selves unreservedly into the fresh religious life of our age, at once giving and drawing from it what intellectual light, what spiritual strength, we may; if, still labouring with unwearied perseverance in the mine of sacred learning, we recreate our affections in abundant efforts of Christian love; we shall at once cease to be vain of great principles which were bequeathed to us by better men than ourselves, and shall enter into the harvest which, if we did not sow the seed, we have at least tended and watered. Perhaps, after all, we may learn that for a church, no less than for a single labourer, the true secret of success is self-forgetfulness. We need entertain no fear that the truths on which our hopes are stayed can suffer in any religious convulsion which attends upon scientific progress: only in revolutions of science does progress involve the abandonment of fundamental truths: the foundations, once duly laid, cannot be disturbed as stone is added to stone, till the topmost pinnacle divides the air. We expect no changes which shall shake our conviction of the absolute Unity of the Divine Essence; which shall shatter the link which unites Christ with humanity; which shall deny the access of the Spirit of God to every soul of man; which shall introduce into the relations between God and man an unjust justice and a loveless love. It may well be that our conceptions of these great truths may be enlarged and deepened as we discern more and more how they are the living principle even of theologies whose external form belies them, and learn, from long and reverent contemplation, how in infinite realities there is a manysidedness which mocks all attempt at definition, a glory which is "dark with excess of light." We may find reason to modify the minor results of scriptural interpretation, or even our prepossessions as to the relation of religious truths to the human intellect; the same kind of evidence is not convincing to every mind, and the honesty with which a man uses the materials of knowledge is at least as important as the reasonableness of his conviction. Of what importance are these things, if year by year a deeper certainty is added to the grounds of theological belief, a warmer glow of the religious life kindled in men's hearts, if the healing balm of Christian love is more richly poured upon the wounds and sores of our social state, and the righteous will of God is owned to be the rule of our political action! They are the most careful guardians of Christianity who, loving it much, love Truth more. And to none can the interests of a church be so safely entrusted as to those who desire that it should broaden into a communion of all saints. It is from the Unitarian position as defined in the foregoing pages that the THEOLOGICAL REVIEW desires to speak. For while both its Editor and those who are associated with him in its management disclaim any theological prepossessions which are inconsistent with a simple allegiance to truth, any sectarian motives irreconcilable with the most ardent desire of Christian union, they think it most honest, and in the long run most likely to be advantageous to the objects which they wish to promote, frankly to take their stand upon their natural ecclesiastical position. Whether, as the progress of theological science produces a larger agreement of religious opinion and feeling among thoughtful men, that position may not justifiably be modified, is a question which can be answered only by the course of events. In the mean time, the THEOLOGICAL REVIEW will endeavour to give distinct form and clear expression to the thought, the wants, the aspirations, of the free churches to which it makes its first and chief appeal. It will bestow a special attention upon their literature, and will treat the ecclesiastical and religious questions of the day with peculiar reference to their circumstances and needs. And if, on the one side, it is the means of laying before the members of Unitarian churches an accurate statement of the progress of religious thought and life in other churches at home and abroad, it may hope also to be able in some degree to contribute to that progress, by uttering the voice of an organized Christian communion in favour of a scientific investigation of theology, which is at present recommended and practised only by solitary scholars. The THEOLOGICAL REVIEW will not attempt to effect a doctrinal representation of churches which suffer the imposition of no doctrinal tests. It will endeavour to quicken their intellectual life by the free admission to its pages of thoughtful and able theological essays, whatever the precise shade of opinion which they may display; and wherever a marked divergence of theory is known to exist, to secure a fair presentation of the argument on both sides. And although the REVIEW will in general, and especially in all moral and practical questions, adopt and maintain a policy of its own, the Editor, under the circumstances stated above, cannot hold himself responsible for every statement of opinion in every paper which he may think it advisable to publish. In conclusion, he may be permitted to express the hope, that by this attempt to transfer to the conduct of a Theological Journal the principle of agreement in the free and courteous discussion of varying opinions which has long characterized the administration and mutual intercourse of the churches whose interests it is primarily designed to serve, something may be done to assist the progress of theological truth, as well as to lessen the pain of theological difference. IL-SAINT JEROME AND HIS THEOLOGICAL CORRESPONDENTS. IN a celebrated composition