Essays and Reviews
This was the title of a multi-authored work published in London in March, 1860. It has been described as "the historic manifesto of modern Liberal Anglicanism".
It was edited by John William Parker, and is a "broad-church" volume of seven essays on Christianity. The topics covered the biblical research of the German critics, the evidence for Christianity, religious thought in England, and the cosmology of Genesis.
Each essay was authored independently. There was no overall editorial policy and each contributor chose his own theme. The essayists were:
Frederick Temple, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote on "The Education of the World", described as "a warmed-over sermon urging the free study of the Bible";
Rowland Williams, then tutor at Cambridge and later Professor and Vice-Principal of St David's University College, Lampeter, wrote "Bunsen's Biblical Researches", described as "denying the predictive character of Old Testament prophecies";
Baden Powell, clergyman and Professor of Geometry at Oxford, wrote "On the Study of the Evidences of Christianity", described as "flatly denied the possibility of miracles" - for his text, click >here<;
Henry Bristow Wilson, fellow of St John's College, Oxford, wrote "Séances Historiques de Genève. The National Church", described as "giving the widest possible latitude to the Thirty-nine Articles and questioned the eternity of damnation";
Mark Pattison, tutor at Lincoln College, Oxford, wrote "Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750", described as "a learned and cold study of the evidential theologians of the eighteenth century";
Benjamin Jowett, Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford (later Master) and Regius Professor of Greek, Oxford University, wrote "On the Interpretation of Scripture", in which he "urged that the Bible be read 'like any other book' and made an impassioned plea for freedom of scholarship"; and
Charles Wycliffe Goodwin, former fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, Egyptologist, barrister and, later, Assistant Judge of the British Supreme Court for China and Japan, wrote "On the Mosaic Cosmogony", described as "a critique of the attempted 'Harmonies' between Genesis and geology".
The book was important because of its date and its authors. Appearing four months after Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species", it summed up a three-quarter-century-long challenge to biblical history by the higher critics and to biblical prehistory by scientists working in the new fields of geology and biology.
Baden Powell restated his argument that God is a lawgiver, miracles break the lawful edicts issued at the creation, therefore belief in miracles is atheistic, and wrote of "Mr Darwin's masterly volume" that the Origin of Species "must soon bring about an entire revolution in opinion in favour of the grand principle of the self-evolving powers of nature."
Outwardly, the conflict ended inconclusively, with the acquittal of Williams and Wilson by the courts and the condemnation of the volume by the clergy in Convocation. At a deeper level, it marked the exhaustion both of the Broad Church and of Anglican orthodoxy and the commencement of an era of religious doubt.
Nowadays hardly known outside academic theological circles, Essays and Reviews sold 22,000 copies in two years, more than Origin of Species sold in its first twenty years. It sparked five years of increasingly polarized debate with books and pamphlets furiously contesting the issues.
Today the essay topics and conclusions may seem innocuous, but at the time, the essays were described by their opponents as heretical, and the essayists were called "The Seven Against Christ".
For more, click
>here< for "Wikipedia" article on "http://www.spanglefish.com/"
>here< for Lachlan Cranswick's webPage on "Essays and Reviews"
and
>here< for an essay by Roger T. Beckwith in "The Churchman", 1994
