Chapter XX: 482 (1)

THREE SONGS.

Captain Cary had been three weeks in Seaton, and was to sail in two days for New York, where the _Halcyon_ was sold, taking Dick Rowan with him. From New York, Dick was to sail immediately, on a three years’ voyage, in the _Edith Yorke_. The captain did not say definitely what his own plans were, perhaps did not know them himself. “I did think of settling down on shore,” he said to Mrs. Yorke. “But one person doesn’t make a home, and all my people are dead. I’d half a mind to ask Rowan to take me as a passenger. He has a splendid ship.”

They were all in the garden that last evening but one. Edith sat on a bench beside Melicent, and looked intently at Dick Rowan, who was talking with Clara and Mrs. Yorke. She was thinking over all his goodness, all his affection for her, studying his personal beauty, his frank, bright face and athletic form, and trying to excite in herself some enthusiasm regarding him. Carl stood near, listening to, but not joining in, the conversation. She compared the two young men. Their height, their form, were very nearly the same; but Carl had the proud and measured tread of one bred to the parlor and the promenade, Dick the free and springing step of the mountaineer. This was distinctive, yet each had moods like the other. On the deck of his own ship, the sailor trod like a king; and the man of the world could bound as lightly up a steep, or vault as lightly over an obstacle, as though his life had been spent in athletic sports. Dick Rowan’s eyes sparkled like the ripples of his own blue sea, and looked _at_ people, not through them; Carl’s careless glance could become piercing and keen as a two-edged blade. It was useless to compare them, the one as direct and transparent as a child, the other noble, indeed, yet subtle, as one aware of the world’s ways, and guarded at every point.

“I must be very hard and cold,” Edith thought, finding herself unmoved, in spite of her efforts. “Or, perhaps, it may be because I have always known and been sure of him.”

Looking her way, Dick met that steady gaze, and flushed with pleasure. If the expression was grave and regretful, what then? Were they not about to part? He led Mrs. Yorke to her, and the others followed, to make arrangements “for a sail they were to have the next day.”

“You had better wear dresses that wetting will not hurt,” Dick said; “for you will be likely to get a little scud-water in your laps.”

“And, pray, what is scud-water?” Mrs. Yorke asked.

Dick explained that it was spray blown off.

“How pretty!” exclaimed Clara. “You may fill my lap with it.”

They separated again, and Dick was left with Edith.

“What shall I bring you from Calcutta?” he asked.

“Bring me Dick Rowan safe back again,” was the answer.

Both were silent a little while, then he spoke in a quiet voice: “Ask God to do that, Edith. He has been so good to us, I think he will refuse nothing.”

She looked at him wistfully. “Are you very happy, Dick?” 483

“Happy!” he exclaimed. “Dear, my very finger-nails shine! Edith, I am so happy that I should be afraid, if I would allow myself to be. But, no; I will trust God when he gives me joy, as well as when he gives me pain.”

While they talked, Mrs. Yorke was walking aside with Clara, and questioning her. “What is the matter with Captain Cary?” she asked. “He has grown very sober lately.”

Clara laughed, rather consciously. “How should I know, mamma?”

Mrs. Yorke looked displeased. “I wish for a frank answer,” she said. “What is the meaning of this? It isn’t possible that there has been any trifling on your part!”

The girl blushed deeply, but told what little there was to tell, including that unlucky question: “How would you like to be a sailor’s wife?”

“He hadn’t the slightest personal meaning, mamma,” Clara added hastily, seeing her eyes open with something like a flash. “He told Edith afterward that it was a slip of the tongue.”

“Then why should not that have been the end of the matter?” Mrs. Yorke asked, rather peremptorily. “You had but to assume that such a thing was impossible, not to be thought of, and be just as courteous to him as before.”

“But you see, mamma,” Clara replied, looking a little frightened, “it isn’t as impossible as it is unlikely. Stranger things have happened in the world, and will again, and the world is and will be no worse for them. You know I have never been able to acquire the fine art of assuming that ninety-nine facts make a truth.”

“My dear,” said the mother with precision, “please not to be grandiloquent. Let us confine ourselves to the case in hand. Your sublime generalizing has done you very little credit if it has led you to disturb the peace of a good honest man, and put our own delicacy in question. Coquetry is not only cruel, it is mean and vulgar. Of course you are ready with the childish excuse that you meant no harm. That is not enough for one who has arrived at years of discretion and has a conscience. You must mean something one way or the other.”

Clara’s eyes were suffused with tears. “I think that you misunderstand me, mamma,” she said in a low voice. “I was never in my life so much pleased to have any one like me.”

Mrs. Yorke stopped, and looked at her daughter in astonishment.

