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THE

CHRISTIAN TEACHER.

ART. I.—THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST TO THE ABOLITION OF PAGANISM IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. By the Rev. H. H. MILMAN. 3 vols. 8vo. London: John Murray.

THIS is a work that claims our highest praise, both for the learning and ability with which it is executed, and for the elevated spirit in which the Author has raised himself above the strifes and party purposes of the times. Mr. Milman writes not for his own day; nor to please any party in his own Church. He ignores the controversies, the contentions, the religious passions that are raging around him. He writes as if such things were not; as if his book was to encounter no narrow and hostile criticism: as if there was no bigotry in the world, no dogmatic theology, whose pretensions he is destroying and exposing at every page. He has evidently lifted himself into higher, purer, calmer regions; and makes his appeal not to the passing fermentations, but to the abiding reason, the enlightened philosophy of instructed man.

The work is of great compass, and we can only glance at its contents. For the first time in this country Ecclesiastical History has been made acceptable to general readers, and we confess that no work has appeared in England for many years from which we expect so much benefit indirectly to accrue to Christian Truth.

The History opens with a rapid but very able review of the state and various forms of Religion and Philosophy, both Pagan and Jewish, in the times of our Saviour. This statement of what Judaism and Heathenism had effected for mankind is the best introduction to the History of Christianity; the best proof that a new instrument was needed to place the souls of men in right relations to God; the best demonstration that the " fulness of time" was come. Judaism had lost its soul, and only VOL. III. No. 11.-New Series.

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flamed up like a dying lamp in the person of John the Baptist. Paganism was any thing and was nothing; a philosophy; a fable; an allegory; a mystery; stripped of its outward form by Science; robbed of its inward spirit by Sensualism: it had no integrity, no unity in itself, and could impart none to the life of man. "The time, though fitted to receive, could not by any combination of prevalent opinions, or by any conceivable course of moral improvement, have produced Christianity. The conception of the human character of Jesus, and the simple principles of the new Religion, as they were in direct opposition to the predominant opinions and temper of his own countrymen, so they stood completely alone in the history of our race; and as imaginary, no less than as real, altogether transcend the powers of man's moral conception. Supposing the gospels purely fictitious, or that, like the Cyropædia' of Xenophon, they embody on a groundwork of fact the highest moral and religious notions to which man had attained, and show the utmost ideal perfection of the divine and human nature, they can be accounted for, according to my judgment, on none of the ordinary principles of human nature. When we behold Christ standing in the midst of the wreck of old religious institutions, and building, or rather at one word commanding to arise, the simple and harmonious structure of the new faith, which seems equally adapted for all ages-a temple to which nations in the highest degree of civilization may bring their offerings of pure hearts, virtuous dispositions, universal charity,—our natural emotion is the recognition of the Divine goodness, in the promulgation of this beneficent code of religion; and adoration of that Being in whom the Divine goodness is thus embodied and made comprehensible to the faculties of man. In the language of the Apostle, God is in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.""

Mr. Milman justly considers that a Life of Christ is indispensable to a History of Christianity. To explain the Christian movement, we must penetrate to the interior life of him who originated it. “Had the life of Christ been more generally considered as intimately and inseparably connected with the progress and development of human affairs, with the events and opinions of his time, works would not have been required to prove his existence, scarcely, perhaps, the authenticity of his history. The real historical evidence of Christianity is the absolute necessity of his life to fill up the void in the annals of mankind, to account for the effects of his religion in the subsequent history of man." And here we must say that this is just the respect in which we are least satisfied with the work of Mr.

