V.I 
 
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 UNIVERSITY 
 
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CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
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TEiOTS FOE PEIESTS AND PEOPLE. 
 
LOKDOK : 
 
 PKIHTED BT R. OLAT, SON, AND TATLOB, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL. 
 
TEACTS 
 FOE PEIESTS AND PEOPLE. 
 
 BY VARIOUS WEITEES. 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
 MACMILLAJSr AN'D CO. 
 
 dtambribg^ : 
 
 AND 23, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, 
 
 '$antsm. 
 
 1861. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 No. I. RELIGTO: LAIOI. 
 
 By Thomas Hughes, Author of "Tom Brown's School Days." 
 
 No. II. THE MOTE AND THE BEAM: A CLERGYMAN'S 
 LESSONS FROM THE PRESENT PANIC. 
 
 By the Rev. F. D. Maueioe, Incumbent of St. Peter's, St. 
 Marylebone. 
 
 No. III. THE ATONEMENT AS A PACT AND AS A THEORY. 
 
 By the Rev. Feanois Garden, Sub-Dean of her Majesty's 
 Chapels Royal. 
 
 No. IV. THE SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN: AN 
 APPEAL TO SCRIPTURE ON THE QUESTION OF 
 MIRACLES. 
 
 By the Rev. John Llewelyn _p a vies, Rector of Christ Church, 
 St. Marylebone. ' 
 
 No. V. ON TERMS OF COMMUNION. , , ^ 
 
 I. The Boundaries oe the Chuboh. By the Rev. C.'K'Fa^'^ 
 II. The Message of the Chukoh. By J. N. Lanqlet, M.A. 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 No. VI. TEE SERMON OP THE BISBOP OF OXFORD ON 
 REVELATION, AND THE DAYMAN'S ANSWER. 
 
 I. A Dialogue on Doubt. By J. M. Ludlow. 
 
 II. MoEALiTY AND DiviNiTT. By the Rev. F. D. Maueioe, 
 Incumbent of St. Peter's, Vere Street, St. Marylebone. 
 
 No. VII. TWO LA 7 DIALOGUES. 
 
 By J. M. Ludlow. 
 
 I. On Laws of Natueb, and the Faith therein. 
 II. On Positive Philosophy. 
 
PREPACE. 
 
 These Tracts were commenced about six months ago. 
 The controversy respecting the 'Essays and Eeviews,' 
 which has not subsided yet, was then at its height. 
 Clergymen and laymen were told that they must either 
 declare their sympathy with the hook openly, or must 
 unite in condemning it. 
 
 The writers of these Tracts felt that they coald take 
 neither of these courses. They could not declare their 
 sympathy with the book ; for it seemed to them 
 almost entirely negative ; hinting at faidts in the 
 prevalent religious opinions of the day, but not in- 
 vestigating them ; hesitating dislike to certain obliga- 
 tions which are imposed upon Churchmen, but not 
 stating or considering what those obligations are ; 
 leaving an impression upon devout Christians that 
 something in their faith is untenable, when they want 
 to find what in it is tenable; suggesting that earnest 
 infidels in this day have much to urge on behalf of 
 
viii PKEFACE. 
 
 their doubts and difficulties ; never fairly asking what 
 they have to urge, what are their douhts and diffi- 
 culties. 
 
 The very same reason which hindered the writers 
 of these Tracts from accepting the teaching of the 
 ' Essays and Eeviews ' hindered them from joining in 
 the popular denunciation of them, or in appeals to 
 ecclesiastical authorities against them. Those denun- 
 ciations and appeals took an almost entirely negative 
 form. They contradicted and slandered objectors ; 
 they were not assertions of a belief; they led Chris- 
 tians away from the Bible to apologies for the 
 Bible, from the creeds which they confess to certain 
 notions about the creeds, from practice to disputation. 
 They met no real doubts in the minds of unbelievers ; 
 they only called for the suppression of all doubts. 
 They confounded the opinions of the day with 
 the faith once delivered to the saints. They tended 
 to make anonymous journalists the lawgivers of the 
 Church. They tended to discourage clergymen from 
 expressing manfully what is in their hearts, lest they 
 should incur the charge of being unfaithful to their 
 vows. They tended to hinder all serious and honest 
 co-operation between men who are not bound together 
 in a sectarian agreement, lest they should make them- 
 selves responsible for opinions different fr-om their own. 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 Such consequences are perilous to the existence of 
 a Church. Every memher of a Church is bound to do 
 what in him lies to avert them. The writers of these 
 Tracts might he able to do very little — ^might be 
 unworthy to be even pioneers in that work of Refor- 
 mation which God will accomplish if we are ever so 
 unwilling to take part in it. But they could not with 
 safe consciences stand aloof affecting neutrality, in a 
 time when neutrality is only possible for critics who 
 look down with equal scorn on all parties, who have 
 no sympathy with the deep and strong convictions of 
 any. They felt that it was their business, as far as 
 they could, to have sympathy, and to express sym- 
 pathy, with the strong convictions of all parties and of 
 all men ; to refuse alliance with them only so far as they 
 are negative and contradictory; yet to deal justly and 
 reverently with their negations and contradictions also ; 
 to seek the meaning of them for the very purpose of 
 avoiding them. If the writers of these Tracts could in 
 any measure, however feebly, pursue this course, and 
 keep these ends in sight — they might vindicate the 
 liberty and the duty of clergymen to speak what they 
 think, and to let other men speak what they think ; 
 they might show that those who have taken vows 
 under Him who was called a blasphemer and a friend of 
 publicans and sinners — ^who, in the days of His flesh, 
 
X PEBFACB. 
 
 was denounced by every section of the religious world 
 — have no right to tremble at the censures of Mobs, 
 of Convocations, even of those ecclesiastical fathers to 
 whom they gladly yield reverence and homage; they 
 might do something to establish that healthy intercourse 
 between clergymen and laymen, between Churchmen 
 and Dissenters, between Christians and unbelievers, 
 which involves no compromises, and which is neces- 
 sary to the fulfilment of the tasks that are committed 
 to the priests of the land, but which the recent excite- 
 ment threatens to make impossible ; they might lead 
 Christians to feel more sure of the truths which sus- 
 tain their being, to be less fearful that God may prove 
 weaker than the Devil; they might lead those who 
 are not Christians to perceive that the Gospel dreads no 
 investigation, that it abhors that temper of mind which 
 shrinks from investigation, which is content with 
 appearances, which will not seek for the substance 
 that no changes can affect, no opinions can make less 
 solid and less eternal. 
 
 It has been necessary for these objects that persons 
 should be united as writers who differ in many 
 points of opinion. Their differences, instead of being 
 concealed from the reader, have been obtruded upon 
 him. Tracts have been brought together which axe 
 manifestly written by men who have been led by oppo- 
 
PEEFACE. XI 
 
 site processes of thought to opposite conclusions. To 
 think of these, to compare them, to see how they may 
 consist with a radical union of purpose and principle, is 
 one of the most desirable exercises in this time, one of 
 the greatest counteractions of the Sectarianism which 
 is our curse. It has been a special object of the writers, 
 all of whom have hitherto been members of the Eng- 
 lish Churchj to show that such varieties are not only 
 compatible with her existence, but necessary to it ; 
 that if ■ she fall into the condition of a Church standing 
 on opinions she will renounce her position, and be 
 deserted by God. To shrink from any mutual respon- 
 sibility which this design may involve would have 
 been disgraceful cowardice. To incur that responsibility 
 at a time when the editors of anonymous journals 
 ■are endeavouring to make it dangerous and penal for 
 clergymen to confess what they write before man and 
 God, is a great duty. 
 
 The first volume of these Tracts only touches upon a 
 few of the topics which are most interesting to English- 
 men in the present day. It is hoped that hereafter these 
 may be considered more thoroughly and in different 
 lights, and that many questions may be grappled with 
 which have been only approached at a distance. These 
 especially must come under our notice :-^' Is the 
 ' humanity which men speak of and worship in this day 
 
XU PEEFACE. 
 
 ' a practical reality, if it is not connected with a Son 
 ' of Man ? ' 'Is Christian civilization an obsolete 
 ' thing, or must it not in this age, more than in any 
 ' previous one, make its power known and throw 
 'down the mammonism which is opposed to it?' 
 How many points of the most direct, practical, pressing 
 interest are involved in these questions — ^what philo- 
 sophical and theological principles are involved in them 
 — the reader need not be informed. The writers of 
 these Tracts can only be of the least use to their gene- 
 ration by determining not to separate practical questions 
 from principles ; by accepting in all their force the words 
 which proceeded from the divinest lips : — ' Every one 
 ' that doeth evilhateih the light, neither cometh to the light, 
 ' lest his deeds should he reproved. But he that doeth the 
 ' truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made 
 ' manifest, that they are wrought in GodJ" 
 
TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. 
 
 No. I. 
 
 EELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 All who look at the title of this essay, and then at 
 the name of the writer, have a right to ask, why it has 
 been wiitten. They may fairiy say, ' We can under- 
 stand why any man who is a finished scholar, who has 
 earned a hearing as a critic, or philosopher, should write 
 on these subjects at this time ; but a man who is neither 
 a divine, a scholar, a critic, nor a philosopher, what can 
 he have to say? Surely he at least might hold his 
 tongue.' 
 
 I answer : — ' I am no scholar, or critic, I know nothing 
 of natural science, very little indeed of controversial 
 theology. If the controversy had remained in the high 
 regions of scholarship, criticism, or science, no one would 
 have been troubled with any word of mine. I have 
 neither head nor time for such matters. But this is not 
 so. It is time for every man who has a faith, and can 
 get a hearing, to speak out. For the debate has come 
 down to the every-day working world. Men and women 
 occupied with the common work of life — who are earning 
 their bread in the sweat of their brows, and marrying, 
 and bringing up children, and struggling, and sinning, 
 
8 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No.' 
 
 and repenting — feel that the questions which schoolmen 
 are discussing are somehow their questions. Not indeed 
 in form, for not one in a thousand of the persons whose 
 minds are disturbed jiist now care to make themselves 
 acquainted with the forms and modes of the particular 
 controversies which are raging. If they try to do so, 
 they soon throw them aside with impatience. They 
 feel, ' No, it is not this. We care not what may be said 
 about ideology, or multitudinism, or evidential views, or 
 cosmogonies. At the bottom of all this we suspect — 
 nay, we know — there is a deeper strife, a strife about the 
 very foundations of faith and human life. We want to 
 know from you learned persons, whether (as we have 
 been told from our infancy) there is a faith for mankind, 
 for us as well as for you, for the millions of our own 
 countrymen, and in all Christian and heathen lands, who 
 find living their lives a sore business, and have need of 
 all the light they can get to help them.' 
 
 It cannot be denied. The sooner we face the fact the 
 better. This is the question, and it has to be answered 
 now, by us living Englishmen and Englishwomen : the 
 deepest question which man has to do with, and yet — 
 or, rather, therefore — one which every toiling man must 
 grapple with, for the sake pf his own honesty, of his 
 own life. 
 
 There is nothing to be gained by shutting our eyes 
 any longer to the fact, that doubt as to what answer 
 must be given to this question is very widely spread 
 amongst us. An attempt to answer it — or at any rate 
 to clear away some of what the authors believe to be 
 
I.] BMIGIO LAICI. 9 
 
 hindrances to an answer — has heen made by the writers 
 of the Essays and Reviews. In my humble opinion, 
 this attempt is wrong in principle. But I must say that 
 the aim of that book is, not to set up any deistic or 
 pantheistic philosophy in the place of Christianity, but 
 to claim for English Churchmen the right of honest and 
 free inquiry in the realm of nature and the history of 
 man as a necessary step to the spread of a spiritual 
 Christianity. I do not think they have taken the right 
 method of con&ming our English faith, or that this 
 book of theirs will confirm it ; but I fear nothing from 
 such inquiries. What I do fear is the dishonesty of the 
 attempts which have been made to put them down, and 
 to stifle free inquiry. It is sad to see all our English 
 Bishops, and eight thousand clergymen, trying to make 
 scapegoats of these men, as if they too were not on their 
 trial before God and their country. Let them stand 
 forward and say what they believe, that we may know. 
 The doubts which have now to be met have, as was 
 sure to be the case, taken more hold on our young men 
 than on any others amongst us. For many years I have 
 been thrown very much into the society of young men 
 of all ranks. I spend a great part of my time with them. 
 I like being with them, and I think they like being with 
 me. I know well, therefore, how rare anything like a 
 living faith — a faith in and by which you can live, and 
 for which you would die — is amongst them. I know 
 that it is becoming rarer every day. I find it every day 
 more difficult to get them to speak on the subject : they 
 will not do so unless you drive them to it. 
 
 B 
 
10 TRACTS FOB, PBISSTS AND PEOPLK [No 
 
 I feel deeply that for the sake of England they must 
 be driven to it, and therefore that it is the bounden duty 
 of every man who has any faith himself, and who has a 
 chance of being listened to by them, to speak out man- 
 fully what he has to say, concealing nothing, disguising 
 nothing, and leaving the issue to God. 
 
 I would ask for a hearing, then, from young men. I 
 wiU he as short as I can, and as plain as I can. This is 
 no time and no subject for special pleading, and I have 
 no adversaries over whom I want to triumph. Nor is 
 there any question whatever involved in the great con- 
 troversy on which I should not be glad to speak out 
 what I think. On the contrary, my whole object is to 
 speak out, openly and affectionately, not stepping lightly 
 over or shirking altogether ground which I know that 
 my hearers believe to be unsound, and unable to hear an 
 honest man's weight. I solemnly declare that I know 
 of none such. 
 
 Every man who has watched the signs of the times 
 must have heen looking for some such crisis as the 
 present one for years. That which has heen called the 
 ' negative theology ' has been spreading rapidly, though 
 for the most part silently. In the first instance it may 
 have heen simply ' a recoil from some of the doctrines 
 which are to he heard at church and chapel ; a distrust 
 of the old arguments for, or proofs of, a miraculous reve- 
 lation ; and a misgiving as to the authority, or extent of 
 the authority of the Scriptures.' But, as was sure to be 
 ■the case, the 'negative theology' could not stop, and has 
 not stopped, here. 'Men who have come across these 
 
I.] RBLIGIO LAICL 11 
 
 recoils, distrusts, misgivings, will soon find (as many of 
 you have found), if they are honest and resolute with 
 themselves, that there is another doubt underlying all 
 these, a douht which they may turn from in horror when 
 it is first whispered in their hearts, but which will come 
 back again and again. That doubt is whether there is 
 a Grod at all, or rather, whether a living, personal Grod, 
 thinking, acting, and ruling in this world in which we 
 are, has ever revealed Himself to man. 
 
 This is the one question of our time, and of all times 
 upon the answer which nations or men can give to it 
 hang life and death. 
 
 There are some of you, I fear I may say many of 
 you, who will answer at once, ' No : it is not possible ; 
 at any rate there has never been such ' a revelation. 
 What we in England (along with the rest of Christen- 
 dom) have put forward and upheld, as such a revela- 
 tion, is crumbling to pieces in our hands. It was an 
 invention of man, a nobler invention perhaps than any 
 which went before it, but full of the usual superstitions 
 which broke up all its predecessors, and are now break- 
 ing it up.' And those amongst you who would say this 
 would point to this volume of Essays and Reviews, and 
 ask how after that we can seriously stand up for the old 
 faith. 
 
 It is to these of you that I would in the first instance 
 specially address myself. Let us see how the case 
 stands. I wish to put the case as favourably for you 
 as I can, with this one remark as to the Essays and 
 Reviews (which I am bound in justice to the writers to 
 
 b2 
 
12 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLK [No. 
 
 put forward at once and emphatically), that I do not 
 find in them what you say is there. You say then that 
 this book destroys, or, at any rate, that it has given the 
 finishing stroke to, much old superstition, that had 
 stiffened about the religious mind of England, and had 
 made her worship little better than an idolatry. In the 
 first place, the belief in miracles, including the Incarna- 
 tion of our Blessed Lord, must be acknowledged to be 
 henceforth impossible. For the notion of a domain of 
 intellect and knowledge, in which man can and may 
 use his reason, and a boundless region of spiritual things 
 beyond, which is the sole dominion of faith — from the 
 threshold of which region reason retires gracefully, 
 admitting that ' What is not a subject for a problem 
 may hold its place in a creed ' — is too utterly un- 
 English to do more than offer a momentary resting- 
 place for a few timid spirits who are still encumbered 
 with some of the old trappings. 
 
 Then Prophecy must be given up, unless we are con- 
 tent to accept, what you are quite ready to grant us, 
 that what we call prophecies are, generally, noble old 
 Eastern poems, full of synjbolism, like other Eastern 
 poems, but referring (so far as they refer to any events 
 at all) to events happening under the writers' eyes. 
 
 The Inspiration of Scripture follows. Scholars have 
 already proved beyond a doubt that most of the books 
 were not written by the persons, or at the times, by 
 whom and at which they profess to have been written. 
 Every year is knocking greater holes in them, throwing 
 discredit on fresh places in their narrative. If we like 
 
I.] RELIGIO LAICI. 13 
 
 to retain them as very remarkable old books of a re- 
 markable people, well and good. You would yourselves 
 probably put them above the Vedas, the Koran, or 
 Homer. But if we claim more than this for them, we 
 must look to it, and not complain at the work of dissec- 
 tion, inspection, analysis, which has to be carried out 
 rigorously, let the results be what they will. 
 
 Lastly, although you do not feel so sure on this point 
 as on all the others, you must say the evidence is get- 
 ting so strong — what with Messrs. Crosse and Weekes' 
 experiments, Mr. Darwin's patient investigations, even 
 Mr. Owen's admissions, which,, on such a point, are of 
 enormous value — that we had better give up ' creation ' 
 altogether. It cannot hold out above a year or two, just 
 long enough to give the philosophers time to finish their 
 experiments. Better give it up at once, and save our- 
 selves humiliations in the future. 
 
 I am not aware that there are any other special points 
 which you would press on me. I cannot see why there 
 need be. If one thinks for a moment what is implied 
 in the above admissions, one must at once grant that 
 you have made a pretty clean sweep. Any residuum is 
 not worth haggling over. 
 
 Well, I say, be it so. I wish to put myself honestly 
 at your point of view. Let us then give up revelation 
 altogether. It requires a greater effort than I am able 
 to make, but I will do my best. Let the four Gospels 
 first sink into mere legends, and then be lost like a 
 decade of Livy. Let it come to be utterly denied, that 
 there is a Son of Man and Son of God. But let the 
 
14 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 idea of Jesus, as a beautiful and noWe mythical per- 
 sonage, a name to be placed in the same categorj witli, 
 but perhaps higher than, those of Vishnu, Balder, 
 Hercules, iloat down on the stream of time, to have 
 such effect on the hearts and wills of men, as all beautiful 
 and noble ideas will have, and no more. With our 
 Lord must go all belief in a personal God : at least, I 
 do not see myself how any such belief can be then held, 
 and I take it you would not deny that so it must be. 
 Tou would probably decline, however, to make any con- 
 fession on this point. The negative theology, infidelity, 
 and orthodoxy of a certain kind, here join forces, and 
 you would agree with Mr. Mansel, that as man cannot 
 know God in any such sense as St. Paul and others 
 seem to have believed that he might, it is worse than 
 useless for him to waste any more of his own and the 
 world's time in getting back again and again by different 
 roads to the old impossibility. 
 
 Having thus to the best of my power put myself 
 where you wish to put me, given you aU you can ask, I 
 must in my turn ask you what you are going to set up 
 instead. You cannot leave me, you cannot stand your- 
 selves, on a simple negation. The world is going on 
 turning as it has been used to do, night succeed- 
 ing day, and generation generation ; nations are waking 
 into life, or falling into bondage : there is a deal of 
 wonderful work of one sort or another going on in it, 
 and you and I in our little corner have our own share 
 of work to get done as well as we can. Now you hare 
 put out my old light, and some light or other I must 
 
I.] BELIGIO LAICI. 15 
 
 liave, and you would wish me to have. What is it 
 to be? 
 
 You will answer prohahly, that I have touched the 
 heart of the matter in putting my question. Night follows 
 day, and generation generation. All things are founded 
 on a ' permanent order/ ' self-sustaining and self-evolving 
 powers pervade all nature.' Of this order and these 
 powers we are getting to know more every day ; when 
 we know them perfectly, man, the colossal man, will 
 have reached the highest development of which he is 
 capable. We need not trouble ourselves about breaking 
 them, or submitting to them, some of you would add, 
 for we cannot either break them or submit to them. 
 They will fulfil themselves. It is they, these great 
 generalizations, which are alone acting in, and ruling 
 the world. We, however eccentric our actions may be, 
 however we may pride ourselves on willing and work- 
 ing, are only simple links in the chain. A general law 
 of average orders the unruly wills and affections of 
 sinful men. 
 
 But here I must ask, on what is this permanent order, 
 on what are these laws which you tell me of, founded ? 
 I acknowledge a permanent order, physical laws, as 
 fully as you can, but I believe them to be expres- 
 sions of a living and a righteous will ; I believe a holy 
 and true God to be behind them, therefore, I can sit 
 down humbly, and try to understand them, and when I 
 understand, to obey. Are the permanent order, the laws 
 you speak of, founded on a will ? If so, on whose will ? 
 If on the will of a God, of what God ? Of a God who 
 
16 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PTSOPLB. [No- 
 
 has revealed His character, His purpose, Himself, to 
 you ? If so, where, how, when ? 
 
 But if you tell me that these laws, this order, are not 
 founded on any living will, or that you do not know 
 that they are, then I say (in the words of one of the 
 Essayists) you are holding out to me ' an iron rule 
 ' which guides to nothing and ends in nothing — which 
 ' may be possible to the logical understanding, but is 
 ' not possible to the spirit of man,' and you are telling 
 me, since worship is a necessity of my being, to worship 
 that. In the name and in the strength of a man, and a 
 man's will, I utterly reject and defy your dead laws, for 
 dead they must be. They may grind me to powder, but 
 I have that in me which is above them, which will own 
 no obedience to them. Dead laws are, so far as I can 
 see, just what I, and you, and all mankind, have been 
 put into this world to fight against. Call them laws of 
 nature if you will, I do not care. Take the commonest, 
 the most universal: is it or is it not by the law of 
 nature that the ground brings forth briars and all sorts 
 of noxious and useless weeds if you let it alone ? If it 
 is by the law of nature, am I to obey the law, or to dig 
 my garden and root out the weeds ? Doubtless I shall 
 get too old to dig, and shall die, and the law will remain, 
 and the weeds grow over my garden and over my grave, 
 but for all that I decline to obey the law. 
 
 I see a law of death working all around me ; I feel it 
 in my own members. Is this one of your laws, a part 
 of the ' permanent order,' which is to serve me instead 
 of the God of my fathers? If it be, I mean to resist it 
 
I.] RELIGIO LAICI. 17 
 
 to the last gasp. I utterly hate it. No nohle or true 
 ■work is done in this world except in direct defiance of 
 it. What is to become of the physician's work, of every 
 effort at sanitary reform, of every attempt at civilizing 
 and raising the poor and the degraded, if we are to sit 
 down and submit ourselves to this law ? 
 
 Am I never to build a house, out of respect to the law 
 of gravitation ? Sooner or later the law will assert itself 
 and my house will tumble down. Nevertheless I will 
 conquer the law for such space as I can. In short, I will 
 own no dead law as. my master. Dead laws I will hate 
 always, and in all places, with all my heart, with all 
 my soul, with all my mind, and with all my strength. 
 
 But besides rebellions against your laws of nature, 
 and your permanent order, you must be, prepared for 
 another result of your work. You have destroyed 
 revelation, but have you destroyed, can you destroy, 
 the superstitious element (as you would call it, perhaps) 
 in man ? Granted that you have shown me that what 
 I held to be my knowledge of God is all moonshine, I 
 tell you that I shall not give up thinking about a God 
 for all that. I tell you ,that I shall make gods for 
 myself, in my own image, in the image of devils. The 
 history of the world tells you that I shall do this, that 
 all men will do it. By which of your laws are you 
 going to lay all the devilish conceptions of God which 
 will soon be let loose on the world ? 
 
 I will follow this part of my subject no further. If 
 I have misunderstood those of you to whom the above 
 remarks are chiefly addressed, it is not for want of trying 
 
18 TRACTS FOB PRIHSTS AND PWPLE. [No. 
 
 to understand you, but of capacity for making out what 
 you mean. 
 
 And now let me turn to the other part of the subject. 
 I have been speaking of that which I cannot believe ; 
 let me speak to you of that which I do believe, of that 
 which I hold to be a faith, the faith, the only faith for 
 mankind. Do not turn from it because it seems to be 
 egotistic. I can only speak for myself, for what I know 
 in my own heart and conscience. While I keep to this 
 I can speak positively, and I wish above all things to 
 speak positively. 
 
 I was bred as a child and as a boy to look upon 
 Christ as the true and rightful King and Head of our 
 race, the Son of God and the Son of man. When I 
 came to think for myself I found the want, the longing 
 for a perfectly righteous king and head, the deepest of 
 which 1 was conscious — for a being in whom I could 
 rest, who was in perfect sympathy with me and all men. 
 ' Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks, so longeth 
 ' my soul after Thee, oh God. My soul is athirst for 
 ' God, yea, even for the living God,' — these, and the 
 like sayings of the Psalmist, began to have a meaning 
 for me. 
 
 Then, the teaching which had sunk into me uncon- 
 sciously rose up and seemed to meet this longing. If 
 that teaching were true, here was He for whom I was in 
 search. I turned to the records of His life and death. 
 I read, and considered, as well as I could, the chai-acter 
 of Christ, what He said of Himself and His work ; His 
 teaching, His acts, His sufferings. Then, when I was 
 
I.] BELI6I0 LAICI. 19 
 
 as young as most of you to whom 1 am now speaking, 
 I found that this was indeed He. Here was the Head, 
 the King, for whom I had longed. The more I read 
 and thought, the more absolutely sure I became of it. 
 This is He, I wanted no other then, I have never wanted 
 another since. Him I can look up to and acknowledge 
 with the most perfect loyalty. He satisfies me wholly. 
 There is no recorded thought, word, or deed of His that 
 I would wish to change — ^that I do not recognise and 
 rejoice in as those of my rightful and righteous King 
 and Head. He has claimed for. me, for you, for every 
 man, all that we can ask for or dream of, for He has 
 claimed every one of us for His soldiers and brethren, 
 the acknowledged children of His and our Father and 
 God. 
 
 But this loyalty I could never have rendered, no man 
 can ever render, I believe, except to a Son of man. He 
 must be perfect man as well as perfect God to satisfy 
 us — must have dwelt in a body like ours, have felt our 
 sorrows, pains, temptations, weaknesses. He was in- 
 carnate by the Spirit of God of the Virgin, In this way 
 I can see how he was indeed perfect God and perfect 
 Man. I can conceive of no other in which he could 
 have been so. The Incarnation is for me the support 
 of all personal holiness, and the key to human history. 
 
 What was Christ's work on earth? He came to 
 manifest, to make clear to us, the will and nature of 
 His Father, our God. He made that will and nature 
 clear to us as the perfectly loving and long-suffering 
 and righteous will and nature. He came to lead us 
 
20 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PWPLE. [No. 
 
 men, His brethren, Lack into perfect understanding of, 
 and submission to that will— to make us at one with it ; 
 and this he did triumphantly by His own perfect 
 obedience to that will, by sacrificing Himself even to 
 death for us, because it was the will of His and our 
 Father that He should give Himself up wholly and 
 unreservedly; thus, by His one sacrifice, redeeming us, 
 and leaving us an example that we, too, should sacrifice 
 ourselves to Him for our brethren. Thus I believe in 
 the Atonement. 
 
 Again, Christ was not only revealed to those who 
 saw Him here. He did not only go about doing His 
 Father's will here on earth for thirty-three years, 
 eighteen hundred years ago, and then leave us. Had 
 this been so, he would certainly in one sense have been 
 revealed, in the only sense in which some orthodox 
 writers seem to teach that he has been revealed. He 
 would have been revealed to certain men, at a certain 
 time, in history, and to us in the accounts which we 
 have of Him in the Gospels, through which accounts 
 only we should have had to gain our knowledge of 
 Him, judging of such accounts by our own fallible 
 understandings. But He said, ' I will be with you 
 always, even to the end of the world,' — 'I will send 
 my spirit into your hearts to testify of me ; ' and He 
 has fulfilled His promise. He is revealed, not in 
 the Bible, not in history, not in or to some men at 
 a certain time, or to a man here and there, but in 
 the heart of you, and of me, and of every man and 
 woman, who is now, or ever has been, on this earth. 
 
I.] BIELIOIO LAICI. 21 
 
 His Spirit is in each of us, striving with us, cheering 
 us, guiding us, strengthening us. At any moment 
 in the lives of any one of us we may prove the 
 fact for ourselves ; we may give ourselves up to His 
 guidance, and He will accept the trust, and guide us 
 into the knowledge of God, and of all truth. From this 
 knowledge (more certain to me than any other, of which 
 I am ten thousand times more sure than I am that 
 Queen Victoria is reigning in England, that I am 
 writing with this pen at this table) if I could see no 
 other manifestation of Christ in creation, I believe in 
 the Trinity in Unity, the name on which all things in 
 heaven and earth stand, which meets and satisfies the 
 deepest needs and longings of my soul. 
 
 The knowledge of this name, of these truths, has 
 come to me, and to all men, in one sense, specially and 
 directly through the Scriptures. I believe that God 
 has given us these Scriptures, this Bible, to instruct us 
 in these the highest of all truths. Therefore I reverence 
 this Bible as I reverence no other book ; but I reverence 
 it because it speaks of Him, and His dealings with us. 
 The Bible has no charm or power of its own. It may 
 become a chain round men's necks, an idol in the 
 throne of God, to men who will worship the book, and 
 not Him of whom the book speaks. There are many 
 signs that this is, or is fast becoming, the case with us ; 
 but it is our fault, and not the Bible's fault. We 
 persist in reading our own narrowness and idolatry 
 into it, instead of hearing what it really is saying to us. 
 I shall have to speak of Inspiration presently; but in 
 
22 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 England, -whoever will make a confession of faith, must 
 put in the front of it his belief about the Bible. 
 
 1 do not know that there are any other great doctrines 
 of our Church on which you would wish me to speak. 
 If there are, I can only say that it is not from any wish 
 to keep back my belief as to them that I pass them 
 over. I hold them all, so far as I know, and simply, 
 and in the natural sense, and am ready to give a reason 
 for my faith to any one. Of the subjects not articles of 
 the creed, such as miracles, inspiration, prophecy, future 
 rewards and punishments, which are specially troubling 
 you and the English people, I will now speak. 
 