“Oh! I know all that you would say, mamma,” the girl went on, half laughing, half weeping. “He is a sailor, which is as if a bird should say, ‘He is a fish.’ He has only a common-school education, as far as books go, and he has none of our ways. But all that doesn’t make his esteem any less worth having. Men of the world often give only a tame, half affection, and are, perhaps, almost sorry when they are accepted. They think of themselves, they think of a thousand other things: he would think of me. When Edith sang, the other evening,

‘Oh! wert thou in the cauld blast,

I saw his eyes fill with tears. He would take all the roughness, and danger, and hardship, I know. But men of the world are as dainty as women. If they give us the inside of the pavement, and let us enter a room first, they have gone the length of their chivalry. Then, there is the effect on myself. In the society of such a man”--glancing to 484 where Captain Cary stood--“I should be gentle and feminine. But with the wilted specimens of humanity I see ordinarily, I am in imminent danger of becoming a strong-minded woman. One must keep up a balance, mamma, and it is weak men make bold women.”

Mrs. Yorke sank on to a bench. “What do you mean to do? What am I to think?” she exclaimed.

Clara laughed. “Don’t be afraid, mamma. If this Neptune should offer himself to me--he will not!--I should refuse him, and then cry my eyes out afterward. But if he should take me by force, pirate-fashion, and run away with me, so that I could not help myself nor be responsible, I should be delighted. Now, don’t say any more about it, please.”

Mrs. Yorke threw off her fears with a shrug of the shoulders. It was a mere theory. It was one of Clara’s enthusiasms. “Well, my dear,” she concluded, rising, “all I have to add is that I hope your admiration of the rough diamond will not lead you to consume it in the blowpipe.”

And so the subject dropped.

“There is a party of Indians camping out on the Point,” Mr. Yorke said to them that evening. “You might find it interesting to visit them to-morrow. I met one in the woodland, this morning, cutting down a tree for basket-wood. I asked him who gave him permission to cut trees on my land. ‘It was all ours once,’ he growled out, and gave me a look that I shouldn’t like to meet, unless I had friends near. I told him to take all he wanted.”

The little sailing-party, only six with a sailor from the _Halcyon_ as assistant, started early in the afternoon. The crew of the _Halcyon_ gave them a hearty cheer as they slid down past the wharf where she lay; the fresh breeze, blowing off shore, smoothed the waves, and, overhead, light clouds ran races with them. Out of one cloud, that seemed scarcely a hand’s breadth, a shower of large, sun-lighted drops came clattering down. In the midst of it they reached the Point, and stepped out on to the rocky shore. A clumsy old Indian woman had just kindled a fire, and piled brush over it. Not a spark was visible, but thick white smoke gushed out through the green, curled over into a shifting Corinthian capital, and rose into air, and in another instant it topped a shaft of flame. The woman took no notice of the visitors standing near her, but stood tossing twigs into the fire. Her face was ugly, her dress careless, but her small brown hands and moccasined feet were models of beauty. Two or three men were lying about lazily, waiting for their dinner, and a mischievous little girl was weaving a basket. She alone noticed the strangers, the others wore a look of disdainful unconsciousness. The ladies talked with the child, and bought baskets of her; the gentlemen made themselves acquainted with the elders, and found them not insensible to the charms of tobacco and coffee. Under these persuasive influences, their taciturn hosts melted, and became almost friendly. Presently, another Indian appeared from the woods, came straight toward them, and dropped a long string of quivering, rainbow-colored trout at the old woman’s feet. A whispered exclamation broke from the lips of the visitors as they saw this dusky young Adonis. The Greek outlines, with more than Grecian richness of color, the plumy, clustering hair, from which a few raindrops slid as from a bird’s wing, the eagle eyes, the fanciful dress, beaded and fringed, that air of superb repose and 485 unconsciousness which civilization only imitates, but does not attain--all were fascinating and _unique_. He stood one moment as some exquisite bronze, then stepped lightly over the springy moss, lifted the fold of a tent, and disappeared. This was her brother, Philip Nicola, the little girl told the ladies, and her name was Malie. Edith gave the child an Indian prayer-book, prepared by their patlias; then the party embarked again, spread their sail to the breeze, and sped down the bay.

Dick Rowan, standing to unfurl the sail, sang out joyously, in a clear, ringing voice, an old French song:

“‘Si le roi m’avoit donné
Paris sa grand’ ville,
Et qu’il me fallût quitter
L’amour de ma mie,
Je dirois au roi Henri:
Reprenez votre Paris,
J’aime mieux ma mie, oh, gay!
J’aime mieux ma mie.’”

Edith turned her head aside, and watched their sparkling wake subside to a milky path. If she was pleased, no one could see. But as they approached that low, sandy island that three of them had visited before, she rose, and leaned on Dick’s arm, and gazed on it with him.

“God have mercy on him!” they whispered; and both Dick and the captain removed their hats, and remained uncovered till they had passed by. The others did not know what it meant, but they asked no question, and soon all was gay again.

They landed a few miles down the bay, wandered awhile on the shore, took their luncheon there, and sat to see the sun go down, reddening all the water. Then a bright pallor succeeded, tingling with unseen stars, and the bay became a silver mirror. The breeze went down with the sun, and only a soft breath out of the south pressed their sail as they started to return. Between two fleckless, transparent abysses, they floated, as through ether, and might, it seemed, be drawn up or sink down at any moment. The night deepened, and became a crystalline darkness, with stars above and stars below, and then the east grew radiant with a soft aurora.

