ciple of the immanence of God in the world.' That the Professors Gans and Benary agree with him and with Strauss not only in general, but in this particular point, Michelet, certain of their assent,' has openly declared. According to Dr. Kühne, Hegel's God is not Jehovah; he is 'the ever-streaming immanence of spirit in matter.' To this representation, Dr. Meyen agrees, and says, 'I make no secret, that I belong to the extreme left of Hegel's school. I agree with Strauss perfectly, and consider him (seine Tendenz) as in perfect harmony with Hegel.' Another writer, the anonymous author of the book 'Leo vor Gericht,' ridicules the charge of atheism as though it were a trifle. He represents the public as saying to the charge, What does it mean? Mr. Professor Leo is beyond our comprehension; Wodan, heathenism, Hegel's God, atheism! ha! ha! ha! " * "Stripped of its verbiage, the doctrine is, that men are God; there is no other God than the ever-flowing race of man; or that the universal principle arrives to self-consciousness only in the human race, and, therefore, the highest state of God is man. The extreme left of the school trouble themselves but little with words without meaning. They speak out boldly, so that all the world may understand. 'We are free,' says Heine, ‘and need no thundering tyrant. We are of age, and need no fatherly care. We are not the hand-work of any great mechanic. Theism is a religion for slaves, for children, for Genevese, for watch-makers.'" pp. 76-79.

* *

Hegel is next charged with turning the Gospels into a mythology.

"It is strange," say the Reviewers, "that men holding such views should trouble themselves at all with the Gospel. As this system, however, has arisen in a Christian country, there was but one of two things to do, either to say, that real Christianity means just what this system teaches, or to explode the whole evangelical history. Some have taken the one course, and some the other, while some unite both. That is, they reject the Gospel history, as a history; they represent it as a mere mythology; but, as the ancient philosophers made the mythology of the Greeks and Romans a series of allegories containing important truths, so do these modern philosophers represent the Gospels as a mere collection of fables, destitute in almost every case of any foundation in fact, but still expressive of the hidden mysteries of their system. It is by a mytho-symbolical interpretation of this history, that the truth must be sought. The Life of Jesus,' by Strauss, is a laborious compilation of all the critical objections against the New Testament history, which he first thus endeavored to overturn, and then to account for and explain as a Christian mythology. Had this book,' says Hengstenberg, been published in England, it would have been forgotten in a couple of months.' In Germany it has produced a sensation almost without a parallel. It has become the rallying-ground of all the enemies of Christianity, open and secret, and the number of its advocates and secret abettors is, therefore, exceedingly great.”. p. 82.

In the first pages of this number the theological reader will be VOL. XXVIII. 3D s. VOL. X. NO. III.

49

gratified by seeing a pretty full analysis of this famous book of Strauss, which for the Gospels gives us fables.

"Leo's third charge against this party is, that they deny the immortality of the soul. This point also needs no further proof,' says Hengstenberg, since the former have been proved. With the personality of God falls of course that of man, which is the necessary condition of an existence hereafter. To a pantheist, 'the subject which would assert its individual personality is evil itself.' (Michelet.) It is regarded as godless, even to cherish the desire of immortality. According to the doctrine of the eternal incarnation of God, it must appear an intolerable assumption, for an individual to lay claim to that which belongs only to the race; he must freely and gladly cast himself beneath the wheels of the idol car, that he may make room for other incarnations of the spirit, better adapted to the advancing age. The proofs, however, of this particular charge, are peculiarly abundant. Hegel himself, who ought not to be represented as so different from the Hegelingen, since the difference between them is merely formal and not essential, involved himself in the logical denial of the immortality of the soul. This has been fully proved with regard to him and Dr. Marheineke, in a previous article in this journal, (that is, the Kirchen-Zeitung.) It has also been demonstrated by Weise in the work,‘Die philosophische Geheimlehre von der Unsterblichkeit,' as far as Hegel is concerned; and with Weise Becker has more recently signified his agreement. If this happens in the green tree, what will become of the dry?

