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less and less firm by degrees as to the morality of the Bible. He began by holding that our duty was to receive Christ as our moral king,* and to believe in God, and exercise the religious affections towards Him apart from all dogmas as to His objective nature.† But in 1836 he said—

"Dr. Whately has endeavoured to gloss over the false political economy of the Gospels, and indeed of the New Testament altogether, in regard to almsgiving: but the thing cannot be fairly done. Christ and his Apostles thought that to give away everything a man possessed was one of the highest acts of virtue."‡

46. Next he defined prayer to be, properly speaking, “a longing or desire," an "act of the heart"; and he adds"To make it an act also of the lips, in regard to God, may be excusable, under certain circumstances."§

Then he went on to establish a rule, which may appear almost incredible as the result of almost a whole life passed in criticism of one form or other, for judging of the genuineness of particular passages in the New Testament. It was this; that the moral consequences which these passages had produced, || and their conformity to that reason which he defined to be the voice of God within us, should be the test.¶

.

"I approve in them what I find worthy of approval, and reject what I see no reason to believe or follow."**

On this ground we presume, as he does not name any other, he repudiates (in 1834) the narrative of the woman taken in adultery.tt With the lapse of time, the malady proceeds. In 1838 he says Socrates would have been a very different, evidently meaning an inferior,

*Life, II. p. 4.
§ Ibid. II. p. 263.
**Compare II. 235.

† Ibid. p. 276. Ibid. p. 287. †† Life, I. p. 281.

Ibid. p. 200.
Ibid. III. p. 155.

person if he had had bodily ill-health to bear; and he proceeds, * in words which we will not quote (they simply express the thought), to the blasphemous remark that the same would probably have been the case with our Lord. This is, indeed, a sentiment which may lie, abstractedly, within the simple creed of Unitarianism : but it is Unitarianism practically applied, Unitarianism (so to speak) in motion, and thus it strikes more forcibly upon the eye.

47. Some time later, however, he struck at the very foundation of the moral code of Him, who inaugurated His great discourse with the text that "blessed are the poor in spirit."t For Mr. Blanco White writes thus concerning humility in 1840:

"Humility could not be raised to the catalogue of virtues, except in a society chiefly composed of men degraded by personal slavery, such as history exhibits the early Church. Slaves alone could find such a sanctified cloak for cowardice as humility; for it is not a dignified endurance of unavoidable evil, but such a cringing as may allay the anger of an insolent oppressor. Such submission cannot find acceptance in thine eyes, O God! for it classes Thee with the despots of this earth. . .

"If he (our Saviour) ever uttered the rule of offering the cheek for a second insult, he must have done it under the conviction that the Oriental style he was using could not be misunderstood but by idiots. . . . In the multitude of slaves, who flocked to the Church, is to be found the source of that humility, which has lowered the standard of modern virtue."‡

Then, becoming rabid in his infatuation, he proceeds to stigmatise §"the mean ambition, the low and degraded character, and the worldly views" of the Martyrs of that Lord who is "to be glorified in His Saints and admired in them that believe: "|| and, as if it had been written in

*Life, III. p. 36. § 273, note.

St. Matt. v. 3. || 2 Thess. i. 10.

Life, III. p. 272-4.

heaven that the man who uttered this impiety should not be suffered to do it without at the same time exposing himself to ridicule, while he has thus the Christian Church and her achievements in his eye, he proceeds to complain that by such teaching

"To create in us a habit of distrust and timidity, is to deprive us of that confidence, which is the foundation of all high enterprise."*

Yet he knew something of the power of that system, which is thus enfeebled and degraded by the doctrine of humility; for among the many causes that embittered his last days, and made his life a torment, was the belief which he has recorded that, during his latter life, and contrary to the hopes he had once entertained, orthodoxy was on the advance in his adopted country, in the very land which he had hoped would be its grave.

48. Lastly, as we are obliged to observe, before quitting this part of the subject, Mr. Blanco White appears to have had most feeble ideas of the nature and heinousness of sin as a contravention of the Divine will. Of the sins of his own early life he sometimes speaks in the terms of penitence; but we do not perceive that the idea of sin as such ever raised in him the horror which belongs to it. In his later life, we must say that his vehemence against the Christian doctrine of original sin consorts but too well with his faint impressions upon actual sin. Of the former he does not scruple to say that those, who can believe in it, are beyond the reach of reasoning.† Upon the latter, besides a scoff in an earlier passage,‡ he says— "There is nothing like pure joy among us. Pleasure constantly assumes the appearance of sin-a word which perverts every mind The Hebrew had a sounder notion of the state of man

among us.

*P. 275.

† Life, III. p. 77.

Ibid. II. p. 298

upon earth. See the opinions and sentiments expressed in the book of Solomon." *

49. We esteem these parts of his history as of the highest importance. They powerfully illustrate the inseparable connexion between the morality of the Gospel and the rest of its doctrine. They support the proposition that the man who abandons the latter puts a period, whether consciously or unconsciously, to his secure possession of the former, even though it may often happen that life is too short and impediments too numerous and varied to permit him to pursue the dreary process to its close. Faith, then, with him, was already shipwrecked; and the theory of morals must soon have foundered: but what are we to say to his practical virtues ?

50. There are several dangers of a most serious kind, with which the contemplation of a mind and a history like those of Mr. Blanco White is attended. It may tempt us to deny the reality of those virtues which are presented to us apart from their natural and proper accompaniment of Christian belief. And in this way many, as we think, find an unworthy defence for their orthodoxy at the cost of their justice and their brotherly kindness. For there are those among us who, if any evidences were laid before them of piety on the part of a misbeliever, would almost think themselves obliged beforehand to reject them on account of his heresy. Or again, admitting the reality of the virtues, and unable to deny the absence of all true perception of the Catholic faith, we may fall into that most fatal error of regarding Christian dogma as a thing properly separable from the moral operation which generates the Christian character, and of holding that a Life, III. p. 173.

man

* "may be saved by the law or sect which he professeth;" that there is a basis of human conduct, adequate to the ends of virtue, and yet other than that of the Gospel and the Church. Such a view as this we take to be, not indeed in every individual, but in every school professing it, the sure precursor of infidelity.

51. Or again, if we escape this pitfall, and still cling to the idea that the powers necessary for our moral renovation are linked by Divine order to Christian doctrines, still we may be pressed with cases in which heretical opinion appears to have co-existed with personal piety. Such were those of Firmin, of Courayer (in his last years); and of some others whose denials, though heretical, have not so obviously touched the foundation. We may then be tempted into some classification of the several truths, which make up the deposit of faith; and, setting down as unessential whatever we find to have been rejected by persons apparently living under the influences of religion, we may draw a new catalogue of fundamentals, which we shall too surely find in the course of time to be subject to successive and unlimited reduction. It is surprising how many grave and pious men have been induced to commit themselves, in one degree or another, to this most shallow and slippery theory. The process, indeed, which it requires, as it begins in an act of sheer presumption-for what are we that we shall analyse the faith of the perpetual and universal Church, and separate its organic parts ?-so it naturally terminates in exhaustion and inanition.

But, fourthly and lastly, supposing we grant that Mr. Blanco White exhibits to our human view the marks of a

* Art. XVIII.

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