Sermons and essays on the apostolical age

Preface To The Third Edition

A NEW Edition having been required of this volume, published twenty -seven years ago, it has been thought best, although it belongs, at least in form, to that time, to yield to the demand, and with some necessary corrections of exaggeration in style, and mistaken or over-positive statements, to republish these Sermons and Essays substantially unaltered.

Two general observations, however, may be permitted on the present occasion.

I. It should be remarked, that at the time of their composition the Author was one of the younger Fellows and Tutors of Oxford, who had witnessed with inevitable interest those ten years of stormy controversy, during which the movement of the " Tracts for the Times'* had come into existence, had run the first stage of its course, and had been dissolved at the moment of the delivery of these discourses, by the secession of its chief leaders.

In the revival of Biblical Studies succeeding to the ecclesiastical agitation, which had so long absorbed the interest of the University and the Church, it was natural that a new field should have seemed to open to those who came fresh to these topics from the teaching of Schelling, Neander, De Wette, Liicke, and the

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first dawn of the genius of Ewald ; and, nearer home, full of the inspirations drawn from Coleridge, Arnold, and Bunsen.

The conclusions of the criticism of that time, have doubtless been, in some points, modified by the researches and speculations of the intervening period. The adjustment of the natural and the preternatural, the legendary and the historical, may have been altered; the "fierce light which has beat" on the authorship of the sacred books may have afiected, in some respects, the position of the Pastoral Epistles, or the Fourth Gospel, or the Apocalypse. But the general framework in which these conclusions were set forth does not, it is believed, require any essential change. The relative proportions of the elements which formed the main tendencies of the Apostolical Age, are still acknowledged to be the same. Whatever may be alleged against the form of any parts of the history, the moral and spiritual doctrines which it embodies have not been subverted by such criticism. Whatever date may be assigned to the various portions of the present canon of the New Testament, there can be no question that the main influences of the first century after the close of the Life of Christ, were (as the youthful author of these Essays and Sermons, following in the steps of the great Grerman theologians, ventured to suggest,) those which are connected more or less directly with the names, in varying degrees, of Peter, Paul, and John, of James, and of Apollos.

II. Another reflection of a different kind occurs on

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V looking back from a distance of nearly thirty years on the vexed questions on which this volume touches. "When these Sermons were first preached, it was said that serious offence was given by the intimation that the Epistle to the Hebrews was not composed by St. Paul. Since that time the view entertained by Origen, by Luther, and by the chief modern theo logians of Germany, has become so familiar, as to have been adopted almost as the recognised view of English ecclesiastical scholars. This example of a silent revolution of theological judgment, (to which others might easily be added even from the short compass of this volume,) may suggest thoughts both of warning and of re -assurance. They indicate the ease with which the public mind becomes accustomed to advances of critical knowledge which, in the first instance, give, it may be, a rude shock to existing opinion. They indicate also the superficial, often the beneficial, character of changes of view, which at one time were believed to strike at the essence of Religion.

With these two remarks this volume is once again committed to the public. Any further discussion of the topics which it handles, must be reserved for other occasions, when they can be treated more directly and more fully.

Deaneey, "Westminster, November 1874.

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PEEFACE.

T'HE Sermons contained in this volume were preached before tlie University of Oxford in the years 1846 and 1847, the four first in the office of Select Preacher, the two last on two occasional turns afforded by the kindness of friends. The Essays have been inserted in explanation or illustration of points on which it would have been inappropriate to enlarge in spoken discourses.

In the composition of the volume it is almost needless to say that I have derived great help not only from the works which have more or less treated of the same subject, but from those to whose intercourse and acquaintance, as well as to their actual criticism of these pages, I would here express my deep obligations, which I do not feel the less, because it is impossible more directly to acknowledge them. And, if there are fewer references than might naturally have been expected to the name of one to whom, though not living, this, as well as any similar work which I may be called to undertake, must in great measure be due, it is because I trust that I may be allowed to take this opportunity of vindicating, once for all, for the scholars of Arnold, the privilege and pleasure of using his words and adopting his thoughts

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without the necessity of specifying in every instance the source from which they have been derived.

It has been my object (as I have implied in the title of these Sermons and Essays) not to enter on the higher questions of Theology involved in " the "Apostolical Doctrines" of the New Testament, except so far as they are implied in every subject of Christian study, but to confine myself strictly to the consideration of those characters and circumstances which represent most fully "the Apostolical Age," by exhibiting as far as possible the outward and local image of that which we usually contemplate in its inward and spiritual essence. To have entered on the wider field of the truths themselves which the Gospels and Epistles communicate, or of the general principles of their interpretation and application to the afiairs of men, would have required more thought and labour than under the circumstances it was possible to bestow ; and for the same reason, even within the narrow compass which I have assigned to myself, many questions necessarily remain untouched, important as some of them may be to the . full understanding of the subject, and indefinite as some of my statements must appear by reason of their omission. Enough however will I trust be found of completeness both in the plan and in the subject, to justify this humbler selection, which, if it possesses far less general interest than would have attached to higher and more controverted points, was more easily brought within the limits imposed by the circumstances of the

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ix case, and in itself was naturally suggested by tlie peculiar studies and pursuits of the place.

Such historical representations of the first age of Christianity as I have here ventured to attempt are so necessary to a right interpretation of many parts of the New Testament, as well as so instructive in themselves, that there has been hardly any age of the Church in which they have not been more or less frequent. Cave's Lives of the Apostles and Butler's Lives of the Saints are familiar instances in which the individual human characters of the several Apostles have been exhibited at considerable length. And it is natural to expect that a branch of sacred criticism, to which so much attention was paid under the manifold disadvantages of former times, should not be neglected now, amidst our many additional means of investigating and illustrating the events of past times, and at a time when the reasons for endeavouring to form a lively conception of the scenes of Scripture history have been certainly increased rather than diminished.