 I believe that the writers of Holy Scripture were 
 directly inspired by God, in a manner, and to an extent, 
 in and to which no other men whose words have come 
 down to us have been inspired. I cannot draw the line 
 between their inspiration and that of other great teachers 
 of mankind. I believe that the words of these, too, 
 just in so far as they have proved themselves true 
 words, were inspired by God, But though I cannot, 
 and man cannot, draw the line, God himself has 
 done so; for these books have been filtered out, as 
 it were, under His guidance, from many others, 
 which, in ages gone by, claimed a place beside them, 
 and are now forgotten, while these have stood for 
 thousands of years, and are not likely to be set aside 
 now. For they speak, if men will read them, to needs 
 and hopes set deep in om- human nature, which no 
 other books ever have spoken to, or ever can speak to, 
 in the same way — they set forth His government of the 
 
I.] RELIGIO LAICI. 23 
 
 world as no other books ever have set it forth, or ever 
 can set it forth. 
 
 But though I do not believe that the difference be- 
 tween the inspiration of Isaiah and Shakespere is expres- 
 sible by words, the difference between the inspiration of 
 the Holy Scriptures — the Bible as a whole — and any 
 other possible or conceivable collection of the utterances 
 of men, seems to me clear enough. The Bible has 
 come to us from the Jewish nation, which was chosen 
 by God as the one best fitted to receive for all man- 
 kind, and to give forth to all mankind, the revelation 
 of Him — ^to teach them His name and character — 
 that is, to enable them to know Him, and, in know- 
 ing Him, to feel how they and the world need re- 
 demption, and to understand how they and the world 
 have been redeemed. This Bible, this Book of the 
 chosen people, taken as a whole, has done this, is in 
 short the written revelation of God. This being so, 
 there can be no other inspired book in the same sense 
 in which the Bible is inspired, unless we, or some other 
 world, are not redeemed, require another redemption 
 and another Christ. But as we and all worlds are re- 
 deemed, and Christ is come, and God has revealed His 
 name and His character in Christ so that we can know 
 Him, the Bible is and must remain the inspired Book, 
 the Book of the Church for all time, to which nothing 
 can be added, from which nothing can be taken, as 
 they will find who try to take from it or add to it. 
 There may be another Homer, Plato, Shakespere ; there 
 can be no other Bible. 
 
24 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 As to the prophecies of Christ in the Bible, believ- 
 ing that Book to be the inspired Book, the written 
 revelation of Grod, of course I must expect to find it 
 full of passages referring to Him who was to show 
 forth the nature and character of God to men. The 
 longing for a Deliverer and Eedeemer of himself and 
 his race was the strongest and deepest feeling in the 
 heart of every Jewish patriot. His whole life was 
 grounded and centred on the promise and hope of such 
 an one. Just therefore when his utterances would be 
 most human and most noble, most in sympathy with 
 the cries and groanings of his own nation and the uni- 
 verse, they would all point to and centre in that De- 
 liverer and Redeemer — just in so far as they were truly 
 noble, human, and Godlike, they would shadow forth 
 His true character, the words He would speak, the acts 
 He would do. Doubtless the prophet would have 
 before his mind any notable deliverance, any noble 
 sufferer, or deliverer of his own time ; his words would 
 refer to these. But from these he would be inevitably 
 drawn up to the great promised Deliverer and Re- 
 deemer of his nation and his race, because he would see 
 after all how incomplete the deliverance wrought by 
 these must be, and his faith in the promise made to his 
 fathers and to his nation — the covenant of God in 
 which he felt himself to be included — would and could 
 be satisfied with nothing less than a full and perfect 
 deliverance, a Redeemer who should be the Head of 
 men, the Son of Man and the Son of God. 
 
 Men may have insisted, may still insist, on seeing 
 
I.] BELIQIO LAICI. 25 
 
 all sorts of fanciful references to some special acts of 
 His in certain words of the Bible. But I must again 
 insist that men's fancies about the Bible and Christ are 
 not the question, but what the Bible itself says, what 
 Christ is. The whole book is full of Him, there is no 
 need to read Him into any part of it as to which there 
 can be any possible doubt. 
 
 Holding this faith as to the Scriptures, I am not 
 anxious to defend them. I rejoice that they should 
 be minutely examined and criticised. They will de- 
 fend themselves, one and all, I believe. Men may 
 satisfy themselves — perhaps, if I have time to give to 
 the study, they may satisfy me — that the Pentateuch 
 was the work of twenty men ; that Baruch wrote a 
 part of Isaiah; that David did not write the Psalms, 
 or the Evangelists the Gospels ; that there are inter- 
 polations here and there in the originals ; that there 
 are numerous and serious errors in our translation. 
 What is all this to me? What do I care who wrote 
 them, what is the date of them, what this or that 
 passage ought to be? They have told me what I 
 wanted to know. Burn every copy in the world to- 
 morrow, you don't and can't take that knowledge from* 
 me, or any man. I find them all good for me ; so, as 
 long as a copy is left, and I can get it, I mean to go on 
 reading them all, and believing them all to be inspired. 
 
 Perhaps the subject of miracles has been the most 
 trying of all to the faith of many of you. You cannot 
 reverence a book which states, broadly and simply, that 
 events happened which, you say, were contrary to the 
 
 C 
 
26 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 order of the universe, iiTegular and capricious exercises 
 of power. And yet, although such of the miracles as 
 cannot be explained by natural causes were breaches of 
 order and law, we Churchmen cite them as evidences 
 that the performers of them were testifying for a 
 God of order and law, and assuming to do them in His 
 name. Moreover, you complain that we will not let 
 you deal with them freely, but cry out that you are 
 blaspheming when you attempt ever so reverently to 
 look at miracles through your reason. 
 
 I will answer your complaint first. We Churchmen 
 no doubt have often so argued, are arguing so at this 
 day. Whenever we have done so, or are doing so, we 
 are going directly in the teeth of our Lord's teaching. 
 He expressly invited the men of his time to exercise 
 their reason on His miracles. He said, ' K I do not the 
 ' works of my Father ' (of the God of order) ' believe 
 ' me not. But if I do, though you believe not me, believe 
 ' the works.' Exercise your reason, hear what I teU you 
 of your Father's character, and then say whether these 
 works are the works you would look for from a loving 
 and righteous Father. I do not want to justify Church- 
 ■ men in this matter; and Christ, if you will read His 
 words, and not take our interpretation of them, needs no 
 justification. 
 
 Now as to His miracles. Our Lord came proclaiming 
 a kingdom of God, a kingdom ordained by God on this 
 earth, the order and beauty of which the unruly and 
 sinful wills of men had deformed, so that disease, and 
 death, and all miseries and disorder, had grown up and 
 
I.] BELIGIO LAICI. 27 
 
 were destroying the order of it, and thwarting the per- 
 fectly loving will of God. 
 
 In asserting this kingdom and this order, our Lord 
 claimed (as He must have claimed if He were indeed 
 the Son of God) dominion over disease and death. 
 This dominion was lower than that over the human 
 heart and will, but He claimed it as positively. He 
 proved His claim to he good in other ways, but 
 specially for our present purpose by healing the sick, 
 raising the dead. Were these works orderly or dis- 
 orderly? Every one of them seems to me to be the 
 restoring of an order which had been disturbed. They 
 were witnesses for the law of life, faithful and true 
 manifestations of the will of a loving Father to His 
 children. 
 
 Yes, you may say, but He did other miracles besides 
 these of healing. He turned water into wine, stilled 
 the waves, multiplied loaves and fishes. These at any 
 rate were capricious suspensions of natural laws. You 
 say you believe in natural laws which have their 
 ground in God's will. Such laws He suspended or 
 set aside in these cases. Now were these suspensions 
 orderly ? 
 
 I think they were. The natural laws which Christ 
 suspended, such as the law of increase, are laws of God. 
 Being His laws, they are living and not dead laws, 
 but they are not the highest law ; there must be a 
 law of God, a law of His mind, above them, or they 
 would be dead tyrannous rules. Christ seems to me 
 to have been asserting the freedom of that law of God 
 
28 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PMOFIB. [No. 
 
 by suspending these natural laws, and to have been 
 claiming here again, as part of His and our birthri^t, 
 dominion oyer natural laws. 
 
 All the other miracles, I believe, stand on the same 
 ground. None have been performed except by men 
 who felt that they were witnessing for God, with 
 glimpses of His order, full of zeal for the triumph of 
 that order in the world, and working as Christ worked, 
 in His spirit, and in the name of His Father, or of 
 Him. If there are any miracles which do not on a 
 fair examination fulfil these conditions — which are such 
 as a loving Father educating sons who had strayed from 
 or rebelled against Him ■ would not have done — I am 
 quite ready to give them up. 
 
 Again, as to the Mosaic cosmogony, which many of 
 you think is enough to sink the Church of England 
 and all other Christian bodies who pretend to hold to it, 
 I shall not be dealing fairly with you unless I tell you 
 what I think about it. 
 
 I own that I have never troubled myself very much 
 upon the subject, but I give you my view as the view 
 of a layman, who has just given so much attention 
 to the questions raised about it as to satisfy his own 
 mind. Take my view for what it is worth, and for 
 nothing more; it satisfies me, and is honest at any 
 rate. I don't particularly value it, am quite ready to 
 change it to-morrow if you will show me a better. If 
 all cosmogonies were to disappear to-mon-ow, I should 
 be none the poorer. As nothing will make me believe 
 that Grod did not create the earth, and man to rule it 
 
I.] RELIGIO LAICI. 29 
 
 no faith of mine hangs on them ; I sincerely pity those 
 who are so much troubled about them on both sides. 
 
 I always felt the first chapter of Genesis to be a very 
 noble and beautiful history of creation, before I ever 
 knew of the doubts as to its authenticity, or thought of 
 considering whether the days there mentioned were 
 days of twenty-four hours or any measures of time at 
 all. What impressed me most in it then was, the order 
 and harmony of the whole, and the way in which every 
 stage is leading up through man to God. 
 
 When I came to read it with the geological and other 
 objections in my head, at first I quite thought, that it 
 must be an interpolation^ — the mere human utterance of 
 some reverent but dogmatic old Rabbi, I held this 
 belief for some time, but, coming back to the account 
 again and again, I began to feel that I had been too 
 hasty. The key-verse of the whole first chapter — 
 ■ So God created man in His own image, in the image 
 ' of God created He him, male and female created He 
 ' them ' — seemed to point ' out, that creation in this 
 chapter cannot mean the giving of outward visible form. 
 In this place it cannot of course; because, as God has 
 no outward visible form, man could not in that sense be 
 created in His likeness ; and if not in this place, which 
 is the key and crown of the whole, could the word have 
 that meaning in the rest of the chapter? Again, if 
 God created 'male and female' at once, what was the 
 meaning of the history of Eve's creation in the second 
 chapter ? Then, on looking closely at the second chap- 
 ter, 1 found, that if I took words in their proper sense, 
 
30 TRACTS FOE FBIHSTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 the accounts of creation in the first and second chapters 
 could not refer to the same creation. I found, more- 
 over, that the account of creation in the second chapter 
 referred back to a former one. ' The Lord God made 
 ' the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field 
 ' before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field 
 ' hefore it grew : ' and then the second chapter goes on 
 to state how the plants grew — 'there went up a mist 
 ' from the earth, and watered the whole face of the 
 ' ground ' — and then how a man was created, and then 
 how beasts were created, and lastly how a woman was 
 created. Each account seemed complete in itself, and 
 not to clash with, but to refer to, the other as a separate 
 act of creation. Could they be reconciled ? 
 
 Then an explanation I had read in books for which 
 I had the greatest reverence, but which had always 
 seemed to me far-fetched, and which I had therefore 
 never tried to master, came before me in a new light. 
 I mean, that the first chapter is speaking of creation in 
 the mind of God, the second, of the clothing in visible 
 material form of that which before had substance in 
 His mind ; in short, what we commonly mean by crea- 
 tion. Then I asked myself, Is this natural? — would 
 one expect to find such a double account? It seemed 
 to me that one would. I tried it (as the nearest 
 analogy I could get) by the case of some invention 
 of a man, such as the steam engine. Here I found that 
 the highest invention must be first in the mind of the 
 inventor ; that after that highest invention has dawned 
 on him, he proceeds to clothe his invention in material 
 
I.] RELI6I0 LAICI. 31 
 
 form. This explanation has always satisfied me since, 
 though I quite admit that it is nothing but a specu- 
 lation. Very possibly it may not meet many of the 
 difficulties. There may be quite as many geological 
 objections to the account of creation in the second as 
 to that in the first chapter. As I said at the outset, 
 I only give it you for what it is worth. 
 
 But you have another charge against Christianity. 
 Tou say it is after all a selfish faith in which, however 
 beautiful and noble the moral teaching may be, the 
 ultimate appeal has always been to the hope of re- 
 ward and fear of punishment. Tou will tell me that in 
 ninety-nine of our churches out of a hundred I shall 
 hear this doctrine, and shall find it in ninety-nine out 
 of every hundred of theological or religions works. 
 
 If it be so I am sorry for it. But I am speaking of 
 Christ's Gospel, and I say that you will not find the 
 doctrine you protest against there. I cannot go through 
 our Lord's teaching and His disciples' to prove this. I 
 ask you to read for yourselves, bringing honest and 
 clear heads to the study, and not heads fall of what you 
 have thought, or this and the other man has preached 
 or written, and I say that then you will give up this 
 charge. 
 
 But, as I have tried to do in all other cases, so here, 
 I will tell you exactly what my own faith on this 
 matter is. 
 
 Christ has told me that the only reward I shall ever 
 get will be ' life eternal,' and that life eternal is to know 
 God and Him. That is all the reward I care about. 
 
32 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND RWPLE. [No. 
 
 The only punishment I can ever bring on myself will 
 be, to banish myself from His presence and the presence 
 of all who know Him, to dwell apart from Him and my 
 brethren, shut up in myself. That is the only punish- 
 ment I dread. 
 
 But this reward He has given us already, here. He 
 has given us to know God, and knowing God involves 
 entering into His kingdom, and dwelling in it. That 
 kingdom Christ has opened to you, and to me, here. 
 We, you and I, may enter in any hour we please. If 
 we don't enter in now, and here, I can't see how we are 
 ever likely to enter in in another world. Why should 
 not we enter in? It is worth , trying. There are no 
 conditions. It is given for the asking. 
 
 I think you will find it all you are in search of and are 
 longing for. Above all, you will find in it and nowhere 
 else rest, peace — ' not a peace which depends upon pacts 
 ' and bargains among men, but which belongs to the 
 ' very nature and character and being of God. Not a 
 ' peace which is produced by the stifling and suppression 
 ' of activities and energies, but the peace in which all 
 ' activities and energies are perfected and harmonised. 
 ' Not a peace which comes from the toleration of what 
 ' is base or false, but which demands its destruction. 
 ' Not a peace which begins from without, but a peace 
 ' which is first wrought in the inner man, and thence 
 ' comes forth to subdue the world. Not a peace which 
 ' a man gets for himself by standing aloof from the 
 ' sorrows and confusions of the world in which he is 
 ' born, of the men whose nature he shares, choosing a 
 
I.] RELIGIO LAICI. 33 
 
 ' calm retreat and quiet scenery and a regulated atmo- 
 ' sphere ; but. a peace which has never thriven except in 
 ' those who have suflfered with their suffering kind, who 
 ' have been ready to give up selfish enjoyments, sensual 
 ' or spiritual, for their sakes, ■ who have abjured all 
 ' devices of escape from ordained toils and temptations ; 
 ' the peace which was His who bore the sorrows and 
 ' sins and infirmities of man, who gave up Himself that 
 ' He might become actually one with them, who thus 
 ' won for them a participation in the Divine nature, an 
 ' inheritance in, that peace of God which passeth all 
 ' understanding.' 
 
 This kingdom of God is good enough for me at any 
 rate. ' I can trust Him who has brought me into it to 
 add what He will, to open my eyes, and strengthen my 
 powers, that I may see and enjoy ever more and more 
 of it, in this world, or in any other in which He may 
 put me hereafter. Where that may be is no care of 
 mine ; it will be in His kingdom still, that I know ; no 
 power in Heaven, or Hell, or Earth can cast me out of 
 that, except I myself. While I remain in it I can freely 
 use and enjoy every blessing and good gift of His 
 glorious earth, the inheritance which He has given to us, 
 His father's children. His brethren. When it shall be 
 His good pleasure to take me out of it. He will not take 
 me out of but bring me into more perfect communion 
 with Him and with my brethren. He nourish eth my 
 heart with good things on this earth, He will not cease 
 to do this anywhere else. He reveals Himself to me 
 here, though as a man I cannot take in His full and 
 
34 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 perfect revelation, but wlien I awake up after His like- 
 ness I shall be satisfied — and not till then. 
 
 There is another stumbling-block in the way of many 
 of you, quite apart from such doubts as I have been 
 speaking of hitherto, on which I must say a few words. 
 You are revolted and kept at arm's-length by the sepa- 
 ratist and exclusive habits and maxims of those who 
 profess to have the faith which you want. Many of 
 them are kind, exemplary men, but just because they are 
 Christians, and in so far forth as they are Christians, 
 they are calling to you to come out from amongst the 
 people of the world — to separate yourselves from an 
 adulterous generation. 
 
 Against this call something which you know to be 
 true and noble in you rises up. You have felt that what 
 your age is crying out for is, union. You acknowledge 
 the power of that cry in your own hearts. You want to 
 feel with all men, and for all men. K you need a faith 
 at all, it is one which shall meet that cry, which shall 
 teach you how all men are bound together; not how 
 some may be separated from the rest. You will not be 
 false to your age. You will have no faith at all, or a 
 faith for all mankind. 
 
 Keep to that ; take nothing less than that ; only look 
 again and see whether that is not just what Christ offers 
 you. Again I urge you not to look at His followers, 
 real or professing— look at Him, look at His life. 
 
 Was He exclusive? Did ever man or woman come 
 near Him and He turn away ? Did He not go amongst 
 all ranks, into every society? Did He not go to the 
 
I.] BBLIGIO LAICT. 35 
 
 houses of great men, and rulers ; of Pharisees, of poor 
 men, of puhlicans? Did He not frequent the temple, 
 the market-place, the synagogue, the sea-shore, the hill- 
 side, the haunts of outcasts and harlots ? Was He not 
 to be found at feasts and at funerals ? Wherever men 
 and women were to be found, there was His place and 
 His work ; and there is ours. He who believes in Him 
 must go into every society where he has any call what- 
 ever. Who are we that we should pick and choose? 
 The greatest ruffian, the most abandoned woman, that 
 ever walked the face of this earth, were good enough for 
 our Lord to die for. If He sends us amongst them. He 
 will take care of us, and has something for us to do or 
 speak, for or to them. The greatest king, the holiest 
 saint on earth, is not too high company for one for whom 
 Christ died, as He did for you and me. So, if He sends 
 us amongst great or holy people, let us go, and learn 
 what He means us to learn there. 
 
 I know how deeply many of you feel and mourn over 
 the miseries and disorder of England and the world 
 — how you long to do something towards lightening 
 ever so small a part of those miseries, rescuing ever 
 so small a corner of the earth from that disorder. 
 I know well how earnestly many of you are working 
 in one way or another for your country and your 
 brethren. I know what high hopes many of you have 
 for the future of the world, and the destiny of man. I 
 say, mourn on, work on ; abate not one jot of any 
 hope you have ever had for the world or for man. 
 Your hopes, be they what they may, have never 
 
36 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PJEOPLE. [No. 
 
 been high enough — your work never earnest enough. 
 But I ask you whether your hopes and your work 
 have not been marred again and again, whether 
 you' have not been thrown back again and again into 
 listlessness and hopelessness, by failures of one kind or 
 another, whether you have not felt that those failures 
 have been caused more or less by your own uncertainty; 
 by your having had to work and fight without a leader, 
 with comrades to whom you were bound only by chance, 
 to journey without any clear knowledge of the road you 
 were going, or where it led to ? 
 
 At such times have you not longed for light, and 
 guidance ? what would you not have given for a well of 
 light, and hope, and strength, springing up within you 
 and renewing your powers and energies ? What would 
 you not have given for the inward certainty that the 
 road you were ■ travelling was the right one, however 
 you might stumble on it ; that the line of battle in 
 which you stood was the line for all true men, and was 
 marching to assured victory, however it might waver 
 and break at the point which had been given you to 
 hold, whatever might become of you? Well, be sui-e 
 that light and guidance, that renewal of strength and 
 hope, that certainty as to your side and your road, you 
 are meant to have ; they have been prepared, and are 
 ready, for every man of you, whenever he will take 
 them. The longings for them are whispered in your 
 hearts by the Leader, whose cross, never turned back, 
 ever triumphing more and more over all principalities 
 and powers of evil, blazes far ahead in the van of our 
 
I.] BELIOIO LAICI. 37 
 
 battle. He has been called the Captain of our Salvation, 
 the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Lamb who was slain 
 for the world ; He has told us His own name, the Son 
 of God and the Son of man ; He has claimed to be the 
 redeemer, deliverer, leader of mankind. 
 
 My younger brothers, I am not speaking to you the 
 words of enthusiasm or excitement, but the words of 
 sober every-day knowledge and certainty. I tell you 
 that all the miseries of England and of other lands 
 consist simply in this and in nothing else, that we men, 
 made in the image of God, made to know Him, to be 
 one with Him in His Son, will not confess that Son, 
 our Lord and Brother, to be the Son of God and Son of 
 man, the living Head of our race and of each one of us. 
 I tell you that if we would confess ; Him, and lay hold 
 of Him, and let Him enter into and rule and guide us 
 and the world," instead'of trying to rule and: guide our- 
 selves and the world without Him, we should see and 
 know that the kingdom of God is just as much about us 
 now as it will ever be. I tell you that we should see 
 allsorrow and misery melting away and drawn up from 
 this fair world of God's like mountain mist before the 
 July sun. 
 
 Three more words and I have done. I am not asking 
 you to adopt any faith of mine. But as you would do 
 good work in your generation, I ask of you to give 
 yourselves no peace till you have answered these ques- 
 tions, each one for himself, in the very secret recesses of 
 his heart, ' Do I, does my race, want a head ? Can we 
 be satisfied with any_one less than a Son of man and a 
 
38 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 Son of God? Is this Christ, who has been so long 
 worshipped in England, He ? ' 
 
 If you can answer, though with faltering lips, ' Yes, 
 this is He,' I care very little what else you accept, all 
 else that is necessary or good for you will come in due 
 time, if once He has the guidance of you. I have not 
 been confessing my faith to convert you to any opinions 
 whatever. I would most gladly have said anything 
 I had to say in some other form had it been possible, 
 for this is a very disagreeable form to me, and one 
 which is almost certain to be misunderstood. But, 
 looking most anxiously at late doings and writings, 
 feeling most deeply the awful importance of the crisis 
 to our Church and our country, and longing to say 
 some deliberate word to the many of you whom I do 
 know, and who I believe will read this for my sake, I 
 have come to feel that it is the only thing to do. Tou 
 have a right to say to every one, whatever his rank or 
 position in the Church, who comes forward now to 
 speak'to you, ' No anonymous stabbings from behind. 
 Stand out in your own names. And now, tell us— not 
 what we are not to believe, we can discover plenty of 
 that for ourselves without your help — but, what we 
 are to believe. And before all other things, just tell 
 us this. Have you any faith? What is it? Has it 
 answered ? ' 
 
 I have replied to the two first questions as openly 
 and clearly as a paper of this kind and my own power 
 of saying what I mean will allow. To the third I say 
 now. Yes, it has answered. My faith has been no 
 
I.] RELIGIO LAICI. 39 
 
 holiday or Sunday faith, but one for every-day use ; a 
 faith to live and die in, not to argue or talk about. 
 It has had to stand the wear and tear of life ; it was 
 not got in prosperity. It has had to carry me through 
 years of anxious toil, and small means, through the 
 long sicknesses of those dearer to me than my own 
 life, through deaths amongst them both sudden and 
 lingering. Few men of ray age have had more failures 
 of all kinds ; no man has deserved them more, by the 
 commission of all kinds of blunders and errors, by evil 
 tempers, and want of faith, hope, and love. 
 
 Through all this it has carried me, and has risen 
 up in me after every failure and every sorrow, fresher, 
 clearer, stronger. Why do I say ' it ' ? I mean He. He 
 has carried me through it all ; He who is your Head and 
 the Head of every man, woman, child on this earth, 
 or who has ever been on it, just as much as He is my 
 Head. And He will carry us all through every temp- 
 tation, trial, sorrow we can ever have to encounter, in 
 this world or any other, if we will only turn to Him, 
 lay hold of Him, and cast them all upon Him, as He 
 has bidden us. 
 
 My younger brothers, you on whom the future of 
 England, under God, at this moment depends, will you 
 not try Him ? Is He not worth a trial ? 
 
LONDON : 
 
 «. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOE, PRINTERS, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL. 
 
TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. 
 
 No. II. . 
 
 THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 
 A CLERGYMAN'S LESSONS FROM THE PRESENT PANIC. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 BELIEr AND UJJBBLIEF IN OXPOED AND LONDON. 
 
 About the beginning of Lent the clergy of England 
 were invited to pronounce certain of their brethren 
 enemies of the Christian faith. Such a call, coming at 
 such a time, must have led us to reflect upon other sins 
 besides those of the writers of " Essays and Reviews." 
 Attacks have been made upon those writers from all 
 quarters. Apologies have been made for them. Now 
 that the excitement has a little abated, may I be per- 
 mitted to set down for the benefit of my youngei 
 brethren a few of the lessons which have been brought 
 home to me by these discussions, respecting the duties 
 which belong to all the priests of the land, respecting 
 the unbelief with which we are all chargeable ? 
 
 As I am a London clergyman, I would rather speak 
 first of these duties and these offences as they afiect our 
 work here. But the subject is connected more closely 
 in the popular mind with the Universities, especially 
 with Oxford. What is said of a body firom which we 
 have received our choicest blessings, cannot be indiffe- 
 
 2. B 
 
2 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PWPLI. [No. 
 
 rent to us. If Oxford is on its trial, every Oxford man 
 is on his trial. 
 
 I. The panic which this book has produced is 
 mainly owing to an article which appeared in the 
 Westminster Review of last October. It may have 
 been noticed before in episcopal charges or University 
 sermons ; but these possess a merely local or pro- 
 fessional interest. The review aroused both the 
 laity and the clergy. It came from an Oxford man. 
 It declared that the faith of both pupils and tutors 
 in Oxford was utterly shaken. Some of the latter, 
 finding the old Christianity untenable, were trying to 
 construct a new Christianity. It was a very poor 
 experiment. The writer uttering, as he thinks, the senti- 
 ments of the most thoughtful men of his age, maintains, 
 that if there is to be a Christianity at all, the old type 
 is better than the modem one. 
 
 The tone of the Reviewer, when he speaks of his 
 seniors, is defiant and contemptuous ; when he speaks 
 of himself and his contemporaries, it is serious, even 
 pathetic. On the first subject his wish is father to 
 his thoughts ; we cannot, therefore, attach much wortli 
 to them. On the second he evidently tells us what he 
 has known and felt. And there are other reluctant 
 testimonies on the same side. Mr. Hughes has con- 
 fessed, in the first tract of this series, that his ex- 
 perience of the young men of the day whose minds 
 have been formed at Oxford, coincides in essentials with 
 that of the Eeviewer. We clergymen are not qualified 
 to contradict such authorities. Young men count it a 
 
II.] THE MOTE 4ND THE BEAM. 3 
 
 rudeness to tell us what they thipk. They suspect that 
 we only half accept the confessions which we make 
 with our lips ; why should they force us to endanger 
 our position? If we have no doubts, why should they 
 disturb us ? So we only see the surface of their minds ; 
 the depth of their unbelief-r-perhaps, also, the depth of 
 their belief — ^is hidden from our eyes. We ought there- 
 fore to be thankful for the discoveries which the Re- 
 viewer has made to us, if they are ever so painful. 
 
 We owe also jnucli to this wfiter for telling us broadly 
 and simply whfit kind of opinion it is which sets him 
 at war with Christianity, pew or old, and which sets 
 those at war with it who represent, as he supposes, the 
 coming ti^e. He believes that there are fixed natural 
 laws, which determine the course of the world, and to 
 which the actions pf men must be conformed. He 
 believes that the proclamation of these laws is the great 
 power for influencing society. To set them forth in 
 contrast to that faith in a Will, which lies at the 
 basis of all theology, and of all the morality which 
 is grounded upon theology, is the business pf our time. 
 He treats the Essayists as men whp cannot influ^ce 
 society, whp do npt recognise with any clearness these 
 natural laws, whp are hampered with theological notions, 
 who are in fact mere Mrs, Partingtops attempting with 
 their brooms to sweep out ap Atlantic, which must 
 overwhelm Jhem apd those who denounce them 
 together. 
 
 Evidently the Reviewer ,kjiows nothing pf criticism ; 
 he is not the le^st infected with any German neology ; 
 
 b2 
 
4 TRACTS FOE, PRIESTS AND PEOPLB. [No. 
 
 debates about the authenticity of the books of Scrip- 
 ture only interest Mm, so far as they indicate that we 
 cannot determine what he takes to be the grounds of 
 our faith. For that reason simply our controversies are 
 important in his eyes. They convince him that the 
 ground is crumbling under our feet. We have nothing 
 to proclaim to the world ; we have not settled even our 
 premises. 
 
 I cannot consider that any attention which has been 
 given to this article has been undeserved. But some 
 inferences have been drawn from it which are quite 
 unwarranted. We have assumed the writer to say that 
 the Essayists and Reviewers have produced the state of 
 mind which he affirms to exist in Oxford. He allows 
 them no such honour. He accepts them merely as in- 
 dications that the ablest men amongst us are incapable 
 of encountering that state of mind. He thinks that 
 they are trying, so far as they can, to encounter 
 it. He is sure that they have not succeeded, and 
 cannot succeed. That is the one cause of the pleasure 
 which he derives from them. 
 
