BRITISH AND FOREIGN EVANGELICAL REVIEW. SEPTEMBER 1853. ART. I.—Lectures on Systematic Theology, embracing Lectures New THIS is in more senses than one a remarkable book. It is, to a degree very unusual, an original work; it is the product of the author's own mind. The principles which he holds have indeed been held by others, and the conclusions at which he arrives had been reached before; but still it is abundantly evident that all the principles here advanced are adopted by the writer, not on authority, but on conviction, and that the conclusions presented have all been wrought out by himself and for himself. The work is therefore in a high degree logical. It is as hard to read as Euclid. Nothing can be omitted; nothing passed over slightly. The unhappy reader, once committed to a perusal, is obliged to go on, sentence by sentence, through the long concatenation. There is not one restingplace; not one lapse into amplification or declamation, from beginning to the close. It is like one of those spiral staircases that lead to the top of some high tower, without a landing from the base to the summit; which if a man has once ascended, he resolves never to do the like again. The author begins with certain postulates, or what he calls first truths of reason, and these he traces out with singular clearness and strength to their legitimate conclusions. We do not see that there is a break or a defective link in the whole chain. If f you grant his principles, you have already granted his conclusions. NO. VI. 20 66 Such a work must of course be reckless. Having committed himself to the guidance of the discursive understanding, which he sometimes calls the intelligence, and sometimes the reason, and to which he alone acknowledges any real allegiance, he pursues his remorseless course, regardless of any protest from other sources. The Scriptures are throughout recognised as a mere subordinate authority. They are allowed to come in and bear confirmatory testimony, but their place is altogether secondary. Even God himself is subordinate to "the intelligence;" His will can impose no obligation; it only discloses what is obligatory in its own nature and by the law of reason. There can be no positive laws, for nothing binds the conscience but the moral law, nothing is obligatory but what tends to the highest good, and as a means to that end, which must be chosen not out of regard for God, not for the sake of the moral excellence implied in it, but for its own sake, as what alone has any intrinsic value. All virtue consists in obedience to the moral law as revealed in the reason. —(P. 301.) "Benevolence (i. e. virtue) is yielding the will up unreservedly to the demands of the intelligence." (P. 275.) Moral law "is the soul's idea or conception of that state of heart or life which is exactly suited to its nature and relations. It cannot be too distinctly understood, that moral law is nothing more or less than the law of nature; that is, it is the rule imposed on us, not by the arbitrary will of any being, but by our own intelligence." (P. 6.) It is obligatory also upon every moral agent, entirely independent of the will of God. "Their nature and relations being given and their intelligence being developed, moral law must be obligatory upon them, and it lies not in the option of any being to make it otherwise. To pursue a course of conduct suited to their nature and relations is necessarily and self-evidently obligatory, the willing or nilling of any being to the contrary notwithstanding."—(P. 5.) As man's allegiance is to the universe, to being in general, and the rule of his obedience his own intelligence, God is reduced to the same category. He is "under moral law;" he is bound to seek the highest good of being; and as the highest well-being of the universe demands moral government, and as God is best quali fied, it is his duty to govern." (P. 19.) "His conscience must demand it." (P. 20.) Our obligation, however, to obey him rests neither on our dependence, nor in his infinite superiority, but simply on "the intrinsic value of the interests to be secured by government, and conditionated upon the fact, that government is the necessary means or condition of securing that end." (P. 24.) God's right is therefore limited by its foundation, "by the fact, that thus far, and no further, government is necessary to the highest good of the universe. No legislation in heaven or earth, no enactment, can impose obligation, except upon condition that such legislation is demanded by the highest good of the governor and the governed. Unnecessary legislation is invalid legislation. Unnecessary government is tyranny. It can in no case be founded in right." -(P. 24.) The question is not what form of truth may be conveyed under these expressions: we quote them as exhibiting the animus of the book; we bring them forward as exhibiting what we have called the recklessness of the writer,—his tracing out his principles to conclusions which shock the ordinary sensibilities of Christians; which assume, to say the least, principles inconsistent with the nature of religion as presented in the Bible and as avowed by the vast body of the people of God. The