DEAN FARRAR'S NEW ZEALANDER.

A Review and Criticism of Dean Farrar’s recent Work on “ The Bible: Its Meaning- and

Supremacy.”

S U P P L E M E N T TO “ T H E L I T E R A R Y G U ID E ,” O C T O B E R , i 8gj.

Dean Farrar loves two things. He loves jewels and anecdotes. He adorns his pages with many sparkling a.Iluf ° ns î ° dlat" onds and emeralds, chrysolites and pearl, And he cheers the reader’s attention with enough stories to form a new volume o f the Percy Anecdotes. VVe mav onen our remarks on his new and significant work by quoting from its leaves a paragraph which is both anecdo e and jewel :—

“ In New Zealand, when an unbeliever was sneering at the Bible to a native chief, the chief pointed to him a m-e-n stone, and said : «My fathers and I were once bloodthirstv cannibals. On that stone we slaughtered and roasted and devoured our human victims. We are Christians now What raised us to what we are from what we were ? 'rn ’ Bible at which you scoff.’ ” le

From the picturesque Dean we now turn to a very prosaic volume o f geography, from which we extract a few lines on the native population o f New Zealand :—

“ When the islands were first settled by Europeans the Maories were much more numerous than at present and their numbers are still diminishing, and there is but’ little doubt that the beginning o f the end has come for the Maori race. The natives are said to be conscious o f their approaching fate— a fate in which not only the people themselves, but also the native fauna and flora, seem involved H ence the Maories rightly say, ‘ As the white man’s rat has extirpated our rat, so the European fly is driving out our flv The foreign clover is killing our ferns. And so the Maori himself will disappear before the white man.’ ”

It would therefore appear that Dean Farrar’s Bible and British civilization have combined to destroy the New Zealand natives at a quicker rate than the bloodthirsty cannibalism of former ages. We have given them culture and death. We have converted them so efficiently that soon nothing will be left but a few spears and hatchets and tattooed skulls in the glass cases o f our museums. At such a price Christianity is bought too dear. And if we mav appropriate Dean Farrar’s New Zealander as material for a parable, we see in his unfortunate Maori a type o f the fate to which he is trying to condemn his Bible. He endeavours to elevate the Bible to a position o f unapproached supremacy over the literature o f the world ; and in doing this he practically annihilates the divine claims which°have hitherto secured so vast a reverence and homage from the intellect and the lips o f Christendom. He gives glory to the Bible by denial o f its celestial pretensions. He asks men to admire it because God did not write it. He praises the Bible, he magnifies it, he flatters it. But his flattery resembles, not the frankincense and myrrh which the Wise Men o f the East offered to the infant Jesus, but the sweet spices which the women brought for the embalming of the dead God. His eulogy is deadly. He saves his New Zealander by annihilating him, and his Bible by de-sunernaturalizing it. p

Perhaps Dean Farrar is not a consistent Christian logician Perhaps his fellow-clergy will raise the cry o f heresy Per" haps the evangelical journals will attack him for infidelity That is not our business. We can at least acknowledge the services which he renders to the progress of rational thought. The popular errors on the subject o f the origin and character of the Bible needed enlightenment The Freethought press seeks to rectify those errors • but it Ins not so much power that it can dispense with the aid of eloquent deans. And it is the merest justice to declare that half o f Dean Farrar’s book constitites an admirable criticism of the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible. So long as the public is converted, we raise no jealous question a s t o who shafl wear the laurels. Let Voltaire have his reward; let Paine have his due; give Gibbon a meed of gratuude, tender thanks to Strauss ; vote Renan a memorialand let not Dean I'arrar be forgotten. Let there be no’ strife as to which is the greatest in the kingdom. But that is not saying that we take unalloyed pleasure in following the Dean’s gilded tributes to the Rationalistic spirit of the age. We never can be certain of his intellectual movements. One foot on sea, and one on land ; to one thing he is constant never. I f he travels a sound logical road for a consecutive quarter of a page, he dashes our joy by forthwith rolling over.into the most hopeless theological ditches ; and then rehabilitates himself by a return to sobriety. Here we give a sample of the mixed method, indicating the somersault into the ditch by italics :—

“ The writings of Freethinkers are widely disseminated among the working classes. The Church of Christ has lost its hold on multitudes of men in our great cities. Those of the clergy who are working in the crowded centres of English life can hardly be unaware of the extent to which scepticism exists among our artizans. Many of them have been persuaded to believe that the Church is a hostile and organized hypocrisy. There are some in all classes who take refuge from doubt in the abnegation of inquiry and the blind acceptance of an unintelligent traditionalism. To quote the phrase of Cardinal Newman, they treat their reason as though it were a dangerous wild beast, to be beaten back with a bar of iron. There are others to whom such a resource would be impossible and dishonest. No religious system will be permanent which relies mainly on the emotional and the ceremonial, and is not based on the convictions of the intellect. The human reason is no seducing enemy, but a heaven-sent guide. The spirit o j man is the lamp o f the Lord. Reason, as Bishop Butler so truly said, is the only faculty wherewith we can judge of anything, even of revelation itself.”

Let us see where the Dean is taking us. He says reason is a heaven-sent guide. In a later chapter he remarks that “ the Bible is amply sufficient for our instruction in all those truths which are necessary to salvation. Its final teachings are our surest guide to all holiness. We hear the voice of God breathing through it....... God has granted to man a lamp unto his feet [the Bible] and a light unto his path, bright enough to guide him to eternal blessedness.” Now we are confronted by

TWO LAMPS AND TWO GUIDES:

the lamp of reason and the lamp of the Bible ; and the lamp of reason is the instrument by which we judge the worth of the other lamp. This conclusion would appear to establish the supremacy of reason, and, indeed, to do away with the necessity for a divine revelation. And, oddly enough, the Dean does actually say something which comes next door to such a proposition :—

“ Locke wisely warns us that to attempt any subordination or sacrifice of reason to revelation is to put out the light of both ; for revelation can only come to us through the reason, and one voice from heaven cannot utter oracles which are in direct contradiction to another.”

“ Revelation can only come to us through the reason.” Then the Bible-lamp is the direct product of the lamp of reason, and subordinate to it. I f the light of reason is superior to the light of the Bible, why do we need the heaven-sent guide of the Jewish-Christian Scriptures ? Why should we be hampered with the unnatural combination o f two heaven-sent lamps, one of which (reason) tests and criticises the other? All this entangled scheme of Heaven and its lamps resembles the old Ptolemaic astronomy. One gets lost in the images, and turns with relief to the simple tenet of modern science which makes reason the central point of human life, experience, development, and morality.

We revert to the title of the book— “ The Bible: its Meaning and Supremacy.” Supremacy over what ? Not over reason, for reason is confessedly the judge of “ revelation.” We open the special chapter (xviii.) entitled “ Supremacy of the Bible.” The author there quotes