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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



he conceived the idea that, to make this 

 vindication of any actual and permanent 

 service to those conceptions, it must itself 

 be actual ; it must itself be scientific, it must 

 itself be something decidedly more than 

 merely theological. In other words, what- 

 ever inherited conceptions, about either the 

 Bible or religion, he found he could not 

 establish by valid evidence and by legiti- 

 mate reasoning, he resolutely determined 

 that he would never make the effort to es- 

 tablish either by any such distortion of evi- 

 dence, or by any such illegitimate reasoning, 

 as he had fortunately come to discover to 

 be only too characteristic of the mediaeval 

 apologists." 



Pursuing his biblical studies from this 

 independent point of view, Mr. Blauvelt, in 

 the spirit of the liberal scholarship of the 

 time, was led to the formation of opinions 

 widely differing from the orthodox tradi- 

 tions. The general results which he reached 

 are given with their proofs in the first eight 

 chapters of the little volume before us, the 

 subjects of which are : I. The Crisis ; II. 

 Dogmatic Theology; III. The Yalidity of 

 the Biblical Canon ; IV. The Inspiration of 

 the Bible ; V. The Historical Character 

 of the Gospels; VI. The Religion of the 

 Bible; VII. Religion; VIII. The Religion 

 of Jesus. These chapters are full of infor- 

 mation in relation to the work of modern 

 criticism on biblical subjects, and they af- 

 ford an excellent introduction to the general 

 inquiry, for those who wish to know how 

 the register of theological liberality stands 

 at present. 



But the sequel of honest and fearless 

 research proved to be in this case, what it 

 had always been before, repression of free 

 thought. In Chapter IX, Mr. Blauvelt gives 

 us some examples of the treatment extended 

 to religious men who have undertaken to 

 inquire for themselves. He* tells us that 

 "when, in 1835, Strauss published the ini- 

 tial volume of his first ' Life of Jesus,' he 

 was occupying the position of a theological 

 instructor at Tubingen, with the most brill- 

 iant prospects before him, and beloved and 

 honored of all. But even before the ap- 

 pearance of the second volume he was sum- 

 marily ejected from his position. As the 

 unparalleled commotion created by his work 

 continued to increase, his own father turned 



away from him in anger ; his early teachers 

 in divinity hastened to disavow all complic- 

 ity with his opinions, and ' as for the friends 

 and companions of my studies,' says Strauss 

 hirnself, 'these I had the mortification of 

 seeing exposed to so much suspicion and 

 annoyance for their merely rumored inti- 

 macy with me, that it became a point of 

 conscientious duty not to expose them to 

 still greater odium by any public memorial 

 of our friendship." 



Again, " The faculty of the Theological 

 Seminary of St. Sulpice were once engaged 

 in preparing their annual examinations, 

 when a young candidate for the deaconship, 

 who had always been noted for his great 

 modesty and studious habits, asked leave to 

 submit a number of questions which per- 

 plexed his mind and seemed to depress his 

 religious spirit. Unless they were solved to 

 his satisfaction, he could not hope to enter 

 into holy orders. His earnestness aston- 

 ished and alarmed the entire faculty. They 

 refused at once to examine questions which 

 to them appeared novel or subversive, and, 

 justly fearing that a neophyte who on the 

 threshold of the priesthood was besieged 

 with such misgivings might become a cause 

 of strife in the Church, they withheld their 

 protection, and bade him depart from the 

 consecrated place. This inquisitive and 

 conscientious student was Joseph Ernest 

 Renan." How he subsequently succeeded 

 in passing with the highest honors his ex- 

 amination for University Professor of Phi- 

 losophy ; how he became Professor of He- 

 brew, Chaldaic, and Syriac Languages and 

 Literature in the oldest chair of the oldest 

 institution in the land ; and how he was 

 howled down by the clerical party so that 

 he could not be even heard on the day of 

 his inauguration; and how this was fol- 

 lowed by a governmental decree suspending 

 his course of lectures indefinitely is now 

 well-known matter of history. 



When the volume entitled " Essays and 

 Reviews," containing some independent the- 

 ological thought, appeared in England, the 

 authorities were besieged to prosecute the 

 writers for heresy ; and there was one peti- 

 tion which is said to have contained the sig- 

 natures of not less than nine thousand clergy- 

 men of the Established Church, to promote 

 this end. Bishop Colenso was subsequently 