of the great Venetian painter Titian,* called the Triumph of Christ, our Saviour is represented in a chariot to which the Evangelists are yoked, while the four Doctors of the Latin Church, Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose and Gregory, stationed each by one of the wheels, are helping with all their strength to urge it forward. The allegory beautifully and justly expresses the share which these great men collectively had in establishing Christianity, under the form of the Medieval Church, in Western Europe. The period in which they flourished was one in which, if vigorous hands and arms had not been applied to the wheels, the triumphant progress of the chariot was in great danger of being arrested. A swarm of pagan barbarians had overspread the Roman empire, and with the overthrow of the old institutions and the destruction of the old governments, Christianity had lost the support which she had derived * See Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, I. 265. from her adoption as the religion of the state. There was yet no power that could convert them as, at a later day, Charlemagne converted the Saxons, by the sword. Argument and historical evidence had little to do in bringing them over to the Christian faith; but if the Church had not presented its doctrines in a sharply-defined, dogmatic form, if its hierarchy had not been firmly organized, if its ritual had not been rendered impressive and its discipline sternly maintained, if monachism and the celibacy of the clergy had not provided it with a host of self-sacrificing missionaries, the West could hardly have become Christian. Each of the Doctors we have named helped forward in his day one of the wheels on which the chariot must roll. The influence of St. Augustine's eloquence and mental power, in combating heresies and fixing the standard of doctrine in the Church, is felt even at the present day. The name of St. Ambrose is connected with some of our most ancient forms of worship; and his bold defiance of imperial power, whether in defence of the rights of humanity or the claims of his own office, even if prompted in part by ambition, was a seasonable protest against the lawless violence which characterized the age. St. Gregory perfected the ritual and extended the power of the Church, including the pre-eminent dignity of his own see. If some desire to increase its domain mingled with anxiety respecting the souls of pagans, in his zeal for the conversion of the Germans and the Saxons, the benefit of his labours to civilization and religion is unquestionable. Of the four Doctors, St. Jerome was the least of a practical man; he would have made an indifferent Pope or Bishop; but in the history of scientific theology he fills a more important place than any of them. The reader who knows him as he appears in painting, seated in his cell at Bethlehem, absorbed in his translation of the Scriptures, or in Correggio's picture at Parma, presenting it to the Divine Infant in the arms of the Madonna, or in the immortal Last Communion of Domenichino, would hardly suspect that the pale scholar and macerated saint had passed a jeunesse orageuse.* He had an ardent and impetuous nature; the lion who accompanies him in Correg * Scitis ipsi (Chromatius and his brother) lubricum adolescentiæ iter, in quo ego lapsus sum. Ep. xliii. gio's picture was no doubt originally a type of his bold and daring temperament, though in legendary lore it has occasioned the transference to him of the story of Androcles. In this respect he resembled his great contemporary, Augustine, whose unsaintly life cost his mother Monica so many prayers and tears. His transgressions, however, appear to have been confined to the first period of his youth, and he consoles himself by the reflection that they had not extended beyond the time of his baptism, which, though his father was a Christian, must have been deferred till he was nearly entering on manhood. But after this the old Adam often rose in rebellion. He has drawn a fearful picture of his own struggles with the "innatus medullarum calor" when he had embraced the hermit's life and was dwelling in the desert of the Syrian Chalcis. Though he had betaken himself to this solitude "ob Gehennæ metum," evil thoughts pursued him there; in imagination he was once more among the luxurious delights of Rome and hankering for them. He fasted for a week at a time, covered himself with sackcloth, and dashed himself against the ground. The very walls of his cell seemed to him conscious of his unlawful thoughts, and he wandered forth into the most savage solitudes. Only after days and nights passed in prayer and penance was he able to recover his tranquillity, so that visions of surrounding angels took the place of the recollections and desires of the world. Exaggeration is the vice of Jerome's style, and he was especially fluent in vituperation. We may hope, therefore, that he has treated himself in these confessions as he treated Ruffinus and Pelagius, and that he was not so black as he painted himself. It would be doing injustice to Jerome, however, to suppose that his youth was wholly spent in licentious pleasure. His father, who appears to have been a wealthy man, discovering his aptitude for study, sent him from his native place, Stridon in Pannonia, to be educated at Rome. Here he was the pupil of Donatus,† the celebrated commentator on Terence, whose exclamation, Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixere! has been so often repeated by those who found their bright thoughts anticipated. At the same time he studied Greek. * Ad Eustochium, Ep. xxii., Vol. i. p. 173, ed. 1579. |