Christian land stand to the Gospel of Christ; of the benefits which all, though unconsciously, are deriving from it; and of the obligations of all within whose reach its means of grace are placed; obligations that cannot be escaped by any man's refusal to acknowledge them. He thought that men were designed to live in church estate as much as in the civil state and in the family; and that they are born into the one as much as into the other. This idea, the original idea of the Church, as he considered it, but which has been in a great degree lost sight of in Protestant communities, and is very imperfectly represented in our present ecclesiastical institutions, he wished to see revived, brought distinctly to men's consciousness, and embodied in new church organizations. One of the last acts of his life was to take practical measures for actualizing this idea among the people of his charge. On the first Sunday of the year he preached his last sermon, in which, after speaking of the deaths that had occurred among his flock, he alluded to the possibility of his own decease during the year. In the course of the following week he was suddenly smitten with severe disease, from which he had partially recovered, when a relapse rapidly terminated his days. Died in Amherst, N. H., January 8th, HoN. CHARLES H. ATHERTON, aged 79. Charles Humphrey Atherton was born in Amherst, N. H., August 14th, 1773. His father was the Hon. Joshua Atherton, a prominent lawyer at the New Hampshire bar, and a member of the Convention held in 1788 for ratifying the Constitution of the United States. The son was graduated at Harvard University in 1794, and, after the usual preliminary studies, he adopted the law as his profession, in which he achieved an honorable distinction. He was elected a member of the House of Representatives in the Congress of 1816-17, and at a subsequent period held office in the Legislature of his native State. Mr. Atherton remained in the discharge of his professional duties, and of various other trusts, until late in life; nor was ever any one, perhaps, more prompt to do service, and more zealous for the public good, with less incitement from motives of personal ambition. Mr. Atherton's mind was distinguished by clear and accurate perceptions, sound judgment, a will strong in purpose without impetuosity, and a persistent patience both in deliberation and inquiry. He began early, and never laid aside, the habit of a thorough industry. So uniform was this, and so deeply set, as to wear the grace of some beautiful instinct. There was in it no bustle, no hurry. It was the genuine love of labor stirring the whole being, and keeping its energies directed in constant application to wise and useful results. He seemed as one who could not rest idle, and yet his movements were so quiet that he imposed no disagreeable constraint on those near him, although his very presence was a reproof to a listless inaction. There were several very marked and sterling qualities exhibited by our friend, which are all indicated when we say, that few men can ever have been better fitted to counsel, guide, sustain, and reinforce the minds of others. Not alone to professional clients was he thus serviceable, but to friends and neighbors and his own family, in the various emergencies that make one anxious to get light which he cannot find for himself, and long for a support in sympathy which his own strength has failed to give. Mr. Atherton was resorted to, and leaned upon, by many who had learned how dispassionate and cool, judicious and candid, gentle and sympathetic, he was. He won, and kept through life, a perfect confidence in the hearts of those who knew him well. So delicate was his sense of honor, so pure his conscientiousness, so constant his fidelity, so void of guile was he, as that none doubted that what he had under his control would be safe, and whatever he undertook to do would be done. He had no caprices, no eccentricities, no extravagance. His reason, affections, and conscience seemed to act always in harmony for a common end. Hence his character was uniform and consistent. One always knew where to find him. Here, too, was his good influence continuous and unintermittent. Society could count him among her pillars. His opinions were deliberately formed, but were not easily disturbed when once settled in his mind. He was not hasty in his attachments, but they were never hastily abandoned. Energetic and decisive, he was of great modesty, without arrogance or self-sufficiency. He was dignified and self-possessed, not to be overcome by his own or others' emotions; yet tender and affectionate; and if of wonderful fortitude, of as remarkable a submissiveness, and feeling of his absolute dependence on God for strength and aid. He was regarded with a degree of reverence where he drew most affection to himself. His own manner was that which shows respect to others in such a way as implies an equally habitual and secure reliance on their respect in return. If not what is called a learned man, Mr. Atherton was abundantly furnished with all necessary knowledge, and was well informed in the literature and science of his times. He read much, and not uncritically. A member of the Historical Society, he contributed to its papers. He wrote, also, occasionally, political articles for the daily press. It is impossible to think of Mr. Atherton without including his habitual piety. There was some reference to religion in whatever he did. A religious spirit sanctified his domestic happiness, and was diffused over his social intercourse. Piety gave to his mind its habitual tone. It sustained and comforted him in sorrows which admitted no other solace, and made serene and hopeful his declining years. In religious opinions Mr. Atherton was a Unitarian. He was early made a Vice-President of the American Unitarian Association, and very liberally contributed to its funds, and for the interests of the denomination generally. He made great sacrifices for the sake of the truth in his native town, and was its unfaltering advocate till death. Mr. Atherton was married in early manhood to Miss Marianne Toppan, daughter of the Hon. Christopher Toppan of Hampton Falls. She was a remarkably intelligent woman, whose tastes and principles were congenial with those of her husband. He survived her