare an independence of mere natural growth. And, as the forces of nature imply God's power, and the instincts of the creatures proclaim His wisdom, so the conscience of man declares that He is righteous (pp. 37-75).

We must say little about the admirable chapter in which Dr. Martineau shows that the different forms of Utilitarianism are unsatisfying. Conscience and the notion of utility are

concerned with different parts of practical thought; the sense of obligation and duty is supplied by the conscience, the knowledge of reasonable means is due to considerations of utility. Utilitarianism supplies no bridge between the thought of the happiness of self and that of the happiness of others; the merely sentient can never produce the moral, whatever cumulation by inheritance there may be (pp. 76– 100). Nor may we dwell at any length on the chapter that follows on the working of God in history. It is true, we are told, that history is the result of forces in nature and forces in man, individuals and circumstances acting and reacting upon one another. But this is represented as being in no way inconsistent with the real action of God, since behind all that is secondary is His working, since He initiates while man realises or loses, since He gives the ideal and man makes it the actual (pp. 101-25).

In its main features the first book is a magnificent vindication of the belief that nature and man demand the existence of a living, thinking, righteous God.'

The second book deals with what Dr. Martineau considers the artificial misplacing of authority. According to his view authority has been misplaced in two main ways-by Catho

1 It will be understood that there are many individual expressions and some arguments in the first book with which we cannot agree, which it has been impossible for us to notice in so contracted a summary as that which we have given above. And, moreover, we regard this part of the work as so valuable that we have been unwilling to interrupt our account of it by expressions of disagreement. But it may be well to say here that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity affords a better satisfaction of some requirements of the idea of God than the notions of 'eternal cosmogony' to be found on pp. 12, 18-20, 32. If there are three persons in the one God, it is no longer possible to speak of 'His lonely infinitude,' since within the Trinity itself there is thus society and love. See, e.g., St. Aug. De Trinitate, viii. 10, ix. 1-5; Lacordaire, Conférence de la Vie intime de Dieu, especially the following passage: 'La doctrine catholique n'admet pas que Dieu soit un être solitaire, éternellement occupé à une contemplation stérile de lui-même; elle n'admet pas non plus que l'univers, bien que l'ouvrage de Dieu, en soit la vie propre et personnelle. Elle s'élève au-dessus de ces idées infirmes, et nous emportant avec la parole de Dieu par delà toutes les conceptions de l'esprit humain, elle nous apprend que la vie divine consiste dans l'union coéternelle de trois personnes égales en qui la pluralité détruit la solitude, et l'unité la division; dont le regard se répond, dont le cœur se comprend, et qui, plongées dans ce flux et reflux de l'une à l'autre, identiques par la substance, distinctes par la personnalité, forment ensemble une ineffable société de lumière et d'amour' (Œuvres du R. P. Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, Paris, Poussielgue Frères, t. iii. p. 447). And the sentence on p. 17, 'had not Christendom unhappily bound up its religion with the physics of Moses and of Paul,' ignores important questions and presupposes part of what is discussed later in the book.