are only damaged by all this; and what good can Christianity get from it? So long as the clergy think themselves bound to defend things that are refuted ten times over by science and reason and common sense, they can gain nothing but the reputation of being uncandid and unscrupulous, besides all the ridicule which must follow the attempt to elevate trifles or absurdities into divine religion. Who can preserve his gravity on reading in Captain Clapperton's "Africa," how horrifically a Moorish woman described him to her daughter: "He eats pork, and will go to hell?" And is it less ludicrous to teach that a man falls under the wrath of God for not believing the story of Noah's menagerie, or any of the incongruities narrated in an anonymous book, concerning events which long preceded the rise of literature? Why are these speculations more to be respected than that of the birth of Minerva and of Venus, or the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha ?

A religious Reformation, in the very direction to which Colenso points, is demanded by the most intelligent part of the nation. Men are sick of glozing pretentiousness, of sanctimony joined with overbearing conduct and damnatory assumptions. They crave a more humane, tender, and cheerful religion, which shall teach of God as a father, not as a tyrant, over all nations of mankind and every man in each. What the religion shall be called, thousands care but little; but it must in many respects be very different from what is now enacted by law, or professed by" orthodox" dissenters, if it is to reign in a Church of the Future. It must not tamper with the primary morality stamped by God in the human heart, and appeal to some sacred "letter" in justification. It must not preach slavery-social, political, or religious. It must disown and denounce tyranny and shedding of innocent blood as frankly as do the Hebrew Psalms. It must not be afraid of freedom, nor of criticism: therefore, it must not be tied to a legal standard, but be left as free as all fruitful and living science. It must maintain the rights of the needy, and not fawn on power and rank. It must not justify arrogance, bully men's consciences, threaten them with God's wrath for honestly seeking after truth; or give them unintelligible riddles and self-contradictory propositions under pretence of instruction. When they ask for bread, it must not hand to them a stone or a viper. If a hierarchy are still to sit among the peers, they must take a lead in the active promotion of public morality, and in every humane and elevating measure. Purity of conduct and

motive, kindness and philanthropy, even-handed justice to all orders of the State and to foreign nations, must be valued more, and agreement of opinion less, in the religion of the future; and then we shall soon approximate towards that agreement which now is sought for in vain. Our religion must no longer teach us haughty airs towards "heretics," or a heartless inability to esteem "pagan" virtue, and to discern the Spirit of God in spite of form or disguise. It must teach a higher international morality; must limit war to the execution of a judicial process, solemnly and publicly performed; and must verily and truly make the brotherhood of all mankind prominent in every public act. Every word that Bishop Colenso writes assures us that he would move on with heart and soul, not so much towards recovering the exact form of Apostolic religion, as towards a higher state which they dimly augured, vehemently desired, but for which the fulness of time was not then come.

AGAINST RELIGIOUS HERO-MAKING.

[1864.]

ADDRESS IN A UNITARIAN CHAPEL, FINSBURY.

FOR OR more than twenty years we have been made familiar with the phrase Hero-Worship. It has been applied not only in the regions of politics and literature, but in religion, as the phrase itself strictly claims. We have been told, from very opposite quarters, that the excellence, as well as the characteristic, of the Christian religion turns on its venerating a personal hero in Jesus of Nazareth. Many who regard Jesus as a mere man, yet insist upon inscribing themselves his servants and followers, and on so wedding their honour for him with their adoration to God most high, as systematically to incorporate the two. Nay, some who utterly disown allegiance to Jesus-who think him to have taught many things erroneously, and to have had nothing supernatural in his character, in his powers, in his knowledge, in his virtue, in his birth, or in his communications with God-still maintain that he is fitly called the Regenerator of mankind, and ought to receive-I know not what acknowledgment-as our Saviour. It appears then not superfluous to bestow a little space on the treatment of this question.

I need hardly observe that personal qualities alone in no case constitute a hero. Action and success must be added; and action cannot succeed until the times are ripe. No one knows this better than the true hero. True genius is modest in selfappreciation, and is fully aware how many other men could have achieved the same results if the same rare conjuncture of circumstances had presented itself to them. Men of genius are fewer than common men, but they are no accident. God has provided for their regular and continuous recurrence; their birth is ordinary and certain in every nation which is counted by millions. The same is true in every form of mental pre-eminence, whether capacity for leadership, or genius for science, or religious and

moral susceptibility.

