VII. REVIEW OF CURRENT LITERATURE Theology. Merivale's Conversion of the Northern Nations, 280. - History and Biography. Mommsen's Römische Geschichte, II. MORAL LIFE UNDER THE EMPIRE. -H. J. Warner. III. TROLLOPE'S HISTORY OF FLORENCE.-H. T. Tuckerman. THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER. JULY, 1866. ART. I.-GOD IN OUR HISTORY. THE grand Christian doctrines of election and predestination have been sadly belittled by dogmatic interpreters. Rightly understood, they only declare that decisive part which God, by his Spirit and his Providence, has in the direction and unfolding of the spiritual fortunes of humanity. With no reference to individual allotments, or to the fixing of personal fates, they belong wholly to questions outside the freedom of the human will, and above the region of sectarian disputes. They draw our attention to the overwhelming fact, that the current of history is not a wild and will-less stream, stagnating here and rushing there, according to the fortuitous nature of the country; but a river of God, its course foreseen, its tributaries provided, its contracting highlands and its widening plains pre-arranged, while its fountains are fed by snows and rains, both descending in due season from Him who sitteth on the circle of the heavens. Because the Infinite Creator and Inspirer has been pleased to wrap his election and his predestination up in the very nature of the human soul, there are those who think the plan and course of history determined by human accidents and individual caprices, who trace to this school of philosophersor that class of statesmen, this happy invention or that special discovery, this giant intellect or that vigorous will, — to VOL. LXXX.-NEW SERIES, VOL. II. NO. I. 1 Aristotle or Plato, to Nominalist or Realist, to Charlemagne and William, to Cromwell and Napoleon; or, taking the theological line, to Paul and Athanasius, Hildebrand and Calvin, Wesley and Channing, the sum and shape and direction of human civilization, the present quality and flavor of public opinion in Church and State. Why does it not oftener occur to us to think that He who assigns and orders human nature necessarily prescribes human history and human destiny? It is not the character, but the nature, of men which decides the great outlines and fills in the large features of that map we call History. It is what is originally in man, forcing itself out of him in a necessary order, that has slowly built up from the ground that lofty plant, so coarse in its roots, so fine in its topmost twigs, so mighty in its bole and branches, so magnificent in its proportions, yet evidently as yet so incomplete in its growth, which we contemplate under the name of Civilization. The sap of this tree is the Spirit of God. Ultimately it is reason, conscience, will, imagination, affection, constitutional and universal passions and desires, which have their way, and constitute both the current and the banks of that human Nile whose fountain-head continues a sort of open secret. Nothing that the most extraordinary persons can do affects history as the least of the permanent qualities of humanity affect it. The meanest Sense controls the usages and customs of society, more and longer than the proudest Dynasty. It is not thinkers, but the laws underlying thought, that settle our intellectual problems; it is not statesmen, but the political necessities of human nature at different stages of its development, that create and determine forms of government. It is not Buddhas and Mahomets, Pauls and Luthers, that establish religious dispensations; but necessary tendencies of the religious possibilities in man, embodying themselves, according to stages of moral and spiritual development, in creeds or forms of worship, which crystallize round some individual, who is the providential exponent of the inevitable event. The volcano does not make the fire it belches forth; and, if the internal heat had not broken out at Etna, it would have chosen some neighboring mountain for its chimney. In the eye of faith there can be nothing in history accidental or unexpected. The fact of human freedom does not touch that other fact, the divine necessity, which has its own way through the very freedom it has established. Man's will is free only within the scope of his nature, which he cannot change; and God's will, in fixing the nature of man, has prescribed the boundaries of his freedom. Chaos, slowly coming to order in the planet on which man dwells, did not obey more fixed laws and follow a more inevitable succession of changes than history does; being the precise and necessary development of forces originally folded in human nature. But there is a still more glorious meaning than this in the Christian doctrines of election and predestination. Human nature, in its higher and finally predominating qualities and features, is an embodiment, in carnal and personal conditions, of the mind and heart and conscience and will of God himself. God has not merely given man a mind, but he has given him Mind; not merely a conscience, but Conscience; not a faculty of reasoning only, but Reason. He has put himself, not his orders or wishes, in humanity. The changeless attributes of God are represented in the human soul. Nothing is in God more divine than the eternal Reason, the original Conscience, the holy Will, of which the universal revelation lies in human nature. God utters himself in terms of reason, conscience, love, in the human soul. Here all of God that can be manifest, when conditioned by flesh and blood and by human personality, is ever publishing itself, according to a necessary method, in what we call human history; or, more truly, natural revelation. Not only, therefore, is history in its large outlines divinely shaped, but it is the reflection of celestial truth, goodness, and righteousGod's way is perfect. His plan is the necessity of his own wisdom, truth, and holiness. God lives and reigns in humanity and in history. He is the light of all our seeing; the reason of our reason; the conscience of our consciences; the great personality, of which our human personalities are ness. offshoots and echoes. The world not only moves, but it moves by the impulses designed to move it, and towards the goal fore-ordained. The late President once said to a committee who piously expressed a hope that the Lord was on his side, "Gentlemen, I have not considered very carefully whether the Lord was on my side; but I have been exceedingly anxious to be on the Lord's side." God is on no man's side, any more than the sun is in favor of any man's farm. God is on the side of humanity, truth, justice; or, rather, he is these, as all the beams come from and centre in the sun. If, in view of these principles, we briefly consider the present condition of Church and State in America, we may find some guidance through the labyrinth which confounds so many seekers after the truth. And first of the State. This country of ours is elected and predestinated to democratic equality and universal freedom; not from any merits of its founders, or any skill of its statesmen, but simply because, for the first time in history, a suitable conjunction of circumstances exists, through which that which is always striving to exemplify itself in the political and social nature of humanity now has its chance to take actual form and substance. There is a force working out the political problem of America, which is neither the result of party combinations, nor of private patriotism; which is back of all our questions, mightier than our armies, and more peremptory than the most decisive congress, or the most positive president. It is the force of ideas and convictions which do not owe their power to any man's judgment or will or even consciousness, which are the native ideas of political justice in the very constitution of the human soul, coming to their birth at the providential moment. Men and eras may consent to aristocratic, monarchical, and even absolute forms of government, and to states of society corresponding to them; but human nature never so consents. Now, it is only what all men can agree in that is permanent. All forms of government, except the popular and democratic form, are provisional and temporary; stagings |