In the present time of wide-spread disbelief in the inspiration of Scripture, and when one has so often to sorrow over the surrender of an orthodox faith on the part of those who had professed it, it is good to be able to record on the opposite side the working of God's grace in bringing those into subjection to His Word who have been conspicuous in their opposition to its claims. The clipping from a newspaper given below is an example of this kind in the case of the first contributor to the well-known Essays and Reviews which, published in 1860, aroused so much attention and opposition as to call forth in England alone, it is said, nearly four hundred publications. Dr. Temple was at that time head-master of Rugby school, and his appointment to a bishopric sometime after was naturally strongly opposed on account of the views to which he had given utterance.
Dr. Temple's essay was indeed one of the least offensive in the unhappy volume, where it appeared, however, shoulder to shoulder with the most pronounced and destructive rationalism. Yet in his own essay on "The Education of the World," he makes Scripture only a means of exalting man's " conscience " to a place above it, which is characteristic of the world's manhood, when, he says, "the spirit or conscience comes to full strength, and assumes the throne intended for him in the soul. As an accredited judge, he sits in the tribunal of our inner kingdom, decides upon the past and legislates upon the future, without appeal, except to himself . . . He is the third great teacher, and the last." So supreme is he, indeed, and so strange is the manner of his adjudication, that even " Christ came just at the right time "* to escape it ; " if He had waited till the present age, His incarnation would have been misplaced, and we could not recognize His divinity; for the faculty of faith has turned inward, and cannot now accept any outward manifestations of the truth of God." (! !) *I quote from Hurst's "History of nationalism" here.*
These are published statements, and they are brought forward now only to magnify, as we may be sure Dr. Temple would wish us, the grace of God which has changed all this for him. The Churchman says,-
It is curious, as a piece of intellectual history, to compare the writer of " The Education of the World " with the Bishop Temple who has recently been lecturing on the Scriptures in London. In that number of Essays and Reviews, the conscience of the individual reader of the Scriptures was exalted above the written Word, and given the power to correct it. The dangerous admissions of this essay were recognized and condemned even by Bishop Thirlwall in his charge of 1863. In the Bishop of London's recent Polytechnic lecture, we find a complete and genuine palinode to his earlier utterances.
It is said, only fools cannot change their minds. The Bishop had no hesitation in saying, on the occasion referred to, that the more he read the Bible through from end to end, the more the things in it seemed to be master of him; so that if he differed from it, he was driven to the conclusion that either he did not understand it or that he was in the wrong. The spirit of it was so supreme over all that he could think or imagine of the purest and holiest things that it was absolutely necessary that he should accept Us authority. When, too, he studied the unique Figure in humanity which stood unapproachable by all philosophers or heroes, his conscience, which bowed before the Book, bowed still more before that majestic Royalty which spoke with authority, not as a learned man, not as a philosopher, not as a guide or a teacher who, having gathered knowledge from various sources, communicated it-with a voice which bore eternal truth with no qualification, and which was plain for every one to hear and to understand.
The italics are our own, and this lecture should be read by doubting minds of to-day as one of the most striking examples of a recantation from previous latitudinarianism which have ever been volunteered by a mind at once honest, strong, and thoroughly devotional.
May God in His goodness raise up many such witnesses ! and may it encourage prayer for those who as leaders in the present day unbelief may be all the more to the praise of that grace in their being turned from darkness to light, and to Him in whom that light has shined !