As the light increased, they saw a speck on the water, and, leaning low, Captain Cary espied Philip Nicola in a bark canoe, dancing across the bay, skimming the water like a bird. The imp of mischief, or of vanity, seemed to possess the fellow. He shot across their prow, so near as almost to catch the foam it threw up, he zigzagged ahead of them, he slid into their wake on one side, and flew past them on the other. Lastly, he dropped far behind, and they heard him singing over the water. The song was some wild chant in his own language, piercingly sweet, and full of a barbarous pathos and power. As they listened, convention dropped from them like a garment. They were simple children of nature, and creation was full of mysteries for them.

A golden splendor filled the east, a disk of burning gold showed above the woods, and kindled their feathery tops, a crinkling flame ran round every ripple of the bay, and their prow tossed off sparks instead of foam. Then the moon sailed majestically upward, and made an enchanted day about them. As she rose, the blue of the sky drew back, like the fold of a curtain, and left a pathway of mellow light for her feet.

Not a word was said by any one. The scene was too beautiful for praise. Edith and Carl sat opposite each other, and Dick Rowan stood between them, leaning against the mast, and looking down on that fair head with its crown of braids. She leaned over the boat-side, and 486 trailed her hand in the water, nor spoke a word, nor once lifted her eyes. As the water-lily, growing to maturity through unconscious sun and dew, when its appointed sunrise comes, shines through all its snowy petals, and opens to disclose another sun hidden within its folded whiteness, so her soul, now its time was come to know itself and be known, stirred through all its calm reserves and unconsciousness at the sound of that savage chant. She forgot, for the time, all that was cramping in her life, and had a new sense of freedom and joy.

The song ceased. They neared the Point, and a path of crimson trembled out from the camp-fire there and crossed the moonlight. Clara leaned, and whispered to Carl. He hesitated a moment, then, with a gesture that showed a sort of defiant resolution, acquiesced in her demand. Carl seldom sang, and, when he did, it was for the words rather than the music, and his style was that of an improvisator. He sang:

“The moon is climbing up the sky,
Back rolls the ether blue.
The folded roses stir and sigh,
With droppings of the dew;
The tide runs up to meet the stream,
And bear her to the sea:
Downward, as in a happy dream,
They’re floating silently.

“The slumb’ring deeps of life upbreak,
Our childish play is o’er.
The footsteps of the future shake
The lintel of our door!
Awake, sweetheart! thou giv’st to-day
A soul, and not a toy:
Wake! lest the child’s hand fling away
The woman’s crowning joy.

“Cast off the dreams of childish days,
Take on thy woman’s state.
Search thine own spirit’s deeper ways,
Ere yet it be too late.
The time is come for thee to give--
The time for me to take:
Lift up thy lids, and bid me live!
O woman’s soul, awake!”

Slowly Edith lifted her drooping head, her heavy eyelids, and looked at Carl, and he looked at her. The full moon shone in their faces, and they saw only each other, and were conscious only of each other. The lily had bloomed.

Some sharp sound, like breath drawn through teeth, was heard, and Melicent cried out, “Mr. Rowan!”

They looked just in time to see Dick’s white face as he staggered backward. His eyes closed, and, before they could reach him, he fell over the boat-side, with a heavy splash, and sank.

Captain Cary threw off his coat, and was overboard in a second, and soon they saw him bearing up a pallid face on his arm. “Haul in sail, and row ashore!” he called out, and himself struck out for the Point, which they were close upon.

Philip Nicola met him there, and the other men came down, and, when the party had stepped on shore, Dick was in one of the tents. Captain Cary came out to meet them. “He has come to,” he said, “and will soon be all right. But you had better go home. I will stay and take care of him. He doesn’t wish to go up now.”

“I must see him, I shall certainly see him,” Edith said resolutely, stepping forward.

“I wouldn’t to-night, Miss Edith,” the sailor replied, standing in her way. “He doesn’t feel like talking.”

“I shall go in!” she said, and waved him aside, and went into the tent.

Dick Rowan lay on the low pallet, with his face turned away and hidden in his arms. Edith knelt beside him. “Dick!” she said, in an imploring voice.

He started slightly. “Don’t speak to me! Please go home now,” he said. “I don’t want to talk.”

“I mean to be true to you, Dick,” she sobbed, without rising. “I will 487 never see nor speak to any one you wish me to avoid. I will go away with you this time, if you say so.”

His only reply was to bid her go. “Give me time to think,” he said, “I will tell you afterward.” And there was no way for her but to go.

“I am going to walk home,” Carl said, and started off through the woods.

When, the next morning early, they sent down to the village for news, the _Halcyon_ had sailed, and Dick Rowan had sailed in her.

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BETHLEHEM.

Bethlehem--House of bread:[105]
Of the Bread that came down from heaven,[106]
“For the life of the world ‘tis given:
Eat of it,” Jesus said.

“Father,” he bade us pray,
“Give us this heavenly bread.”
“Ours” we must call it, he said.
“Give us it day by day.”

Knelt in the midnight cave
The shepherds and sages three--
_Theirs_ (do we envy?) to _see_
The Bread which the Father gave:[107]

_We_ in the faith’s broad day
Kneeling--nor once, but at will--
Take of that Bread our fill,
None “sent empty away.”

