Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/311

Rh which Charles Secretan is the editor, he stands as a mediator between two opposite parties, which are incessantly in combat, the one against the other, and whose representatives in Switzerland are, on the one side, Merle d'Aubigné, M. Gaussin, in his Theopneustie, and Count de Gasparin, in his periodical Archives du Christianisme, and the other Genevese, Edmund Scherer and his fellow-laborers in the Strasburg publication Revue de Theologie. The former maintain the literal inspiration of the Scriptures; the latter reject it, and—both parties go too far. Science, however, and the thinking public, are gainers in the mean time by the contention, because it is carried on with fairness by fair and learned men. Edmund Scherer, as an individual, is noble and amiable; but the unreasonable and intolerant conduct which he has met with in Switzerland, in many quarters, may well have tended to make his own behavior more unyielding and his opinions more one-sided. Between these combatant camps—in the east and west of Switzerland—stand Vinet and Secretan, and the school which they have founded. They say but little about the husk and the mere forms, but they study to preserve the kernel and the spiritual meaning, as well in life as in books. An independent thinker, M. de Rougemont, a Swiss of the Canton of Neufchâtel, has lately joined this party. I had often heard him spoken of, but it was in the house of Secretan that I first became well acquainted with him by his book, Christ et ses Temoins, a work which takes an important place in the theological literature of the present time. It has benefitted and interested me by its honest examination