thirty-five years, but did not again marry. He always spoke of the companion of his early life with unabated tenderness. Two only of their children remained in life when he left the world. And of these, the daughter, endeared to her father by great devotion to his happiness for many years, his nurse, solace, and pride, has since gone to join him in his better home. THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER AND RELIGIOUS MISCELLANY. MAY, 1853. ART. I. THE GOSPELS, THEIR INSPIRATION, THEIR AUTHENTICITY, THEIR GENUINENESS. WHEN the Grecian oracles gave their mysterious responses, or when Isaiah saw the hand of God in the fall of Tyre, and beheld through the exhalations of his country's corruptions a regenerated Israel arise, it could hardly have been anticipated that the time would come when inspiration would be judged by rules of evidence, and be supposed to reside in historical accounts; that critics would stand forth to examine it armed in Greek, and claims to it be extinguished by an almanac. It could not have been foreseen that that which was thought to describe the most glorious state of man, in which he was god-intoxicated, god-borne, vdeos, on fire, and kindled the hearts of men as with flames, should be made to consist in correctness of testimony, and imply a surrender of all mental action. Such has come to be regarded as the nature of plenary inspiration; it is a state in which a man is as passive an instrument as a pen or a pipe, — judgment, choice, imagination, heart, all being suspended; for if there were judgment there might be error, and if there were choice there might be mistakes, and imagination and heart would only be in the way of that mechanical faithfulness in which the value of the result of " plenVOL. LIV. - 4TH S. VOL. XIX. No. III. 31 ary inspiration" is supposed to consist. We are invited, therefore, to call something inspiration which is the very opposite of all that was properly meant by the term ; and indignation is expressed, and heresy is hinted, when we call any men inspired but those who are supposed to be thus magically stunned and benumbed. Heads are shaken, and the most solemn countenances assumed, when genius is called a kind of inspiration; and it is thought to be a certain horrible thing called "pantheism," if the inspiration of the Evangelists be put on a par with it. A difference is alleged, a difference in kind. And well there may be. But on which side is the dishonor? What man in his senses will compare the inspiration of Matthew with the inspiration of Milton, or that of Luke with that of Dante? The so-called inspiration which fitted a hearer to report correctly, for instance, the invocation of Christ's prayer, does not surely rank with the devout genius which could interpret it. To write down from the lips of the Saviour, "Our Father who art in heaven," does not imply that the soul is fanned by any sweet breath of God; but when we read, "O Padre nostro, che ne' cieli stai, we are moved on to a truer understanding of the Saviour's thought. Even if the evangelical reports were as accurate as they are asserted to be, they would not be long to the high efforts of the human mind. The divine which there we see is behind the document. Before Christ himself we stand with uncovered head, and naked feet, and streaming eyes. No profane suggestions of equality with him are ever breathed from our lips. No foolish confoundings of that moral elevation which he produced in his followers, with the intellectual elevation of less blessed men, are we ever guilty of. It is only when the sacred names are degraded, and the Holy Ghost is put on a level with a stenographer, with only one virtue, that of veracity, it is only when holy things are profaned by such narrow theories, and letter and parchment substituted for divine utterance, - - that we are impelled to take exceptions, and to declare, as we do, that the Evangelists in making their record had no inspiration. 1853.] Supposed Infallibility of the Gospels. 353 The act of recording facts is not an act in which inspiration would assist; but inspiration would be the greatest hindrance to it. Who would not rather have a schoolboy than a sibyl to report a street-fight? And if you wished to know the facts of the taking of the Bastile, would you listen to Madame Guyon or to Monsieur Dusaulx? That divine afflatus which fits a man for creating, and which fits another man for interpreting, does not especially fit a man for testifying. We do not read of the gift of reporting, as one of the charismata of the early Church. It is well known that the "Evangelists," who are spoken of by Paul as among those endowed with the spirit, had a very different function from that of bearing witness to facts. The latter function was best discharged when the Spirit retreated from a mind which it had possessed, when a Christian, in the remissions of inspiration, fell into a state of calm memory, with nothing of his higher moods but the negative virtues which they had induced,― veracity, absence of all ambition, stillness and passiveness of sentiment. We say, then, at the beginning, strangely confused and filled with smoke as is the atmosphere about this subject, that we see our object clearly, and will not confound it with any other. The question of the Gospels is not a question of inspiration, but a question of testimony. The party which continues to use that pedantic phrase, "plenary inspiration," in so loose and absurd a sense, not only asserts a theory, but affirms a fact on which the theory is in part predicated, for which, perhaps, the theory is invented; namely, that the Gospels are historically accurate, that there is in them an absolute freedom from error. And this is made a capital point, the corner-stone of dogmatic orthodoxy. We propose to examine this cor ner-stone. The first natural way of testing the correctness of any narrative is to compare it with the facts, however otherwise ascertained. But inasmuch as our sacred history covers a field which is not trodden by any other writers, and hardly touched, we find this method impossible. Yet since we have in our record several testimonies, one may be tried by the other; having made one Gospel the criterion of what really transpired, we may thereby test the faithfulness of all others which relate the same thing; |