 Even if this were not the plain meaning of the 
 Reviewer's words, it would have been impossible for those 
 who know what has been passing in Oxford during the 
 last thirty years to believe, on his authority, or on any 
 authority, that the Essayists and Reviewers had thrown 
 elements of doubt into an atmosphere which was pre- 
 viously undisturbed and calm. Think of all the discus- 
 sions which have been carried on there respecting the 
 authority of Scripture and of tradition ; respecting the 
 
II.] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 5 
 
 fixedness of creeds and their developments; respect- 
 ing the obligation to subscribe articles, and the 
 licence to evade them ! Think how often the persons 
 whose names were most honoured there, who spoke 
 on their own side with the greatest decision, have 
 changed their position, have reversed their decrees, 
 have treated with contempt that which they almost 
 idolized ! Think how those to whom our Communion 
 was dearest have shaken the dust off their feet and left 
 usl Think how all these events have been talked over 
 in the rooms of every undergraduate I Think what 
 effects they must have produced in the hearts of those 
 who have talked of them least, who have brooded 
 over them in silence! Think what jests they have 
 heard in the houses of their fathers, about these remark- 
 able proofs of the unanimity of clergymen and of the 
 sincerity of their convictions ! Think what bitter scorn 
 they have listened to from High Church clergymen 
 concerning the inconsistent faith of the opposite school ! 
 Think with what notes of triumph that scorn has been 
 answered when the High Churchmen have fulfilled the 
 prophecies which had been made respecting them, and 
 have been guilty of schism ! Then, think how, side by 
 side with these theological debates, there has arisen in 
 Oxford a new and sudden interest in physical science. 
 Think what youths, not deep in either subject, have 
 heard of the certainty of the conclusions in one of them 
 — of its undeviating, unrelaxing progress ! Think how 
 seniors, not naturally inclined to these studies, have en- 
 couraged them for the very purpose of discouraging 
 
6 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PWPLE. [No. 
 
 others which they considered more perilous. Think of 
 all these things, and then say whether there is not 
 enough to explain the phenomena which have startled 
 us in the new Oxford life. Is there not reason here 
 why so many of the most serious shrink from taking 
 orders ; why so many begin to fear that there is nothing 
 solid at their feet, nothing that may not crumble to 
 pieces if the light is let in Upon it ; why Some profess 
 boldly the doctrine that the science of Nature is that 
 which must absorb all others into itself; why many 
 hold that man and God must alike be contemplated as 
 parts of Nature, and subjects of laws which have esta- 
 blished themselves. The Essayists and Reviewers are 
 not answerable for creating this state of feeling. All 
 of us have been instruments in creating it, So far as we 
 have substituted arguments against opponents for belief 
 in a living God and charity to living men. 
 
 It seems to me that those tutors and professors who 
 see these influetices around them, who feel these influ* 
 ences actitig upon themselves, must pass through strug- 
 gles which we who are not in their circumstances cannot 
 appreciate. If they are devoted to their work, free from 
 the coldness which keeps young men at a distance, 
 able to attract and ready to accept their confidence, 
 they must discover in them a number of difBculties 
 which they had known of in books, but which had not 
 been revealed to them as actual parts of human expe- 
 rience. They may perceive that those who suffer from 
 these perplexities are far more alive to the deepest and 
 divinest interests, far less frivolous, than numbers of 
 
 o 
 
II.] TEE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 7 
 
 those wlio are quietly preparing themselves, often by 
 a course of idleness and dissipation, to take their vows 
 as clergymen. They may be afraid to suppress doubts 
 which God has perhaps awakened, afraid to foster the 
 many motives which young men have to substitute 
 acquiescence for faith. If to these fears one adds the 
 influence of a cloister atmosphere in disconnecting the 
 thoughts of the brain with the business of life and" 
 with the works of the citizen — and at the same time 
 the strong conviction in the mind of a teacher that 
 they ought to be connected and that he must not 
 allow any opinions which he has either formed or in- 
 herited to sever the connexion — I can, I think, find 
 an interpretation of those Essays which are really 
 Oxford Essays, without assuming them to be attempts 
 at a Neo-Christiianity. I can see that they contain 
 lessons for us which we can ill afford to lose, even 
 when we feel most keenly how little they supply the 
 wants which they indicate, ' 
 
 The Essay which the Westminster reviewer has 
 denounced most bitterly is that of Dr, Temple. He 
 regards it as a: miserable effort to sustain an obsolete 
 theology by an' advanced philosophy. -Dr. Temple 
 speaks of a eoioasal man. That phrase is worthy 
 of Comte, was probably learnt from him. But Dr. 
 Temple speaks of aa education of man by a living God. 
 There we discover the slave of an old Hebrew tradition. 
 I know no deeper instruction than is supplied both by 
 the Essay and the comment upon the Essay. English- 
 men and Englishwomen in all ages have been drawn 
 
8 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PTLOFLB. [Ko. 
 
 to the Bible, because it sets forth God to them not as a 
 Being about whom they are to hold certain opinions, or 
 towards whom they are to exhibit certain feelings, but as 
 One who is manifesting Himself towards them, govern- 
 ing them, meeting them in their necessities, ignorances, 
 weaknesses, awakening their consciences, showing them 
 their evils, teaching them their relations with their 
 brethren, using their sins and follies, their joys and 
 sorrows, as ministers in thei? education. Such a belief 
 connects itself with all the morality of those who 
 cherish it ; they can in no wise disjoin their morality 
 from their theology. God is revealing to them what 
 His character is, that they may learn what they have 
 become by estrangement from it, that they may be 
 reformed after His image. He has redeemed them 
 from the habits and dispositions to which they are 
 naturally prone. He gives them power to be right- 
 eous and true men. This, I say, has been and is 
 the faith of our land. It can have no other. It has 
 been cast in the mould of the BiUe. If you give us 
 anything in the place of this, we shall become atheists. 
 Now, the title of Dr. Temple's Essay held out a pro- 
 mise that this venerable faith of Englishmen was that 
 which he wished to substitute for the endless debates 
 about propositions with which Oxford had been occu- 
 pied. It savoured not of a new Christianity, but of a 
 return to the oldest. And, so far as Dr. Temple fol- 
 lowed the instincts of his own heart, so far as he has 
 profited by his Eugby experience, this promise is not 
 belied. One sees how much he must have gained in 
 
II.] THS MOTE AND TEE BEAM. 9 
 
 spiritual insight by intercourse with hoys ; how much 
 he has learnt the need of a Divine Teacher through his 
 faithfulness as a human teacher. What, then, makes this 
 Essay disappointing, almost heart-hreaMng, to those who 
 had hoped so much from it ? Not, I think, the colossal 
 man. That phrase may be Comte's, or any one's else 
 who likes to claim it. Something it has done to petrify 
 those thoughts, affections, sins which Dr. Temple dis- 
 cerns in the history of the race and in the history of 
 each individual. But the substantive would have been 
 stronger than the adjective, the man would have 
 quickened the Colossus, if there had not been another 
 phrase in the Essay which covers a far stonier con- 
 ception. Dr. Temple represents the Jewish people, as 
 existing to teach Monotheism to the world. The calling of 
 a man, a family, a nation — the growth, the sins, the punish^ 
 ment of the man, the family, the nation — all that Divine 
 human record — is only to tell mankind not to worship a 
 great many Gods. OhJ miserable result of law, history, 
 prophecy! Miserable substitute for the revelation of 
 the living God, from whose service all idolatries are 
 deflections, in whose worship .all the partial worships 
 of the nations must be united! How entirely has 
 Dr. Temple defeated his own admirable conviction, that 
 Greeks and Eomans, as well as Jews, were under the 
 guidance and education of God, by this hard notion ! 
 How well might he have justified that conviction if he 
 had followed the living lessons of Scripture, instead of 
 giving us this scholastical figmgnt in exchange for 
 them! 
 
10' TRACTS FOB, PRIESTS AND PEOPLB. [No. 
 
 But where did Dr. Temple get this notion ? It is a 
 dull, drearj, respectable common-place which he carried 
 with him from Oxford to Eughy. It might have 
 been introduced into a hundred sermons at St. Mary s 
 without provoking a single comment from heads of 
 houses or from bishops. It would have been accepted 
 as an exceedingly proper doctrine which had been 
 sanctioned by the most orthodox authorities. And 
 yet this has made the Bible, which is evidently 
 full of joy and strength to the writer's own heai-t, 
 look like a dead letter in his Essay. The Book bears 
 to him the good news that there is a Teacher who 
 never ceases to guide and govern those whom He 
 has created in His image ; never ceases to prepare them 
 for the day when He shall gather up all things in 
 Christ, both things in heaven and things in earth. Had 
 nothing hindered him from taking, in the full im.port of 
 that message, his own Essay would have been filled 
 with a new life; nay, the whole volume would have 
 acquired a different character. We should have re- 
 membered the introduction, and have believed that the 
 Divine Teacher would turn even words that grieved us, 
 pr that we could not interpret, to our good. Is it not 
 well, then, that we should consider what it is that has 
 robbed us of this blessing? Should we not confess 
 honestly that it is an opinion which' has been lurkinw in 
 all our hearts ? We cannot condemn Dr. Temple for it. 
 If he has brought it to light that we may cast it out, we 
 owe him great thanks. 
 
 The lesson which I have learnt from Dr. Temple's 
 
II.] THE MOTH Ann THE BEAM. 1 1 
 
 essay is enforced by all those ■vvhich have proceeded 
 directly from Oxford. All express painfully and deeply & 
 want which is affecting our English divinity, which 
 causes laymen to groan that it does them no good. All 
 indicate a struggle, though an ineffectual struggle, to 
 recover what we have lost. 
 
 Mr. Pattison's Essay would have passed, I believe, 
 unscathed through the ordeal of even unfriendly criti- 
 cism if he had not eJjpressed the results of it in some 
 sentences, which sound at first very sceptical and very 
 hopeless. The authority of the Church has been tried ; 
 that has failed. . The authority of the Bible has been 
 substituted for it; that has failed. The authority of 
 Reason has been tried ; that has failed, or is failing. 
 The evidence in the Essay being drawn especially from 
 the records of the last century, when the authority of 
 the Church Was not much recognised — when evidences 
 of natural and revealed religion were exchanged for the 
 words of the Bible^makes much more in favour of the 
 third conclusion than of the two others. If it is a con- 
 clusion in which nothing is concluded, the Eationalist 
 has rather more cause to complain of it than any one 
 else. But may it not be a conclusion which suggests, 
 though it does not state, the cause of our different 
 forms of unbelief, and the cure for them all ? Has not 
 the High Churchman forgotten God in exalting the 
 Church? Has not the Biblicist forgotten God in 
 exalting the Bible ? Has not the Eationalist forgotten 
 God in exalting the Keason ? If we turn to God and 
 confess that sin, will not the Church, the Bible, the 
 
12 TRACTS FOB. PRIESTS AND PEOPLK [No. 
 
 Eeason, eg,ch take its own place, each work -with, 
 not against, the other ? Will not each be exalted as it 
 has never heen exalted yet ? 
 
 That great truth is even more thrust upon us by 
 the study of Mr. Jowett's Essay than of Mr. Patti- 
 son's. This essay has been called the best and the 
 worst in the series. I can understand the sentiment I 
 can in part adopt it. No essay leaves on my mind such 
 a sense of an inward belief, of an honesty, a devotion, 
 which words cannot express, which must come forth in 
 the life of a man. No essay causes me more perplexity, 
 — leads me to ask myself oftener, ' Does the Scripture 
 then mean anything, everything, or nothing ? ' And 
 yet, when I do ask myself that question in any moment 
 of faith and prayer, this answer comes out very dis- 
 tinctly, ' All this proves what we most want to feel : 
 ' that the Bible needs a Divine interpreter to bind 
 ' together those different interpretations which Mr. 
 ' Jowett has set before us in such startling contra- 
 ' diction. He does not say that the Bible is not the 
 ■' word of God. He makes us think what we must mean 
 ' when we say that it is the word of God. Any other 
 * conception of it must be ineffectual if these objections 
 ' exist. It is idle to say that they are discussed 
 ' and refuted in a hundred books. The hundi-ed books 
 ' have not driven them out of the minds of men. Mr. 
 ' Jowett feels deeply that the one book may do much 
 ' mere for us than the hundred. What he should have 
 ' told us is, that it must do more than the hundred — 
 ' that it must be better than all its interpreters — because 
 
It] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 13 
 
 ' it witnesses directly of God ; because it sends the wisest 
 ' and the weakest to Him.' Surely, if we are brought to 
 this point by Mr. Jowett's teaching, we shall not think 
 that our best and safest course is to silence the tutor 
 who, probably more than any other in the Uuiyersity, 
 has taught young men that they may find a friend in 
 a clergyman, and a friend in that clergyman's Master. 
 
 Of Mr. Wilson's Essay I shall have to speak in 
 another part of this paper; if I do not refer to him 
 here, it is because he has not for many years been a 
 tutor in Oxford. When he was a tutor there, we have 
 the authority of the Quarterly Beview for saying, 
 that he was particularly active in enforcing a rigid 
 adherence to the Articles in their natural sense. The 
 measures which he took for that purpose do not appear 
 to have been eminently successful, or to be specially 
 worthy of our imitation. If, since he has been a 
 country clergyman, he entertains those who frequent 
 his ministrations with discussions upon multitu- 
 dinism, individualism, and ideology, I should think 
 he had discovered an effectual and ingenious method 
 of illustrating the worth and simplicity of prayers 
 written centuries ago, as compared with the most refined 
 and advanced preaching of our own century. 
 
 The only essay written by an Oxford man which 
 has any relation to the belief or unbelief that is expressed 
 in the Westminster Article, is Mr. Baden Powell's. He, 
 like the reviewer, had little interest in Biblical criticism 
 for its own sake, — had no sympathy with any German 
 speculation. He' was an English man of science. The 
 
14 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLH. [No. 
 
 miracles regarded as departures from order, contradicted, 
 in his judgment, the very idea of physical science; he 
 could not reconcile them. He believed that no one 
 could. Nevertheless, he recognised a region of faith 
 beyond the region of science. What it was he could 
 not explain. I imagine that he considered it, by its 
 very nature, inexplicable. Extremes meet. He may 
 have arrived hj a stranget route at the very result at 
 which so many devout Romanists arrive; faith and 
 reason may have. been as real opposite in his mind as 
 in theirs. I cannot read his essay without being per- 
 suaded that his faith was a reality to him. It is not 
 the mere desire to think so of one who has been taken 
 from us which gives me the assurance; it is the 
 obvious conclusion that one who shocked ordinary 
 opinions as much as he did, would not have scrupled 
 to shock them more if a deep inward conviction had 
 not held him back. The world would give him little 
 credit for the reserved belief; it was everything to 
 himself. I must honour any one who was able to 
 retain it under these difficult conditiona But I could 
 not hold it myself under such conditions. I could not 
 urge any one else to hold it. The lesson I would 
 gather from Mr. Powell's Essay is, that the reserved 
 sometJimg which was so necessary «to him is indeed the 
 very ground of all science, as well as of all faith. What 
 was that something but the Will of a Father in heaven ; 
 that which we say has been manifested in Christ ; that 
 which we affirm to be the ground of all order in nature ; 
 that which we affirm to be the ground of all righteous- 
 
II.] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 15 
 
 ness, of all moral life in man. Take away that Will, 
 and you do indeed get rid of Christ's acts of healing, — 
 of the powers which He is said to have exerted over 
 nature and man. But you get rid also (as Mr. Hughes 
 has urged in his tractj of all the energies by which 
 men fight against disease and degeneracy. Admit the 
 Will, and Christ's ficts hecome the most blessed and 
 enduring manifestations of it; denunciations of all 
 fatalism; justifications of all attempts to remoTe the 
 disorders of the universe ; pledges that order 'shall be 
 triumphant over them at last. 
 
 The conclusion to which I have been led by this 
 Essay, and by all the Essays, is this. Theology and 
 science present themselves to men in Oxford as two 
 antagonistic principles or powers, which some ingenious 
 person may possibly be able to reconcile. At present 
 the scheme of reconciliation is either to give up certain 
 opinions about theology which are incompatible with 
 science, or certain opinions about science which are 
 incompatible with theology- But, in fact, it is the 
 worship of opinions which is enslaving bath theology 
 and science, and nowhere enslaving them more than at 
 the university. Can we affirm that anjrthing is? If' 
 not, what becomes of science? What is to come 
 of our abstractions and generalisations? Can we 
 say that G-OD is ? If not, what is theology ? The new 
 J)hysical science at Oxford will become merely a meta- 
 physical talk about physics — the orthodoxy and hetero- 
 doxy of Oxford will become merely a metaphysical talk 
 about God — if we shrink from this question. All studies 
 
16 TRACTS FOB, PBIESTS AND FEOPLE. [No. 
 
 will suffer the same fate. The study of history will l)e 
 a talk about progressive or conservative notions. The 
 study of language will be a talk about races. The 
 Professors at Oxford, I am sure, dread this calamity; with 
 the indifference to real study, the tendency to endless 
 criticism, debating, scorn, which must be the result of it. 
 None, I am satisfied, are labouring more truly in their own 
 spheres to counteract it than the most eminent of the essay- 
 ists. But they are not quite sure whether the counteraction 
 is to come from more liberal notions, or from a deeper and 
 more earnest faith. They vibrate between the two con- 
 clusions; when they see how afraid those who profess 
 orthodoxy are of investigation, they incline to the 
 former. Oh, let them be sure that that terror is itself 
 the consequence of faithlessness ; that it is faith we 
 need, one and all. The orthodox need it, and show that 
 they need it by the shrieks with which they fill the air 
 when any doubt is stirred. The liberal need it, and 
 show that they need it by their incapacity to encounter 
 any of the real problems of the world except by vague 
 generalities. The old need it, that all the traditions and 
 services which they have loved may not become mere 
 empty idols. The young need it, that all the subjects 
 which they discuss may not become mere shadows 
 to them. Be sure our young men cannot dwell any 
 longer in a twilight of opinion ; they cannot be content 
 with notions, liberal or illiberal. In the deepest doubts 
 of the nineteenth ceirtury, as of the sixteenth, there is a 
 demand for a faith deeper than that of the monarchs and 
 priests who are most anxious tO' crush the expressions of 
 
II.] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 17 
 
 untelief. Now, as then, there is a cry for a God in 
 whom peasants as well as scholars may trust, who cares 
 to deliver both from the yoke of visible tyrants and of 
 their own fancies and vanities. Let only a few men at 
 Oxford declare that they believe in such a God, that they 
 are sure His Kingdom is indeed established and will 
 have no end ; the voice, like that of the monk in a much 
 smaller, younger university of Germany, will reach thou- 
 sands of hearts. It will do what no Erasmus has been 
 able to do for the promotion of letters and the exposure 
 of corruptions. It will do what no Reuchlin has been 
 able to do for the vindication of philology against 
 obscurantists. It will do what no Leo has been able to do 
 for art, because it will tell the Leos of the earth that art 
 does not stand on their patronage, but on the truth of 
 God. It will do what no mere debates about science 
 have been able to do for the quickening of all real 
 scientific investigation, because it will show that there 
 is an end which may reward those investigations, that 
 there is a Living Teacher who quickens them and 
 watches over them. 
 
 I doubt not every great movement in Oxford ' has 
 been an eifort for this reform. But it has been a reform 
 manqui, because so much of opinion-worship has been 
 mixed with the worship of God. The clear distin<;- 
 tion must be made; the full reformation must come. 
 But who will stand in that day? Which of us will 
 bear the light of it? 
 
 II. This lesson, if true, belongs even more to 
 London than to Oxford, to the preachers of the 
 
 2. c 
 
18 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOFLB. [No. 
 
 metropolis than to tlie tutors of the university. 
 London clergymen drew up the address to the Arch- 
 bishop against the Essays and Eeviews ; they appealed 
 confidently to their London hrethren to support them. 
 They had reason for that confidence. Such a book 
 must be far more irritating and exasperating to us than 
 to men who dwell in cloisters. We have not much 
 leisure for speculation. Many who had once a taste for 
 it have lost the taste. Everything reminds us of work 
 and sufiiering. Whatever does not enable us to work and 
 suflfer has none of the marks which we seek of truth and 
 divinity. Here, we said, are men who throw us back 
 into a sea of speculation. ' They seem to tell us that all 
 ' which we learnt in our colleges about the piUars of our 
 ' faith is unstable. We were instructed that the evidences 
 ' for it from prophecy, from miracle, from the authen- 
 ' ticity of the Scripture books, were good against all 
 ' objectors. Now, we hear that all these are feeble ; 
 ' that the objectors, old or new, may be right We 
 '• do not know where we are standing. Audit is not only 
 ' we who hear these tidings. The members of our con- 
 ' gregations hear them. Men say to us, women say to 
 ' us, that the things we have been taking for granted are 
 ' disputed by persons of ten times our learning, persons 
 ' of our own cloth and profession. What are we to do ? 
 ' Surely such writers pught to be silenced if they can be 
 ' silenced. If they cannot be silenced, surely we ought 
 ' to declare that we utterly repudiate them^ If that is 
 "■ not enough, we should try to confute them by argu- 
 ' ments. If we have a Creed and a Bible let us show that 
 ' we have them, and will not part with them.' 
 
II.] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 19 
 
 I can go all lengths with the final resolution which I 
 have ascribed to these London ministers, and which I 
 am satisfied expresses the true desire of the hest part of 
 them. ' If we have a Creed and a Bible let us show 
 that we have them.' I am willing to consider hereafter 
 whether we shall show that by trying to silence the 
 Essayists, or to protest against them, or to confute them. 
 I will first allude to another method which seems to me, 
 at all events, more obvious and direct, and which need 
 not be interfered with by the other methods, if they 
 should be desirable. 
 
 If I wish to show that I have a creed, I would pro- 
 claim that creed. I say that I believe in God, the Father 
 Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth. Then I would 
 proclaim GOD the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven 
 and Earth. I say that I believe in Jesus Christ, His only 
 Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, 
 who was born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered under 
 Pontius Pilate, who was crucified, died, and buried, who 
 descended into Hell, who rose again the third day from 
 the dead, who ascended into Heaven, who sitteth at 
 the right hand of God the Father Almighty, who 
 shall come again to judge the quick and the dead. 
 Then I would preach of Jesus Christ as the only Son 
 of God, our Lord. I would preach of all those acts by 
 which he has shown, and of all those by which He will 
 show, that He is the only Son of God, our Lord. I say 
 that I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic 
 Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, 
 the resurrection of the body, the life everlasting. Then 
 c2 
 
20 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 I .would proclaim the Holy Ghost, and what He has 
 done to build up a Catholic Church, to establish a 
 communion of saints, to impart forgiveness of sins; 
 how He has quickened, and is quickening, and will 
 quicken men's mortal bodies ; how He is bestowing and 
 will bestow on men the life everlasting. 
 
 If these words are true, surely they are the most won- 
 derful truths that we are able to utter. Surely they 
 contain the grandest revelation of God, the most won- 
 derful message of deliverance to all men. Would it not 
 be better then to preach these than to bring forward subtle 
 arguments to show why we have a right to preach 
 them, upon what authority we hold them, why they 
 are not to be disturbed ? If they are true, may we not 
 present them boldly to those for whom they are meant? 
 If they are true, is not God true ; is not He living ; 
 and will they not go forth with the demonstration of 
 His Spirit and power ? 
 
 We are in the midst of work, you say ; we have not 
 time to speculate. Just so. Then why waste the short 
 time in which you are able to work in speculation? 
 "Why argue and debate, when you might proclaim good 
 news to your fellow-creatui-es ? You talk of the value 
 of testimony and antiquity in establishing certain 
 propositions. Cannot you trust G«d to testify of them 
 as He did of old? You say the evidence of miracle and 
 prophecy is conclusive. Let it be conclusive. Then 
 speak out the conclusion. Set forth the miracles as 
 they are set forth in the Gospel, as witnesses of Christ's 
 kingdom over men. Study the prophets, and learn 
 
IL] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 21 
 
 what words they spoke to the people in their day 
 respecting the living God and His government over 
 men. See whether their words are not mightier than all 
 the evidences that have been deduced from them. 
 
 For you say that you are determined to show you 
 have a Bible. In God's name, do it, then ! You are 
 not showing that when you are disputing about it; 
 trying to prove its statements by your feeble reasoning ; 
 trying to silence and confound all who raise .objections 
 to it. You are showing that you have it if you really 
 recognise in it treasures new and old ; if you are sure 
 that these treasures are committed to you that you may 
 dispense them to your people ; if you are sure that a 
 living Spirit can alone make them intelligible and 
 mighty to you as to them. Is it not a melancholy and 
 a miserable thing to hear men, in the face of all that we 
 see or know to exist in London, prelecting about the 
 evidences of Christianity, as if they ever helped to raise 
 a soul out of perdition, — as if Christ Himself were not 
 higher and more effectual than all evidences about 
 Him ? If the Essayists and Reviewers set clergymen 
 of all measures of intellect — yes, if they set clergy- 
 men of the very highest intellect, with the greatest 
 knowledge of objections, ancient and modern, with 
 great logical power and clearness of exposition — upon 
 the old task of producing Evidences for or from mira- 
 cles, prophecy, the authority of Scripture — their book 
 will be indeed a curse to us. The cdngregations of 
 the metropolis will have a right to tell the authors 
 of it, — ' You have led our preachers to give us stones 
 
22 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 when we are wanting bread.' But congregations may ob- 
 tain a blessing from it for which they will always have 
 to praise God. The younger clergy may be driyen 
 from those dreary arguments which have proved so 
 ineffectual in the mouths of their fathers. They may 
 believe that God Himself is speaking to them, and 
 warning them to be less conceited about the power of 
 their arguments — to be more confident in the power of 
 His truth. If they have been resting their faith in the 
 Gospel upon Paley's arguments, or upon their recollec- 
 tion of his arguments, it is well that they should 
 be led to suspect such a foundation ; it is well 
 that they should learn their faith again at the feet 
 of Christ Himself : for so only can they impart 
 it to others, so only can it in any degree meet the 
 miseries of the world around them. Churches did not 
 arise, Christendom was not formed, by the preach- 
 ing of evidences, but by the preaching of a Gospel. 
 Churches cannot be restored, Christendom cannot be 
 reunited, by the preaching of evidences, but by the 
 preaching of a Gospel. 
 
 But do we believe that we have such a Gospel ? Do 
 we accept the Creeds?- These are great questions 
 indeed; to be meditated in our hearts before we 
 condemn any of our brethren for unbelief. It seems 
 to me that we need, one and all of us, to have our 
 unbelief probed and laid bare ; that we need to con- 
 fess it before God, and to ask Him to take it away 
 from us. We have been afraid to do this. We have 
 wanted to think that all was right with us. There has 
 
II.] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. ' 23 
 
 been a certain consolation in discovering those whom we 
 might pronounce wrong. Oh! what have we not suffered 
 for this cowardice and baseness ! There is a faith beneath 
 our unbelief; there is a God who is sustaining that 
 faith ! If we would penetrate below the crumbling 
 surface we should find it, we should find Him. And 
 perhaps we should find a faith in those who seemed 
 furthest from it, we should find a God upholding it 
 in them. If we believe in a Divine Will to all good as 
 strongly as the Westminster Reviewer believes or thinks 
 he believes in the generalizations of the human intellect, 
 we may try which is stronger for the reformation of 
 society. 
 
 PAET II. 
 
 OLD CREEDS AND MODERN OPINIONS. 
 
 The lessons from the present crisis which I considered 
 in the first part were suggested in .great measure by 
 an article In the Westminster Review. I cannot find a 
 better text for those of which I am about to speak, than 
 an elaborate article in the National Review for January, 
 which was also called forth by the "Essays and 
 Reviews." It presents the subject in quite another 
 aspect. Like the Westminster it regards the publication 
 of the Essays as a sign of .the times, as marking in 
 some sense a theological epoch. But the writer is by no 
 means revolutionary. He desires quiet progress and 
 
24 TRACTS WE PRIESTS AND PHOPLK [No. 
 
 toleration, He is a dissenter, with unusually benignant 
 feelings towards the Church of England, and with a 
 sincere desire to save it, if possible, from destruction. 
 
 These feelings exhibit themselves at the outset of his 
 paper. He contrasts the bigotry of the Independents, in 
 ejecting Dr. Davidson from a professorship on the ground 
 of his Scriptural investigations, with the freedom of 
 thought which is displayed by seven men who belong 
 to our universities, who are acknowledged ornaments of 
 them, and who had not (when he wrote) called forth 
 any severe animadversions from the societies of which 
 they were members, or from the Church generally. He 
 accounts for the difference by the necessity xmder which 
 such a body as the Independents feels itself to maintain 
 its sectarian position, and by the close connexion of 
 the English Church with the social and literary life 
 of the nation. He speaks of the Dissenters as adhering 
 to the doctrinal Protestantism of the sixteenth century, 
 and as being, therefore, obliged to resist all invasion of a 
 rigid Scripturalism ; of the Anglican Church as com- 
 bining, however inconsistently and illogically, Catholic 
 with Protestant elements — reverence for tradition 
 with reverence for the Bible — and, in consequence of 
 that awkward union, as being less jealous of the honom* 
 of the written Word. He hails the Essayists as 
 breaking loose from the fetters of Protestantism— if by 
 Protestantism we mean the belief that the Bible is an 
 authoritative code inspired directly by God; as main- 
 taining more vigorously than their contemporaries the 
 principle of Protestantism — if by Protestantism we 
 
II.] TEE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 25 
 
 mean the assertion of the right of individual judgment. 
 He bestows the higheot praise on the Essays of Mr. 
 Williams and Mr. Jowett, because they vindicate the 
 freedom of Scriptural interpretation. He admires Mr. 
 Jowett's especially for the ethical principle which it lays 
 down, that the New Testament (the Sermon on the 
 Mount is the special instance) sets forth precepts which 
 may greatly elevate the tone of our minds and hearts, 
 but which are alien from men's present condition and 
 practice, and must be received ks counsels of perfection 
 rather than as laws. 
 
 But all this mode of thinking and speaking he holds 
 to be totally incompatible with allegiance to the formu- 
 laries of the Church. He deals tenderly with the men, 
 deeming that attachment to the creeds and habits of 
 their childhood is natural, but he denounces the act of 
 subscription as dangerous and immorail, except in those 
 who are prepared to surrender all independence of 
 thought, and to abjure the notion that we can per- 
 ceive any truths which our forefathers did not perceive. 
 He bestows a passing smile of pity, mixed with moral 
 indignation, upon some members of the English Church, 
 not connected with the Essayists, who have- adopted, as 
 he says, the theory of the Alexandrian fathfers, which 
 has been defunct for sixteen centuries, and who suppose 
 that they can force the Articles of the English Church, 
 which are radically Augustinian, to speak their language. 
 He disposes, with some severity, of the maxims re- 
 specting conformity, which are defended in Mr. Wilson's 
 Essay. He proceeds to dwell upon the hopeless con- 
 
26 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLK [No. 
 
 dition into wMch Gennan theology has fallen since 
 1848, from the efforts of the reactionary party to stifle 
 aU thought and inquiry. He believes Strauss and 
 Baur, though exaggerated in many of their opinions, 
 to he valuable witnesses on behalf of the right to 
 speak freely in the midst of civil and ecclesiastical 
 oppression. He earnestly recommends us to abolish 
 clerical subscription ; ingeniously urges some of the 
 arguments of Burke against the proposition for aban- 
 doning it in the last century as reasons in favour of 
 that course now ; and concludes with sketching a plan 
 of very mild reform, which would preserve all the 
 present conditions of the Church as to its dioceses and 
 parishes, only emancipating it from the thraldom of 
 Creeds and Articles. 
 
 I. I have spoken in this tract as if I held the Creeds 
 to be true myself, and as if I thought they were the 
 best guides to the clergy in preaching a Gospel to the 
 people. I have spoken as if I thought we had not 
 overvalued, but undervalued the Bible ; as if I thought 
 it did contain a complete record of God's revelation of 
 Himself. These statements, of course, put me under the 
 ban of the reviewer. I must be an enemy of toleration 
 and progress if I maintain them. If I am not an enemy 
 of toleration and progress, I must be warping the 
 Creeds, and the Articles of the Chm-ch which reassert 
 the Creeds and protest against certain departures from 
 them, to a sense of my own. Whether this be so is a 
 question of some importance to my own conscience; 
 whether such results are inevitably involved in the 
 
II,] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 27 
 
 reception of Creeds and Articles, is a question for the 
 conscience of every clergyman. It is one of the ques- 
 tions which are specially thrust upon us now ; which we 
 cannot evade. The Essays and Reviews generally, Mr. 
 Wilson's Essay particularly, compel us all to examine 
 it afresh. I am thankful for that necessity. If we turn 
 it to a right account we may all be the better for it. 
 