How should we envy _them_?
Yet as the grace the shame,
If but in boast we claim
The goodlier Bethlehem.

ADVENT, 1871.

[105] The literal signification of Bethlehem.

[106] John vi. 33, 51, 52

[107] Ibid. v. 32.

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THE PROTESTANT RULE OF FAITH[108] 488

Dr. Hodge is an Old School Presbyterian, and a sturdy opponent of what among Protestants is called the “New England theology.” He is a man of learning and ability, and one of the most distinguished theologians in the Presbyterian Church. If he has failed to reduce Protestantism to a system, complete, uniform, and coherent in all its parts, it is not his fault, but undeniably the fault of Protestantism itself, which is not all of a piece, which consists of fragments only of truth, with no genetic relation one to another, or connecting links, and which no mortal man can mould into a systematic whole. What man can do with so untoward a subject Dr. Hodge has done, if we may judge from the volume before us, and, as far as our knowledge goes, his work is the least unsuccessful attempt to construct a complete and consistent system of Protestant theology that has as yet been made.

Neither our space nor our leisure permits us to review the entire volume, or to discuss the author’s system in its several bearings; a better opportunity to do that will be presented when we have the completed work before us, of which only the first volume has as yet been published. We shall confine ourselves for the present to a single question, namely, the Protestant rule of faith. The author devotes the entire Chapter V. of his Introduction to the statement and refutation, as he understands it, of the Catholic, or, as he says, the Romanist rule of faith; but as his objections to that rule and his supposed refutation of it presuppose the truth of Protestantism, and are of no account if the Protestant rule of faith is invalid or inadequate, we need not stop to defend it, but are free to pass at once to the examination of the Protestant rule which he opposes to it. If that can be asserted and maintained as a rule of faith, or authority for determining what is the faith God has revealed and commanded us to believe, the Catholic rule is indefensible, or at least unnecessary.

The author is not very clear and definite in his statement of the Protestant rule of faith. He says (p. 150), “All Protestants agree in teaching that ‘the Word of God as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is the only infallible rule of faith and practice’;” but from his assertion of the right of private judgment and several of his objections to the Catholic rule, we may, without danger of error, take the Protestant rule of faith to be the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, or the Bible interpreted by private judgment--that is, interpreted without any public or catholic authority--as the Protestant rule or standard of faith. But this is rather the denial than the assertion of a rule, because it presents no rule or standard to which private judgment must conform in order to be anything but naked opinion. The Bible, even conceding its divine inspiration and sufficiency, cannot be the rule or standard for private judgment, if it is to be interpreted by private judgment, for 489 that would require private judgment to judge what the faith is, before it has any rule by which to judge what it is. The Protestant doctrine confounds the rule of faith with the place of faith, and private judgment with individual judgment. In private judgment, the individual judges by no objective rule or standard, and his judgment is purely subjective, and is worth nothing even for himself; but an individual judgment is not necessarily private, for it may be by a rule or standard common to all men, what we call a public or catholic rule. A judgment dictated by reason, or the reason which is common to all men and the same in all, is not a private but a public judgment, and binds all men to whose knowledge it comes as much as it does the individual who renders it. Men may sin against reason as well as against faith. Men are bound to exercise their reason, the reason common to all men, in all questions submitted to reason or within its province, and are bound to do so in interpreting the Bible so far as its interpretation comes within the province of reason, and may abide by its decisions, unless overruled by a higher authority--as the lawyer has the right to abide by his own judgment of the meaning of a statute, or as to what the law is, till the court decides against him; but private judgment is a private opinion, and binds nobody.

Dr. Hodge holds that the Scriptures contain not all the revelation Christ and his apostles made, but all that is now extant. But, even if so, his doctrine only makes them the _place_ of faith; it tells where the faith is, but not what it is. They may be the fountain, but they cannot be the rule or standard, of faith. The rule is precisely that which is necessary to enable us to draw the faith from the Scriptures, and determine that it is the faith God has revealed and commanded us to believe as his word. The Protestant rule as given, then, is no rule of faith at all, and it is impossible to elicit by it an act of faith. The author is too hasty, then, in setting aside the Catholic rule on the authority of his Protestant rule, which, in order to be a rule, demands a catholic rule of judgment, as he himself virtually concedes (p. 127).

Dr. Hodge makes it a grave objection to the church that she does not allow private judgment as a rule of faith; yet it is only as against the church or Catholics that he himself allows it. When his aim is to destroy Catholic faith or to detach Catholics from their fidelity to the church, he asserts the unrestricted right of private judgment; but, when he wishes to build up faith or to establish Protestantism as a positive doctrine, he restricts it, and confines it to the regenerate. It is not every one who is free to interpret the faith or the Scriptures according to his own private judgment; but only those who have been regenerated, and are enlightened and led by the Holy Ghost. But even this does not help him, for he has no public or catholic rule by which to determine who are or who are not regenerated, and the individual himself has only his own private judgment by which to test the spirits, and to determine whether the spirit by which he is led is the spirit of truth or the spirit of error. The blessed Apostle John tells us not to believe every spirit, but to try the spirits, for there are many false prophets gone out into the world. Now, what is wanted is an objective test or touchstone of truth by which to try the spirits. This cannot be the subjective leadings of the spirit, for they are precisely what is to be tested in order to determine that they are from God, and not from the enemy of 490 souls taking the guise of an angel of light in order to deceive. The learned professor, then, even with the restriction of private judgment to the regenerate, and the assumption of the interior assistance and guidance of the Spirit, though contradicting himself, gets no rule of faith, and has at best only the place of faith.