Scriptures assume that our allegiance is to God, and not to being in general; that the foundation of our obligation to obey him is his infinite excellence, and not the necessity of obedience to the highest happiness of moral agents; and that the rule of our obedience is his will, and not "the soul's conception" of what is suited to our nature and relations. According to the doctrine of this book, there is no such thing as religion, or the service of God as God. The universe has usurped his place as the supreme object of love; and reason, or "the intelligence," has fallen heir to his authority. A very slight modification in the form of statement would bring the doctrine of Mr Finney into exact conformity to the doctrine of the modern German school, which makes God but a name for the moral law or order of the universe, or reason in the abstract. It is in vain, however, to tell Mr Finney that his conclusions shock the moral and religious consciousness. What right, he asks, has "the empirical consciousness" to be heard in the premises? "If the intelligence affirms it, it must be true, or reason deceives us. But if the intelligence deceives in this, it may also in other things. If it fail us here, it fails us on the most important of all questions. If reason gives us false testimony, we can never know truth from error upon any moral subject; we certainly can never know what religion is, if the testimony of reason can be set aside. If the intelligence cannot be safely appealed to, how are we to know what the Bible means? for its is the only faculty by which we get at the truth of the oracles of God."-(P. 171.) * Our object at present, however, is not to discuss principles, but to state the general character of this work. It is eminently logical, rationalistic, reckless, and confident. Conclusions at war with the common faith of Christians are not only * The remarks quoted in the text are made in immediate reference to the author's doctrine that "moral character is always wholly right or wholly wrong;" or, that every moral agent is always either perfectly free from sin or totally depraved; or, that they are at all times as sinful or holy as with their knowledge they can be."-(P. 554.) """stark non avowed without hesitation; but "sheer nonsense," sense," "eminently nonsensical," are the terms applied to doctrines which have ever held their place in the faith of God's people, and which will maintain their position undisturbed long after this work is buried in oblivion.* Men have other sources of knowledge than the understanding, the feeble flickering light burning in the midst of misty darkness. If, deaf to the remonstrance of our moral nature, to the protests even of the emotional part of our constitution, we follow that light, it be longs to history and not to prophecy to record the issue. It really seems strange, when the first sentence of his preface informs the reader that "the truths of the blessed gospel have been hidden under a false philosophy," that the author, instead of presenting those truths free from that false ingredient, should write a book which hardly pretends to be any thing else than philosophy. The attempt to cure philosophy by philosophy is a homoeopathic mode of treatment in which we have very little confidence. The gospel was intended for plain people. Its doctrines admit of being plainly stated. They imply, indeed, a certain psychology, and a certain moral system. The true and Christian method is to begin with the doctrines, and let them determine our philosophy, and not to begin with philosophy and allow it to give law to the doctrines. The titlepage of this book is not plainer than the fact, that the doctrines which it inculcates are held not on the authority of God speaking in his Word, but on the authority of reason. They are almost without exception first proved, demonstrated as true, as the necessary sequences of admitted or assumed principles, before the Bible is so much as named. It is by profession a philosophy, or a philosophical demonstration of certain doctrines of morals and religion, and which might be admitted and adopted as true by a man who did not believe one word of the Scriptures, or who had never heard of their existence. The only doctrines which are assumed as facts, and not deduced from assumed premises, are the atonement as a fact, and the influence of the Holy Spirit on the mind; and as to the former, its nature, design, and effect are all proved à priori; and as to the latter, the writer professes "to understand the philosophy of the Spirit's influence." (P. 28.) It is altogether a misnomer to call such a book "Lectures on Systematic Theology." It would give a far more definite idea of its character to call it "Lectures on Moral Law and Philosophy." Under the former title we are authorised to expect a syste * On p. 499, after referring to Dr Griffin's assertion, that until the heart is changed by the Holy Spirit, the gospel excites its enmity to God, Mr Finney exclaims, "O orthodoxy, falsely so called, how absurd and false thou art! what an enemy thou art to God; what a stumbling block to man! What a leaven of unrighteousness and hell is such a dogma as this!" |