 It is well to find a point of agreement with any 
 writer from whom we differ very widely, especially 
 with any one who attacks us for dishonesty. I heartily 
 agree with the Reviewer in his denunciation of those 
 churchmen, whoever they may be, who put forward 
 a theory of Clemens or Origen as the true Christian 
 doctrine, and try to fashion our Articles in conformity 
 with it. Such feeble creatures, who play their theoso- 
 phical fiddles while Rome is burning, are worthy of all 
 the contempt he can pour upon them. As if theosophy, 
 and not God, was to reform the world ! As a London 
 clergyman, I may be tempted to feel most indignation 
 against these pseudo churchmen on this ground. But 
 the Reviewer's ground is also a perfectly right and 
 tenable one. Our Articles are, as he says, radically 
 Angustinian. Those who would deprive them of that 
 character, destroy not their accidents, but their very 
 essence. 
 
 Augustine stands forth through a number of different 
 centuries as the representative of the doctrine that the 
 will of God is the one ground of all redemption for 
 man, of all right action by man. In this sense he 
 was hailed by Luther in the sixteenth century as the 
 
28 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PBOPLB. [No. 
 
 witness that God, and not man, breaks the fetters of 
 the human will ; in this sei;se he was the Father to whom 
 the Jansenists in the seventeenth century, abhorring 
 the name of Luther, resorted as much as he did. There 
 was assuredly a vast difference between them. Luther 
 hated theories with entire hati-ed. The free grace of 
 God was for him the deliverance from the theories of the 
 schoolmen; he fled to Augustine from Aquinas, who 
 was an Augustinian ; he gladly fled from Augustine 
 himself to St. Paul. Jansenius, probably, regarded 
 Augustine as a great theorist. Still it was on God 
 Himself as the author of all grace, not on a theory 
 about grace, that he relied. And it was such a doctrine 
 of grace which made Luther an effectual protester 
 against papal tyranny; Pascal, an effectual protester 
 against Jesuit chicaneries. Such a doctrine of grace 
 has been the one effectual testimony throughout Europe 
 on behalf of morality, and on behalf of freedom. It 
 was inscribed on the heart of Coligny ; it went forth 
 to battle with William the Silent. God Himself against 
 popes, synods, Catholic leagues ; God Himself against 
 injustice, lying, robbery for burnt-offerings, was the 
 watchword in which they fought and fell. The lo^s of 
 that faith in its direct personal form, the absorption 
 of it into any religious or philosophical theory, the 
 mitigation of it by any Arminian or semi-Pelagian 
 compromises, I hold to be the ruin of moral strength 
 and life to a land ; the revival of it to be the sign of 
 coming reformation. That it wants other truths to sustain 
 it — that it becomes a mere Mahometan proclamation of 
 
II.] THE MOTE AND TEE BEAM. 29 
 
 a Divine sovereign without them — I fully believe. That 
 it is the fundamental truth, without which none can 
 live, which awakens Churches and Nations out of their 
 sleep in one age or another, I believe also. 
 
 Most thankful I am then to the reviewer for reminding 
 us that our Articles are based upon this principle. If 
 they had not been, they could not have told the priests 
 in the sixteenth century of the Gospel which they were 
 to preach ; if they had not been, they could be of no use 
 for the same purpose to us in the nineteenth. For the 
 battle whether there is such a Will, and what it is, was 
 the battlfe of the sixteenth century. The Westminster 
 Reviewer has shown us that it is the battle of the nine- 
 teenth. The priests of the sixteenth century were 
 disposed to forget that they were to declare this Will to 
 th6 people. They put the notions and fancies of that 
 century in the place of it. The priests of the nineteenth 
 century are disposed to forget that they must proclaim 
 this Will to the people. They put their own fancies 
 and notions in the place of it. The Articles were wanted 
 then that the people might not be deprived of the know- 
 ledge which was their right. I, at least, feel that I want 
 them, to prevent me from robbing our people of the 
 knowledge which is their right. 
 
 ' But they bind us to an Augustinian theory,' On 
 the contrary, they bind us to reject Augustinian theo- 
 ries, and every other theory which interferes with the 
 maintenance of that great principle for which Augustine 
 in his day, Luther in his day, was 'the witness. The 
 Keformers were not confined by the terms in which' 
 
30 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 Augustine thought or spoke. What helonged to his 
 individual mind they threw aside, for their own sakes ; 
 what helonged to the Africa of the fourth century they 
 threw aside for their country's sake. If they had not 
 believed in a Will of God which is ahove all theories 
 and above all men, they would not have done so ; as 
 they did believe in such a Will, they could not help 
 doing so. If we .have ceased to believe in a Will of 
 God which is above aU theories and all men, we shall 
 hold ourselves tied by the conceits of their individual 
 minds, or of their centuries. If we believe in such a 
 Will, we shall throw off any fetters which hinder the 
 fall proclamation of it. We shall know that in throw- 
 ing off these fetters we are following the mind of those 
 who imposed the Articles — their very purpose in im- 
 posing them. We shall know that we are taking them 
 in a fuller, stricter sense than their own. Cranmer, 
 Ridley, and Parker may have in their theories and dis- 
 putations only confessed a supralapsarian election. If 
 we ascend higher, if the circumstances of our time drive 
 us with St. Paul to confess an Election in Christ that 
 was before all worlds, are we not more truly Augus- 
 tinian than they were, or than Augustine himself was ? 
 are we not in more actual communion with them than 
 we should be if we affected to measm-e that which was 
 meant for all time by the accidents of a particular time? 
 If the National Reviewer had passed on from those 
 which he calls our Augustinian Articles to those which 
 assert the Word or Son of God to be one with the 
 Father, to have taken man's nature, and to have re- 
 
II.] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 81 
 
 deemed the world — he might have struck eyen a heavier 
 blow than he has struck at those foolish clergymen who 
 wish to galvanise an Alexandrian theory which died in 
 the second century. For he could have shown them 
 how little those Articles which do teach the special faith 
 of the Alexandrian doctors endorse or revive any of their 
 special opinions. The Word of God, of whom they spoke 
 as the Teacher of Mankind, is set forth as the Living 
 Word through all ages. He is a Person, not a theory ; 
 rather the great Deliverer from all 'theories, the bond of 
 fellowship to human beings. And, in this case also, if 
 I find that the Articles teach me to assert the perfect 
 union of the Word with the Father, His relation to 
 mankind, His sacrifice for mankind. His universal 
 dominion; and if the compilers of them by any theories 
 of theirs weakened any of these truths — ^especially if 
 their theories in any wise prohibit us from saying that 
 the divine Son perfectly manifested the Will of His 
 Father, and that we can know that WiU only in Him 
 — I have a right to abandon— it is my duty to abandon 
 those theories — ^not because I have not subscribed the 
 Articles, but because I have subscribed them. 
 
 Once more. The Articles tell me that I am to set forth 
 a Spirit of God as proceeding from the Father and the 
 Son, and as building up a Catholic Church. This is a 
 part of my Gospel to mankind, which I must preach. 
 There have been a number of theories about the pre- 
 sence and operations of the Divine Spirit, — Romanist 
 theories, Quaker theories, Methodist theories, Irvingite 
 theories, philosophical theories. Holding the Spirit 
 
32 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 of God to be above all these, and to be the Former 
 of a living Society, which js large enough to embrace 
 the universe, I cannot confine myself by one or all of 
 them. But I can believe — I am bound to believe if I 
 accept the teaching of the Church — that each of these 
 indicates some operations of the Spirit, which I as a 
 Christian ought not to forget, or to hide. I dare not 
 therefore deny them, or mock at them. If I deliver my 
 message and ask the Spirit of God to open and to guide 
 my heart, I shall enter into as many of them as it is 
 good that I should enter into ; my message will meet 
 the minds and hearts of some who are possessed by 
 them. But I must keep myself from negations and 
 the worship of opinions, if I want to preserve my alle- 
 giance to the Church, and to abide in the Name wherein 
 I have been baptized. 
 
 I cannot then adopt the Reviewer's statement that the 
 writers of the " Essays and Reviews " are inconsistent 
 Churchmen, because they assert that there is a progress 
 in illumination respecting divine truth, and that opi- 
 nions change. If they more fully confessed that God 
 has revealed Himself to us, and that He is guiding us 
 by His Spirit out of the opinions of men and ages, 
 into the Truth which belongs to all ages — they would 
 be more consistent Churchmen. They would then un 
 derstand better what the difference is between a Church 
 and a Sect, between the acceptance of ancient creeds 
 and the adoption of certain propositions as the expression 
 of the " consciousnesses " of themselves or their time. 
 But though I wish that they and we all perceived this 
 
II.] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 33 
 
 distinction more clearly, 1 do find it recognised even by 
 those of them -ftrho appear the most inclined to novelties. 
 It lies at the root, I suspect, of that strange theory of 
 subscription by which Mr. Wilson has startled the 
 Reviewer, and many members of his own communion, 
 more than the Eeviewer. 
 
 I venture to. speak on this point (1),, Because I am 
 not likely to deal too tenderly with Mr. Wilson,, seeing 
 that there is scarcely a writer in the compass of literature 
 whose habits of mind are so alien from my own as his ; 
 seeing that those writers of the New Testament who 
 are dearest to me are those whom he most suspects; 
 seeing that he dislikes such words as Grrace, which have 
 for me the profoundest significance, and uses such words 
 as Multitudinism and Ideology, which have for me the 
 least possible significance. (2), Because I cannot plead 
 that benefit of clergy which the Reviewer grants to Mr. 
 Wilson and others on the score of ancestral prejudice, 
 since I have deliberately put on the bonds which he 
 asks us to cast off ; have deliberately abandoned the 
 position which he counts the only- tenable one; But, 
 with motives on all these grounds to judge Mr. Wilson 
 severely, and to distinguish my own case from his, I 
 must say that he seems to me, amidst a number of in- 
 coherencies, to give proofs- of real loyalty to the Church, 
 and to justify his adherence to her formularies. 
 
 II. I am willing to be accounted a dishonest man by 
 the Reviewer, by the whole body of Dissenters, by a 
 large body of Churchmen, while I explain myself on this 
 point. I do not undervalue their judgments ; perhaps 
 
 2. D 
 
34 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 I value them rather too much. But I have learnt to 
 look up to a higher judge than any reviewer; and for 
 the sake of asserting a principle in which I think the 
 existence of the English Church, as well as the mora- 
 lity of her priests^ is involved, I will defy the hazard, 
 in the hope, almost in the certainty, that there are a 
 few whose consciences will be made — ^not easier — but 
 freer and simpler by attending to my words. 
 
 That we abandon our natural liberty when we come 
 under the laws of a nation, has been the commonplace 
 of jurists and statists. I hold that commonplace to be 
 a hateful paradox and sophism. 1 do not know what 
 natural liberty is. The condition of the savage seems 
 to me an utterly slavish condition. A man never be- 
 comes free, never acquires the energies of a freeman, 
 the fellowship of a freeman, the aspirations of a fr-eeman, 
 till he feels the obligations of a citizen. That is the 
 doctrine of the Bible. That was the doctrine of all the 
 ancient republics. That was the doctrine of our own 
 ancestors. The words freeman and citizen were ■ndtli 
 them almost interchangeable words. 
 
 The parallel commonplace to this respecting the 
 jiation is, that a man abandons a portion of his 
 spiritual freedom by becoming the member of a Church. 
 That commonplace also I hold to be a hatefal paradox and 
 sophism. The condition in which I indulge all my own 
 notions and fancies sfeems to me one of spiritual slavery; 
 very soon it tends to become one of spiritual inani- 
 tion. I cannot think freely, nobly, hopefully, till I 
 am in fellowship with others; till my mind, heart, 
 
II.] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 35 
 
 conscience, reason, are under a government. But wTiose 
 Government? By being a member of a Church, I 
 understand being in God's kingdom, under His own 
 government. I hold that He has taken me out of my 
 dull, torpid, natural condition; out of the state of an 
 animal, into the condition of His child, whom He has 
 redeemed, that I may know Him and be the partaker 
 of His wisdom and goodness and truth. I cannot speak 
 of choosing that position. He has chosen me for it. 
 I confess that He has,> or my parents, or my godfathers 
 and godmothers, confess it for me when they bring me 
 to Baptism. I put myself, or they put me, into His 
 hands. I learn to lisp His name. I begin to know by 
 degrees that He is governing me, as I know by de- 
 grees that my earthly parents are governing me. By 
 various acts of discipline I am brought to have a little 
 glimpse of that world of mystery which is surrounding 
 mj spirit, as I am brought to have a few glimpses of 
 the world of mystery with which I converse through 
 my senses. I make innumerable mistakes, and fall 
 into innumerable bewilderments in my attempts to 
 realize the meaning of either region. But these mis- 
 takes and bewilderments assure me that I want a teacher 
 for both, to guide raj spirit out of its darkness, to pre- 
 vent my senses and my understanding from being 
 crushed by the objects about which they are meant to 
 give me information. 
 
 Now, if creeds are a confession of these facts, the 
 attempt to justify conformity to them by saying, ' They 
 express my opinion,' 'they accord with my opinion,' must 
 
 d2 
 
36 TRACTS FOE PRIESTS AND PEOFLR [No. 
 
 lead us, I conceive, to continual embarrassment and 
 continual falsehood. K opinioo is the groand of the 
 uniyerse, then, bj all means, let there be no creeds, or 
 let there be new creeds every centur j, every ten years, 
 every five years,, every month.. Let there be a different 
 creed for every eorantry, for every county, for every 
 family, for every man. The whole question is settled 
 one way — can only be settled one way — ^if that is the 
 suppressed premiss in our mind, if that is what we 
 mean, though we do not say it. And to a great extent 
 this hces been the suppressed premiss in the minds of 
 Churchmen who have pleaded the cause of creeds, and 
 of Dissenters who have assailed them. Under such 
 circumstances all kinds of sophisms have passed current 
 as defences of conformity; sophisms whidi can be 
 easily exposed by its opponents ; sophisms wMeh too 
 often become palpable to him who uses them; sophisms 
 which conspire most inconveniently and perilously 
 with all the motives which tempt us to be members 
 of a body possessing emoluments and traditional re- 
 spectability. But beneath all these there has been 
 another and altogether different feeling, which the 
 opponent could not understand, which his arguing could 
 not reprove or reach ; which could encounter internal 
 perplexities, and contradictions far more terrible than 
 any arguments; which has the hardest fight of all in 
 sensitive minds with the fear that they may be yielding, 
 not to it, but to personal motives and old attachments. 
 It is the sense of leaving a Father's house, of shaking 
 off ties which we did not create any more than we 
 
IL] THB MOTE AND TEB BEAM. 37 
 
 created the relation to our earthly parents, or brothers, 
 or sisters. It is the 4read of renouncing the service 
 of Truth itself for the sake of doing homage to a con- 
 ception of truth in our particular minds, which ma.y be 
 strong to-day and gone to-morrow. 
 
 That this straggle may terminate, we all know too 
 well. But how rarely does it terminate by the mere 
 triumph of an opinion! It ends in a great majority of 
 cases thromgh the weariness of opinion ; through the 
 desire to be delivered from the perpetual conflict of 
 opinions ; through the longing for a Will which shall 
 determine what we are to think — what we are to be. 
 More and more of such discontent there must be, if we 
 do not discover that a Will and Reason higher than 
 that of prelate or pope has given us our place in the 
 Universal Church, and will teach and guide us to hold 
 fast that place, and to do the work which belongs to 
 it. Oh, how thankfully, and with what pleasure do 
 I read in Mr. Wilson's Essay the tokens that he 
 feels that Reason and that Will binding him to the 
 Church of his infancy, though all the power of self- 
 opinion may be drawing him from it. He is sure that he 
 breathes more freely in that Communion than he could 
 in any other ; he will not change it, unless he is forced, 
 for one in which he would feel the bondage of opinion 
 more, the sense of being under the government of a 
 Father and Redeemer less. Is not that a freemason's sign 
 which we should all recognise ? Should we not hail it the 
 more eagerly because it comes from one whose tendencies 
 are so much to exalt individual opinions into laws ? 
 
38 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 III. If the reader has gone so far with me, I think he 
 will be ready to advance a step further. I think he will 
 be prepared to admit that the worship of opinion has been 
 the main cause of all intolerance ; and that fixed Creeds, 
 just so far as they deliver us from the worship of 
 opinions, are the protectors of toleration. I am aware 
 that this doctrine will sound to the Reviewer, to all 
 dissenters, and to a multitude of clergymen, a ludicrous 
 paradox. I must spend a few moments in the illus- 
 tration of it. 
 
 The Reviewer has di-awn a contrast far too kind, and 
 too much in our favour, between English Churchmen and 
 English Dissenters; between English Churchmen and 
 the orthodox Germans. Perhaps he may now be dis- 
 posed to retract these compliments. At all events they 
 rest, as it seems to me, upon an insuflScient ground. 
 Those social advantages of which he speaks may at times 
 make us indifferent about any religious controversy; 
 just, as often they will make us vehement against any 
 opinion which Society dislikes. In 1800, it would have 
 been possible to get the votes of 8,000 clergymen, 
 supported by the most influential laymen, for the exclu- 
 sion of Mr. Simeon from the Church ; in 1840 the same 
 number of clergymen, supported by as many influential 
 laymen, might have passed the like sentence upon Dr. 
 Pusey. Each of our schools does its best to extinguish 
 the other ; so far as we ourselves are concerned, we can 
 make out no plea for being reckoned less exclusive, less 
 disposed to persecute, than other people. 
 
 Yet there must be a justification for a judgment so 
 
II.] THE MOTE AND TEE BEAM. 39 
 
 impartial, so unexpected, as that of the Reviewer. 
 Evidently there is. The attempts of our schools to 
 restrain and persecute each other, are signally and 
 repeatedly defeated. The defeat comes no doubt 
 obviously and directly from the tenderness of our law 
 for property; from the reluctance of those who administer 
 the law to deprive any one of property without very 
 ■distinct evidence that he has violated the conditions- upon 
 which it is held. But there has been another restraint 
 which has acted quite as strongly, though not always 
 consciously, both upon ecclesiastics, upon the lawyers, 
 and upon the lay public. They have felt that there is a 
 practical bull involved in the notion of our being bound 
 by formularies which we can ourselves bind; of our adopt- 
 ing an old document for our guidance, which receives its 
 sense from the temper and inclinations of this age. No 
 doubt some people are still more alive to what strikes 
 them as the strange contradiction, that we should have 
 creeds which we cannot enforce. To the writers in religious 
 newspapers, to all who believe that there is no power 
 in this world but that of outward punishment and 
 disgrace — that all God's government has respect to- a 
 future state, and that even there it cannot be safely trusted 
 — this consequence presents itself as supremely ridiculous. 
 But there is a sense in men's minds, deep, though un- 
 developed,-that if the Creeds are true, God really reigns ; 
 that the Church is either the region in which His voice 
 is heard above that of human tribunals and public 
 opinion ; or that it is a fiction. Churchmen are obliged 
 to confess that they cannot enforce their decrees 
 
40 TRACTS FOR PRIMTS AND PWPLH. [No. 
 
 and excommunications now as they did in the days of 
 old; that, they cannot get sentences passed to affirm 
 certain propositions as true, and to denounce others as 
 false. They submit, often with a very ill grace, to the 
 necessity. They say (and say truly) that the liberal 
 doctrine respecting toleration proceeds upon the hypo- 
 thesis that all Truth is uncertain ; that possibly there is 
 no such thing as Truth, or that if there is we can never 
 know what it is. Would it not be more pious to recognise 
 a will of God in what we call a necessity ? Would it 
 not be more wise to consider whether He may not be 
 vindicating the certainty of Truth and the right of man 
 to possess it by that very course of events in which we 
 (taking Locke's Essay for our Bible) have only seen 
 the opposite meaning .? Assuming a revelation of God 
 to be real, assuming the Church to be what I have taken 
 it to be, assuming God to be exercising an actual dominion 
 over men, the h priori reason for this faith would be over- 
 whelming. Let us see whether the actual experience of 
 the Church is less decisive on the same side. 
 
 Taking our start from that Name which is pro- 
 claimed in the Creeds, it is the most notorious historical 
 commonplace, that to crush Sab^Uianism was to call 
 forth Arianism; that these who were most vehement 
 in denouncing Nestorians became Etitychians. Do we, 
 who believe in this Name, feel that such facts as these 
 weaken our belief in it ? Do we reverence less the men 
 who fought for it against an immense majority of 
 Churchmen, and against the emperors? No! we see 
 in all these half truths of the different dividers a wit- 
 
II.] TEE MOTH AND TEE BEAM. 41 
 
 ness for the whole truth. We hold that the champions 
 of the faith were great when they were contending 
 against the public opinion of the Church, and the 
 tyranny of the State ; were then winning a victory by 
 which other generations were to benefit; that they 
 were little when they were using the force of public 
 opinion and of emperors to crush opponents ; that they 
 were then creating heresies among the most earnest, 
 enlisting all baseness, insincerity, treachery, on the 
 side of orthodoxy. 
 
 Every subsequent controversy on topics concern- 
 ing the life of the Church, though not comprehended 
 in her general Creeds, leads to the same conclusion. 
 The Eucharist stands forth as the mightiest wit- 
 ness of a communion between earth and Heaven, 
 grounded upon a sacrifice made for the world. The 
 Church claims it in this character for all its members. 
 Some are not content so to receive it ; they must make 
 it more real by describing it in the terms of logic, 
 though, if it means anything, it must transcend those 
 terms. Others will try to exalt it by feeble rhetoric, 
 though, if it has the grandeur and awfulness which 
 we say belongs to it, the use of rhetoric respecting it must 
 be profane. Is there not an excuse for resisting such 
 experiments ? Do we not respect Johannes Scotus for 
 his witness in the ninth century? Do we not sym- 
 pathise with Berengarius for his protests, and his 
 sorrowful recantations, in the eleventh? Such men 
 deserve our reverence for asserting the honour of the 
 Eucharis't against those who would degrade it into 
 
42 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS JND PWPLH. [No. 
 
 an idol. But it has been found that if you merely 
 crush those who turn it into an idol, you call forth those 
 who make it subside into a metaphor; in crushing 
 them you revive the idolatry. In the conflict between 
 these parties, the sense of communion and all its pro- 
 found blessedness is ever ready to perish in the hearts 
 of the people. God upholds it ; it cannot die. The 
 full truth works itself out in His hands through the 
 partial assertions of divines ; the poor eat and are 
 satisfied. But by every denunciation and persecution 
 of one school or another, doctors and rulers have done 
 what in them lay to extinguish the Divine truth, and 
 to send empty away those that are needing the bread 
 and water of life. 
 
 The assertion, ' God justifieth by faith without the 
 works of the law/ was in Luther's mouth a trumpet 
 that roused all Europe, and shook the detestable in- 
 fidelity and immorality of Leo, and Leo's age. But 
 the Lutheran is able in some little sphere to confute 
 and persecute those who speak of the worth of good 
 works, or who give a difi'erent sense to the word jus- 
 tification from that which it bears in his formularies. 
 The punishment is, that the principle loses all its 
 power ; it becomes merely the denial of some other. It 
 weakens morality instead of being a deep foundation for 
 morality. 
 
 I shall repeat myself if I refer to that other even 
 more striking illustration of this great historical law, the 
 debates respecting the Divine Will and Human Free- 
 dom. I have said already that the emancipation of the 
 
11] THB MOTE AND THE BEAM. 43 
 
 nations from the worst forms of ecclesiastical and im- 
 perial bondage may be traced directly to the procla- 
 mation by the Keformers, in its simplest, nakedest 
 strength, of an all-efl5cient Divine Will. The moment 
 they had an opportunity in Holland, Switzerland, 
 Scotland, of putting forward dogmatic confutations 
 and penal sentences upon those who denied their 
 propositions, and magnified the will of man in contrast 
 to the grace of God, their own doctrine shrivelled into 
 a dry, dead, cruel formula, powerful only for cursing 
 and for provoking a violent Arminian reaction. It is 
 equally true that the Laudian persecution of Calvinism 
 turned the assertion of the freedom of the human will 
 into a strange contradiction, and produced a fierce and 
 intense protest against Arminianism; and that the 
 Jesuit persecution of the Port Royal, if it did not stir 
 up any decided Augustinian reaction, has to answer in 
 no slight degree for producing the infidel reaction, which 
 overwhelmed Jansenism and Jesuitism together. 
 
 Equally striking, it seems to me, is the evidence 
 which the most recent times have furnished of the same 
 principle. The statements which seem most likely to 
 sap the whole faith of Christendom have been already, 
 and may be still more, the means of deepening it, not 
 by bringing forth a multitude of replies and confu- 
 tations which have stood us in very little stead, but by 
 evoking some deep slumbering belief. On this ground I 
 entirely agree with the Reviewer, that the publication of 
 the theory of Strauss respecting the Person of our Lord 
 has been a blessing to our age. Numbers in England 
 
44 TRACTS FOB PRIISSTS AND PMOFLE. [No. 
 
 and in Gennany were talking Straussianisra without 
 knowing it. Numbers Aa(^ reduced our Lord into a myth. 
 The old Unitarianism, which spoke of Him merely as a 
 Messiah, who appeared in the 4000th year of the world 
 to preach morality, do certain strange acts, and rise 
 from the dead, was wearing itself out. Religious men, 
 who had revolted from that freezing system, were begin- 
 ning to think of Christ only as their Saviour, to mould 
 him according to their faith. A vague Christianity was 
 taking the place of Christ in the popular mind. Strauss 
 presented to men their own thoughts distinctly and 
 definitely. He showed them what they meant. So he 
 aroused the question what He could he whom men had 
 called King and Lord, if He were not the product of the 
 human consciousness, not a human idea of what is excel- 
 lent. The old creed of a Son who had dwelt with the 
 Father hefore all worlds, of a Word who is one with the 
 Father, who took flesh and dwelt among men, and in 
 whom they could see the glory of the Father, full of grace 
 and truth, has come forth as the alternative to this 
 theory. No notion or doctrine ahout Christ can be the 
 alternative of it. An actual Christ, divine and human, 
 is the only antithesis to a mythical Christ. Of such a 
 one the Creeds speak; of such a one we may speak if we 
 accept the Creeds. 
 
 Nor can I dissent from the Reviewer that Baur's 
 divarication of the, Gospels has done a service of the 
 same kind as the mythical doctiine. One is in fact 
 the necessary consequence of the other. The story of 
 a man, to whom his disciples have imputed cei-tain 
 
II.] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 45 
 
 strange powers and heroical or godly endowments, 
 must be told variously and inconsistently by those dis- 
 ciples ; opposition of purposes is, on that hypothesis, 
 the natural explanation of their diflferences ; a subse- 
 quent. attempt to combine them, of their apparent resem- 
 blances. The further that scheme of interpretation is 
 pushed, the more ably and learnedly it is worked out, the 
 better ; the more must those who believe that Christ is 
 an actual Person be driven from all poor experiments 
 at an artificial harmony, to seek for a real harmony, 
 grounded upon God's purpose to manifest the acts 
 of His Son, and involving the use of diiferent minds for 
 that manifestation. The two methods will stand out 
 broadly and clearly against each other. That which has 
 been the tacit assumption of Christendom, that which is 
 recognised by the popular mind of Engltod as true, that 
 which explains the reverential and loving expressions 
 respecting the Gospels which occur in the Essay of so 
 unprejudiced a thinker as Dr. Temple, will be dis- 
 engaged from those mixtures with notions borrowed 
 from the opposite hypothesis, from those attempts to eke 
 out a little faith with a little .learning, which - have 
 brought it into disgrace. Then we may boldly act upon 
 it with the confidence that it is true, and be thankful 
 for whatever opposes it and so helps to make its truth 
 more evident. 
 
 If the orthodox Germans, as the Reviewer says, have 
 not done this ; if they have been anxious to suppress the 
 statements of Strauss and Baur; if they have tried 
 merely to controvert their arguments, and not rather to 
 
46 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLK [No. 
 
 bring forth into fuller clearness the principle which they 
 were controverting; I should he inclined to say they had 
 exhibited great weakness and great faithlessness. But I 
 should hesitate before I ventured to pass a judgment 
 upon foreigners, just as I should not feel myself war- 
 ranted in condemning the English Independents for 
 their treatment of Dr. Davidson. In their position, 
 such efforts seem to me quite excusable. If they have 
 no creeds, if they merely live by a certain tacit, in- 
 herited, or general opinion, I cannot see how they can 
 escape the temptation to persecution except by falling into 
 the apparently opposite temptation of utter indiflference. 
 Each tendency will be continually reproducing the other. 
 But for us to imitate them seems to me, not unnecessary, 
 but suicidal. With the evidence of God's ways and pur- 
 poses which we see behind us and around us, is it any- 
 thing less than rebellion against Him to devise schemes 
 for suppressing words which in His divine wisdom He 
 has willed to be spoken, and which it is our own folly 
 and sin if we do not turn to the strengthening of 
 our own faith and of the faith of the world? Our 
 one effort should be to prove that we are not a Sect, 
 that we do not rest upon certain opinions, but upon the 
 revealed name of the Most High God. He has shown 
 us that we can trust in that name ; that if we try to stifle 
 even the most imperfect statements respecting it, we hide 
 some side of it from men, we crush some truth which 
 they have need of in their life. What the effect of the 
 opposite policy is in our own days — how w^e have 
 produced, and are producing, heresies and unbelief, by the 
 
II.] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 47 
 
 efforts we use to crush heresy and unbelief, I shall 
 endeavour to show in my third part. I will only add 
 here that I accept Dr. Temple's doctrine, that toleration 
 is the last lesson which God teaches us; subject to this 
 condition, that with that lesson comes an overwhelming 
 evidence of the might and comprehensiveness of Truth, and 
 of the negative dividing nature of Falsehood, an evidence 
 which has been accumulating through all ages, ■ and 
 which must be brought to bear with tremendous weight 
 upon ours. 
 