The learned author is aware that the Bible interpreted by private judgment is no rule, at least no adequate rule, of faith, and so he seeks to supply its deficiency by tradition. He says, “Protestants admit there has been a stream of traditionary teaching flowing through the Christian church from the day of Pentecost to the present time. This tradition is so far a rule of faith that nothing contrary to it can be true. Christians do not stand isolated, holding each his own creed. They constitute one body, having one creed. Protestants admit that there is a common faith of the church, which no man is _at liberty to reject, or can reject and be a Christian_” (pp. 113, 114). This would seem to make the Protestant rule not the Bible interpreted by private judgment and private illumination, but the Bible interpreted by the traditionary teaching of the church or the common faith of the Christian body. This, if it meant anything, would be fatal to Protestantism. The author says (_ubi supra_), “Christians constitute one body with a common creed. Rejecting this creed, or any of its parts, is the rejection of the fellowship of Christians, incompatible with the communion of saints or membership in [of] the body of Christ.” It is undeniable that the Catholic Church included at the epoch of the Reformation the whole Christian body, except those cut off from that body as heretics and schismatics; and it is equally undeniable that the Reformers or first Protestants did reject what was then the creed of this body, or at least important parts of it, and, therefore, did reject what our Princeton professor says “no man is at liberty to reject, and which no man can reject and be a Christian.” The Reformers, then, were not, and Protestants who held from them are not and cannot be, Christians.

But the author would avoid this conclusion by making the tradition he concedes mean nothing, or at least nothing tangible. When Protestants speak of the common consent of Christians, he says (p. 115), “they understand by Christians the true people of God,” that is, “the truly regenerate, holy men, the temples of the Holy Ghost.” They understand not a public external organic body, but an invisible and inorganic body of believers, confined to no one external communion, that is, men who belong to what Catholic theologians call “the soul of the church.” Yet even these prior to Protestantism were, if not the whole body of Catholics, in the Catholic Church, and held firmly, and more firmly than others, the very creed, or the very parts of it, which Protestants reject as Roman or Papal corruption. Even conceding this restriction, the author would hardly be able to avoid the conclusion that Protestants do reject the common creed of the true people of God, for these true people of God, whoever they might be, were included in the visible Catholic Church, and held its faith. But let this pass. How is the Protestant to ascertain who these people are? Or how ascertain what is their creed or common faith, if he does not determine it by the creed publicly professed by the external or visible church in which they are concealed?

Here is a grave difficulty, and much graver than our Protestant professor would seem to regard it. The Scriptures interpreted by 491 unregenerate men, he holds, are no rule or criterion of faith; it is only the private judgment of the regenerate, of those who are led by the Spirit, that is to be heeded, and the common faith of all such, the true people of God, is obligatory, and the faith which no one can reject in whole or in part and be a Christian. But we cannot avail ourselves of their traditionary teaching or common consent as a rule of faith, or for the interpretation of Scripture, unless we know who they are. But, as they are not an outward visible public body, but an invisible, inorganic, and, so to speak, a private body, we cannot know who they are without some rule or criterion by which we can distinguish them from the ungodly, or from those who, according to St. Augustine, are _in_ the church, but not _of_ the church. Hence the difficulty. We must have, prior to the application of the Protestant rule, another rule, a catholic rule, by which to determine and apply it. We cannot use the Protestant rule unless we know what it is, and we cannot know what it is without a prior rule for determining who are the true people of God, the elect, and what is their common creed, or traditionary teaching from the day of Pentecost down to our times. But our learned professor has neglected to give us this antecedent rule, without which the one he gives us is no rule at all. He gives no mark or sign by which we can recognize the invisible people of God, and we do not think he can; for we do not believe anybody knows or will know who they are till the last judgment, when the secrets of all hearts will be laid open.

It will not do here to refer us to the Bible for the rule by which to ascertain them; for we must know them and their common faith in order to obtain our guide to the sense of the Bible. We cannot take the sense of the Bible to determine them, and then take them to determine the sense of the Bible. It will not do, again, to say they are they who are led by the Spirit, for it is precisely those who are led by the Spirit that we wish to ascertain; nor will it do to appeal to religious experience, for it is only the religious experience of the true people of God that can avail, and that would be referring us to the people of God to tell us who are the people of God. It would be to reason like the poor Anglican, who makes orthodoxy the test of the church, and the church the test of orthodoxy. “Jack, where is the hoe?” “Wid de harrow, massa.” “Where is the harrow?” “Wid de hoe, massa.” The Protestant, in any case, gives no more satisfactory answer; for, with all his pretensions, he can only tell us that the true faith is the faith held and followed by the true people of God, and the true people of God are they who hold and follow the true faith.