"Richter came out with such a violent polemic against the doctrine of immortality, that the party had to disavow him, for fear of the public indignation. When, however, they thought it could be done unnoticed or without danger, they acknowledged the same doctrine. Michelet endeavors most earnestly to free Hegel's system from the charge of countenancing the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, as from a reproach. He speaks out clear and plain his own views, in words which, according to him, Hegel himself had spoken; 'Thought alone is eternal, and not the body and what is connected with its individuality,' that is, the whole personality, which, according to this system, depends entirely on the body. Ruge ridicules the scruples of theologians, as to whether 'Philosophy can make out the immortality of the human soul; whether philosophy has any ethics; whether it can justify the gross doctrines of hell, of wailing and gnashing the teeth, &c.' 'Such vulgar craving,' he says, 'is beginning to mix itself with purely philosophical and spiritual concerns, and threatens to merge philosophy in its troubled element. The more this dogmatical confusion arrogates to itself; the more this senseless justification of the wretched errors of orthodoxy dishonors the free science of philosophy, the more necessary will it be to cast out this dungheap of nonsense to the common mind, (in das gemeine Bewusstseyn.)"" — pp. 82–84.

...

That part of Leo's last charge which relates to "Dishonesty," we must omit, but add what relates to immorality generally.

"With this last charge, Leo,' says Hengstenberg, entered upon the department of morals; and we could wish that he had dwelt longer

on this part of the subject. It would then have been shown how this party are laboring to destroy all that Rationalism has left of religion and morality. What their ethics are, may be readily inferred from their religion. Where there is no personal God, there is no law, which men need fear to violate, as the expression of his will. If the distinction between God and man is removed, if man is set in the place of God, then nothing is more natural, than that men should without reserve, and upon principle, give themselves up to all their inclinations and lusts. To suppress these desires, is to hinder the development of God; if they do not become God as developed, they do become the nascent God; if not good in themselves, they are relatively good, as transition points in the progress of development. It is not sin that is sinful, but only impenitence, that is, cleaving to the relative good, which is vulgarly called evil, as though it were the absolute good. These painful results of the doctrine of this school are everywhere, with the most logical consequence, avowed and brought to light."" — p. 88.

Such are the charges brought by the Professor Leo against Hegel's system of philosophy, and so are they made out. This is done at much greater length in the tract from which we quote, and to that we refer the reader for fuller information. If it should prove in further publications that the Pantheistic school has been misrepresented by its orthodox opposers in Germany, or here, we shall be prompt to do justice to one party as well as the other. But, although some of the preceding statements may require modifications and abatements to bring them within the exact limits of truth, we cannot believe that the main features of the system, as they are here set forth, will be found to be greatly erroneous or distorted.

In regard to Cousin, no one we should suppose could doubt, who considers language which he has used, whether he also is to be numbered with the Pantheistic philosophers of Germany. The Reviewers say;

"As he has given the world nothing in the form of a system, it is only by these occasional intimations, that his readers can judge how far he adopts the ideas of the German school, whence all his opinions are borrowed. These intimations, however, are sufficiently frequent and sufficiently clear to make it plain, that he is a denier of God and of the Gospel. This has been clearly proved in the article in this Review already referred to. He uses almost the very language of the Hegelians in expressing his views of the nature of God. God exists as an idea,' say the Hegelians; 'these ideas,' that is, of the infinite, finite, and the relation between them, 'are God himself,' says Cousin. According to the Hegelians, God arrives to consciousness in man; and so Cousin teaches; God returns to himself in the consciousness of man.' The German school teaches, that everything that exists is God in a certain stage of development; so also Cousin; 'God is space and number, essence and life, indivisibility and totality, principle, end, and centre, at the summit of being and at its lowest degree, infinite and finite to

gether, triple in a word, that is to say, at the same time God, nature, and humanity. In fact, if God is not everything, he is nothing.' Surely there can be but one opinion among Christians about a system, which admits of no God but the universe, which allows no intelligence or consciousness to the infinite Spirit but that to which he attains in the human soul, which makes man the highest state of God. And we should think there could be, among the sane, but one opinion of the men, who, dressed in gowns and bands, and ministering at God's altars, are endeavoring to introduce these blasphemous doctrines into our schools, colleges, and churches.” — pp. 94, 95.

