bility of development which we are now considering. His intention was to set a limit to irreligious thought, by showing that all thought on religion was a physical impossibility to man; with what success experience has since shown. During the. last ten eventful years in Oxford, thought has progressed with fearful strides. The theory which was intended to set bounds to it was expressed in no ambiguous terms.

The conclusion which an examination of the conditions of human thought unavoidably forces upon us is this: there can be no such thing as a positive science of speculative theology; for such a science must necessarily be based on an apprehension of the Infinite; and the Infinite, though we are compelled to believe in its existence, cannot possibly be apprehended in any mode of the human consciousness. The same impediment which prevents the formation of theology as a science, is also manifestly fatal to the theory which asserts its progressive development. We can test the progress of knowledge only by comparing its successive representations with the objects which they profess to represent; and as the object in this case is inaccessible to human faculties, we have no criterion by which to distinguish progress and mere fluctuation. The so-called progress in theology is in truth only an advance in those conceptions of man's moral and religious duties which form the basis of natural religion; an advance which is regulative, not speculative; which is primarily a knowledge not of God's nature, but of man's obligation; and which is the result not of an immediate intuition of the nature of the Infinite, but of a closer study of the laws of the Finite.*

To some of the grounds of this view we shall afterwards recur; but at this moment we only pause to notice that the conclusion is based upon a philosophical opinion which the author has expressed as follows:-"All the various processes of thought may be referred to the single faculty of thought or reflection; the operation of which is in all cases comparison. The unit of thought is always a judgment based on a comparison of objects; and the several operations of thought are in ultimate analysis nothing more than judgments derived from different data." From these premisses Dean Mansel has inferred that the human mind can have no conception whatever of an Infinite Being; and that though we can believe in His existence by faith, yet faith is not an intellectual process at all, and no notion of Him is ever formed by our reason. "The Absolute and the Infinite are thus like the Inconceivable and the Imperceptible, names indicating, not an object of thought or of consciousness at all, but the mere absence of the conditions under which consciousness

*Dean Mansel's Bampton Lectures.

is possible." Nor is this only true of the abstract Infinite; but far more is it true of the concrete notion of an Infinite Being. A concrete Infinite is a contradiction; and Personality involves a further contradiction. The attempt to conceive it is "the suicide of Rationalism." We can only say that Dean Mansel's view is the suicide of Reason, and of something far more precious. He cures the headache by cutting off the head. He effectually destroys wild thoughts by blowing out his brains. The deadly sickness and vertigo of doubt is gone; but we have got instead of it intellectual death on all the grandest subjects which can occupy human thought. Let us go over the steps by which this miserable conclusion is reached. From the assumed fact that every idea is a judgment, he has inferred that the human mind is physically incapable of forming any real idea of God. Every judgment implies comparison, and what terms of comparison have we by which we can measure God? It implies limitation, and therefore the Being who is illimitable is utterly beyond its apprehension. It is essentially a relation, and therefore the Absolute is an unmeaning term. Above all, a judgment is by an inexorable necessity partial, while the Infinite is very Oneness without the possibility of parts. God must be apprehended wholly, or not apprehended at all. For this reason there are contradictions fatal and inevitable in the very notion of the Infinite. It is not an idea at all, since it is incapable of being included in a judgment. Now as to Dean

Mansel's premisses, we say as little as possible; for we wish in this article to be as nearly as we can mere historians of views on development. But it is scarcely possible to speak too severely of the conclusion. If it be true, then God is to the human intellect a word symbolizing the want of thought. With perfect consistency the author applies his theory to the mysteries of the Faith. Theological terms are simply and absolutely conventional, conveying no idea whatsoever to the hearer, and implying none in the speaker. On such a view as this, development vanishes as a matter of course. That which has no sense is struck at once with barrenness. It can only bring forth wind. How can a man develop Abracadabra ? But, then, what becomes of Revelation? What is the meaning of a Revelation which adds in no way whatsoever to the sum of human knowledge, which reveals nothing?

It is a portentous fact that a system such as this should have issued from Oxford. We do not accuse Dr. Pusey and his friends of having thought out all this. In general we may say that the process of thinking is foreign to their minds. We do say, however, that the whole of their tone falls in most

remarkably with the conclusion. They are ever systematically taking refuge in vagueness and in mist, and that on the ground of the irreverence of precision. They quarrel with the Tridentine definition of Transubstantiation, and retire into a vague Real Presence, utterly inadequate to convey the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. Let them beware lest the Consubstantiality of the Divine Word should share the fate of the Blessed Sacrament, and become "scholastic language."

It is not, however, with these principally that we are now concerned. The examination of the above views already furnishes us with one absolutely necessary condition of a true development. It can only be exercised upon a thing really apprehended by the intellect, and all theories which do not provide for a knowledge of the object to be developed are at once to be regarded as faulty. Development is a process of reflection on an object previously seized by the thought. Nor does anything in the notion imply that that apprehension is small. It is requisite to bear this in mind, because some writers use terms which imply that the first steps in the process must be despicably small. Of course such expressions as germs and seeds are perfectly allowable; but if they are employed to exaggerate the imperfection of the beginnings of Christian theology, they are dangerous and false. The very peculiarity of Christian development is that the stream is broadest at its source. No theologian to the end of time will know more than the Apostles. Nay, there is nothing in the nature of the case to prevent the knowledge possessed by their immediate successors from being better in kind than that of subsequent theologians. This is historically borne out by the facts of the progress of Christian dogma. The enunciations of the earliest writers on our Lord's Godhead are more downright and unequivocal than those of the Fathers who followed them. Who ever found fault with S. Clement and S. Ignatius? It is with the Apologists that difficulties begin. So it is with Our Lady. The doctrine of S. Irenæus and of the author of the second Epistle to Diognetus is far higher than that of Origen.