The author, as we have seen, says: “When Protestants plead the common consent of Christians--the common faith of the Christian body--they mean by Christians the true people of God. Romanists, on the other hand,” he continues, “mean the company of those who profess the true faith, and who are subject to the Pope of Rome. There is the greatest difference between the authority due to the common faith of truly regenerate, holy men, the temples of the Holy Ghost, and that due to what a society of nominal Christians profess to believe, the great majority of whom may be worldly, immoral, and irreligious.” But where did the professor learn that the authority of the teaching depends on the personal virtue of the teacher? How does he know that they who 492 recognize the authority of the Pope are only nominal Christians? or that the Pope is not led and assisted by the Spirit in his office of teacher of the universal church? Nay, how does he know, or how can he prove to us or anybody else, that there are any of the true people of God among Protestants at all? He must prove his rule of faith before proceeding to apply it.

Dr. Hodge continues, on the same page (115): “The common consent for which Protestants plead concerns only essential doctrines; that is, doctrines which enter into the very nature of Christianity as a religion, and which are necessary to its _subjective_ existence in the heart, or which, if they do not enter essentially into the religious experience of believers, are so connected with vital doctrines and precepts as not to admit a separation from them.”

Here is the same difficulty again. What is the Protestant rule for distinguishing among revealed doctrines those which are essential and those which are not essential? Will the author tell us the essentials are those doctrines which all Protestants agree in teaching, and that those in which they do not agree in teaching are non-essentials? But who are Protestants? All those who agree in teaching the essentials? Where is the hoe? With the harrow. Where is the harrow? With the hoe. This would be only to adopt the principle of poor Jack’s replies to the questions of his master.

But no. The essentials are “those doctrines which enter into the very nature of Christianity as a religion, and which are necessary to its _subjective_ existence in the heart.” But how determine what these are, unless we know the very nature of Christianity? And how can we know or determine what is the very nature of Christianity, unless we have a rule or standard of faith? But the essentials are those doctrines which “are necessary to its subjective existence in the heart.” What doctrines are these? Have Protestants any objective rule for determining them? The professor gives none except the Scriptures, which do not suffice, because, as we have seen, the Scriptures are the place, not the rule of faith, and what we are seeking is the rule or authority for determining what is the faith they contain. Among Protestants there is a very great diversity of views as to what is necessary to the subjective existence of religion in the heart. Schleiermacher, in his _Discourses on Religion, addressed to the Cultivated among its Despisers_, maintains that only the sense of dependence is necessary to the subjective existence of religion; Twesten, as cited by the author, maintains the same, and that in a subjective sense all religions are equally true, though not equally pure; some Protestants place the essence of religion in reverence; Dr. Channing seemed to place it in philanthropy, or in a sense of the dignity of man; others in “self-culture,” in “self-worship”; and a distinguished Protestant minister maintained to us, some years ago, that a pantheist, like Spinoza, or an atheist, like Shelley, might not only be truly religious, but a good Christian. There are thousands and thousands in all Protestant denominations who, virtually at least, regard the subjective existence of religion in the heart as nearly, if not totally, independent of all objective doctrines or faith. Such is at least the tendency of modern Evangelicalism, Bushnellism, Beecherism, and from which even our author himself is not always free. He makes, indeed, a brave fight for dogmatic theology or objective faith, but his concessions to Whitfieldian and Wesleyan notions of 493 religious experience place him on the declivity to pure religious subjectivism. All these have the Scriptures, and profess to take them for their rule of faith and practice; but it is evident from what we have said that the Scriptures are not a sufficient rule by which to determine what are essentials and what are not. What rule, then, have Protestants by which to make the distinction?

Dr. Hodge says, in refutation of the Catholic rule, which, by the way, he does not correctly state: “Our Lord, in promising the Spirit to guide his people into the knowledge of truths necessary to their salvation, did _not_ promise to preserve them from error in subordinate matters, or to give them a supernatural knowledge of the organization of the church, the number of the sacraments, or the power of bishops” (pp. 115, 116). Then, on these matters, the organization of the church, the number of the Sacraments, and the power of bishops, Protestants have no promise of exemption from error, and hence it is quite possible that they err in rejecting the Catholic doctrine of the church, of the hierarchy and the sacraments. But the professor’s limitation of the promise of our Lord is not warranted by his own professed rule. The promise, as recorded by the Evangelists is unlimited: “But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you _all_ things, and bring _all_ things to your mind _whatsoever_ I shall have said to you” (St. John xiv. 26). This is explicit enough. But, again, “But he, the Spirit of truth, when he shall come, will teach you _all_ truth” (_ib._ xvi. 13). Therefore, our Lord said to his apostles, “Go ye, and teach all nations ... to observe all things _whatsoever_ I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you all days, even unto the consummation of the world” (St. Matt, xxviii. 19, 20). This is a promise of guidance of the Spirit into all truth, and of exemption from error, in anything which our Lord has said or commanded.

