the teaching of this ancient school,
so the explanations suggested of divine mysteries(982) like the Trinity or
Redemption are similar. These explanations are the mystical expressions of
the thoughts apprehended by this faculty, when it strives to raise itself
to oneness with the infinite object which it contemplates.

These remarks will explain the philosophical system taught by Coleridge,
and will furnish the clue to interpret the form of theological thought
which has originated from him. The parallel between his system and those
with which it has now been compared, will be no less obvious in noticing
the results of it. The system of Schleiermacher was the theological
corollary from the theories of German philosophy above named; and the
school of the Alexandrian fathers was the corresponding one which resulted
from the Neo-Platonic.(983) We should therefore expect that, if the
philosophy of Coleridge was a mixture of the two schools above described,
the teaching of his disciples would combine the two theological schools
which flowed from those systems. Attentive consideration of the
philosophical side of the modern movement of free thought in English
theology will confirm this anticipation, and show that its chief elements
are a union of these two theological schools. The tendency to require that
the human soul shall apprehend divine mysteries intellectually, as well as
feel their saving power emotionally; the reduction of inspiration
theologically, as well as psychologically, to an elevated but natural
state(984) of the human consciousness; the inclination to regard the work
of Christ as the office of the divine teacher to humanity, and human
history as the longing for such a divine voice; the description of the
work of Christ as a divine manifestation of a reconciliation which
previously existed, instead of being the mode of effecting it; the
tendency to view the death of Christ by the light of the incarnation,
instead of regarding the incarnation by the light of the atonement, the
death of Christ as the solution of the enigma of God becoming flesh;--these
seem all to be corollaries from the philosophy of the Neo-Platonists, and
find their parallel in the school of the Alexandrian fathers: they express
too, though with some differences, which will be apparent by recalling the
remarks in a preceding lecture,(985) the fundamental religious conceptions
of Schleiermacher, to which we before had occasion to object as inve