 IV. If I wanted a proof of the blessing which Creeds may 
 confer upon a land, and of the loss which it would suffer 
 if they were taken away, I should find that evidence in 
 the article which I have been considering. I have been 
 struck with nothing so much in that article as with 
 the writer's fervent desire to rise above opinions and 
 theories, and with his incapacity of rising above them. 
 He must contemplate all the ^t&i principles -which, have 
 had power over men — the belief in a Divine Will, the 
 confession of a Divine Word — as theories of this man in 
 one century, or that man in another century, And there- 
 fore he cannot disengage himself from the logical conse- 
 qiiences to which Strauss has been led, that all Christianity 
 is a great and beautiful theory of which a half historical, 
 half mythical Person is the centre ; though that conclu- 
 sion is, I believe, painful and revolting to him. Next, he 
 seems to me to have the most fervent wish for progress ; 
 and to be obliged to realise that wish under the strangest 
 and most impossible conditions. For how, in this nine- 
 teenth century after Christ, he believes that some great 
 
48 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 theology is to emerge out of the different instincts of 
 poets, politicians, philosophers. They are discontented 
 with all the notions and beliefs around them. What 
 help, but that all these should be cast off, and that 
 some newer notion and belief should arise out of them ? 
 Now I cannot think of theology as anything but the 
 declaration of God. A new theology, formed out of 
 the instincts of men, would be simply the most porten- 
 tous form of idolatry ever yet seen in the world; 
 in fact, the combination of all previous idolatries. But 
 if I own a revelation of God, an actual Name which He 
 has delivered to us, I can believe that He has been 
 working through all the ages, and is working now, to 
 bring that Name into fullest light and manifestation. I 
 can receive all the discontents of men, wise or foolish, 
 pious or impious, as witnesses to us that we have been 
 darkening that Name by our conceits, and idolatiies, as 
 calls upon ms to begin a new life. 
 
 V. And this reversal of the idea of progress, arising 
 from the separation of progress and permanence — &om 
 the inability to conceive anything as fixed, and as made 
 known — extends it, as it must needs do, from the region 
 of theology into that of morals. The idea of the New 
 Testament morality, which Mr. Jowett has suggested 
 in his Essay, is exactly in accordance with the tone of 
 all his Essay. It is the melancholy cry of a very honest 
 and very earnest man looking out upon the world, and 
 seeing our utter nonconformity to that of which he reads 
 in the Bible. He wishes it were not so ; he despairs 
 , of reconciling the contradiction ; and he hints, as a last 
 
II.] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 49 
 
 resource, at the old Romish notion that there are certain 
 ' counsels of perfection' for society, which ordinary 
 men are not expected to follow, though these counsels 
 may have an elevating influence upon their low practice. 
 Such words from such a man may well set us upon the 
 most diligent self-examination; they must indicate 
 something utterly wrong in all society, in religious 
 society especially. But the Reviewer accepts them with 
 delight, as giving the hint of a new mode of interpreting 
 Scripture, and so of removing a stumbling-block out of 
 our path. What! because they actually take us back 
 to a period before the Reformation ? Because they undo 
 the great moral principle which was asserted then with 
 such mighty power ? ' There is a law which all men 
 ' must obey ; none can break it with impunity. There 
 ' is a Gospel which answers to the law, sets men free 
 ' from the curse of it, enables them to fulfil it, not in 
 ' the oldness of the letter, but in the newness of the 
 'spirit.' This was the sixteenth century proclamation 
 which levelled the hills and exalted the valleys which 
 scattered monastic ' counsels of perfection ; ' which bore 
 witness to every soldier and . citizen that he was to live 
 godly and righteously in this present world, looking 
 for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Is it a great 
 progress that we must reverse this doctrine? Or do 
 we need that it should be brought out in its fulness 
 and majesty? A Unitarian of the old school might 
 well tremble to hear that the pi&t of the Gospel|Which 
 he had always dwelt upon as the especially practical and 
 human part, had lost that character, and was treated 
 2. E 
 
50 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 as at the farthest remove from ordinary business and 
 life. But those who have always felt that morality 
 must he based upon theology ; that the revelation of 
 the righteousness of God is the only ground for any 
 righteousness in man ; that the Divine law fulfilled in 
 a living person, must be translated into a higher region, 
 and must have a might and power which it could not 
 have as a code of morals ; those who have accepted the 
 old faith, that Christ, having fulfilled the law of love 
 in His own person, has sent His Spirit to write that 
 law in our hearts; they will receive these confessions 
 of our deflections from that law as solemn calls to 
 repentance. They will think that there can be no 
 progress which does not begin with repentance. They 
 will not doubt that we have fallen from the doctrine 
 of the Eeformers respecting the common morality 
 and are relapsing into the perilous notion of a special 
 morality ; because we have not proclaimed Christ as the 
 actual King of men ; because we have made the Gospel 
 of redemption and of a new life less extensive than the 
 law which proclaims curses and death Thanks be to 
 God for the discipline by which He is driving us from 
 our false, untenable positions ; by which He is showing 
 us that the words which we speak with our lips are 
 deeper and broader, not feebler and narrower, than our 
 apprehension of them. 
 
 V. I cannot leave the National Reviewer without two 
 remarks. The first is ^his : The existence of Creeds and 
 Articles in a land may be a greater benefit to him, 
 and to such as him, than they at all know. They may 
 
II.] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 51 
 
 be unconsciously deriving from that which they reject 
 the sense of an order surrounding them whieh they 
 did not create, but which upholds them. They may he 
 reminded that the age wherein we live is the inheritor 
 of blessings, the full meaning of which it is to learn, but 
 which are not of one age or another, which belong to eter- 
 nity, not to time. > They may be led by it to feel that thesfe 
 eternal and immutable truths are the only basis of a 
 universal morality, which shall not bend tO' the notions 
 and habits of one place or another, one period or another. 
 They may be able to hold the ground, which is rapidly 
 slipping from under their feet, against such vigorous 
 deniers as the writer in the Westminst&if Beview, who do 
 confess a permanent order, though one which is guided 
 by no Will ; who certainly will not be content to wait till 
 a new theology has been developed out of the instincts 
 of poets, philosophers, politicians ; who understand by a 
 mythical Christ a mere imagination ; who are not the 
 least likely to be influenced by any counsels of per- 
 fection. My second remark has reference to the inge- 
 nious and elaborate scheme for our reformation, which 
 the Reviewer has drawn out for us. As a pretty model 
 of a Church cut out in paper, I admire that scheme. 
 I cannot accept it as of the slightest value for our actual 
 necessities. The English Church, being set in the 
 midst of a number of sects, must either be the instru- 
 ment of bringing those sects into fellowship, or she must 
 be lost in them. Being set in the midst of a population 
 of Chnstia;h men, she must either be able to declare an 
 actual Christ to those men, or she must cease to believe 
 
 e2 
 
52 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AHB PHOPLE. [No. 
 
 in any Christ herself. Being mixed, as the Eeviewer 
 says, of Catholic and Protestant elements, she must 
 either have a voice which can teach Protestants the fall 
 meaning of their Protestantism, Catholics the full mean- 
 ing of their Catholicism, both of their union in that 
 Name which the creeds of hoth proclaim, or she must 
 become a miserable tertium quid, neither Catholic nor 
 Protestant, rightly despised by those who have preserved 
 any relics of either faith. Being set in a country which 
 rules over Mahometans, Hindoos, Buddhists — every 
 faith that governs the hearts of men — she must either 
 be able io meet the thoughts and longings in their 
 minds with the revelation of a reconciling God, a perfect 
 Sacrifice, a living Spirit, or she must see imitations 
 of all that is worst in Mahometanism, Hinduism, 
 Buddhism, driving out that revelation in her own land. 
 It is well to face these alternatives ; then we shall know 
 how to appreciiite the suggestions for our good which 
 are offered either by amiable on-lookers, or by those 
 members of our body who claim a right to prescribe 
 for us. 
 
 PAET III. 
 
 HOW TO duive qui and to bring in strange doctrines. 
 
 Hitherto I have drawn my lessons from writers who, 
 for very different reasons, have welcomed the Essays 
 and Reviews; who, though on different grounds and in 
 
II.] TEE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 53 
 
 diiferent degrees, are opposed to the English Church. 
 In this part I shall speak of one of the most conspicuous 
 impugners of the Essays and defenders of the Church. 
 I allude to the writer of the article in the Quarterly 
 Review for last. January. I have a right to call' him 
 conspicuous, for the number of the Review in which 
 his criticism appeared has passed through five editions ; 
 and no one, I believe, doubts that it has owed its 
 unprecedented circulation to that criticism. 
 
 Our first business is to ascertain, if we can, the main 
 purpose of a composition which must have been read by 
 ' so many, and has probably exerted so much influence. 
 On this question the reader of the article can have no 
 doubt. The writer holds a brief for the Church of 
 England against the seven Essayists. His intention is 
 to convict them, one and all, of dishonesty in their pro- 
 fessions, of disloyalty to the Church, of unbelief in the 
 Bible. He wishes to get the Church free of them 
 either by their own act, by the terrors of public opinion, 
 or by some formal decree. I cannot perceive that 
 either in his design or in the quality of his rhetoric he 
 differs essentially from any eminent Nisi Prius or Old 
 Bailey advocate. His Essay might fairly rank with the 
 report of any speech of Mr. Serjeant Wilkins or Mi'. 
 Edwin James, provided that report had been revised by 
 its author, and had received his latest corrections. There 
 . is no doubt this difference in the cases : Mr. Serjeant 
 Wilkins and Mr. Edwin James never had the privilege 
 of wearing a mask. Their addresses could only be 
 directed to a jury of men who were sworn well and 
 
54 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 truly to try the cause, and a just verdict to give accord- 
 ing to the evidence, so help them God. The witnesses 
 whom they examined were able to answer in open court 
 to their questions ; a judge took care that the questions 
 should be fair, and the answers exactly recorded. 
 
 I allude to these differences. I do not mean to 
 dwell upon them. I rather wish to consider how far 
 that object and that rhetoric, in which the Quarterly 
 Reviewer resembles the Nisi Prius lawyer, are likely to 
 serve the cause of the Church, how far it is for our 
 interest and well-being that we should consider the 
 Essayists as men of different beliefs or unbeliefs from 
 our own, how far it should be our aim to separate them 
 further from us than they are already separated. The 
 principles upon which these questions are to be decided 
 I have considered in the previous parts of this Essay. I 
 believe the Quarterly Reviewer may throw great light 
 upon their application. 
 
 1. There are some points discussed by him at great 
 length, to which I am comparatively indifferent. He 
 maintains that each Essayist is responsible for the 
 opinions of the others. It may be so. I cannot see 
 my way in dealing with these points of casuistry. The 
 writer of an anonymous article in a Review may not be 
 the least responsible for the other articles which appear 
 in that Review. He may have such entire faith in the 
 wisdom or virtue of the Editor that he may be sure 
 nothing will be published in it which ought not to be 
 published. Or the mere fact of his writing without a 
 name, may be the discharge of his conscience in the 
 
II.] THl!l MOTH AND THE BEAM. 55 
 
 sight of God and man. On the other hand, a person 
 who puts his name openly to a certain portion of a book, 
 to the different portions of which other persons put their 
 names, may he responsible for the whole of it. To a 
 considerable extent I think he is. If he says, as the 
 writers of these Essays say, that they do not pledge 
 themselves to each other's opinions, I assume that they 
 do not. It is the custom in civilized society to trust the 
 word of men who have not shown that they are in the 
 habit of breaking it. If they prove, as these Essayists 
 prove, that they are not agreed with each other by put- 
 ting forth opinions in one Essay which often directly 
 contradict those in another — ^by exhibiting a spirit in one 
 Essay which is as unlike as possible to that in another, — 
 I do not rely any longer merely upon their own state- 
 ment, but on the' fact. Nevertheless, I hold that they 
 ought not to have clubbed their compositions together, 
 unless each believed that it was better, for the interests 
 of truth and of mankind, that every one of the others 
 should come forth than that it should not come forth. 
 And of this t am sure, that having, rightly or wrongly, 
 wisely or unwisely, acted upon that opinion, they are 
 bound, as Englishmen and gentlemen, to abide the con- 
 sequences of it. I am, therefore, utterly astonished at 
 the language which the Reviewer. employs in addressing, 
 himself to Dr. Temple. He believes that gentleman to 
 be responsible for the writings of his associates, and yet 
 he entreats himj ' with the manly openness which marks . 
 hik character,' to disclaim those associates. Certainly 
 this is a new theory of manly openness ! The Reviewer 
 
56 TRACTS FOB PBIBSTS AND FWPLK [No. 
 
 continually appeals, with a flattery wMcli does not strike 
 me as very safe or Christian, to our English honesty. He 
 repeats frequently that he is himself a plain and honest 
 Englishman, an assertion which might, perhaps, have 
 been as well reserved till it had heen disputed. But do 
 honest EngHshmen commonly recognise this sort of 
 manly openness as worthy of their admiration ? Would 
 not they be very likely to tell Dr. Temple if he exhibited 
 it, that he was setting an exainple to his pupils of 
 cowardice and sneaking ? 
 
 Will the Reviewer carry his appeal from the court in 
 which he seems to have so much confidence to a higher 
 court? Will he tell Dr. Temple that he ought to 
 sacrifice friends, kinsmen, all earthly considerations, for 
 Christ ? Surely he ought. Father and mother, wife 
 and children, the opinions of 8,000 clergymen and 24 
 bishops, must all be discarded if they would make us 
 false to Christ. But is a schoolmaster to confound his 
 duty to Christ, with the desire to preserve a reputation 
 among the parents of his pupils, with the desire for the 
 success of his school ? Is he to abandon a single friend, 
 a single point of honour, for these objects? Is not 
 our advocate already in this opening of the case, giving 
 us a hint of the kind of moral confusions in which 
 he will involve us ? And the evidence would be still 
 stronger if we proceeded with his argument against 
 this defendant. He fii-st identifies him with his col- 
 leagues, then coaxes and flatters him to renounce 
 them, then insinuates that he is actually commu- 
 nicating to his scholars all the deadly lessons which 
 
II.] THE MOTE ANB THE BEAM. 57 
 
 he says they are diffusing over the land. Could he 
 have taken a more effectual method of leading those 
 scholars, of leading all who know the worth and 
 Christian tone of Dr. Temple's education, to accept 
 the worst parts of the Essays as sound, and to feel 
 intense disgust for those who oppose them ? 
 
 2. I have been reluctantly detained by this topic. 
 I feel much more the importance of discovering how 
 far we are all answerable for whatever is wrong or 
 unbelieving in the Essayists, than of ascertaining how 
 far they are answerable for one another. But this illus- 
 tration of the Reviewer's ethical code is not without its 
 value, since in one of the most elaborate and highly 
 declamatory passages of the article (p. 289), he main- 
 tains the essential connexion between morality and 
 theology. No one can feel that connexion more 
 strongly than I do. The loss of it seems to me the 
 most perilous loss which can befall us. I quite agree 
 with him that indications of that separation — ^notions 
 that there can be a morality which is not based upon a 
 theology— rare to be found scattered about the Essays ; 
 may, to a certain extent, be accepted as characteristic of 
 them. There is in them a half-formed opinion, that 
 somehow the righteousness which is required of man, 
 and exhibited by man, may be different from the 
 righteousness of God; Wherever such a feeling prevails 
 there will be — there must be — that imperfect sense of 
 the worth of a revelation, which the Reviewer imputes to 
 the Essayists ; there will be the dream that we can have 
 a morality based upon merely human conceptions, or 
 
58 TRACTS FOB PBISSTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 upon the circumstances of men in reference to this world. 
 Above all there will be an unbelief, or only a half 
 beHef in Christ; as manifesting to us the righteousness 
 of His Father. His human acts wiU be regarded as 
 beautiful human acts, not as exhibitions to us of the 
 Divine Nature. 
 
 This tendency to divide our morality from God's 
 morality, and the corresponding tendency to divide the 
 Son from the Father, I do feel to be latent in the 
 Essayists, though I perceive a vigorous struggle against 
 it in nearly every one of them ; a protest of the heart 
 and conscience on behalf of the old faith in opposition 
 to the temper of the age. But how fearfuUy does that 
 temper of the age come forth in the Reviewer when he 
 is in the act of denouncing the Essayists ! Of all the 
 number, Mr. Rowland Williams is the one who has most 
 wounded the hearts of devout Christians, — ^who has 
 appeared most to take pleasure in wounding them. A 
 man of large culture and knowledge, who might have 
 done much to instruct us all if he had really made use of 
 his scholarship, has despised us so much that he has 
 only given us what must be the merest rags of it, just 
 enough to do us harm, not enough to clear away a single 
 difficulty, or even a single superstition from our minds. 
 A man who is apparently eager for oui- reformation' 
 has not awakened us to the sense of one of the many sins 
 of which we are guilty; he has rather made us very 
 comfortable under them, since it might seem as if one of 
 our greatest ignorances and errors is that we have 
 supposed words to proceed from Isaiah which may 
 
II.] TEE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 59 
 
 possibly have proceeded from Baruch. "With such an 
 offender at the har, what might not a clever counsel 
 for the prosecution effect ? The Quarterly Beviewer is 
 quite aware of his advantage. He pursues it to the 
 utmost. But see into what peril he brings us while he 
 is confounding Mr. Williams. Thus he winds up a very 
 dashing address to his invisible jury on the subject 
 of miracles : — 
 
 ' There is no escape, from this. If He wrought the 
 ' works, the whole rationalistic scheme crumbles into 
 ' dust. If He wrought not the works, He was in truth 
 ' the deceiver that the chief priests declared Him to be. 
 ' Dr. Williams makes a miserable effort, to escape from 
 'this dilemma. "By appealing," he says, "to GoOD 
 'Works {sic), however wonderful, for His witness, 
 ' Christ has taught us to have faith mainly in good- 
 ' ness " (p. 51), as if the appeal of Christ was mainly 
 ' to the inherent goodness, and not to the manifested 
 'power of the^ works — a fallacy so transparent that it is 
 ' needless to do more than enunciate its terms.' — Quar- 
 terly Review, pp. 283, 284. 
 
 Can any confidence or security be greater than this ? 
 The fallacy is so transparent that it is needless to do more 
 than enunciate its terms. And yet those priests who 
 called our Lord a deceiver, did, according to the Evange- 
 lists, bring this charge against Hira, He casteth out devils 
 through Beelzebub, the chief of the devils. And our 
 Lord spoke of that as the great blasphemy of all, 
 because it confounded the acts of the Holy Ghost with 
 the acts of the Evil Spirit. Is this also a transparent 
 
60 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOFLB. [No. 
 
 fallacy ? Is not the whole Gospel involved in it ? Did 
 not the priests deny Christ, because they knew neither 
 Him nor the Father ; because they believed God to be 
 a mere power, which might manifest itself in one kind 
 of wonders or another, which they thought could not 
 manifest itself in shame and weakness; — ^whereas the 
 eternal goodness and love we worship and adore, was 
 never so manifested as in the death upon the cross. 
 Thus in the act of attacking the most oflfensive of all 
 the Essays, the Quarterly Reviewer has contrived to 
 announce a doctrine which, if it were pushed to its 
 consequences, as he pushes the Essayists to their conse- 
 quences, would involve the subversion of the whole 
 Revelation of the Son of God, — above' all, would 
 show that Christian morality has not a basis in that 
 Revelation. 
 
 Proceeding in his demolition of the same defen- 
 dant, the learned counsel complains that the objections 
 which Mr. Williams raises against the ordinary English 
 belief in the Bible indicate a very indifferent acquaint- 
 ance with German theology. I dare say it is so. I am 
 not a competent judge. But the Reviewer goes on to 
 tell us that we may be quite comfortable in our English 
 belief, because Hengstenberg, whose Christology has 
 been translated by Clark of Edinburgh, has answered 
 all the German cavils ; because especially he has proved 
 that the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah was always con- 
 sidered purely Messianic by the Jews, till some of them 
 found it convenient to invent another interpretation, 
 for the purpose of overthrowing the claims of Jesus to 
 
II.] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 61 
 
 be tbe Messiah. I do not know whether this is shallow 
 or profound scholarship, but I am sure it is a most 
 perilous ground to sustain English faith upon. Is 
 Hengstenberg then infallible more than other German 
 doctors ? May not his learning break down, his argu- 
 ments be confuted ? Or am I bound to accept the very 
 doctrine which the Keviewer complains of, when it is 
 put forth by Mr. Jowett, and to hold that the fifty-third 
 chapter of Isaiah cannot refer to the Jewish nation, or 
 to any holy man, because, in the highest sense, I receive 
 it as belonging to the Lamb that was slain ? Do we 
 not see all through Scripture — 
 
 . "marks' that glow. 
 Of the true Cross imprinted deep 
 Both on the Shepherd and the Sheep " ? 
 
 May I not learn something of Mr. Williams — shallow 
 scholar as he is said to be — without adopting his sneers, 
 or his mere negations? May not what he tells me of 
 the application of those and other words to the times 
 in which they were written make me understand better 
 what the Evangelists mean by the fulfilment in the 
 Head, of that which was first realised in some member 
 of the body? Thoughts like these might, perhaps, 
 save the faith of many a man who is perplexed by 
 the doubts which Mr. Williams and others have sug- 
 gested. They might give a new sense to some of the 
 unity of the Bible, and of the relation of that unity to the 
 union of men in Christ. But they must be all banished, 
 because the object is to find a confutation from a Berlin 
 
62 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PWPLTi. [No. 
 
 critic, if no other can be had, which may overthrow- 
 Mr. Williams. 
 
 3. In his treatment of Mr. Goodwin, the Eeviewer 
 has illustrated even more strikingly the effects of partial 
 rhetoric in robbing the theologian of a great oppor- 
 tunity for good, whilst he is convicting a layman of 
 propagating mischief. Mr. Goodwin expresses his 
 entire dissatisfaction with the theories by which clergy- 
 men have endeavoured to reconcile the first chapter of 
 Genesis with the facts of astronomy and geology. He 
 indicates at the same time his sense of the simplicity 
 and beauty of that chapter. He then overthrows that 
 admiration by a marvellous notion that Moses was an 
 early Descartes, Ijusy with the conception of possible 
 vortices out of which the world might have issued. 
 Might it not have been possible to awaken him to a 
 perception of this inconsistency ? Might not a person 
 evidently so honest have been asked, whether there 
 must not be some idea of the universe which regards 
 man, and not the sun, as the centre of it; whether 
 he can himself part with such an idea; whether 
 ^ the presence of it is not the cardinal point of differ- 
 ence between the Mosaic and any other scheme of 
 creation; whether, connected as it is with the whole 
 revelation which follows, it is not the mightiest vindi- 
 cation of the right of man to look above nature, and to 
 investigate nature ; whether, if it were lost, we should 
 not crouch to nature, as Hindoos do, full as their 
 cosmogonies are said to be of brilliant hints, respecting 
 the ages of which geologists speak? Such lessons 
 
II.] TEE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 63 
 
 would have been as profitable to us as to Mr. Goodwin. 
 But as the object is to make us judges of him, how 
 could the Reviewer impart them to us ? 
 
 4. Mr. Wilson has spoken in his Essay of a * verifying 
 faculty ' in man, by which he judges whether the pre- 
 tensions of any book or teacher are to be accepted or 
 rejected. This writer is fond of unusual phrases. He 
 could not talk like the ancients of a faculty of discern- 
 ing truth and falsehood. The counsel sees his advantage. 
 He torments the phrase in the style with which our courts 
 have made .us so familiar. Unhappily, he torments some- 
 thing besides the phrase and its author. What he says 
 strikes directly at Butler's doctrine of a conscience. It 
 strikes far more directly at these words : My sheep hear my 
 voice, and I know them, and they follow me. A stranger 
 will they not follow, hut will flee from him, for they Tcnow 
 ■not the voice of strangers. . . . All that ever came hefore 
 me are thieves and robbers ; but the sheep did not hear 
 them. Is there not a 'verifying faculty' here? To 
 deny it is to deny the Divine authority ; to scorn it is 
 to scorn all the most blessed human experience. And 
 it is to leave us without a Gospel. For is not this the 
 language of the greatest preacher of the Gospel in the 
 first ages? Must it not be the language of the real 
 preacher in every age ? ' Therefore seeing we have this 
 ' ministry, as we have received mercy we faint not; 
 ' but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty ; 
 ' not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of 
 ' God deceitfully ; but by manifestation of the truth, 
 ' commending ourselves to every mans conscience in the 
 
64 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 ' sight of Ood.' Some of the wit of the Revievrer must, 
 I am afraid, fall upon the head of St. Paul. He cer- 
 tainly spoke to that in man which I might call the 
 ' verifying faculty,' if I did not think his language much 
 stronger, much simpler, much more efficacious against all 
 who would substitute a mere scheme of evidences ad- 
 dressed to the intellect respecting the authority of Scrip- 
 ture, or of the Church — for a direct message to the man 
 himself, from the God who has created and redeemed 
 him. 
 
 In the same spirit, the Reviewer tells with irrepres- 
 sible glee, what sounds to me a most melancholy story 
 respecting the share which Mr. Wilson took in the 
 attack upon Dr. Newman's Ninetieth Tract. He might 
 have carried the narrative back a few years and told 
 of the share which Dr. Newman took in convicting 
 Dr. Hampden of treason against the same Articles. The 
 records are worthy to be preserved ; they are profoundly 
 instructive. The Reviewer uses them, or so much of 
 them as he cares to repeat, for the purpose of procuring 
 a verdict against Mr. Wilson. That is his business; 
 he could not have shown his talent as an advocate 
 better than in availing himself of such a point, and in 
 working it as he has worked it. But, if it is not our 
 business, if we have another object than to get a sen- 
 tence against Mr. Wilson, we may perhaps draw a 
 different moral from the tale. Dr. Hampden, Dr. New- 
 man, Mr. Wilson, all accepted the Articles, as we have 
 every right to believe, in good faith, when they took 
 orders. There came a time to each of them when some 
 
IL] ' TEE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 1 65 
 
 side of the doctrine which these Articles treat thrust 
 itself prominently hefore them, when another lay in 
 shadow. Must there not come such times to all men 
 who think, who read, who are in earnest? Is it not 
 more desirable that there should be men in the Church 
 who have a certain attraction to one side of Christian 
 truth, — ^who in |heir zeal for that, become for a time 
 indifferent to every other? Is it not desirable that 
 they should speak out their convictions, even if 
 they do involve some forgetfulness of that which to 
 many of their brethren is most precious? All this 
 is good ; as I have urged in what I have said in 
 answer to the National Reviewer, it is one of the bless- 
 ings of having Articles, which are witnesses to lis of a 
 whole Gospel, that we can permit these partial statements. 
 But it becomes utterly bad, if you thrust the Articles upon 
 a man just when he is obviously incapaWe of recognising 
 more than one portion of them. Then you drive him to 
 subterfuges ; then he will put forth a Ninetieth Tract ; 
 then he will try to show that the framers of the Articles 
 meant to. cheat him — so he may cheat .them. What is 
 the cotisequence? If he had retained his love for the 
 Church, his reverence for his -forefathers, he would have 
 adhered to it in spite of his opinions; he might have 
 clung to it the more, because it restrained him from 
 succumbing to them. But your clever arts have almost 
 destroyed his affection:; he has still ao much of it 
 left that he will spin subtle webs of the intellect, rather 
 than part with you altogether. You complain of him, 
 as you reasonably may. Tou tell him that it is his 
 
 I" 
 
66 TRJCTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 duty to go. He casts one lingering look at that which 
 had been dearer to him than the house of his infancy, and 
 he oheys your mandate. He leaves you to hate you and 
 curse you. Woe to the warld'because of offences ! for it must 
 needs he that offences come : tut woe to that man through 
 whom the offence cometh. Oh ! Priests of England, does 
 not that sound ring through the ages ? Cian it have come 
 from any other than the Head of the ages ? Ought not 
 each one of us to tremble as he listens to it ? 
 
 5. The Keviewer, speaKng, be it remembered, still 
 under a mask, tells those who have contributed to these 
 Essays that they cannot, consistently with moral honesty, 
 continue clergymen of the Church of England. To those 
 who have received orders in the Church, who have 
 believed that they were called thereto by the Holy 
 Ghost, who have supposed, they had the most awful 
 treasures in tru^t for their fellow men, this must appear 
 a rather light method of treating such an act as that of 
 abandoning an office which has been bestowed under 
 such sacraments, by such an authority, for such an end. 
 Seeing, however, that the Reviewer speaks of moral 
 honesty, he refers the matter to another tribunal. Gfod is 
 the Judge of moral honesty. It can do none of us harm 
 to be reminded that we stand before that Judge, that He 
 is requiring from us all an account of our stewardship. 
 That is surely true. We do not hold it of Reviewers, or 
 of the readers of reviews ; we hold it of Him. And He 
 is very manifestly summoning us all, from the Pope of 
 Rome to every village curate in Romish or Protestant 
 lands, to answer how we have used it, what we are 
 
11.] THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 67 
 
 doing with it. If the writer of the article in the Quarterly 
 had told us this, would five editions of it have disap- 
 peared so rapidly? But might he not have done more 
 for us than by flattering us with the thought that we 
 are helievers, and that the Essayists are unbelievers ? 
 
 6. And if his clever advocacy is of so little help to us 
 as individuals, what has he done for the unity of the 
 Church ? In the most rhetorical passage of the article 
 he has entreated High Churchmen and Low Churchmen 
 to merge their differences in a common attack upon these 
 six men: that, he thinks, may establish a bond of 
 durable peace between them. Merciful God ! to what 
 is he leading these schools ? They have precious truths, 
 which they have inherited from their fathers, or won for 
 themselves. Not one can we afford to lose ; each is 
 worthy to be lived for and died for. And this is the 
 way of reconciling them ! To drown them in a 
 dead negation of other men's opinions ; in a fellowship 
 of hatred. Accursed arrangement ! Peace that is worse 
 and more deadly than the most savage. wars! Every 
 High Churchman, every Low Churchman, who would 
 not be a traitor to the traditions of his fathers, to his 
 own deepest convictions, should protest with heart and 
 soul against it, should cry to God against it. And yet 
 it is to this that confutations are leading us. If they are 
 regarded as the means of redressing the evils of the 
 Church, this hollow, treacherous suspension of hostilities 
 between two foes till they have wreaked their vengeance 
 upon a third and weaker foe, will be the substitute for 
 the prayer, That they all may he one, as Thou, Father, art 
 
 f2 
 
68 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLK [No. 
 
 in Me, and I in Thee, that they may he on£, in Us; for 
 communion in the sacrifice of Him who died for all. 
 
 Priests of the English Church, you have been called 
 upon again and again in the last few months to remem- 
 ber your Ordination Vow — ^how that you were pledged 
 to do what in you lay that all heresies and strange 
 doctrines might be driven out of the Church. Most 
 earnestly do I beseech you to recollect that pledge, and 
 all other pledges which you made when you were sent 
 forth with authority to preach God's Word, and to 
 administer His Sacraments. Kemember that you are 
 bound to consider how you may most effectually drive 
 out those strange doctrines and those divisions which 
 are so dangerous to your flocks and to yourselves. One 
 method has just been set before us by a person whom 
 we do not know, but who claims a right to advise and 
 guide us. He has, I think, shown us very clearly 
 whither that method must lead. He has declaimed 
 against loose statements about the Scriptures, and has 
 himself sanctioned statements respecting it which would 
 turn it into a dead letter, and make our preaching of it 
 vain. To check schism he has encouraged ordained 
 ministers to make a schism. To bring about peace he 
 has urged opposing parties to seek a bond of union in a 
 common enmity. He has added one more proof to 
 those which every page of ecclesiastical history supplies, 
 that there is no such promoter and begetter of strange 
 doctrines as he who merely contradicts them, — ^no such 
 render of the Church as he whose eyes are always awake 
 to discover how other men ai-e rending it. Our Ordina- 
 
■11.] THE MOTH AND THE BEAM. 69 
 
 tion Vow, then, binds us not to follow him, not to go one 
 steJp in the road which he would mark out for us. 
 