If we were defending the Catholic rule, we should remind the author that this promise was made to the _ecclesia docens_, and only through that to the _ecclesia credens_; but, as we are not defending the Catholic rule, we suffer him to apply it to what he calls the true people of God. Yet, if he accepts the plain declaration of our Lord himself as recorded in the Gospels, he has no authority for distinguishing between essentials and non-essentials in the revelation of God, and none at all for restricting the promise of spiritual guidance and assistance to a promise of preservation from error only in certain fundamental truths of revelation. The author must either give us the rule or authority on which he makes the distinction and limitation, or concede that he makes it by no rule, and, therefore, on no authority.

Dr. Hodge tells us (p. 151) that “all Protestants agree in teaching that the word of God, as contained in the Old and New Testaments, is the infallible rule of faith.” He should have said _some_ Protestants; for many who claim to be Protestants do not agree in teaching that. Will the professor say that those who do not so agree are not Protestants? By what authority? By the authority of the Bible, interpreted by private judgment? But they have the Bible and private judgment as well as he, or those who agree with him. Will he appeal to tradition? But tradition taken as a whole condemns him as well as those who differ from him. Then he must discriminate in tradition between what is to be followed and what is to be rejected. But this 494 discrimination demands a rule of judgment. But what rule can the author allege? Private judgment? But that is no rule, for private judgment is by its very definition a judgment without any rule or standard of judgment, and, besides, those who differ from him have private judgment, and theirs is worth as much as his. Will the author answer again--The tradition or common consent of the true people of God? But who are they? Here, then, we are back in the old difficulty. Protestantism moves always in a vicious circle; proving its rule by its faith, and its faith by its rule. We see no way by which it can get out of this circle. It is not only as a Catholic we have felt this difficulty; we felt it as a Protestant, when we had the misfortune to be a Presbyterian, like our learned friend the Princeton professor.

We are sure the fault is not the professor’s, for he doubtless sees that he moves only in a vicious circle as clearly as we do, and no doubt would come out of it and move forward in a straight line, if he could. The fault is in Protestantism itself, which is essentially illogical, and does not conform to the divine order or the truth of things. The Reformers themselves started without seeing whither they were going, and without seeing that the Catholic system, parts of which they rejected, was a systematic whole, and that, if one part was retained, the whole must be retained, and, if one part was rejected, the whole must be rejected. This is what Moehler has so admirably shown in his _Symbolik_. But the Reformers did not wish to reject the whole; they wished to reject only a part, and in the beginning only a small part. They wished to remain Catholics, _minus_ one or two dogmas, and, after the condemnation of Luther by Leo X., _minus_ the Pope and the Roman curia. But they were driven onward farther than they intended, and farther than they foresaw or were prepared for. They constructed no rule of faith beforehand, and adopted one only as the exigencies of the controversy with Catholics made one necessary; still, except on certain points, they continued using the old Catholic rule. Hence their Protestantism was patched up with shreds of the old religion, eked out by such new cloth as they were able to supply to meet the pressure of the occasion. It was formed not all at once, nor all of one piece. It was formed little by little in the struggle to maintain themselves against their Catholic adversaries, and to retain as much of what had always been the faith of Christendom as was possible in the position they assumed. In forming it, they were much more intent on demolishing what our professor calls “Romanism” than on laying a solid foundation for a Protestant superstructure.

The simple fact is, the Protestant movement could find no solid foundation except in pure rationalism, or, rather, in pure individualism, in which every man is his own church, his own rule of faith, his own law, and his own God--a conclusion from which Luther and Calvin would have recoiled with horror, as recoils Dr. Hodge to-day. The Reformers did not see, for they were, as all Protestants are, sad logicians in matters of religion, whither their movement tended, nor dream that one day they would be called on to show that their religion rests on a solid foundation, or a bottom of its own, irrespective of any relation to the Catholic Church, and when they must prove that it is something besides a mere protest against the 495 Church of Rome. They thought they could throw off Rome and a few dogmas, and still remain true Christian believers. In this they were deceived; for they were too little for Christianity and too much for its full denial. They retained certain positive Christian doctrines, but they had no authority for them except the Catholic authority which they madly rejected. Hence, when we press them for the authority on which they assert these doctrines, they fall into the vicious circle in which we find them for ever gyrating, and from which not even Dr. Hodge can relieve them.

The author says (p. 104), “Romanists agree with Protestants in teaching the plenary inspiration and consequent infallible authority of the sacred writings.” But this is a mistake. Catholics do not agree with Protestants, but some Protestants--by no means all Protestants--agree with the church in maintaining the Catholic doctrine of the “plenary inspiration and consequent infallible authority of the sacred writings.” It is simply a Catholic doctrine retained by the Reformers from the church, which taught it nearly fourteen hundred years before Protestantism was born. The able and learned professor, we are sorry to observe, forgets that the church is some centuries older than the oldest Protestant sect, that the founders of Protestantism had all been reared in her communion, and separated from her. Protestants have undeniably no historical connection with our Lord and his apostles, save through the Catholic Church, or the church in communion with the See of Rome. Whatever doctrines Protestants hold that the church always held and taught are hers, not theirs; and it is a grave mistake to pretend that they are Protestant doctrines. Protestantism consists essentially and solely in those things which distinguish it from Catholicity, or in what is peculiar to it and constitutes its _differentia_--in what it denies that the church asserts, and it asserts that she denies. If they have stolen some of her doctrines, that does not make them any the less hers by right, nor give them the right to appropriate them as their own. There is not a single doctrine which Protestants profess to hold--which she teaches, and always has taught--to which they, as Protestants, have any title, or which they can prove to be revealed truth independently of her testimony and authority. It is disregarding this truth that gives to Protestantism the appearance of being a religion.

