which is sufficient for all. We do not say, "Christ died for thee;" this would imply a knowledge of the secret purposes of the Most High, and secret things belong not to us; but we may say, "Christ is dead for thee," that is, he is exhibited as crucified and slain for thee-for thy benefit, for thee to look to for salvation, as the serpent was lifted up for the wounded Israelite to look to for healing,-for thee to flee to, as the city of refuge was appointed for the manslayer to flee to for safety. Nothing, therefore, can be more scriptural and more simple than the view which the Marrow-men gave of saving faith. They represented it as trusting in Christ alone for salvation. This has been the faith of God's elect in all generations. It is the faith in which all true Christians live, and in which even those good men who have theoretically impugned the definition, if they do not now live, are sure to die. It is the view of faith in which even Baxter himself, who had spent much ink in quarrelling with the definition, ultimately expressed his acquiescence. More recent definitions, by attempting to simplify the subject, have only involved it in mystification and confusion. Mistaking the distinctions by which our elder divines sought to remove the rubbish and exhibit the simple idea of saving faith, standing up apart from all its counterfeits, for so many definitions of the idea, our moderns would simplify the question by allowing all this extraneous matter to remain; and contenting themselves with defining faith, which needs no definition, they fail to describe the special character of faith in Jesus Christ, in such a way as either to satisfy the trembling sinner, or to convict the presumptuous hypocrite. The nature of saving faith, as not merely a cold assent to the truth of the divine testimony, but as the betaking of the heart to the Saviour, speaking in and offering his hand to us in that testimony, and resting upon him for salvation, and consequently as implying both appropriation and assurance, is now so fully owned by evangelical divines in all churches, that it would be a waste of time to enlarge on it. The rapid strides made by evangelical truth during the present century, have carried us so far ahead of the meagre "Moderate" theology of the last, that the danger now lies in quite an opposite direction from that in which it was apprehended by our fathers of the "Marrow" school. Our "modern divinity" is too often like the marrow run to oil and set on fire. It has all the extravagance of its phraseology, with none of the substantial ingredients which our old divines judiciously mixed up with it, to qualify its fervour, and convert it into wholesome aliment. Some would-be heresiarchs have even pretended to sneer at our NO. V. 2 F Marrow-men, as if they had only seen half-way through the truth, and acted merely as pioneers of themselves-the true champions of the gospel! When this chaff has blown away, the prejudice which has been done to these good men will yield to the general conviction, that they were thoroughly familiar with the gospel plan, that they knew the truth, and the truth had made them free. We may have fallen upon happier modes of presenting the truth than that of spiritual paradox; we may have learned to walk over the ground of Christian privilege and duty with a freer step, instead of painfully picking our way between Neonomianism and Antinomianism, or needing rows of palisades to guard us at every step from entering on forbidden ground; and yet, among all evangelical churches, at home and abroad, the same free and unfettered gospel as that advocated by the Marrow-men is really preached. Error is a perishing annual; truth is an evergreen. The church has outlived the effete moralism of the last century; and the vigorous growths of a scriptural evangelism, springing from the inner life of faith, and fed with the dew of heaven, promise erelong to supplant not only the poisonous plants of heresy, but the puny products and fungous excrescences of a dead and formal orthodoxy. ART. VII.-1. The Victory of Faith, and other Sermons. By JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M.A., Archdeacon of Lewes, Rector of Herstmonceaux, and late Fellow of Trinity College. Second Edition, 1847. 2. The Mission of the Comforter, with Notes. By JULIUS CHARLES HARE, &c. Second Edition, revised. 1850. 3. Sermons preached in Herstmonceaux Church. 2 vols. By JULIUS C. HARE, &c. 4. Essays and Tales. By JOHN STERLING. Collected and Edited, with a Memoir of his Life. By JULIUS C. HARE, &c. 2 vols. 5. The Contest with Rome: a Charge to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Lewes, delivered at the ordinary visi tation in 1851; with Notes, especially in answer to Dr Newman's recent Lectures. By JULIUS C. HARE, &c. 1852. 6. The Means of Unity: a Charge delivered at the visitation in 1842; with Notes, especially on the Anglican Bishopric at Jerusalem, and on the need of an Ecclesiastical Synod. By JULIUS C. HARE, &c. 7. The True Remedy for the Evils of the Age: a Charge delivered at the visitation in 1849; with Notes, especially on the Educational, Matrimonial, and Baptismal Questions. By JULIUS C. HARE, &C. 8. The Unity of the Church: a Sermon, with Introductory Remarks on Uniformity. By JULIUS C. HARE, &c. 1845. 9. The Unity of Mankind in God: a Sermon preached on the occasion of the Jubilee of the Church Missionary Society, 1848. By JULIUS C. HARE, &c. 11. A few Words on the Rejection of the Episcopal Bill to Amend the Ecclesiastical Court of Appeal. By JULIUS C. HARE, &c. 1850. 12. Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers. First Series, Fourth Edition, revised. 1851. 1848. Second Series, Second Edition, with large additions. 13. The Religions of the World. By FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, and Professor of Divinity in King's College, London. 14. Christmas Day and other Sermons. By F. D. MAURICE, &c. 15. Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy. By F. D. MAURICE, &c. Part I. Ancient. 16. The Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament. By F. D. MAURICE, &c. 17. Notes on the Miracles. By R. C. TRENCH, B.D., Professor of Divinity in King's College, London, and Examining Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Oxford. Third Edi tion. 18. Notes on the Parables. By the Same. Fourth Edition. 19. Hulsean Lectures. Two Series in one. By the Same. 20. Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet. An Autobiography. 2 vols. 21. Twenty-five Village Sermons. By CHARLES KINGSLEY, Rector of Eversley. Second Edition, revised. 1851. THOSE who are at all acquainted with the present tendencies of theological thought in England, will not be surprised that we should deem it important to direct special attention to the writings of Archdeacon Hare, or that we should couple with his name those of the other writers, some of whose works we have placed at the head of this paper. Few men, if any, are exercising at this moment a more important influence on the great body of the rising and genial mind of the country, both within and without the English Church, than the author of the "Victory of Faith" and the "Mission of the Comforter;" and in that influence, such as it is, and whatever it may bode, either of good or of evil, to the vital interests of Christianity, the other writers in question largely share. Apart altogether from special circumstances, which may have brought the minds of some of them into a closer personal relation with one another, it is easy to discern a general oneness of spirit and of tendency in the productions of those several pens, which warrants us in ranking them together under the same class, and regarding them as manifestations of one special phase in the theological tendencies of the time. To this view of the matter, or to any inference which may thence be warrantably drawn, we are persuaded the eminent authors themselves would not object. They would, doubtless, cordially admit that they feel to one another the relationship of congenial minds, and that their general views in regard to religion and Christianity, and their longings and aspirations for the future, are essentially one. That they differ more or less from one another on various grave questions of recent discussion we are well aware; but there may be, even in the midst of much diversity in detail, a certain inward unity of mind and spirit, which shall constitute a much truer and more living bond of connection than any mere coincidence of dogmatic opinion; and such a unity,-a unity of feeling and of heart in regard to whatever is most vital and essential in religious truth, we have no doubt the writers in question would gladly own. Thus much we have thought it essential to say, with the view of clearing our way, and making plain the ground on which we think ourselves warranted in connecting together the writings of men who are, of course, in no way responsible for one another's sentiments, any further than they can be shown to be coincident with their own. Some, we know, would hold us entitled to go much further than we have indicated. They would consider us justified in regarding the whole mass of authorship in question, and much besides, bearing, as they think, the traces of the same pervading spirit, as constituting in the strictest sense one body,-one definite system, or, as the common phrase is, school of theological speculation, and so of reasoning from one to the other, and interpreting the one by the other, as so many emanations from one and the same source. The extreme hazard and injustice of this sort of criticism we shall have occasion to advert to before we close the present paper. Meanwhile, for ourselves, we entirely disclaim the right to proceed upon any such principle. No man is responsible for any opinions but those which he has himself expressed, or which by plain inference may be deduced from his writings. One author may have been affected more or less by the spirit of another, and yet may himself entertain sentiments which the other would repudiate; or, a number of minds may together manifest the influence of some common tendency, and yet each in other respects hold on its separate way. In every such case the course of truth and of justice is manifest. In so far as they are one, let them be regarded and treated as such, and approved or condemned accordingly; but let it not be taken for granted that those who are at one in some points are at one in all, and so jointly and severally responsible for all the merits and all the errors of each. We have seen Archdeacon Hare publicly arraigned in an influential English journal as responsible not only for the opinions of himself and of his friends, but of a much wider circle of supposed associates, including such men as Thomas Carlyle, D. F. Strauss, and even Blanco White. This is, of course, egregiously unjust. We hold our author responsible only for the opinions of Archdeacon Hare himself, and for such consequences as those opinions either in logical necessity or in their manifest tendency carry along with them, though the importance of those opinions will be greatly affected by the degree in which they appear to be shared by other minds of congenial cast, who may be exercising in their several spheres a powerful influence on the spirit of the age. The above list of works will show that our author is a sufficiently voluminous and multifarious writer. Intimately conversant with those questions that have been occupying the world of thought and speculation, as well as active life, during the last twenty years, he has thought much, and given forth his views, more or less, on most of them. Poetry, painting, music, architecture, education, moral science, the philosophy of history, civil and ecclesiastical polity, theology, the pastoral care, all in turn come under the thoughtful glance of this singularly fresh and genial spirit. The form, too, is as multifarious as the subject-matter. By some singular idiosyncracy of mind, or some peculiarity of circumstances, this author seems to have been all along shut up to a miscellaneous and fragmentary form of publication. Sermons, charges, letters on some special point of controversy, notes, notes upon notes, aphorisms, essays, isolated thoughts, and fragments of thoughts,--such are the apparently fugitive results of the literary labour of many years. With a view to permanent utility, this is undoubtedly to be regretted. We should greatly err, however, were we to conclude that what is thus fragmentary and occasional in its form is on that account either hasty or superficial. Calm, earnest, richly fraught with varied learning and the well-assimilated stores of other minds, and teeming with fresh thoughtfulness, he touches no subject without seeking at least to penetrate to its inner principle, and shedding upon it a light peculiarly his |