 But have our other counsellors taught us nothing? 
 The National Reviewer would emancipate us from our 
 creeds. If we have no Gospel to proclaim to men, — if 
 we may not tell them that the Father has sent His Son 
 to redeem the world, and that He has redeemed it, and 
 that He is King of it, and that His Spirit is working 
 through all human life and society — I do not see what 
 our creeds are for, because I do not see what our fanc- 
 tion is for— what our existence is for. Let us he emanci- 
 pated from them by all means ; but let us be emancipated 
 from our whole office. Let us frankly tell our people 
 that it was a delusion to dream there was such an office. 
 Let us say openly ; ' If there are any glad tidings for 
 ' men, we do not know that there are : they have not been 
 ' entrusted to us.' But if there are such glad tidings, let 
 us be thankful for the words that set them forth to us. 
 And let us utter those words as if they were a message 
 from God ; as if they did contain a Revelation from 
 Him. Then if people ask us, — Where did you get the 
 books which tell you of this Revelation? we can 
 answer them, — Is it a Revelation to you ? Does it tell 
 you of yourselves ? Does it tell you of Him whom you 
 are feeling after, if haply you may find Him ? If it 
 does, you will receive it as God's Revelation of you and 
 of Himself, through whatever hands it comes to you, 
 wherever we found it, whether we are cheats or true- 
 men. If it does not come to you as a revelation of God, 
 ■no evidence which we can bring to convince you that it 
 
70 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 is, will have any power over you. You may yield to the 
 evidence as a matter of form and propriety ; you may 
 teject it when the fashion of your circle is to reject it; 
 which you do is not very important. If you receive the 
 Bible out of courtesy and compliment it will not he a 
 Bible to you ; it will hold you back from no evil way, — 
 it will guide you into no good way. But if it does 
 speak to you as a Bible — if it does come to you as God's 
 Word — you may look fearlessly at all questions which 
 concern it. So iax as you have leisure to pursue them 
 honestly and manfully they will do you good ; you can 
 be safe without them if you have no such leisure ; 
 whatever the result is, God will turn it to your benefit. 
 
 This lesson would be very imperfect if we had not 
 the help of the Westminster Reviewer to deepen and 
 establish it. He has made us understand very clearly 
 that questions about the authenticity of the books of 
 Scripture, about ecclesiastical authority, about any of 
 the matters which we are wont to dispute of with each 
 other, are not in the least interesting to the young men 
 of this generation, except so far as they show how little 
 we are agreed among ourselves, how little confideiyje we 
 have in the conclusions which we ask them to accept 
 They have gone beneath aU these controversies. They 
 smile at those who fancy they can meet their difficulties 
 by some modification of our demands upon their assent 
 to our standards. Is there a Will governing human 
 beings at all ? is there any will in man to be governed ? 
 Here is the doubt with which their minds are haunted, 
 by which some of them, I hope and believe, are toi- 
 
II.] THE MOTH AND THE BEAM. Jl 
 
 tured. I do not venture to believe it about all. I know 
 there may be for a time a delighted Acquiescence in the 
 sense of a mere natural order, which no Will has created, 
 over which no Will presides. Even that delight, because 
 it indicates something of pasMoii and fervour, because it 
 implies a will in those who entertain it, troubles me less 
 than the cqld contented indifference of numbers who 
 have actually in their hearts cast off the belief of any 
 Divine Will, who think that God has n6 concern with 
 the movements of nations, or with anything which 
 interests them, and who^ therefore, do not care how 
 much we talk, and argue, and preach; who, therefore, 
 wish us to put down all who break in upon our quiet 
 assumptions ; who do not like our orthodoxy to be 
 shaken, because they hold it to be a lie. It is with this 
 atheism that we haVe to fight ; this is more terrible than 
 all strange doctrinfes ; this gives the virus to them all. 
 But oh ! have we not first to fight with if in ourselves ? 
 Has it not crept into our hearts ? Has it nbt liiade the 
 creeds and the Bible untrue to us ? Is not this the 
 secret of our fears, lest seven men should be able to 
 destroy them, though all the wealth and respectability 
 of the land, though the traditions of twelve centuries 
 are on their side? Brethren, if that is all which is on 
 our side, the fear is reasonable. Seven men, or one 
 man, may undermine that which has only the support 
 of wealth, and respectability, and tradition. But I 
 implore you, by the mysteries of Passion week and 
 Eaister week, solemnly to repent' of the thought that 
 this is all which is on our side. I implore you to 
 
72 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 reflect that these were not on the side of Him whom 
 we declare to be the Lord of heaven and earth. The 
 kings of the earth were against Him ; God's own 
 priests were against Him. But His Father was with 
 Him ; therefore is He highly exalted, and has a Name 
 which is above every name. If, in the might of God, 
 we do proclaim that Name ; if we can say from our 
 hearts. He has shown to us that Will which created the 
 heaven and the earth, and all the host of them ; He has 
 shown us the Will to which the wills of all emperors, 
 priests, nations, must bow, or they will be broken in 
 pieces ; we shall find a response to our words when we 
 look for it least. Those who could not listen to us, or 
 care for us when we spoke in a lower, feebler tone, 
 will feel that we know what they want, that this is a 
 message which we did not invent. Naturalists, who did 
 not care much while we argued with them about the 
 story of creation^ still less while we argued with them 
 about all the evidences of adaptation which prove an 
 intelligent Creator, may listen to the strange news that 
 by the Divine Word the order was made, that in Him 
 is life, and that His life is the light of man ; and may 
 find in these mystical utterances the very meaning of 
 f^eation, that which contradicts none of their discoveries, 
 But transcends them and harmonizes them — that which 
 shows that Moses could only understand the order of the 
 universe in reference to man, because he could only 
 understand man in relation to God. And states- 
 men may perceive that another Will than theirs has 
 been guiding the nations, and is guiding them now, 
 
11.] THE MOTE AND TILE BEAM. 73 
 
 or that they must sink into absolutism or anarchy, 
 and be utterly lost. > And the people will feel that the 
 High God has been redeeming them for His sons and 
 daughters, and that they are inheritors of a kingdom 
 whereof there is no end. And Jews, Turks, infidels, 
 heretics may learn that the Head of the Universe poured 
 out His blood for them as for us, and that in Him they 
 can be one fold with us under one Shepherd. Priests of 
 England! this Gospel is committed to us. Shall we 
 not humble ourselves before God, because we have pro- 
 claimed it so ill, and believed it so little ? Shall we not 
 own before Him that the infidelity of England is owing 
 mainly to us? Shall we turn away from His voice 
 which is bidding us repent of our own iniquities, and 
 think that we can do Him service by casting stones at 
 our brothers ? 
 
LONDON : 
 
 K. CLAT, SON, AND TATliOR, PRINTEI«, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL. 
 
TRACTS EOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. 
 No. III. 
 
 ON THE ATONEMENT, 
 
 We are all used to speak of the Atonement as a vital 
 feature of the Gospel ; and of late years we have heard 
 a good deal about denying the Atonement, an accusation 
 which we feel to involve the charge of robbing that 
 Gospel of all that gives it its distinctive character and 
 value. 
 
 Now if a man makes no such accusation against his 
 brother, he may not perhaps be called on to ask himself 
 with any strict scrutiny what he means by the Atonement. 
 It may perhaps, without blame or fault of his, merely 
 stand in his mind as a general term for the whole pro- 
 cess whereby his Saviour wrought out his deliverance 
 from sin, and from the consequences of sin; and absence 
 in his case of vocation to study, of the habit of medita- 
 tion, of the right resources for pursuing the inquiry, 
 may excuse his having no accurate apprehension of the 
 revealed particulars contained under that general term. 
 
 But the case is very different if we charge a Christian 
 Teacher with denying the Atonement, or if we deal in 
 any way with such a charge against him. Then we are 
 imperatively bound to examine the doctrine to the best 
 of our ability, and anxiously to inquire whether or not 
 
 B 
 
2 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLK [No. 
 
 the charge has reference to its substance, or to theories 
 which, he they sound or unsound, are but accidentally 
 fastened upon that substance. And if capable from 
 education and habit of pursuing this inquiry, we are 
 bound for our own sakes to do so, inasmuch as the 
 New Testament demands intelligent insight of its dis- 
 closures, and as a confusion of accident with substance 
 in the case of those disclosures is a peril to ourselves 
 from which we ought to use all available means of being 
 preserved. 
 
 Now it cannot be denied that this general term, the 
 Atonement, does cover a variety of statements, some of 
 which being discrepant, cannot be all true. The word 
 itself, I need scarcely say, means merely reconciliation, 
 bringing together, making to he at one. It is a merely 
 English word, with no exact counterpart in either of the 
 original tongues of Holy Scripture. The only instance 
 in which it is used in the English version of the New 
 Testament is Rom. v. 11, where it is employed very well 
 as the translation of KaraXkaytj. In ordinary acceptation 
 among us, however, it stands as a general term for the whole 
 notion of Christ's death on the Cross as effecting our deli- 
 verance ; and that death being closely associated with the 
 notion of expiatory sacrifice, the thought of expiation has 
 become more or less bound up with the use of the word 
 atonement. Hence we have in great measure ceased to 
 use it in the old way. We do not now speak with 
 Shakespeare of things that were at variance atoning, 
 but we speak of a man making atonement for, or 
 atoning for what he has done amiss. It is so used in the 
 
in.] ON THE ATONEKENT. 3 
 
 English Old Testament, and almost universally both in 
 theological and other language at the present day. 
 
 By the Atonement, therefore, we mean the whole work 
 whereby our Lord wrought out our deliverance on the 
 Cross, and i^ is thus, as I have said, a general term, 
 containing many particulars, both of scriptural and of 
 habitual, it may be, extra-scriptural, thought on the 
 subject. It is to the inquiry whether all those par- 
 ticulars be scriptural, whether they belong to the 
 substance of the scriptural disclosure, or are theories 
 respecting that disclosure, which, be they warrantable 
 or unwarrantable, ought not to be regarded as other 
 than theories, and if unimposed by the Church, as 
 altogether open questions, that we must now address 
 ourselves. 
 
 Now a very slight survey of opinion will show that 
 there has been a variety of such theories in the 
 Church. Closely bound up with our general notion of 
 Atonement, of Purchase, of Ransom, are those of Re- 
 demption. The language both of the Apostles and of 
 our Lord has given rise to, and abundantly vindicated, 
 the association. But it would be difficult to tie the 
 various cases of that language to any one theory. The 
 notions of Purchase, of Ransom, of Redemption, are 
 indeed so clearly exhibited in earthly examples as to 
 require no explanation themselves. But when we come 
 to ask, What is the scriptural connexion of them with the 
 benefits procured by Christ's death, to whom the pur- 
 chase money was paid, and from what men were ran- 
 somed and redeemed ; we shall fail, I think, in extorting 
 
 b2 
 
4 TRACTS FOB. PRIESTS AND PEOPLK [No. 
 
 from Scripture a single answer, uniformly given to us. To 
 take one instance. In 1 Pet. i. 18, we have an impres- 
 sive sentence, which we read on in our habitual key of 
 thought, but are surprised to find that it does not end on 
 the key-note. ' Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not 
 ' redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, 
 ' from ' (it is here that modern ears and thoughts will 
 anticipate a different ending) 'your vain conversation 
 received by tradition from your fathers.' Quitting 
 Scripture for awhile, we find, as I have said, a variety 
 of theories in the Church respecting the ransom, the 
 redemption, effected by Christ's death. About the 
 oldest, and one which has had the longest ascendancy, 
 is that which represents the claim on us to have been 
 the Devil's, and Christ's suffering, bloodshedding, and 
 death, to have been purchase-money and ransom, paid 
 to him, whereby we have been redeemed from his hold 
 on us. This theory, at least as old as Origen, lasted till 
 the time of Anselm, if indeed it did not partially survive 
 him. It will, I imagine, be set aside as altogether 
 untenable by every school in the modern Church; 
 nor have we any other concern with it than to appeal 
 to its undoubted prevalency through ages, as a proof 
 that a theory of any kind must be distinct from the 
 substantial Truth on this subject, which surely was the 
 life of true Christians in every age. 
 
 By Anselm it is altogether set aside. He rightly 
 argues that the devil cannot have a lawful claim of any 
 kind ; and for this, the previously received theory, he 
 substitutes that of satisfaction to God's justice. Indeed, 
 
III.] ON TEB AWNEMUNT. 5 
 
 of phrase as well as theory, he is generally considered 
 the author. Sin inyolved, according to him, a debt to 
 God, with the payment of which God's essential attri- 
 bute of justice did not permit Him to dispense. It was 
 paid for us by Christ's human obedience — that obedi- 
 ence which was even unto death. This is the point 
 which Anselm argues out in his remarkable treatise, 
 ^Gur Deus Homo.^ 
 
 Anselm, as I have said, is considered the author of 
 the prevalent theology of the West on this subject, 
 and, on the whole, rightly so. But it is often over- 
 looked that he came greatly short of it. The very title 
 of his work may serve to indicate this ; for it shows 
 that he did not separate, with the modern theologian, 
 the death from the previous human life of the Eedeemer. 
 It was the whole susception of humanity by the Son ot 
 God, and presentation of that humanity in spotless 
 holiness to the Father — a holiness which received its 
 crowning manifestation in the death on the cross, which 
 Anselm regarded as the payment of the debt which 
 humanity owed. It was, as has been well observed, a 
 satisfactio activa, not a satisfactio passiva, which he 
 contemplated. Dr. Thomson considers Baur as going 
 too far ' in maintaining that the idea of a vicarious 
 ' satisfaction by punishment is altogether strange to the 
 ' theory of Anselm.' (' Bampton Lectures,' note, p. 296.) 
 What follows will justify, I think, the German theo- 
 logian, and show that the idea in question is not only 
 strange to Anselm, but is absolutely shut out by 
 him. For what is the real penalty of sin — that 
 
6 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PBOPLB. [No. 
 
 which eternal justice has everlastingly bound up with 
 sin ? Not suffering merely ; for though suffering maj 
 be connected with sin, love can embrace it as a privi- 
 lege : not outward, temporal death merely ; for that can 
 be made a holy and blessed thing: but misery. Sin and 
 misery — misery, the invasion of death, not on the body, 
 but the spirit ; these must ever be indissolubly joined. 
 NoWj Anselm emphatically denies that our Lord, in the 
 very worst of His sufferings, was or could be miserable.* 
 His theory of satisfaction, however, led to this other 
 notion of Christ being punished for our sin. Neander 
 thinks he finds the first open declaration of it in Pope 
 Innocent III. It was, perhaps, adopted by Aquinas.f 
 Anyhow, as the crowning pinnacle of a structure arrests 
 the eye more immediately than any other part of it, and 
 is felt to determine its whole character, this theory of 
 Christ being punished in our stead, when once adopted, 
 became the predominant one in Western Christendom, 
 and though enforced in no decree of the Church, was 
 probably seldom doubted by the leaders of the Refor- 
 mation. When it had once entered into men's minds, it 
 needs scarcely be pointed out how it must have gathered 
 round itself all such passages of Scriptui-e as speak of 
 Christ being wounded for our transgressions and bruised 
 for our iniquities, as bearing our sins, suffering for sins, 
 
 * Owr Bern Homo, II. 12. 
 
 + I say, perhaps adopted ; for though it be undeniable that Aquinas 
 recognises a penal element in our Lord's sufferings, he connects it with 
 the thought of identification with us, rather than with that of substi- 
 tution for us ; and between these thoughts there is a mighty difference. 
 (Summa iii. Qucest. xlvi. xlviii.) 
 
III.] ON TEE ATONEMENT. 7 
 
 tlie just for the unjust, &c.* It is this theory which 
 is probably present more or less to most men's thoughts 
 when they speak of our Lord's vicarious sufferings ; 
 and it is to a real or alleged denial of this, or a real or 
 alleged confession of doubt or misgiving respecting this, 
 tha; I conceive they efer when they speak of certain 
 eminent Christian teachers as denying or setting aside 
 the Atonement. It is, moreover, against this that the 
 obections mainly point of those who are opposed to 
 the teaching of the Church as on other grounds, so on 
 thit of her doctrine of the Atonement. 
 
 .n calling attention to the comparatively modem date 
 of ;his theory, I do not mean to disparage it merely on 
 tha account. I believe the Church, in so far as she is 
 liviig and healthy, to be in every age a learner ; I 
 belfive that so as the roots be in Scriptiure, the flowers 
 and fruits must be most precious, however long they 
 ma] have been in appearing above ground. But, 
 graiting this, and not, therefore, setting aside the 
 pre'alent theory merely because it is modern, I may 
 yet appeal to this fact of its being modern as an argu- 
 meit that, even if true, it cannot be essential ; and that 
 the] to whom it presents insuperable diflSculties, they 
 whcfail to find it in Scripture, and they who feel too 
 
 * (f course, if such passages teach the doctrine in question, there is 
 an ed of our inquiry. But this is just what many do not succeed in 
 peroEving. Anyhow they can he read and contemplated, and their 
 languge adopted by us, without committing us to the vicarious or any 
 otheitheory. For when I venture to look at our Lord's human life 
 and «ath, 1 Bee as a faot that He did bear our sins and carry our 
 infinities, and I can look at the fact all the better for not burdening 
 mysrf with a theory about it. 
 
8 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PHOPLR [No. 
 
 uncertain about it to adopt it, are not, therefore, to le 
 pronounced heretical, or regarded as strangers to that 
 vital and central truth of redemption by the blood of 
 Christ, which may be dearer to them than their liyes. 
 In the strong language of Gregory Nazianzen, we may 
 affirm, that ' the mode in which Christ has redeemed us 
 is a matter in which we may err without danger ; ''or, 
 with Bishop Butler, we may say, ' how and in what 
 ' particular- way it (Christ's sacrifice) had this efficajy, 
 ' there are not wanting persons who have endeavou:ed 
 ' to explain ; hut I do not find that the Sarvpture las 
 ' explained it. We seem to be very much in the dirk 
 ' concerning the manner in which the ancients unjer- 
 ' stood atonement to be made, i. e. pardon to be obtahed 
 ' by sacrifices. And if the Scripture has, as surel[ it 
 
 has, left this matter of the satisfaction of Christ 
 ' mysterious — left somewhat in it unrevealed, all on- 
 ' jectures about it must be, if not evidently absurd,iyet 
 
 ' at least uncertain Some have endeavoured to 
 
 ' explain the efficacy of what Christ has done jind 
 ' suffered for us beyond what the Scripture has autior- 
 ' ised ; others, probably because they could not expain 
 ' it, have been for taking it away, and confining flis 
 ' office as Redeemer of the world to His instrucjon, 
 
 example, and government of the Church.' — (Anaigy, 
 Part II. c. V.) It can hardly be heresy to hesitate tith 
 Butler ; and even if we venture to deny that Chist's 
 sufferings were penal, we may take shelter, accordir^ to 
 Baur, under no less a protector than St. Leo the Greit. 
 Neither will I at present go into all the questtins 
 
III.] ON THE ATONEMBNT. 9 
 
 which the theory almost necessarily awakens in a thought- 
 ful mind. I will merely refer to two results of it which 
 have actually occurred, and which may well make us 
 pause before we commit ourselves to it. One of these 
 relates to what we are to believe respecting our Lord ; 
 the other to what we are to believe has been gained by 
 mankind from His work. 
 
 I. When men had learnt to regard the Lord on the 
 Cross as a substitute suffering the penalty due to their 
 sins, they were led to ask in what way did His suffer- 
 ings amount to this. What was that full penalty of 
 sin which He paid ? It could not have been mere tem- 
 poral death ; for it was held that the true penalty of sin 
 amounted to something infinitely more awful than that, 
 and from temporal death He did not seem to have 
 delivered us. Accordingly, they were led to the strange 
 and revolting notion that the infinite nature of Christ 
 rendered Him capable of suffering in a limited, what 
 would have had to pour itself out on finite beings 
 throughout an unlimited time, — a thought which one 
 really dares not bring out into distincter statement. 
 So pressing, however, is the difficulty, that they who 
 are considered the great champions of vicarious satis- 
 faction — such as Archbishop Magee — are forced on 
 evasions which almost seem abandonments of the point 
 for which they are contending, — the learned prelate just 
 referred to telling us that we ought to regard our Lord's 
 passion, not as the real punishment for our sin, but as 
 a substitute for that punishment, divinely provided and 
 accepted. Punishment, he says, it could not really be. 
 
10 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 We have seen already that Ansehn protests against 
 the possibility of our Lord's having ever been miserable, 
 and that misery is the real penalty of sin. Separation 
 from God and from good is the only wretchedness, sepa- 
 ration from God and from good is of necessity bound up 
 with moral evil, and is in its completion the second death. 
 Not for a single moment dare we suppose that the Only 
 Begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, the Holy 
 One of God, could have been in this condition* 
 
 II. If our Lord really was the substitute of sinners 
 enduring in His person the full penalty of their guilt, 
 that penalty must needs have been exhausted in Him, 
 and cannot, according to any idea of justice, be re- 
 exacted. Accordingly, it must be altogether removed 
 from those in whose stead He died. But it is believed 
 to be enforced on numbers of men. Hence the inference 
 that He died only for the elect. The doctrine of 
 Particular Redemption is the most repulsive part to 
 many minds of what is called the Calvinistic Creed, and 
 it is certainly one into which no biblical interpretation 
 could by itself have led any man, seeing that nearly 
 the whole dealings of its advocates with the Bible 
 consist in laboriously explaining away the gi-eat declara- 
 tion that Christ died for all ; but it followed, from 
 admitted premises with adamantine logical necessity, 
 
 " The Mi, Mi, lama sahachthani, cried out from the cross, is surely 
 at no variance with what I say. We dare not, while we reverently listen 
 to it, shape dogma out of that ciy. Independently of the fact that the 
 Psalm to which it refers us is no utterance of despair, but of perfect 
 filial affiance in God expressed out of the depths, the very use of the 
 first possessive pronoun, my God, gives the clue to its interpretation. 
 
Ill] ON TEE ATONEMENT. \\ 
 
 and I apprehend it is to those premises, quite as much 
 as to the remaining four points of Calvinism, that we 
 owe the ascendancy of the doctrine ; certainly not, as I 
 have just intimated, to any even seeming countenance 
 which it receives from Scripture. 
 
 Leaving, then, the theories of Atonement, it remains 
 to ask, What is the substantial truth on which they 
 have been fastened ? — a question which has not perhaps 
 been very vigorously pressed by those who have disem- 
 barrassed themselves of the theories. I have neither 
 time nor inclination at present to go over all the dilu- 
 tions of truth which have been put forth on the matter ; 
 and will pass on at once to that masterly dissertation of 
 Coleridge in the 'Aids to Reflection,' which has pro- 
 bably told largely on men's thoughts in our day, and 
 which seems to be echoed, though, after the laws of 
 the echo, with fainter sound and feebler emphasis, by 
 Professor Jowett. 
 
 According to Coleridge, Christ's work on our behalf 
 is never named from anything in itself, but from its 
 known effects upon us. The analogies to sacrifice, 
 redemption, satisfaction of a debt, are all to be sought 
 in those effects, never in their cause. That cause is an 
 act which belongs to the sphere of transcendents, a 
 mystery into which we may not look, and which we 
 must not dare to attempt explaining. But it has effects 
 which are very analogous to the effect of the appointed 
 sacrifice in the reinstatement of the Israelite in his 
 national position and privileges ; to the effect of adequate 
 ransom as promising the freedom of a captive ; to the 
 
12 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 effect of complete payment bj another as my discharge 
 from a debt which I could not liquidate myself. 
 
 Only in the writings of St. John does Coleridge see 
 the redeeming work spoken of, in the light of a single 
 governing thought, that of Regeneration.* 
 
 I cannot deny that there is great wisdom and truth in 
 this representation of the matter ; nor let it he ima- 
 gined, as it might, on a hasty glance, to be a mere 
 explaining away of the Atonement into a series of 
 varying images and analogies, each of use on the occa- 
 sion, and pro re nata, but none of abiding and domi- 
 nant truth. Let it be remembered that all those effects 
 in such fine analogy to well-known transactions of 
 earthly life are ascribed by Coleridge to a causative and 
 transcendent act, which, as such, must be beyond the 
 reach of the human understanding, and inexpressible 
 by human words. Still, though true, it does not seem 
 to me the whole revealed truth. Om- Lord's redemptive 
 act is indeed deeply mysterious ; but I cannot help 
 thinking that more of itself is revealed to us than is 
 allowed by Coleridge ; I cannot help thinking that we 
 are enabled and enjoined to look at and into itself, 
 instead of merely contenting ourselves with its effects ; 
 and, whilst I admit that three out of the four aspects in 
 which he presents it may be but figures expressing only 
 those effects and not their cause, I protest against apply- 
 ing this canon of interpretation to the remaining one. 
 Surely our Lord's death is not merely occasionally, not 
 merely with reference to an immediate context, but uni- 
 ♦ "Aids to Eefleotion," pp. 315-317. 
 
Ill] ON TEE ATONEMENT. 13 
 
 formly, in every variety of context, in every phase of 
 thought, set forth as a sacrifice.* 
 
 In the idea, then, of sacrifice, I find the one governing 
 view of Christ's work, to which all others are hut sub- 
 sidiary and accidental. Eelatively to the figurative exhi- 
 bition of the sin from which it delivers me, that work is 
 no doubt well spoken of as a redemption; relatively to the 
 figurative exhibition of the tremendous relation in which 
 I stood to the Divine justice as a debt, it is no doubt 
 well spoken of as the payment of that debt ; but it is well 
 spoken of as these because it is in deed and in truth a 
 sacrifice, — yea, the sacrifice which contains in itself the 
 fulness of that idea to which other sacrifices were but 
 dimly and variably pointing, and after which their 
 offerers were more or less consciously craving. 
 
 But what is sacrifice? To many modern ears the 
 word sounds little more than a synonym of that notion 
 of punishing a substitute for the real ofiender, to which 
 I have already referred. But, even if we were to grant 
 that any ancient sacrifice, either Heathen or Hebrew, 
 might be fairly regarded as the expression of such an 
 idea, it would not follow that we had got in this the 
 
 * I need scarcely say to those who are acquainted with his writings, 
 that this position is the very opposite of that taaintained by Professor 
 Jowett. (' Epistles of St. Paul,' Vol II. pp. 654-668.) The great charm 
 and value of much of this author's discourse has never dissipated, for 
 me, the mystery in which to my mind some of the first principles of his 
 are wrapped up. Of all the perplexing grounds he has taken, none is 
 so perplexing to my apprehension as those laid down in the pages to 
 which I have referred. For the predominance of the idea of Sacrifice 
 in regard to Christ's work, apart from the associations of immediate 
 context and the like, let me refer, among many instances, to John i. 29, 
 John xvii. 19, Rev. v. 6. 
 
14 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 large and full notion of sacrifice itself. I will refer to two 
 definitions given by high authorities, which show how 
 far wider a view may he taken. St. Augustine tells 
 that every work is a true sacrifice, which, looking at God 
 as the end of all good, is done in order that we may 
 cleave to Him in holy fellowship* St. Thomas Aquinas 
 that a sacrifice is something done to the honour due to 
 God, and with a view to propitiating Him. And 
 Christ's work he pronounces to he a true sacrifice, 
 because, eminently proceeding from love, it is eminently 
 acceptable to God.f In truth, when we look at the 
 whole genus, of which burnt-offerings, sin-offerings, 
 thank-offerings, are the several species, we are forced to 
 regard the generic idea as that of offering and making 
 over a gift to the unseen object of prayer and worship. j: 
 The nature of the gift would of course vary in each 
 species with the thoughts wherewith each species was 
 severally connected. The details of transaction in a sin- 
 offering would naturally bear a reference to sin, its 
 
 * ' Verum Saorificium est omne opus quod agitur ut sancta societaite 
 inliEereanius Deo, relatum scilicet ad ilium finem boni quo veraciter 
 beati esse possimus.' — Ang. de Civ. Dei, x. 6. 
 
 + ' Sacrificium proprie dicitur : aliquod factum in honorem propria Deo 
 debitum ad eum placandum. Et inde est quod Augustinus dicit, verum 
 Sacrificium est, &o. Christus autem, ut ibidem subditur seipsum obtulit 
 in passione pro nobis. Et hoc ipsum opus, quod voluntarie passionem 
 sustinuit, Deo maxime acceptum fuit, utpote ex charitate maxime pro- 
 veniens : undo manifestum est, quod passio Christi fuerit verum sacri- 
 ficium.' — Aquim. Stimm. iii. qu. 48. 
 
 t The two generic terms of the Old Testament are Mincha and 
 Corban. Of these the former, which Gesenius considers to mean a gift 
 or present, was indeed restricted in after times to a particular sacrifice, 
 the meat offering ; but it is used in Gen. iv. for the sacrifice both of 
 Cain and Abel. The New Testament teaches the merely English 
 reader the meaning of the latter. 
 
Ill] ON THU ATONEWENT. 15 
 
 shame, its woe, and its death. The idea of a transfer of 
 the sin of the offerer from himself to the victim might 
 occur naturally enough, and that in a rite of which the 
 general application to Christ^s death is so obvious, that 
 we cannot help making it, without perhaps being there- 
 fore warranted in applying that particular . idea. Still, 
 I say, the general idea of sacrifice is that of a gift, of 
 surrendering up to another's possession that which was 
 outwardly at least in our own. Surely we read of many 
 sacrifices in which we find no place for the notion of 
 substitutive punishment. Abraham's surrender of Isaac 
 is an intelligible expression of his faith in, and his 
 worship of God ; but none surely suppose that he 
 thought Isaac was to bear the penalty of his sin, and 
 thereby discharge him firom that penalty. Yet this is 
 one of the supremely typical sacrifices. The Paschal 
 Lamb — another supremely typical sacrifice — is hardly 
 set forth as sustaining a penalty due by the children of 
 Israel. Even in heathendom, the gift, the symbolical 
 meal, and the accompanying acts of honour and homage, 
 imaginarily presented to the Deity, are surely the 
 governing thoughts. 
 
 Et irore roi, 'XapieVT iirl vqov epe^a, 
 
 *H el' hri TTOTe Tot, Kara irlova fi'^pi' earja 
 
 Tavpayv ■^S' aljS)v * 
 is the appeal of the aprjTrjp. In Scripture the pleasure 
 or displeasure of God in that which is presented to Him, 
 
 * " If I e'er adorned 
 Thy beauteous Fane, or on Thy altar burned 
 The fat acceptable of bulls or goats." 
 