We return to the word of God as contained in the Old and New Testaments. Before the author can assert the Scriptures as the infallible rule of faith, he must settle, first, the canon; second, the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures; third, the completeness or sufficiency of the Scriptures; and, fourth, the true sense of the Scriptures. Now, not one of these points is it possible for a Protestant to settle independently of the witness and authority of the Catholic Church, and Dr. Hodge confirms our assertion by his manifest failure to settle any one of them on Protestant grounds. They are all questions of faith, and not one of them can be settled prior to or without the rule of faith; and yet on Protestant grounds they must all be settled before the rule of faith can be ascertained and applied.

Protestants exclude from the canon of the Old Testament several books called by some the Deutero-canonical books, which are included in it by the Catholic Church, and even the schismatic churches of the East, and they are far from being agreed among themselves as to what books 496 are or are not canonical. Some would exclude the Book of Ruth and the Canticle. As to the New Testament, Luther had doubts, if our reading or memory be not at fault, of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and that of St. Jude, and rejected the Epistle of St. James, which he called an epistle of straw, probably because it flatly contradicts his doctrine of justification by faith alone; others have doubted the canonicity of these, and, in addition, of the Apocalypse, the second Epistle of St. Peter, the second and third of St. John, and that of St. Paul to Philemon; others still reject the Gospel according to St. John, and indeed the whole New Testament, except the Synoptics--and these, while they admit them as authentic, they deny to be inspired. The Princeton professor may deny these to be Protestants, but they have as good a right to exclude from the canon such books as they judge proper as had Luther and Calvin; and there is no rule by which he can make out that he is a Protestant that will not equally serve to prove that they are Protestants. The only rule available is Catholic tradition, and that condemns him as well as them.

The professor does not rely on the authority of the Synagogue, though he adduces it, to settle the canon of the Old Testament, for that would be anti-Protestant; but attempts to settle it by the authority of the New Testament. Such books as he finds a text quoted from by our Lord or his apostles he assumes to be canonical and inspired; but such as he does not find thus quoted from, he rejects from the canon. But this is not conclusive, for the author concedes that our Lord and his apostles said many things that are not recorded in the New Testament, and how does he know that in those many unrecorded discourses the books which he rejects as uncanonical, and which Catholics hold to be canonical, were not quoted? Then, by what authority does he pretend that a citation of a text from a book proves the book to be canonical or the whole book to be inspired? St. Paul, at Athens, cites the Greek poet Arrian, and in his Epistle to the Hebrews he manifestly adopts a phrase and a sentiment from Plato’s _Republic_: must we therefore conclude that the poems of Arrian and Plato’s _Republic_ are canonical, and Arrian and Plato to be included in the list of divinely inspired writers? Has the professor any assertion of our Lord or of any writer in the New Testament that a Jewish or any other book cited by him or by his apostles is canonical and divinely inspired? Certainly not. St. Paul says in his second Epistle to Timothy, “All Scripture divinely inspired is profitable,” etc., but he does not say what Scriptures are or are not divinely inspired.

Then, again, as to the New Testament, the author concedes that, during the first century and later, the canon of the New Testament was uncertain. It, then, was not settled by our Lord or his apostles themselves. On what authority, then, was it settled? Manifestly only on the authority of the church, that is, of popes and councils. But our Princeton professor denies the authority of popes and councils; denies the infallibility of the church; nay, he denies that the church, Catholic or Protestant, has any teaching authority, fallible or infallible. The canon neither of the New Testament nor of the Old is settled, then, by any infallible rule or authority. How, then, can the professor maintain that Protestants have, in the Scriptures, an infallible rule of faith? No fallible rule suffices for infallible faith.

As Protestants are unable, without the authority of the church or 497 tradition, to settle the canon, so are they unable, without the same authority, to determine what books are or are not divinely inspired. The author contends that it suffices to prove that the writers were messengers from God, and commissioned to speak or write in his name. But that cannot be proved unless they accredited themselves as such by their miracles, and not even then, unless the miracles are attested to us by a competent and credible witness of them. Who or what, for Protestants, is that witness? The Record! But the record may have been forged or interpolated, and must, before it can be adduced as evidence, be authenticated. How can the Protestant authenticate it, except by showing that it has been carefully and vigilantly guarded from the first till now by an official keeper with whom it was deposited? Deny the church as the depositary of the record, as the Protestant does, and there is no certain means of authenticating the record, and then none of authenticating the miracles; then none of establishing the fact of the divine commission of the sacred writers, and consequently none of proving the divine inspiration of the sacred writings, since inspiration is a supernatural fact.