We have thus given a brief sketch of German Transcendentalism, as exhibited in the tract before us. The Princeton Reviewers express alarm at what they understand to be the progress of such doctrines among the Unitarians of Boston and its neighborhood. "We have evidence enough," they say, "that this pantheistic philosophy has set its cloven foot in America." And again; "We learn with pain, that among the Unitarians of Boston and its vicinity, there are those who affect to embrace the pantheistic creed." We can assure these gentlemen, that they who even "affect to embrace " this creed are very few. We know of but a single individual whom the public has any sufficient ground for regarding as a believer of it. From the published writings of Mr. Emerson, quoted by the Reviewers, and their accordance with the language quoted from the German philosophers, it may with great apparent certainty be inferred that he is of their school; and beside him there are a few others, who, if not to be termed followers, yet hold generally with him. But it is by no means a safe conclusion, the Reviewers must understand, that because Mr. Emerson was admired as a lecturer, he was therefore received as a master or authority in either philosophy or religion; for we suppose it true that not an individual out of his crowd of hearers at the close of his lectures could have stated with any confidence what his religious or philosophical system was; whether he himself was theist, pantheist, or atheist. One might have an opinion; but he could refer to no argument of the lecturer, on which he founded it. Those lectures were brilliant flights of the imagination, beautiful streams of poetry, very often instructive and elevating homilies upon life and duty, upon man and society, but they were not clear expositions of doctrine, or systematic statements of opinion, or labored defences of one philosophy or another. At the close of the lectures the hearer knew little more of the lecturer's opinions, than before. All he knew was, that he had been treated to a succession of beautiful moral pictures, which, like the pictures of a crowded gallery, had passed rapidly before him, and left pleasing but vague impressions on his mind. The converts of Mr.

Emerson, if he made any, were converts not to his opinions, but simply to admiration of himself as a poet, a moralizer, and a rhetorician. But, however many there may be who hold with him or of him in the community at large, we do not believe there is one occupying a pulpit in the Unitarian body who embraces either the pantheism, or the sort of Christianity detailed in the extracts given above. That there are many both in the pulpit and out of it, who estimate the miracles of the Gospel at a very different value from that which is put upon them by others, to whose minds miracles have little or no force as evidence of the divine authority of Jesus, yet at the same time not doubting or denying them as facts, but to whom other evidence of a different kind is omnipotent, we know very well; but we do not know what that has to do with the Transcendentalism set forth in this pamphlet. We presume the Princeton Reviewers would be slow to accuse him of infidelity, who, while with all his heart and all his reason, he admitted the historical reality of Christ's miracles, could not feel that they approached in their powers of conviction, the character of Jesus, his life, and the divine truths which he uttered. Yet we suppose this to be the extent of the Transcendentalism of most of those to whom this loose term is applied. Of course upon such there can be charged no hostility to, or defection from Christianity. But if we are mistaken in this, if any, proceeding farther, reduce the inspiration of Jesus to ordinary human inspiration, explain away his miracles into myths, place him upon the same level in all respects, except in degree of religious wisdom and philosophy, with other teachers, acknowledge no authority of God in him or his works beyond that authority of God, which accompanies everything ab solutely true and good, then indeed such, in our judgment, are not speculatively Christians, any more than the old Platonists would be were they now living, or than are now Jews or Chinese. They may be good men, devout men, religious men, philosophers, saints, but it were a partial, foolish use of language to call them Christians. Christian stands not for virtue alone, but for belief as well. He is not Christian who has only goodness. He indeed possesses what is better than Christianity; he possesses that which Christ was given to create in the soul; his virtue is the greater, and Christianity the less. Still he is not a Christian, for the same reason that the Jew is not a Mahommedan. Christianity, that is, is not only virtue, but belief also.