 COWPEK, 
 
16 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 its having any use or value in His sight, or its having none, 
 are surely the great lights in which sacrifice is regarded. 
 ' I will not reprove thee because of thy sacrifices, or for 
 ' thy burnt-offerings: beca,use they were not always before 
 ' Me. I will take no bullock out of thine house, nor 
 ' he-goat out of thy folds. For all the beasts of the 
 ' forest are Mine, and so are the cattle upon a thousand 
 ' hills. I know all the fowls upon the mountains ; and 
 ' the wild beasts of the field are in My sight. If I he 
 ' hungry, I will not tell thee : for the whole world is 
 ' Mine, and all that is therein. Thinhest thou that I 
 ' will eat bullocks flesh, and drink the blood of goats ? 
 ' Offer unto God thanksgiving.' Here we have the 
 Divine standard of sacrifice ; but no thought of a 
 punishment mixing itself therewith. 
 
 And had punishment been the governing idea of 
 sacrifice, could it have happened that nearly every ex- 
 pansion of the term from the limits of a material rite, 
 should be expressive of the notion of gift to God, not 
 at all of penalty borne at the hands of Grod, the sacri- 
 fice of praise, the sacrifice of thanksgiving, the sacrifice 
 of righteousness, spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God 
 by Jesus Christ, the presenting om- bodies a living 
 sacrifice? These figures, as many will call them, 
 though I doubt the propriety of doing so, are abun- 
 dant, constantly recm-ring, most natural, if gift to God 
 be the main and governing meaning of sacrifice, of 
 that which was realized and fulfilled in the great and 
 true sacrifice, most unnatural, and to my mind incom- 
 prehensible, if it be not. 
 
Iir.] ON THE ATONEMENT. 1/ 
 
 But gift to God ! What is, what can he a gift to 
 Him ! That which we can buy with our gold, that 
 which we can seize with our hands, that which we can 
 bring to an altar, that which we can solemnly offer 
 there, is surely no gift to Him. Even to a heathen 
 deity I suppose it was felt that such could be no gifts ; 
 that they could only pass for such by a strong effort of 
 the symbolizing imagination. And much more must the 
 same have been felt when the object of worship was the 
 Unseen Jehovah. And yet the symbolization was neces- 
 sary, unavoidable. As the bended knee to the energy of 
 prayer, so were the material gift and its oblation to that 
 surrender of the worshipper to the infinitely holy Will 
 that he worshipped, which is sacrifice. But it is a 
 sacrifice which man fails to render. At last comes One 
 in whom the matter of the oblation and the form are 
 united ; Whose gift is the inward essential sacrifice ; 
 Who said, Lo ! I come to do Thy Will. And He does it 
 perfectly. The gift of His own Will and of His own 
 Being to the Will of His Father is entire and flawless. 
 There is no point at which the offerer pauses. The self- 
 surrender stays not till the very life has been offered. 
 The obedience is carried on until it becomes an obedi- 
 ence unto death. Short of that point, the sacrifice would 
 not have been complete ; there would have been some- 
 thing kept back But all is complete ; nothing is kept 
 back; all faith in, and all love to the eternal Father, all 
 sympathy with the brethren, receive their full expres- 
 sion in the sacrifice which began with the utterance, Lo ! 
 I come ! and was consummated when Jesus bowed, His 
 
 c 
 
18 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 head and gave up the ghost. In gazing on that, we are 
 gazing on the Only Gift ever offered to God, which, for 
 its own sake, God could regard with complacency; in 
 which, for its own sake, God could take delight. 
 
 And we may see how the union of Christ with His 
 brethren renders this gift propitiatory in its effects upon 
 them. For it is human nature which He has offered up 
 in spotless sacrifice to the Father; the whole race is 
 represented in Him. He is the Head and the Root of 
 all mankind. Therefore, mankind now stands accepted 
 before God, and every sharer in the kind may at once 
 plead and occupy the righteous position which has been 
 won for it by the accepted sacrifice of its great Kepre- 
 sentative. 
 
 Who will deny this ? Not any one, let me] be ever 
 so sure that what I have said is the Truth, who has 
 merely another way of stating it than mine, who does 
 not feel free at once to adopt mine, who may say that he 
 does not at present understand mine. For I attach no 
 other value to what I have been saying than as it may 
 help to disentangle from encumbering accidents — a 
 Truth on which I know that thousands on thousands 
 are living far more than I have succeeded in doing. 
 Who then is a denier of the Atonement ? None, I am 
 persuaded, who recognise in Jesus Christ at once the Son 
 of God and the Son of Man, at once their Lord and their 
 Brother, at once the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords ; 
 and the lowly rejected Man, who humbled Himself even 
 to the death of the Cross on our behalf. I do not believe 
 that it is easy for any man, who at all brings home to 
 
III.] ON TEE ATONEMENT. 19 
 
 himself what God is, and what he is, and what Christ 
 is, to be a denier of the Atonement. I do not helieve it 
 is possible for any man to form in this stage of his 
 being, to arrive at, an adequate notion of the Atone- 
 ment. But, I believe that a man gives himself no 
 security against the former case, that of practically and 
 virtually denying it, and gives himself no advantage in 
 the way of approximating to the' latter, and gaining 
 a just notion of it, by rashly committing himself to 
 any one theory of it, and by greedily anathematizing 
 such as, from whatever cause, stumble at that theory. 
 I certainly do not feel securer against a practical, per- 
 haps an altogether overt, denial of the central truth of 
 the Atonement, if I turn a deaf ear to all difficulties, 
 however reverently and diffidently brought forward,' in 
 connexion with the Divine justice. In this case there 
 seems greater danger for me than for the urger of such 
 difficulties, seeing that the glory of the Cross of Christ, 
 according to St. Paul, consists very mainly in its being 
 the great manifestation of the righteousness of God. 
 If it does not manifest this to any man, if it is not a 
 display to him of justice, of that which he would recognise 
 as justice anywhere else ; he has in some way failed to 
 see it in its true light. If it is in my statements, not in 
 his own unaided view of it, that he thus misses the 
 manifestation of justice; I had better abstain from 
 urging such statements upon him. 
 
 Let it be observed that I am not prepared to condemn 
 every theory of the Atonement, which I have here repre- 
 sented as but accidentally connected with the central 
 
 C2 
 
20 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. \iio. 
 
 truth ; and as neither imposed on me by the necessity 
 for my own sake of beholding that central truth, nor by 
 any creed or confession to which I have bound myself. 
 I am satisfied with the liberty which I claim, and have no 
 wish to deprive others of the like. While the real truth 
 of his redemption by the blood of Christ is represented 
 to a man by a theory of satisfaction, whether that 
 of Anselm, or of the modern Calvinist, it will be 
 with that real truth that he is fed ; with the theory not 
 at all, if the theory be wrong. I have not said so much 
 as that either Anselm's, or any other person's theories 
 are altogether wrong. But I own they do not 
 greatly commend themselves to me ; and I rejoice at 
 once in not feeling bound by them, and in seeing a truth 
 which I am sure is independent of them. 
 
 But am I not bound by them? Has not every 
 clergyman of the English Church signed a declaration 
 that ' the offering of Christ once made is that perfect 
 ' Redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for aU the 
 ' sins of the whole world ? ' Art. xxxi. And every 
 time he celebrates the Eucharist, does he not proclaim 
 that Christ made a ^satisfaction for the sins of the 
 whole world ? ' Undoubtedly : and we may go further, 
 and with every probability allege that the word 
 satisfaction occurs in these places, because it had 
 become, since Anselm, a term of art in the Western 
 Church. But surely the mere use of it does not bind 
 ine to every notion that Anselm associated with it, and 
 still less to every notion that laiter schoolmen have 
 fastened on it. It is enough, surely, that I can use the 
 
III. J ON THE ATONEMENT. 21 
 
 term as expressive of a great truth. Christ's sacrifice 
 of Himself was indeed a satisfaction to Divine justice, 
 and that in a far higher sense than is furnished by any 
 mere notions of paying a debt, or enduring a penalty. 
 The Righteousness of God has an entire satisfaction in 
 the work of Christ Jesus. The Supreme Eeason, the 
 Perfect Mind of the Father, sees there that on which He 
 can pour forth a full tide of complacency and approval. 
 There were barriers which the Divine justice no doubt 
 placed between God and sinful man ; for perfect justice 
 can never be on terms with sin ; can never call things 
 other than what they are ; can adopt no legal fiction in 
 order to treat the sinner as if he were not a sinner. 
 Those barriers are broken down by Christ's sacrifice. 
 Man is thereby brought to God.* God's justice sees Man 
 presented to Him, such as He designed Man to be, and 
 is satisfied. The sin of the world is taken away, and 
 all who will avail themselves of it, can occupy a position 
 in which Man is righteous, and may serve God in holiness 
 and righteousness, without fear. 
 
 To sum up what I have wished to enforce. The 
 Atonement, the reconciKation of earth and heaven, of 
 God and Man, the redemption of man through Christ, 
 is what is denied, I am sure, by no man who worships 
 Christ as his God, and reposes on Him as his Elder 
 Brother. Every such man, in so far as he is awake 
 and earnest, traces every good thing he has to the work 
 and the intercession of his great High Priest. But 
 many such men may fail of reconciling themselves to 
 * 1 Pet. iii. 18. 
 
22 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 the theory of vicarious punishment, may find that to 
 them it in no way manifests the righteousness of God, 
 may be unable to see anything in Scripture which 
 warrants the theory. And yet such people may read 
 the declarations : — ' Surely He hath borne our afflic- 
 ' tions, and carried our sorrows,' ' He was wounded for 
 ' our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities,' ' He 
 ' bore our sins in His own body on the tree,' and see and 
 confess their complete fulfilment in the thorn-crowned 
 head, and the arms outstretched on the cross. For we 
 see the facts there that Christ did bear the burden of our 
 sin, and shame, and woe, however determinedly we set 
 our faces against theories of the process whereby He 
 bore them — whether of vicarious punishment, or any 
 other. Certainly the mere words compel us to no such 
 theories : — 
 
 ' Sinful Maodufif, 
 They were all struck for thee, naught that I am, 
 Not for their own demerits but for mine,' 
 
 are most natural 'words and full of real meaning in the 
 tremendous situation wherein they are placed in the 
 utterer'a mouth. And nobody, I suppose, for an instant 
 thinks that a vicarious theory — a theory of sub- 
 stitution — is either required by them, or would enhance 
 their meaning. And even so I may venture to say that 
 the most resolute decliner of such theories in regard 
 to the Work of Christ for our redemption, may use the 
 language of Isaiah liii., and all that other language of 
 Scripture which so corresponds with it, in sincerity, 
 as expressing what all inadequately he feels and sees 
 
III.] ON THE ATONEMENT. 23 
 
 when he tries to contemplate the agony of the garden 
 and the darkness of Calvary. He can see and accept 
 the fact, while he declines all theory respecting it.* 
 
 But one truth respecting it I would not call theory, 
 and I have tried to set it forth as inmost and central. 
 Whatever else was Christ's work on our behalf, it was 
 and is sacrifice. It was and it is the sacrifice which 
 alone is intrinsically acceptable to the supreme reason 
 and everlasting justice of the Father; the sacrifice which 
 binds together and quickens all imperfect sacrifices, 
 services, and efforts after obedience, that have had any 
 truth or meaning — the sacrifice in which those who were 
 alienated and at a distance, the all-holy and the sinful 
 meet together and are at one. It is the mighty cloud of 
 incense, which rising from out of moral and spiritual 
 history, makes that history fragrant and acceptable. And 
 this cloud descended before it arose. It came down 
 from the ethereal region to which it mounts. It is 
 accepted by the Father because it is the perfect doing 
 of the Father's will, the perfect manifestation of the 
 Father's mind. 
 
 There is profound truth in the following quotation, 
 
 * Of course such an one will admit, because he sees it, that the 
 Lord's Passion has a very intimate connexion with sin — the sin of 
 human kind. It was, we may say, I hope without presumptuous 
 theorizing, a humble filial acquiescence in, and acceptance of, the 
 position into which sin had brought the brotherhood of man. Other- 
 wise, it would not have been man's sacrifice. I must refer my readers 
 to Mr. Campbell's reasonings on this point iu his profound book on the 
 Atonement, a book which if I shall succeed in persuading a single earnest 
 man or woman to read, study, and inwardly digest, I shall not have 
 written in vain. 
 
24. TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 of whicli I should be sorry that all our dislike of the 
 
 polemical aims and efforts of its author should rob us. 
 
 ' " But," pursued Fabiola, almost timidly, " is there 
 
 ' no great act of acknowledgment, such as sacrifice is 
 
 ' supposed to be, whereby He may be formally recognised 
 
 ' and addressed?" 
 
 ' Syra answered in the affirmative. 
 
 ****** 
 
 ' "And could not I," still more humbly asked her 
 'mistress, "be so far instructed in your school as to 
 ' perform this sublime act of homage?" 
 
 ' " I fear not, noble Fabiola ; one must needs obtain 
 'a victim worthy of the Deity." 
 
 ' " Ah ! yes, to be sure," answered Fabiola ; " a bull 
 ' may be good enough for Jupiter, or a goat for Bacchus 
 ' but where can be found a sacrifice worthy of Him 
 ' whom you have brought me to know?" 
 
 ' " It must, indeed, be one in every way worthy of 
 ' Him, spotless in purity, matchless in gxeatness, un- 
 ' bounded in acceptableness." 
 
 ' " And what can that be, Syra ? " 
 
 ' " Only Himself." ' 
 
 Fabiola, or the Church of the Catacombs. 
 
III.] ON THE ATONEMENT. 25 
 
 COMMENTS BY ANOTHEE CLEEGYMAN. 
 
 I AM very thankful to the writer of this Essay for his 
 warnings respecting the injustice we may do to other 
 men and to ourselves if we substitute theories of the 
 Atonement for the actual good news of it, which we find 
 in the preaching and letters of the Apostles. No lesson 
 is more necessary for us all ; that we may not contract 
 God's Truth \sy our conceptions of it; that we may not 
 change it from a living power into a dead notion ; that 
 we may not rob our brethren of sides of it which they 
 have perceived, and which we have not perceived ; that 
 we may not compel them to accept what they have not 
 perceived. 
 
 I am afraid, however, that the writer may leave an 
 impression on the minds of some of his readers which 
 will hinder them from entering into his purpose. They 
 may fancy that he wishes them to discard the 
 thoughts which are suggested by what he calls the pra- 
 Anselmite theory, by what he styles the Anselmite 
 theory, by what he describes as the more modern theory, 
 by that which he discovers in Coleridge. All of these 
 are, I confess, very inadequate ; each taken by itself 
 will be merely the contradiction of some other; each 
 may interfere with that great principle of Sacrifice, for 
 which the writer of the Essay demands, and I think 
 most rightly, the central place. But each may indicate 
 
26 TRACTS FOB PJRIHSTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 some aspect of that all-embracing verity, which is above 
 us, and yet in which we live ; which none of us can 
 speak of except most feebly and imperfectly, but which 
 we must, nevertheless, make the main subject of our 
 preaching. 
 
 1. I cannot abandon so readily as the writer seems to 
 do, that doctrine respecting the Redemption from the 
 Evil Spirit, which he says was overthrown by Anselm. 
 In the form which it took when it spoke of a justice due 
 to Satan, I may consider that it is disposed of triumph- 
 antly in the dialogue ' Cur Deus Homo,^ though even in 
 that form it was revived after the Reformation, and is 
 set forth with great vigour in a popular sermon by Bishop 
 Hooper. I think that Anselm treats it with great 
 modesty and caution, evidently discontented with it so 
 far as it assumed that the devil had any claim of right 
 upon man or God, but yet discerning so much practical 
 reality in it that he left the objection to be raised by the 
 person in the dialogue who does not represent the 
 teacher but the disciple. 
 
 To myself this belief of a Redemption out of the 
 hands of a usurper, has been one of quite unspeakable 
 comfort. I know that I have been ready to use the 
 very language, in hours of conflict and oppression, which 
 appears so unreasonable. ' Tyrant ! thou hast been 
 ' paid thy full price. Thou hast had better blood than 
 ' mine since thou desiredst it. Thou hast no right over 
 ' me.' And though I should never dream of turning 
 such a personal argument into the explanation of a 
 universal truth, I can sympathise very thoroughly with 
 
III.] ON THE ATONIMENT. 27 
 
 brave and earnest men like Hooper, who presented to 
 men struggling like themselves a message which they 
 would understand, however little scholastic value it may 
 have. And though I would never speak of Christ's 
 blood as Redemption money paid to the devil, I do 
 maintain that a deliverance of men by their true Father 
 from an evil power who had claimed them as his sub- 
 jects, underlies all the lessons concerning Redemption 
 in the Bible, and explains the passage in St. Peter, and 
 a thousand others, which, as the writer of the Essay 
 truly says, startle the modern reader. Any idea of 
 Redemption but that which imports that it is the pur- 
 chase of a creature out of bondage by a Creator who 
 cares that it should be free, seems to me feeble, self- 
 contradictory, unpractical. Holding that belief, I main- 
 tain that the word Redemption points to the greatest of 
 all divine and human realities, and is not, as Coleridge 
 seemed to think, a metaphor drawn from earthly transac- 
 tions ; this Redemption could only have been effected by 
 the death, burial, and descent into hell of the Son of God. 
 2. But I do not mean that Redemption is the only 
 word which has to do with atonement, or that if the 
 meaning of Redemption were fully set forth, the mean- 
 ing of atonement would be fully set forth. The word 
 Satisfaction is as much involved in that meaning as the 
 one of which I have been speaking. And it is on this 
 word that Anselm designed to throw light, and was 
 able to throw light. Living in an organized Christendom, 
 he did not understand the import of Redemption as 
 clearly as those who had seen men enslaved to false 
 
28 TRACTS FOB. PRIESTS AND FWFLE. [No. 
 
 gods. Living in a cloister, he did not understand the 
 meaning of Redemption so well as preachers addressing 
 men who were sunk in lusts and baseness. But the idea 
 of righteousness and of a righteous God was brought 
 more distinctly and fully to his mind by the contro- 
 versies of his time, than it was to most of the fathers, 
 than it is to most men who are thinking of the power 
 by which they can act upon masses of corrupt people. 
 It was this righteous God he felt, not the unrighteous 
 devil who requires satisfaction. Nothing but a perfect 
 obedience — an obedience unto death — can satisfy Him. 
 The writer of the Essay will be supported by the 
 judgment of all thoughtful readers of Anselm, in the 
 opinion that justice in his mind meant something 
 altogether different from the demand for punishment. 
 The very title and subject of the treatise are (as the 
 Essay notices) decisive that the union of perfect man- 
 hood with the perfect Godhead was essential to his idea 
 of Satisfaction. But I cannot say that Anselm did not 
 absorb the doctrine of Redemption and all other aspects 
 of the Atonement into this one thought of satisfaction, 
 and that in this way he did not unwittingly give a 
 sanction to conceptions of it which were foreign in many 
 respects to his own. 
 
 The Germans, with their habits of mind, and their 
 fondness for histories of dogmas, naturally give a pro- 
 minence and emphasis to Anselm's doctrine, which it 
 has not for us. They are probably right that he pre- 
 sented the truth in a scholastical shape which it had 
 not assumed previously; for Anselm is," in some sense, 
 
III.] ON THE ATONEMENT. 29 
 
 the beginner of the scholastical period. Moreover, this 
 idea of satisfaction is more capable of being cast in that 
 mould than any other, though it is liable to suifer like 
 every living truth, from the compression of a formula. 
 But it is a mistake to forget how vehemently and 
 angrily the bonds of scholasticism have been shaken 
 off in any great Church movements ; and how specially 
 strong and passionate the preaching of the Atonement 
 has been during such movements. How idle would it 
 be to look for any statement of it in Anselm's terms by 
 the Franciscans, by Wiclif, by Luther, by the Evan- 
 gelical teachers in England during the last century ! 
 
 3. To speak specially of these last. It is not 
 correct to fasten upon them any special theory of the 
 Atonement. They spoke to the hearts of their hearers. 
 They spoke to their conscience of sin. They set forth 
 the Lamb of God who taketh away sin. They dwelt, 
 as the writer of this paper has remarked, upon all 
 those expressions which point to the bearing of sin, to 
 the endurance of the chastisement for sin. They could 
 not doubt — they had the strongest internal assurance — 
 that these passages expressed the divinest, the most life- 
 giving truth. By degrees it became to them the one idea 
 of Atonement. The thoughts of redemption, of satis- 
 faction were merged in it and determined by it. Still 
 they made no attempt, or very irregular attempts, to 
 determine how those thoughts could be subordinated to 
 this. Their divinity was experimental, not logical or 
 dogmatical. 
 
 It was opposed by the Unitarian and semi-TJnitarian 
 
30 TRACTS FOR FEIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 Schools. Arguments must he found to sustain it. Men 
 who had none of their strong evangelical convictions, 
 but more of learning and dialectical skill than these 
 teachers possessed, came to their help. Their belief 
 was put for them into a convenient mould. The most 
 serious of them — whose belief was their life — stared 
 when they saw the transformation. It was clearly not 
 this which had sustained them in the fight with the 
 world, and the flesh, and the devil. But they accepted 
 the theory which explained the bearing of sins into the 
 endurance of a certain punishment for sins, as good for 
 controversy, however unsatisfactory it was to their inner 
 life, however ineffectual for practice. They saw that 
 their faith had first been diluted, then crystallised. 
 But perhaps their opponents could only understand it 
 in that form. What use was there in speaking to them 
 about that which concerned spiritual experience? 
 
 4. The Evangelical doctrine of the Atonement, thus 
 reduced and thus hardened by Dr. Magee, was that 
 which caused such pain to Coleridge. He had embraced, 
 with his whole heart, the doctrine that a regeneration 
 of the heart and will is the great principle and end of 
 the Gospel. The utter want of any recognition of such 
 a regeneration — of any power to produce it — in the 
 Unitarian creed, had been one of his principal reasons 
 for casting it off. He protested, with a fervour not less 
 than was displayed by any of the Evangelical divines, 
 against what seemed to him the destruction of this truth 
 by Dr. Mant, and those who identified regeneration with 
 baptism. How, he asked, can the regeneration they 
 
III.] ON TEH ATONEMENT. 31 
 
 speak of import a moral or spiritual renovation ? Upon 
 the same ground precisely he objected to Dr. Magee's 
 doctrine of the Atonement. The Scriptures, it appeared 
 to him, testified of a turning from darkness to light, of 
 a resurrection out of evil. Did not the notion of a. 
 mere artificial substitution interfere with these blessed 
 announcements? Did it not confuse all our sense of 
 personal responsibility ? Did it not introduce a fiction 
 where the conscience most demands reality V 
 
 These statements have produced a great effect upon 
 students of theology, especially upon those who had 
 felt the power of the evangelical teachings, and could 
 not be content to see it swamped in any teaching which 
 was not vital and personal. Some they have led to 
 think that the words in our Baptismal Service and our 
 Catechism must be untrue; some they have led to 
 suspect all the expressions respecting the sufferings of 
 Christ for us, which were the most dear to their fore- 
 fathers. But there are others who have to thank Cole- 
 ridge for awakening them to study the fuU force of these 
 expressions as well as of those in the Baptismal Service, 
 which scandalized him no less than the instruments of 
 the religious revival in the last age. They have 
 found in the doctrine God was in Christ, reconciling 
 the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses 
 to them, the fullest assurance of that transcendent 
 fact of which Coleridge speaks ; that fact which cannot 
 be set forth in any terms of logic, but which com- 
 mends itself to the consciences of human beings as 
 the very ground of a spiritual economy, of an actual 
 
32 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 fellowship for human beings. They have seen in this 
 message that redemption of mankind of which the Cate- 
 chism speaks. They have seen in it the full justification 
 of all the assertions that Christ bore our sins in His 
 own body on the tree, that by His stripes we are healed, 
 in the living sense which the Evangelical teachers 
 gave to them, not in the withered formal sense 
 which Dr. Magee's theory gives to them. Nay, they even 
 believe that a stiU deeper, more full sense than the 
 Evangelical teachers saw in them — though including 
 and sustaining that — was attached to these words by the 
 Apostles and Evangelists from whom they at first pro- 
 ceeded. And accepting in this sense the declaration of 
 the Catechism respecting the Redemption of all man- 
 kind, they can find a full justification of those words in 
 the same Catechism which claim for every baptized child 
 the right of a child of God and a member of Christ. 
 
 The result to which these observations lead me are 
 this. We cannot afford to lose any of these aspects of 
 this great truth, which at times we are inclined to cast 
 aside as the theories of another time, or of an imperfect 
 illumination. They are needful to us as correctors of 
 each other as well as for the necessities of human beings. 
 The first of which the essayist speaks is a witness 
 against the terrible imagination which so often haunts 
 our carnal nature, that Christ has redeemed us out of his 
 Father's hands, not out of the Devil's hands. The 
 second is a witness against the notion that anything can 
 satisfy God but a perfection, a holiness, a love which 
 is the image of His own, that which he sees in the 
 
III.] ON THE ATONEMENT. 33 
 
 only -begotten Son. The third is a witness against the 
 notion that anything short of an actual endurance of 
 human sorrow, an actual endurance of human evil by 
 the Son of God, can content creatures who are conscious 
 of guilt, or can relieye them from the burden of it. The 
 fourth is a witness against all attempts to resolve the 
 union of Christ with men and with God into artificial 
 arrangements, and against the notion that the act of 
 reconciliation can be anything less than a divine and 
 transcendent act. 
 
 On that last point I would dwell for a moment before 
 I conclude. The writer of the Tract says, I think very 
 truly, that Coleridge loses sight of the idea of Sacrifice, and 
 that by doing so he makes the atonement less of a revealed 
 mystery than the Apostles and the Church teach us that 
 it is. But in his hint that it is divine and transcendent 
 lies, if I am not mistaken, the correction of Coleridge's 
 failure in both respects. I adopt all that the Essayist 
 says of Sacrifice so far as the human offerer is con- 
 cerned. But I cannot read such words as these. He gave 
 up His Son for us all, illustrated as they are by the 
 whole New Testament, and by all the prayers and 
 collects of the Church, without feeling the Sacrifice 
 must have a deeper ground than any acts or services of 
 ours. We can only be doing right acts when we are 
 conformed to the image of God. He who is the perfect 
 image of God is the perfect Sacrifice. What is not in- 
 volved in this belief? A truth past our finding out, 
 but which is yet the ground of all human morality, 
 of all human hopes. Every prayer supposes it; every 
 
34 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PWPLR [No. 
 
 humble man confesses it. But what a depth it opens 
 to us! One which only the Eucharist presenting to 
 us a sacrifice, which proceeded from the love of the 
 Father, which was perfectly accomplished in the Son, 
 which is realised in the Church and its members by the 
 Divine Spirit, can set forth fully, practically, for all ages. 
 That has been the witness to Christendom for an atone- 
 ment by a living, all-embracing. Sacrifice. The thoughts 
 of all different teachers are interpreted by it, sustained 
 by it, purified by it, converted by it into nourishment 
 for the flock of Christ. The Eucharist teaches us what 
 the sin is of fighting for the purpose of stifling or contra- 
 dicting the thoughts and apprehensions which God may 
 Himself have imparted to men respecting His truth. 
 The Eucharist teaches us the duty of fighting with 
 Christ's own weapons, that His name may not be 
 slandered. His sacrifice denied. His body rent asunder, 
 while we are busy in defending our opinions, and 
 confounding our opponents. 
 
 POSTSCEIPT. 
 Since this tract was written, a letter has appeared in 
 the Times newspaper, signed by the Principal of King's 
 College, which bears very directly upon the subject 
 of it. In his pamphlet on the ' Essays and Reviews,' 
 Dr. Jelf had used the words pacifying of God's wrath, 
 as if they were taken from one of our articles and had 
 been adopted by the compilers of them as the proper 
 translation of the word Propitiatio. The writer of the 
 paper on the ' Essays ' in the last Edinburgh Beview, 
 
III.) ON THE ATONEMBNT. 35 
 
 whilst fully acquitting Dr. Jelf of any dishonest inten- 
 tion, nevertheless charged him with rashly interpolating 
 a phrase into the articles which did not appear in them. 
 The defence, as far as the Principal of King's College 
 is concerned, is perfectly satisfactory and has satisfied 
 the reviewer. The articles of 1562 do contain the phrase, 
 though the articles of 1571 do not. Itt's introduced, 
 as a translation of the word Fropitiatio. Dr. Jelf was 
 convinced long ago, by Dr. Cardwell, that the text of 
 1562 is better than the text of 1571, and was, in fact, 
 authorised by Act of Parliament. After such a state- 
 ment, every right-minded man will hold Dr. Jelf to 
 be absolved from aU imputation of wilful, or even of 
 rash, interpolation. 
 
 But other questions, far more important to the Church 
 than the personal one, arise out of this discussion. Dr. 
 Jelf thinks that the phrase, pacifying of God's wrath, 
 is an exact equivalent to the word Propitiation. He has 
 an undoubted right to think so. But thus much is 
 certain. 
 
 1. That in the later recension of the Articles, that 
 which — whether the best or not in the judgment or 
 antiquaries — is the one to which every clergyman sub- 
 scribes at his ordination, and which he reads to his 
 congregation after he has received a benefice, the only 
 one which contains thirty-nine articles (the twenty- 
 ninth being omitted in that which Dr. Jelf approves) ; 
 the phrase pacifying of God's wrath was deliberately 
 abandoned, and the word ' Propitiation ' deliberately 
 exchanged for it. 
 
36 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 2. That this was done, although the phrase which 
 Dr. Jelf considers the perfect equivalent for Propitiatio 
 had been used in the book of Edward VI. as well as in 
 the articles of 1562, and although the compilers exposed 
 themselves to the charge of merely anglicising a Latin 
 termination instead of giving a convenient and popular 
 explanation of a word which would be used in popular 
 sermons. 
 
 These two facts we can now affirm on the authority of 
 the Principal of King's College. We have not his help 
 in ascertaining the reason which may have led the 
 compilers of the Articles to adopt such an alteration ; 
 if we had, both he and those who approve the alteration 
 might be very wide of the mark. To imagine reasons 
 for men who lived three centuries ago is difficult work. 
 But as the Articles are surely intended to assist preachers 
 of the Gospel in delivering their message to the people, 
 and as the substance of that message must be taken 
 from the Bible ; some English clergymen may discover 
 a reason of thankfulness on their own hehalf, that they 
 are not obliged by the Articles they have subscribed to 
 put ' the pacifying of God's wrath,' for propitiation, in the 
 two passages of the New Testament, in which our 
 version adopts that word as the rendering of iXacmripiov 
 or lXa<7fJio<;. 
 
 Let us try the first of these; Eomans c. iii. v. 4. 
 Wliom God hath set forth to he a pacifying of His 
 wrath, through faith in his blood, to declare His righteous- 
 ness for the remission of sins that are past through 
 the forbearance of Ood. 
 