Religion, separate from morals, is, of course, only fanaticism. We venerate religion only when built upon pure morals. Moral religion is notoriously a historic growth, and has depended on traditional culture at least as much as what is especially called science; and its progress is not more wayward and arbitrary than that of science, if the whole of human history be surveyed. The present is ever growing out of the past, with a vigour and a certainty which never allow the fortunes of the race to be seriously dependent on any individual. Each of us is, morally as well as physically, a birth out of antecedents. From childhood we are tutored in right and wrong, not only by professed teachers, but by all elder persons who are around us. Improper deeds or words of a child are reproved by a servant, or by an elder brother, or even by a stranger, as well as by a parent or a priest. We imbibe moral sentiment, as it were at every pore of our moral nature; nor do we often know from whom we learned to abhor this course of conduct and to love that. Hence no wise man will claim originality for his moral judgments or religious sentiments. A foolish dogma, a fanciful tenet, may easily be original; but a pure sound truth is more likely to have been old. To prove its novelty is impossible, and certainly could not recommend it: on the contrary, the older we can prove it to have been, the greater its ostensible authority. For these reasons, in the theory of morals and religion, a claim of originality can seldom or never be sustained: in this whole field the question is less what a man has taught than what he has persuaded others. Hundreds of us may have said, truly and wisely: "It is a great pity that Mohammedans, Jews, and Christians of every sect will not unlearn their dissensions, and blend into one religious community." The sentiment must once have been even new; yet its utterance could never have earned praise and distinction. But if any one devoted his life to bring about such union, and succeeded in it, we should undoubtedly regard him as a moral hero; though (as just said) no one could succeed, until the fulness of time arrived and the crisis was seized judiciously.

Thus, in discussing the claims put forth for special and indeed exclusive honour to the name of Jesus, we have to consider, not so much what he said, or is said to have said, as what he effected; what impression he actually produced by his life and teaching; what great, noble, abiding results his energies originated and bequeathed. The moment we ask, What are the facts? we seem to be plunged into waves of most uncertain controversy; into

discussions of literature unsuitable for short oral treatment. Yet, before the present audience, I may with full propriety claim as admitted that which greatly clears our way. I presume you to know familiarly, that the picture of Jesus in the fourth gospel is essentially irreconcilable with that in the three which precede, and is neither trustworthy nor credible. The three first gospels, taken by themselves, do present a character, a moral picture, sufficiently self-consistent and intelligible to reason about. But our present question (allow me carefully to insist) is NOT, Do we see in Jesus a remarkable man, a gifted peasant, a dogmatist by whom we may profit, whose noble sentiments we may admire or applaud? but rather, Do we find one who dwarfs all others before him? one to whose high superiority sages and prophets must bow; before whom it is reasonable and healthful for those who have a hundredfold of his knowledge and breadth of thought to take the place of little children? Or, at least, Has Europe and the world (as a fact) learned from him what it was not likely to learn without him? Is that TRUE which is dinned into our ears, that Christendom has imbibed from him a pure, spiritual, large-hearted, universal religion, adapted to man as man, cementing mankind as a family, and ennobling the individual by a new and living Spirit, unknown to the philosophies, unknown to the priesthoods, untaught by the prophets, before him?

Even if we had no insight as to the comparative value of the several gospels, one broad certainty affords solid ground to plant the foot upon. The positive institutions and active spirit of the first Christian church are notorious and indubitable. On learning what the Apostles established in their Master's name within a few weeks of his death, we know with full certainty what they had understood him to teach, what impression he actually produced, what was the real net result of his life and preaching: and this, in fact, is our main question, Now, it is true beyond disputeit is conceded by every sect of Christians--that in the first Christian church the Levitical ceremonies were maintained with zealous rigour, and that its only visible religious peculiarity consisted in community of goods. The candidate for baptism professed no other creed but that Jesus was Messiah; and the obedience of the disciple to the Master was practically manifested in the sudden renunciation of private property. This ordinance was not, in theory, compulsory; but, while the fervour of faith was new, it was enforced by the public opinion of the church so sharply, as to tempt the richer disciples to hypocrisy. The story of Ananias