The language indeed and the form of such works must vary with the wants felt by different ages of the Church ; and the requisitions of the nineteenth century necessarily differ from those of the eighteenth, in which most of our existing histories of the Apostolic age were framed. Such changes are, however, incidental to every endeavour to approximate the state of religious knowledge to that of the period in which we live; and whether criticism or translation

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be the mode in which they are affected, the defence ^ prefixed to the Authorized Version of the Bible equally applies to either ; ''It breaketh the window '' that it may let in the light ; it breaketh the shell " that we may eat the kernel; it putteth aside the " curtain that we may enter into the most holy *' place ; it removeth the cover of the well that we " may come by the water."

To bear a part in a work at once so inevitable and so important, is pointed ont as the especial duty of those whose natural tastes and studies incline them in this direction ; and in so doing it seems a duty no less imperative to avail ourselves of such human means and appliances as God has placed within our reach, and as in any merely human studies we should think it disgraceful to neglect. Amongst these I need hardly say some of the chief are to be found in the labours of that great nation from which we should be loth to believe that Theology alone had derived no light, or that whilst we eagerly turn to it in every other branch of study, we should close our eyes against it here. Accordingly in the following pages I have had frequent occasion to express my obligations to continental divines, though of course not rendering myself responsible for their general views, any more, I may add, than in the case of similar acknowledgments which I have been glad to make to a very different school amongst ourselves. Until we have

* The Preface (not the Dedication) of the Authorized Version of 1611.

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XI equalled tlie writers of Germany in tlieir industry, their depth, and their love of knowledge, we must still look to them for help ; and, even if we were as much superior to them in all other points as we are inferior to them in those just mentioned, I know not how we should be justified in rejecting with contempt the immense apparatus of learning and criticism which they have brought to bear on the Sacred Writings, — why we should refuse the aid of the workmen of Tyre in building up the Temple of God at Jerusalem. At the same time it is clearly on our own resources that we must ultimately rely ; no mere imitation of foreign writers, even were they as perfect as in many respects they are exceptionable, can meet our own necessities ; it will not be from the rise of any German school in this country, even were it possible, but from such a union as the characters of the two nations so naturally invite, of the German spirit of research and love of truth with our own practical life and religious activity, that the true antidote is to be sought for our intellectual dangers, and not for ours only, but, — may we not also hope without any undue confidence ? — for those of Germany no less.

The particular point of view from which I have regarded the three chief Apostles as connected with the Apostolical age itself and with the subsequent fortunes of the Church, is too obvious not to have been often dwelt upon. As early as the twelfth century it was made the subject of an elaborate exposition by a celebrated mystic of that period ; and it must xii

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be familiar to every student of the most recent works of modern theology, whether treated historically, as by Neander, or devotionally, as in Chevalier Bunsen^s Prussian Liturgy, or philosophically, as by Schelling in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Revelation. Such anticipations or exemplifications of large periods of history, whether in the events or the characters of a particular age, are unhappily liable to much fanciful exaggeration, such as in some French writers on this and kindred subjects is too palpable, in spite of its ingenuity, to need any detailed confutation. But the general principle of regarding individual characters as representatives of large classes, and of tracing in all great changes, whether Divine or humau, the natural stages of a beginning, middle, and end, will not be disputed. Above all, it must be applicable to the Apostolical Age, of which the characters have always been admitted to be especiallv set forth for the examples of subsequent times, and in which, if in any period of the world's history, we might expect to find a summary of God's dealings with mankind, — a likeness of those marked epochs with which we are familiar in the history of the Jewish people, and afterwards of the Christian Church. Of course there is a higher and more universal sense in which each of the Apostles is an example and a witness to all ages alike, and which can never allow the work of St. Peter to be superseded by that of St. Paul, nor the Epistles of St. Paul to " give way by subjection, no not for an

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" hour," to St. Peter and St. John. But this need not prevent us from receiving the subordinate lessons which a closer investigation of the Apostolical age and its consequences seems intended to convey, and which it has been the chief object of this volume to exhibit both historically and in their practical application.

Lastly, it must be remembered that these Sermons, as addressed to an Academical audience, — and, it may be added, immediately after the close of the long theological struggle which for several preceding years had agitated the University in an unusual degree, — necessarily contain allusions which perhaps will hardly be intelligible except to those for whom they were especially intended. I have thought it best, however, to leave them as they were delivered, in the belief that even for the general reader the application of the truths of Scripture to the wants of a particular class, would more effectually illustrate their real value, than the exhibition of them in a more abstract form.

It was chiefly with a view to the younger generations of my hearers that these Sermons were preached ; and it is in the hope that they may not find this volume altogether useless, in their studies here and elsewhere, that it is now published. And if, in the representation of the lives and characters of the Apostles which it contains, there is anything to awaken in them a deeper sense of their peculiar responsibilities in this place — a livelier perception of the truth and power inherent in the words and records of Scrip-

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ture — above all, a stronger belief in the possibility of a nobler end to all our recent excitements, than the Epicurean indifference which in many instances threatens to succeed to them, or than the controversies out of which they grew, — I can truly say that its object will have been, accomplished. It is at least my humble trust that it contains nothing by which such aspirations or convictions can be retarded or destroyed.