The difficulties begin with Origen. Before him she is simply the second Eve, and is thus compared to one immaculate in the first moment of her existence. Of course development is an advance; but we must not be deceived by words, nor make a mistake as to that in which the advance consists. An object. reaches our apprehension first as a whole. Subsequent knowledge splits into parts what at first was one. It sees difficulties, and it struggles to harmonize them. The time of

struggle may be inferior to the first impression until the harmony is found. Even the knowledge gained at last, while more extensive, may yet be less intense than the first. This will become more clear from the examination of the opposite extreme to that which we have hitherto been criticising.

A few years ago the consideration of the theory of which we are now to give an account would hardly have been a practical matter. We fear, however, that a fearful change has taken place. Even Dr. Pusey is terrified into an attempt to fraternize with dissenters, in order to escape the rationalism which has invaded even the common-rooms of Oxford; nor are we reassured because, in one of those curious semi-conscious parentheses, which often betray that a dim view of the reality has just sufficiently reached his mind to call forth a denial of it, he tells the Wesleyan Conference that rationalism is diminishing. May he be right! In the meanwhile it is certain that the shallow barrier set to rationalistic thought when first the tide was flowing, has been utterly overborne, and not so much submerged as swept away.

A view of development has become, at the very least, not uncommon, which, not long ago, was utterly unknown, and which, if known, would have found absolutely no response. Whether the view would be formalized precisely in the German way we have no means of knowing, yet we believe we do not calumniate Oxford when we say that something like the Hegelianism, which is no longer believed in Germany, finds many adherents there. We will state it in its native form, which we borrow from a Catholic writer, whose fairness is

undoubted :

Rationalism has fastened itself on the form in which the organs of the Christian revelation have expressed their religious consciousness in terms which suited their own time, and has drawn the conclusion from it that that expression could not possibly convey the Christian Truth to all time. This view, however, could not possibly stop short at the Apostles, it must ascend up to Christ Himself, who is in the same position as they. Accordingly it is said by Semler that the word spoken by Christ and His Apostles to the Jews and heathen could not be the standard for all times and all degrees of civilization, and that a distinction must be made between their doctrine and their mode of teaching, in the sense that the latter could not have an absolute value, since it was accommodated to the imagery of that time. Then much is said about the infinite developing power of Christianity, and about its aim, to make its truths fruitful for all following generations. Furthermore, it is argued that words could not be framed so as to contain the. whole compass of the conceptions of Christianity, which were to progress in never-ending development. Of this development, which entered into the world with Christianity, the Apostolic writings form but the first shape, the

first link in a chain, the first and the most narrow of the concentric circles raised in the boundless ocean of thought by the flinging of Christian truth into it, the first impulse to the movement. The True and the Perfect is not to be found in the commencement but in the progress to the end. "The text of the Bible," says Hegel," contains the mode of the first appearance of Christianity; this is what it describes, and such a description can only contain what is in the principle of Christianity, and even that not as yet in an express manner, but only a presentiment of it! What the spirit which reveals itself in Christianity is in and for itself (an und für sich) does not come out at first. One might almost say, when one leads back Christianity to its first appearance, it is reduced to the stage of vacancy of spirit (Geistlosigkeit)." Schelling speaks in the same sense. "The first books of the history and doctrine of Christianity are themselves nothing but a special, and therefore imperfect, appearance of it; its Idea is not to be found in them, and their worth is only to be estimated according to the degree in which this Idea is expressed in them.” *

This, however, only gives us, as yet, an imperfect view of the part played by development in Hegel's system. Christ and His Apostles are not only the first feeble beginning of Christianity, but that beginning does not, even in any real sense, contain the germ of future developments. Each step is a spring forward on the last: it does not properly spring out of it. This is apparent from the fact that in that system heresies are as much real developments as are Catholic verities. The truth lies in the very developing, in the movement, in the flux and the succession, in the contradictions reconciled at last by the knowledge to which the spirit attains that each is a necessary step in its life. The Christian notion that our Lord taught a grand body of truth once for all, of which all forms of doctrine are developments, and out of which they come without the least substantial change, is expressly denied and despised as dead, monotonous, lifeless, spiritless. Unambiguously, and without equivocation, it is laid down that each development must be a real, essential change upon the last, and that their substantial truth lies in their being all equally the spontaneous movement of the Absolute Idea, which struggles through them all into a consciousness of Self. So incredible does it appear that any one calling himself a Christian should hold this view, that we quote Kuhn's summary of the views of Dr. Baur, a Protestant professor of Tübingen, which are almost his own words :

Dr. Baur distinguishes three modes of looking upon the process of the history of dogma: the first he calls that of the ecclesiastical belief; the

Kuhn, i. 132.