Milman. His "Life of Christ" would not, we think "account for the effects of his religion in the subsequent history of man." He writes like an interpreter, a critic, one who has to point out the external links and connections that bind together events and speeches, one who has to show how Christianity was modified in its outward developments by the powers and philosophies of the world that beat upon it,-but nowhere does he penetrate to the living soul of this great movement,-nowhere does he show us the spiritual energy that gave birth to and that still sustains this mighty religious revolution, this development of the divine nature of man; and in vain in his cold, formal, exegetical Life of Christ should we look for the inspiration of Christianity, the deep and sufficing springs of the spiritual life of the world. We confess we do not see how, in Mr. Milman's relation of Christianity, this could be otherwise. We deprecate the petty and rude criticism which rejoices to bring into contrast the views and the position of a writer; but at the same time it is evident that Mr. Milman has neither the freedom and spontaneity of the liberal school, nor the unction, and if we may so speak, in all questions of philosophy, the unstopped facilities, the unhesitating explanations, of the orthodox school. His orthodoxy hangs loose about him. It does not colour his inmost soul. He explains nothing by it. He does not find in it his philosophy of religion. Neither has he entire sympathy with what we deem the higher view of the connections of Christ with the spirit of God, as a divine manifestation of the union that is possible between the will of man and the parent mind of our Heavenly Father. Mr. Milman holds a position between these two schools, between Rationalism and Orthodoxy; and therefore we deem him better qualified to comment upon the outward History and developments of Christianity than to reveal its sources. Mr. Milman is much more successful in tracing how the stream of Jewish opinion became tinctured by the ideas of the various climes through which its tribes were dispersed; and how the language, at least, of Christianity, if not its conceptions, holds affinities with all the religious philosophies then existing in the world. We especially recommend, with this view, to those not familiar with such knowledge, the repeated study of the second chapter of his first volume.

The expectation of a Messiah, and the nature of the Messianic anticipations, form one of the most important and mysterious questions in the history of Christianity; important as it affected the early language, determined the earliest forms, and obstructed the genuine spirit of Christianity,-mysterious, as having its sources almost undiscoverable. "Their sacred books, the Law and the Prophets, were not the clear and un

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mingled source of the Jewish opinions on this all-absorbing subject. Over this as over the whole system of the Law, tradition had thrown a veil; and it is this traditionary notion of the Messiah which it is necessary to develop but from whence tradition had derived its apparently extraneous and independent notions, becomes a much more deep and embarrassing question. It is manifest from the Evangelic history, that although there was no settled or established creed upon the subject, yet there was a certain conventional language: particular texts of the Sacred Writings were universally recognised as bearing reference to the Messiah; and there were some few characteristic credentials of his title and office, which would have commanded universal assent." We must not trace the manner in which the East and the West, Persia, Egypt, and Greece, contributed to colour and confuse the national dream of a Messiah,—but we may state the result in the words of our Author. "Each region, each rank, each sect; the Babylonian, the Egyptian, the Palestinian, the Samaritan; the Pharisee, the lawyer, the zealot, arrayed the Messiah in those attributes which suited his own temperament. Of that which was more methodically taught in the synagogue or the adjacent school, the populace caught up whatever made the deeper impression. The enthusiasm took an active or contemplative, an ambitious or a religious, an earthly or a heavenly tone, according to the education, habits, or station of the believer; and to different men the Messiah was man or angel, or more than angel; he was king, conqueror, or moral reformer: a more victorious Joshua, a more magnificent Herod, a wider-ruling Cæsar, a wiser Moses, a holier Abraham; an angel, the angel of the Covenant, the Metatron, the Mediator between God and man; Michael, the great tutelar archangel of the nation, who appears by some to have been identified with the mysterious Being who led them forth from Egypt; he was the Word of God; an emanation from the Deity; himself partaking of the divine nature. While this was the religious belief, some there were, no doubt, of the Sadducaic party, or the half-Grecised adherents of the Herodian family, who treated the whole as a popular delusion; or as Josephus to Vespasian, would not scruple to employ it as a politic means for the advancement of their own fortunes. While the robber chieftain looked out from his hill-tower to see the blood-red banner of him whom he literally expected to come 'from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah,' and 'treading the wine-press in his wrath,' the Essene in his solitary hermitage, or monastic fraternity of husbandmen, looked to the reign of the Messiah, when the more peaceful image of the

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