Occasional Papers: Selected from the Guardian, the Times, and the Saturday Review, 1846-1890, Vol. 2Church, R. W. (Richard William)
Religion
Occasional Papers: Selected from the Guardian, the Times, and the Saturday Review, 1846-1890, Vol. 2
Church, R. W. (Richard William)
Christianity; Church and state -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Church history -- 19th century
each what is false or inadequate.
What, then, is this investigation, and what course does it follow? At
the first aspect, we might take it for one of those numerous attempts
on the Liberal side, partly impatient, partly careless of Christianity,
to put a fresh look on the Christian history, and to see it with new
eyes. The writer's language is at starting neutral; he speaks of our
Lord in the language indeed of the New Testament, but not in the usual
language of later Christian writers. All through, the colour and tone
is absolutely modern; and what would naturally be expressed in familiar
theological terms is for the most part studiously put in other words.
Persons acquainted with the writings of the late Mr. Robertson might be
often reminded of his favourite modes of teaching; of his maxim that
truth is made up of two opposites which seem contradictories; of the
distinction which he was so fond of insisting upon between principles
and rules; above all, of his doctrine that the true way to rise to the
faith in our Lord's Divine Nature was by first realising His Human
Life. But the resemblance is partial, if not superficial, and gives way
on closer examination before broad and characteristic features of an
entirely different significance. That one which at first arrests
attention, and distinguishes this writer's line of thought from the
common Liberal way of dealing with the subject, is that from the first
page of the book to its last line the work of Christ is viewed, not
simply as the foundation of a religious system, the introduction of
certain great principles, the elevation of religious ideas, the
delivery of Divine truths, the exhibition of a life and example, but as
the call and creation of a definite, concrete, organised society of
men. The subject, of investigation is not merely the character and
history of the Person, but the Person as connected with His work.
Christ is regarded not simply in Himself or in His teaching, as the
Founder of a philosophy, a morality, a theology in the abstract, but as
the Author of a Divine Society, the Body which is called by His Name,
the Christian Church Universal, a real and visible company of men,
which, however we may understand it, exists at this moment as it has
existed since His time, marked by His badges, governed by His laws, and
working out His purpose. The writer finds the two joined in fact, and
he finds them also joined in the recorded history of Christ's plan. The
book might almost be described as the beginning of a new _De Civitate
Dei_, written with the further experience of fourteen centuries and
from the point of view of our own generation. This is one remarkable
peculiarity of this investigation; another is the prominence given to
the severe side of the Person and character of whom he writes, and what
is even more observable, the way in which both the severity and the
gentleness are apprehended and harmonised.
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