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Mr. Row. — Certainly they are. 
Mr. Reddie. — Well, they were “ composed ” long before Christianity ; and 
I think it a pity to dissociate Christianity so completely as Mr. Row thus 
appears to do from that first part of divine revelation ; for Christianity is only 
a part of revelation, as we may see on the very face of the Christian writings 
themselves. Christianity came in continuation of the law and the prophets, 
and is only the completion of that revealed truth which had gone before. 
And there is another point : when Mr. Row alludes to the selfishness of the 
Jews, he forgot that the 19th chapter of Leviticus, where the text just 
referred to occurs, as to the second of the two great commandmeuts of the 
law, also actually enunciates a principle the very reverse of that which Mr. 
Row attributes to the Jews. It not only tells them to love their neighbours 
as themselves (v. 18), but in another passage (vv. 9, 10) it says : “ When 
ye reap the harvest of your land thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of 
thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest .... thou 
shalt leave them for the poor and stranger .” That shows, that however the 
Jews may have neglected what they were taught, the theory of the J ewish 
law was not of that rigid and extremely selfish kind which Mr. Row attri- 
buted to them, and which would have been the case had they really acted 
consistently with their Scriptures, in hating all other nations than their own. 
But St. Paul condemned them for that : and the whole preaching of the 
prophets really taught the great brotherhood of nations, although, for a 
special purpose, and for a time, the Jews had had special privileges and 
favours. I think that when Mr. Lecky and Mr. Mill make these unfortu- 
nate antitheses between Christianity and what is true in philosophical systems, 
the proper thing to do is to tell these modern philosophers that Christianity 
professedly takes up all that is good and true in those systems : — “ Whatso- 
ever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of 
good report,” and all that is good in human nature, as parts of Christianity ; 
and that this is really the key to explain what is a kind of difficulty for 
which Mr. Row has to account, — namely, that Christianity has not set forth a 
formal code of morals. But Christianity has done better, in this way : it has 
set forth principles which will generate proper feelings and grounds of moral 
action, and it recognizes everything that is good in human nature itself. So 
also with regard to faith. I am inclined to criticise and question very much 
the accuracy of Mr. Row’s definition on this point. I object to his confound- 
ing faith with knowledge, and resolving all conviction into faith ; and also to 
his statement, that all faith must rest on reason. I was gratified, however, 
to find in one sentence that he did recognize that there is such a thing as 
credulity in the world ! I fear, indeed, that a great majority of faiths in this 
world are adopted in despite of reason ; and yet no one can say that they are 
not strong convictions on the part of those who hold them. It would require 
too much time to pick out all the passages where some of these strange 
expressions occur, but I think I know pretty well the sense in which Mr. 
Row meant to employ them ; and in that sense there is a kind of truth, 
though I must say that precisely as they are written they are not accurate 