III.] ON THE ATONEMENT. 37 
 
 Let us try the second ; John c. ii. vv. 1 and 2. My 
 little children, these things I write unto you that ye sin 
 not. And if any man sin we have an advocate with the 
 Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He is the 
 pacifying (let it be pacifier if it is thought better) of 
 God's wrath for our sins, and not for ours only, hut for 
 the sins of the whole world. 
 
 I repeat what I said before. Every one who pleases 
 may accept this as the exact meaning of these texts. 
 But is it very strange that the compilers of the Articles 
 should not have wished to force the ministers of Christ's 
 word and sacraments, to accept for themselves, and to 
 give to their flocks such a paraphrase of the language 
 of the two Apostles ? Is it very strange that a minister 
 of the Gospel should say now, as one of them does say 
 from his inmost heart and soul — 
 
 ' I believe I should cheat my people of the message 
 ' of reconciliation which God has sent me to deliver to 
 ' them ; I believe I should confuse their minds about 
 ' His nature and purposes to them; I believe I should 
 'not represent the Son as the express image of the 
 ' Father ; if I compelled the Divine words to undergo this 
 ' violence. The words, pacifying of God's wrath, may 
 'convey the best and most blessed meaning to some 
 ' minds. I would deprive no one of that meaning. But 
 ' I must preach God's gospel to sinners ; and to me, and 
 ' from my lips, this would be no gospel at all.' 
 
LONDON ; 
 
 ,. ClAY, SON, ANJ> TAYLOR, PRINTERS, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL. 
 
TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. 
 
 No. IV. 
 
 THE SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OP HEAVEN : 
 
 AN APPEAL TO SORIPTUKE UPON THE QUESTION OE MIRACLES. 
 
 A EEADEE who takes up a discourse upon such a subject 
 as miracles, will reasonably desire to be informed at 
 once as to the position and purpose of the writer. He 
 will wish to know whether he is invited to read another 
 attack on miracles, or another defence of them against 
 attacks. In the following pages, treating of the great 
 signs of the Gospel, the reader will certainly find no 
 attack upon miracles, for I desire to justify to the ut- 
 most the narratives of the New Testament, as historical 
 and authentic, against the doubts which have been cast 
 upon them ; but I also propose to contrast the miracle- 
 worship which pervades so many modern defences of 
 Christianity with that view of the acts called miraculous 
 which the New Testament itself would suggest. 
 
 Miracle-worship betrays itself in the assertion of the 
 following principles. It sets forth violations, or sus- 
 pensions, of the laws of nature, as the ultimate grounds 
 of our. belief in a Divine Lord and Saviour of men. It 
 magnifies such violations or suspensions as more Divine 
 than the laws of nature themselves, until it is in danger 
 
 B 
 
2 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS'.AND PEOPLE.] [No. 
 
 of forgetting that the law^ are Divine at all. And it 
 demands of men a faith in miracles, thus interpreted, 
 almost more imperatively than it demands a faith in Him 
 who wrought them. The metaphysical definition of a 
 miracle is abstracted from the wonderful works of the 
 Lord Jesus and His followers, and is set up as an object 
 to which all Christians are to do homage. 
 
 The prevailing tendency of religious belief for some 
 generations in England has been in favour of the theory 
 which makes miracles the great evidences of Christianity. 
 Every statement of that theory will probably contain 
 a great deal of truth ; but it is scarcely possible to 
 maintain it without displacing the Gospel miracles from 
 their right relation to the whole work of Christ and to 
 the minds of men. In a season of panic it is natural 
 that the traditions of the day should be expressed with 
 vehemence and exaggeration. At the present time we are 
 in danger of having modern notions on many subjects 
 thrust hastily upon us as parts of the necessary belief 
 of every Christian man ; and those who desire to be 
 loyal to the Scriptures and to the Church of their fathers 
 as well as to the truth, must beware how they accept the 
 controversial dogmas of those who are chiefly bent upon 
 crushing an enemy. The strongest things which can 
 be said by popular teachers in opposition to Professor 
 Baden Powell's Essay are not likely to be the truest 
 concerning miracles. I believe, on the conti-aiy, that 
 it is impossible to meet the really dangerous pai-t of that 
 essay without doing justice to much in it that is not 
 only reasonable but Scriptural. It is not, however, 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 3 
 
 the object of this paper to review Professor Powell's 
 Essay, hut mainly to ask for a fair consideration of the 
 Gospel miracles as they are presented to us in the New 
 Testament itself. 
 
 It ought not to surprise us as an unreasonable demand, 
 on the part of the inquiring spirit of our time, that we 
 should justify, if we can, the miraculous narratives of 
 the Bible. If those narratives are to appeal to minds 
 interested in the knowledge and the practical life of the 
 present day, as conveying simple historical truth, it 
 seems inevitable that anything in them which implies 
 a suspension of the laws of nature, should excite a 
 feeling partaking more of repugnance than of admira- 
 tion. There is nothing, indeed, in the scientific or the 
 historical studies by which our age is distinguished, to 
 hinder a cordial reception of wonders into the domain 
 of belief. The patient investigations of students are 
 rewarded every day by the discovery of new facts, no 
 less wonderful and unexpected to the philosopher than 
 to ordinary men. But that which is more wonderful to 
 intelligent men than any isolated fact, is the harmony 
 which is found to prevail in all the departments of the 
 universe. Wherever knowledge increases, there inter- 
 dependence between fact and fact, analogies between 
 diflferent processes, subordination of parts to a whole; 
 are seen to testify of a marvellous living order. If a 
 student comes upon any fact or occurrence which seems 
 to imply a conti-adiction of an established law, he 
 immediately recognises in it a sign of his own igno- 
 rance, a hopeful hint of an enlarged knowledge u.pon 
 
 b2 
 
4 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLK [No. 
 
 whose track he has set his foot. A conceited un- 
 scientific mind would he tempted to reject the fair 
 evidence of a fact for which it could not account hy 
 laws already understood: but the humhle and docile 
 spirit of the true inquirer is always ready to investigate 
 what he cannot explain; always sure that when the 
 truth is ascertained, it will be found to reveal, not a 
 violation, but a more subtle fulfilment, of order. To 
 such a mind nothing is so distasteful as the vaunting 
 of supernatural prodigies. At whatever risk, the vast 
 majority of educated persons do not hesitate to set down 
 as a fool or as an impostor any one who presents him- 
 self with claims to supernatural powers. K there are 
 any reports which we do not think worth attending to, 
 they are reports of modern miracles. An imknown 
 teacher, professing to bring a revelation from heaven 
 and to substantiate it by breaking the laws of nature, 
 would be as certain to excite the contempt, antecedent 
 to investigation, of Professor Mansel or the Bishop of 
 Oxford, as of Professor Faraday or Mr. Mill. But why, 
 then, should the present, it may be asked, be separated 
 from the past ? Why is reverence for a Divine order 
 to govern our thoughts concerning things about us, and 
 to be cast off when we approach the facts of a former 
 age ? ' Why should I be compelled,' a philosopher 
 may naturally plead, ' to receive as the proper and 
 ' ultimate credentials of a Revelation of truth given 
 ' eighteen centuries ago, things which in the nineteenth 
 ' century we should all agree to regard with suspicion 
 ' and dislike, and which would be at least a discredit and 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAFFN. 5 
 
 ' hindrance to any truths which they were meant to re- 
 ' commend?' Such considerations oblige us in candour 
 to admit, that the miracles of the Bible require to be 
 explained and justified. It is a mere matter of fact, 
 that ' suspensions of the order of nature,' instead of 
 compelling men to believe something which they would 
 otherwise refuse to believe, are a preliminary difficulty 
 of belief. All discussions concerning miracles, to be of 
 any use, must be adjusted to this state of things. 
 
 Now the only hope for the Scriptural narratives is 
 that they will justify themselves. They will gain little 
 help from considerations which go round and round 
 them, or from ingenious arguments set in array against 
 general objections. Controversialists on both sides, 
 taking their cue from the language of their opponents, 
 may be drawn farther and farther from the real matter 
 about which the dispute has arisen. Let us pass by, 
 therefore, the metaphysical controversies which have 
 enveloped the question of miracles, and let us endeavour 
 to see what, according to the book itself, the Gospel 
 miracles really are. 
 
 It would be a great advantage if we could get rid of 
 the term miracle altogether. It carries with it some 
 arbitrary definition — some ' conception of a miracle ' 
 — which is foreign to the ideas of the New Testament. 
 And the word is not wanted. In a great majority of the 
 places in which we have ' miracles ' in our version, we 
 ought to replace it by ' signs.' The word itself is exactly 
 equivalent to 'wonders.' Signs, wonders, and powers, 
 are what we have to do with in the New Testament. 
 
6 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 We read there, that a teacher appeared in Judea more 
 than eighteen centuries ago, who announced the near 
 advent of the Kingdom of Heaven. He declared that 
 One was coming, whose appearing would he the mani- 
 festation of the Kingdom of Heaven, because He was 
 ' always and everywhere the heavenly light and life of all 
 men. He called upon men to repent of their ungodli- 
 ness and to turn to God ; and gave them in God's name 
 a baptism of forgiveness and purification. His an- 
 nouncement made a wide and lasting impression on 
 the Jewish mind. To him ' went out Jerusalem and 
 all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan.' 
 But this herald of the Kingdom of Heaven, it is 
 recorded, ' did no signj (Itodvvrj'; a-rjfjLeiov iirottjaev 
 oiSiv, St. John x. 41.) 
 
 In a short time, according to the Gospel histories, the 
 Baptist was able to point out to his followers a fellow- 
 countryman in whom his announcements were fulfilled. 
 Gradually, almost stealthily, the heavenly nature and 
 mission of Jesus of Nazareth began to be declared to 
 the people. He himself adopted the saying of John as 
 His own first declaration, ' The Kingdom of Heaven is 
 at hand.' He caused the disciples whom John trans- 
 ferred to him, to carry on for a time the same baptism. 
 He spoke of the near fulfilment of the glorious hopes 
 which sounded through the pages of the Hebrew 
 prophets. He endeavoured to awaken in the minds of 
 his fellow-countrymen a belief that the God of their 
 fathers was about to manifest Himself, according to the 
 covenant, in acts of deliverance and blessing. He 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF TEE KINGDOM OF HFAVEN. 7 
 
 uttered, in all places, and to all persons, the name of 
 the Heavenly Father, ' My Father and yours.' Thu s 
 putting forward the names of the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 as coming upon the earth and in that land of Judea, 
 and of the Father in Heaven who had spoken by the 
 prophets, He hegan to do works also. At seasons 
 and places and in degrees regulated by no fixed 
 mechanical rule, but by an inward sense of what was 
 expedient, Jesus began ' to heal all manner of sickness, 
 ' and all manner of disease.' ' Preaching the Gospel of 
 ' the Kingdom, and healing every sickness and every 
 ' disease amongst the people,' — this is the account of 
 the greater part of the works of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 Generally, seeing such works, the multitude would 
 glorify God who had given such power to men. If 
 they began to catch at this power, and to offer them- 
 selves as adherents of Him who wielded it, its mani- 
 festations were immediately withdrawn from them. 
 These powers of healing — which in some rare instances 
 went so far as to recall the dead into life — were only 
 put forth in the sight of those who had faith, that is to 
 say, of those whose spirits were in some degree opened 
 to the Kingdom of Heaven and the name of the Father. 
 They had always the closest reference to the unveiling 
 of the Kingdom of God amongst men. 
 
 Besides these works of healing, applied to the whole 
 nature of man, others of a similar pui-pose are recorded as 
 having been wrought by Jesus. Such are the increas- 
 ing of a few loaves and fishes so as to feed a large and 
 hungry multitude ; the changing of water into wine to 
 
8 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLB. [No. 
 
 support the festivities of a marriage entertainment ; and 
 the bringing of a heavy draught of fish into the nets of 
 His disciples. Next to these we may place such mani- 
 festations as the stilling of the winds and waves, and the 
 walking upon the water, by which Jesus nourished the 
 trust of His disciples both in God and in Himself. 
 
 The fact that Jesus was bom of Mary whilst she 
 was yet a virgin, does not appear to have been publicly 
 stated, if we may judge from the silence of the Gospels, 
 whilst He was yet in the flesh upon the earth. But 
 after He had died upon the Cross, He returned within 
 three days alive to His disciples, having taken up His 
 dead body from the grave, and transfigured it into a 
 form which at His will He made visible and palpable to 
 men still in the flesh. His appearances, after the 
 Eesurrectioii, were carefully limited to friends and 
 brethren : and of these, no one actually saw the body of 
 Jesus rising from the grave. At one of his appear- 
 ances, after giving instructions concerning the Kingdom 
 of God to His disciples, ' He was taken up, and a cloud 
 received Him out of their sight.' 
 
 The rising again and ascension of Jesus were speedily 
 followed by an event which His disciples had been 
 taught by Him to expect and to wait for. The Spirit, 
 whom Jesus had promised to send fi-om the Father, 
 came down to the disciples, manifesting His coming by 
 symbols of fiery tongues and a rushing mighty wind, 
 and by impulses to utter the praises of God in some 
 manner not exactly described to us. In the power of 
 this Spirit the disciples, as they have reported to us. 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 9 
 
 understood the nature of their Master, and especially of 
 His Eesurrection. They knew Him to be the Lord of 
 life, and they therefore regarded His triumph over 
 death as a most natural and necessary event. The 
 Spirit created immediately a fellowship of men acknow- 
 ledging Jesus to be the Lord of life and the Ruler of 
 men, as well as the Son of .the Father, and confessing 
 themselves to be God's children, and brothers one to 
 another, in Him. Signs and wonders immediately 
 began to be wrought in the name of Jesus and of the 
 Spirit. The main signs of the Kingdom, in this stage, 
 are the same as before. When God's servants spoke 
 His Word, He stretched forth His hand to heal. The 
 works of healing, though the distribution of them was 
 what, from our ignorance of the reasons of it, we should 
 call irregular, were numerous and conspicuous. There 
 were some exceptional acts of punishment, as the sudden 
 deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, intended to vindicate 
 the Divine calling and inspiration of the new society 
 and the ^temporary blindness of Elymas, intended to 
 stamp, as dark and misleading, those magical arts to 
 which so many minds in that age were enslaved. There 
 were also some instances of deliverance from imprison- 
 ment granted to the leading Apostles. But the works by 
 which Peter, and John, and Stephen, and Paul, are re- 
 ported to have confirmed the word which they spoke to 
 men concerning the redemption of mankind through the 
 death and resurrection of the Christ, the Lord of men 
 and Son of God, were uniformly acts of deliverance done 
 to the bodies and souls of men. They found out or 
 
10 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 received men suffering from blindness, fever, palsy, 
 epilepsy, mania, and made them whole through the 
 name of Jesus. In the words of the Epistle to the He- 
 brews, a great salvation, which first began to be spoken 
 by the Lord, was confirmed by those who heard him, 
 and Grod bare testimony to it by signs and wonders and 
 various powers and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to 
 His will. 
 
 Having recalled to the reader's memory, by this hasty 
 sketch, the general character of the signs and wonders 
 and powers recorded in the New Testament, I would 
 ask his attention to the following more special obser- 
 vations. 
 
 I. The philosophical conception of a miracle, as an 
 interference with the laws of nature, is entirely absent 
 from the New Testament books. The works of Christ 
 were wonderful, and such as no man could do unless 
 God were with him, in the eyes of the disciples ; but 
 they never thought of discriminating between what was 
 in accordance with nature, or contrary to nature, or 
 above nature, in the works which they beheld. No 
 line is drawn, or attempted to be drawn, in the New 
 Testament, between works which might have been done 
 by eminent human skill and power, and works which 
 were necessarily superhuman. If a question had been 
 raised as to whether any wonderful work of St. Paul 
 was done by natural means or by supernatural, the 
 ignorant people who surrounded him at Ephesus or in 
 Melita, would have been utterly incompetent either to 
 investigate or to understand the question. I am speak- 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. ] 1 
 
 ing now of the simple element of power, an element 
 they undoubtedly possessed, in the ' miracles ' of the 
 New Testament. The scientific idea of the super- 
 natural, we must remember, is inferred from the 
 scientific idea of nature; and with reference to minds 
 ignorant of the laws of nature, to call an act super- 
 natural, is no more than to say that it transcends their 
 experience and power of explanation. If a Faraday were 
 to go forth with the resources which his science gives him, 
 to make an impression upon the imaginations of Kafirs 
 or Arabs, he would not be able, indeed, to do the works 
 which Jesus Christ is said to have wrought; but he 
 would undoubtedly be able to overwhelm them with any 
 degree of astonishment and perplexity, by doing works 
 which they would be wholly unable to ascribe to any 
 but a supernatural power. There is no irreverence in 
 comparing such works, as exhibitions of power, with the 
 wonderful acts of our Lord : for He himself mentions 
 the works of false teachers in precisely the same terms 
 by which His own are described. ' There shall arise 
 ' false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great 
 ' signs and wonders ; insomuch that, if it were possible, 
 ' they shall deceive the very elect.' (St. Matthew xxiv. 
 24.) The casting out of devils is spoken of by Jesus 
 as a work of other Jews of His time. ' If I by Beel- 
 ' zebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them 
 ' out? Therefore shall they be your judges.' (St. Luke 
 xi. 19.) The Scriptures then, do not opntain the modern 
 logical notion of a Kevelation attested by miracles. They 
 represent the Son of God as naturally doing mightier 
 
12 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No 
 
 works than other men did, but they do not place his 
 acts, or any part of them, in a class called ' supernatural' 
 by themselves. They give no hint of their having been 
 sifted by incredulous philosophers, and ascertained to 
 be supernatural. They present no careful an-ay of the 
 evidence of those who witnessed them. Their language 
 concerning the signs and wonders of the Gospel is such, 
 that if any one should think it worth while to maintain 
 the hypothesis that, in some future age, through the 
 advancing knowledge and power bestowed by the 
 Creator upon the human race, men will be enabled 
 without supernatural agency to do the very works which 
 Christ did, no sentence could be quoted from Scripture 
 to condemn it. We may have other good reasons for 
 rejecting such a hypothesis ; I only mention it for the 
 sake of illustrating the language of the Scriptures. 
 The tendency of the Scriptural writers is not to 
 draw the line sharply between the natural and the 
 supernatural, but to obliterate it. Consider, for example, 
 the following language of St. Paul concerning spiritual 
 gifts, in I. Cor. xii. 8 — 11, ' To one is given, by the 
 ' Spirit, the word of wisdom ; to another the word of 
 ' knowledge, by the same Spirit ; to another faith, by 
 ' the same Spirit ; to another the gifts of healing, by the 
 ' same Spirit ; to another the working of powers ; to 
 ' another prophecy; to another the discerning of spirits; 
 ' to another divers kinds of tongues: but all these 
 ' worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to 
 ' every man severally as He will.' 
 
 2. Whilst the philosophical and (to speak technically) 
 
IV.] SIONiS OF THE KINGDOM OF HUAFEN. ]3 
 
 evidential definition of miracles is thus entirely absent 
 from the Scriptures, there is no doubt that the wonderful 
 and powerful and divinely-wrought nature of- the works 
 of Christ and His Apostles is plainly set forth. But 
 with reference to the effect of this ' supernatural ' 
 element, the Scriptures assert a principle which has 
 been strangely overlooked. Any conversion or adhesion 
 to His cause which rested rather on the impression pro- 
 duced iy superhuman power than on the acceptance of 
 the truth in the heart, was studiously repelled hy our 
 Lord Himself. This most remarkable fact is illustrated, 
 as might be expected, in St. John's Gospel more than, 
 in the other three. "We learn from St. John, that the 
 thing desired by Jesus was that His word should be 
 received as the truth. He did mighty' works ; but they 
 were to gain a hearing for the word, to illustrate it, to 
 be utterances of it. As soon as He perceived that the 
 works, as powers and wonders, were not ministermg to 
 the acceptance of the word by the reason and con- 
 science and heart, they were withdrawn. The word 
 could do without the mighty works : the works, sepa- 
 rated from the word, ceased to be of any use, and 
 became hurtful. The first three Gospels tell us how 
 Jesus could do no mighty works where unbelief pre- 
 vailed. They record His deliberate refusal to work 
 signs for the gratification of his townsmen, or for the 
 convincing of the Pharisees. (St. Matthew xii. 38, 39 ; 
 xiii. 58 ; xvi. 1 — 4. St. Mark vi. 5, 6. St. Luke iv. 
 23, 24.) 
 
 St. John's testimony is given more explicitly. 
 
14 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 The disciples who first attached themselves to Jesus 
 were not persuaded to receive Him as the Messiah hy 
 a display 6f supernatural works. They were directed 
 to Him by their master the Baptist, who told them that 
 he had seen Jesus pointed out to him by a sign from 
 heaven, as the One greater than himself, of whom 
 he had previously spoken to his followers; but it 
 was through personal intercourse with Jesus Himself 
 that they learnt to believe in Him (i. 35 — 51). After 
 a while, He wrought His first sign to manifest His 
 glory to these His followers ; and the effect of it was a 
 deepening of their faith (ii. 1 — 11). 
 
 When Jesus went up to the Passover, after the com- 
 mencement of His ministry. He began His work by 
 driving the traders out of the Temple. ' The Jews ' 
 thereupon asked Him what sign He showed to justify 
 such an act. His answer conveyed a refusal to work 
 any sign. Nevertheless, at the same festival, he after- 
 wards wrought signs which caused many to believe in 
 His name. But Jesus, ' would not commit Himself unto 
 ' them {pvK eTrlarevev avrov aurot?), because He knew 
 'all men, and needed not that any should testify of 
 ' man.' (St. John ii. 13—25). What did He perceive 
 in them, which caused Him not to trust Himself to 
 them ? We leai-n from vi. 14, 15, ' Then those men 
 ' when they had seen the sign which Jesus did, said : 
 ' This is of a truth the Prophet that should come into 
 ' the world. When Jesus perceived, therefore, that they 
 ' would come and seize upon Him, to make Him a king, 
 ' He departed again into a mountain Himself alone.' 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OF HFAVFN. 15 
 
 An adhesion produced by mighty works was not what 
 Jesus desired. After his repulse of the common people 
 at that first Passover, Nicodemus, ' a ruler of the Jews,' 
 came to Him, confessing that an impression had heen 
 made upon him, also, by the mighty works of Jesus. 
 This confession is immediately met by the declaration 
 that the Kingdom which Jesus was come to establish 
 was a spiritual Kingdom,' and was to be entered, not 
 through wondering at mighty works, but by a new 
 birth of water and of the Spirit. When Jesus had 
 returned to the place in which His first sign had been 
 wrought, Cana in Galilee, ' a certain nobleman ' came to 
 Him, and besought Him that He would heal his son 
 who was at the point of death. Jesus takes the oppor- 
 tunity to rebuke the wonder-worship which he desired 
 to discourage, and says emphatically, ' Except ye see 
 signs and wonders, ye will not believe' (iv. 48). Once 
 more, when the multitude asked Him for a sign, to 
 attest (in modern phrase) the Revelation which He 
 brought from Heaven, in the words, ' What sign showest 
 ' Thou then, that we may see and believe Thee ? 
 ' What dost Thou work ? Our fathers did eat 
 ' manna in the desert ; as it is written, He gave them 
 ' bread from Heaven to eat,' — ^Jesus gave them no sign, 
 but spoke to them of a spiritual bread on which they 
 might feed by believing in Him (vi. SO). After that 
 discourse ' mauy of his disciples went back, and walked 
 no more with Him.' Those who remained said, through 
 the voice of Peter, ' Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou 
 hast the words of eternal life ' (vi. 68). The words 
 
16 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLK [No. 
 
 of eternal life were the miglity convincing power which 
 brought true disciples to Jesus and kept them near Him. 
 Those tliat would not be drawn by these, Jesus would 
 not have. 
 
 We observe, then, that the Scriptures know nothing 
 of ' a Revelation received independently of its contents, 
 ' because attested by miracles.' ' The contents of a 
 ' Eevelation,' is an expression very foreign to the ideas 
 of the New Testament. But, if we are to use it, it is 
 quite plain that Jesus distinctly condemned the temper 
 of mind that would accept a Revelation on the strength 
 of miracles, independently of its contents. ' If I say 
 ' the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God 
 ' heareth God's words ; ye therefore hear them not, 
 ' because ye are not of God.' ' Do you want signs and 
 ' wonders, that you may believe ? No sign shall be 
 ' given you.' It was the purpose of Jesus to make the 
 Kingdom of Heaven visible to men, and to draw them 
 into it, and to do this by revealing the Father. Mighty 
 works were a fitting part of His ministration, and might 
 do much good by opening and instructing the minds of 
 men. But such signs and wonders deserve no great 
 honour in themselves. They might be exhibited in attest- 
 ation of falsehood, and then true men should scorn them. 
 The child of God can hear God's voice, whether it 
 comes with mighty works or without them. 
 
 3. When the works of our Lord are mentioned in the 
 Gospels, the term which we might accurately translate 
 miracles, Tepara, that is, wonders, is the one which is 
 least frequently or conspicuously employed. The terms 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF TEE KINGDOM: OF ffEAFEN. 17 
 
 signs, arj/Meta, and powers, Swi/a/iet?, are much more fre- 
 quent. The first of these, even if we do not insist that 
 it is always to be taken in a designedly strict sense, leads 
 us to what all who have reverently studied the works of 
 Christ perceive to be their most striking characteristic. 
 They are signs; tokens into which the nature of the 
 Christ and of His Kingdom is translated. This is St. 
 John's favourite expression for the works of His Master. 
 The earlier Evangelists speak of powers as being dis- 
 played by Jesus. As these Evangelists devote them- 
 selves so expressly to the recording of those acts and 
 discourses by which the Kingdom of Heaven was mani- 
 fested, we may perceive a propriety in their use of the 
 term ' powers ' for the works of deliverance which ac- 
 companied the proclamation of the Kingdom. All these 
 works were, in the strictest sense, signs of the heavenly 
 kingdom. As any one thing may be a token or indica- 
 tion of another less visible thing, so the cures wrought 
 by Jesus and His apostles were exact tokens or indica- 
 tions of the spiritual powers then being exerted upon the 
 earth. But St. John is occupied with the setting forth 
 of those grounds, in the relations of the Son of God to 
 the Father and to men, upon which the kingdom of 
 heaven rested. And in reading his Gospel, we see mani- 
 festly that the wonderful works which he records, not 
 only are in themselves signs of the glory of the Son of 
 God, but are expressly interpreted by him as having 
 that significance. This is so important an aspect of the 
 Scriptural theory of ' miracles,' that I shall briefly illus- 
 trate it by three leading examples. 
 
18 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 The ninth chapter of St. John is the story of a man 
 born blind, upon whom Jesus bestowed the gift of eye- 
 sight. The story is complicated by many detaiLs, some 
 of which are of a minute kind, and is interspersed with 
 various questionings which arose in the progress of it. 
 If this story is not historical and authentic, it is, to say 
 the least, very difficult to imagine the artistic skill which 
 could have so imitated simplicity in constructing it. 
 Where is anything in the slightest degree parallel to it 
 to be found ? At the beginning of this narrative we read 
 that Jesus explained the man's blindness as being an 
 occasion 'for manifesting the works of God.' 'I must 
 ' work the works of Him that sent Me. . . . Whilst I 
 ' am in the world, lam the light of the world.'' This fact, 
 His being the light of the world, determined the nature 
 of the work now to be done. That work is thus reported 
 to his neighbours by the blind man : ' A man that is 
 ' called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and 
 ' said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash ; and 
 ' I went and washed, and I received sight.' The occur- 
 rence is represented as evoking in a curious manner the 
 prejudice and bigotry of the Pharisees, beginning with 
 the charge, 'This man is not of God, because He 
 keepeth not the Sabbath-day.' Speaking in the spirit 
 of the narrative, we should say. What singular mani- 
 festations of the hlindness of the Pharisees ! The end 
 was that the Pharisees angrily ' cast out ' the man who 
 had received the new sense of sight. Then, we read, 
 ■ Jesus found him and said to him. Dost thou believe on 
 ' the Son of God ? He answered and said, Who is He, 
 
rV.] SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OF HFAVFN. 19 
 
 ' Lord, that I might believe on Him ? And Jesus said 
 ' unto him, Thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that 
 ' talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And 
 ' he worshipped Him. And Jesus said, For judgment I 
 ' am come into this world, that they which see not might 
 ' see, and that they which see might be made blind. And 
 ' some of the Pharisees which were with Him heard these 
 ' words, and said unto Him, Are we blind also ? Jesus 
 ' said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin : 
 ' but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.' 
 Is it not wonderful to observe how the gift of sight was 
 made the instrument for training the blind man in the 
 knowledge of Christ until, with the confession, ' Lord, I 
 believe,' he began to follow the Light of the World, and 
 no longer to walk in darkness ? and how, on the other 
 hand, it was made the occasion of convicting and ex- 
 posing the blindness of those who thought themselves 
 enlightened, and therefore resisted the Light ? Without 
 obtrusive comments, certainly, but with unmistakeable 
 intention, this work of God is made by the evangelist 
 the stepping-stone by which his readers, together with 
 those concerned in the event, ascend by the simplest of 
 methods from the things of sense into the invisible 
 world. 
 
 Observe next the narrative of the eleventh chapter, the 
 raising of Lazarus from the dead. We pass from the 
 bustle and agitation of the former scene to one of more 
 pathetic interest. We enter the chamber of death and 
 of the purest domestic love. Lazarus and his sisters 
 were personal friends of the Lord Jesus, and Lazarus 
 
 C2 
 
20 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 lay dying. His sisters send to Jesus the message, ' Lord, 
 ' he whom thou lovest is sick.' Jesus explains the sick- 
 ness, as He had hefore explained the blindness. ' This 
 ' sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, 
 ' that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.' Here 
 again, details of varied and touching character are 
 related. We pass these by, and go with Jesus into the 
 house of the sisters. Martha says to him, 'Lord, if 
 ' thou hadst been here my brother had not died. But I 
 ' know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, 
 ' God will give it thee. Jesus saith unto her, Thy 
 ' brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I 
 ' know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the 
 ' last day. Jesus said unto her, lam the resurrection and 
 ' the life : he that believeth in me, though he were dead, 
 ' yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in 
 ' me shall never die. Believest thou this ? She saith 
 ' unto Him, Yea, Lord \. I believe that thou art the 
 ' Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the 
 ' world.' Those words of Jesus were His own interpre- 
 tation of the wonderful work He was about to perform. 
 The raising of Lazarus to life, was a sign of the spiritual 
 power going forth from Him, through which all who 
 believed in Him should become alive from the dead. 
 
 ' Then one deep love doth supersede 
 All other, when her ardent gaze 
 Eoves from the living brother's face, 
 And rests upon the lAfe indeed' 
 
 Our third example shall be from the Apostolic His- 
 tory (Acts iii. iv.). Peter and John were going up into 
 the Temple, when a lame man who lay at the gate 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF TEE KINGDOM OF EEJFFN. 21 
 
 asked an alms of them. ' Peter said, Silver and gold 
 ' have I none ; but such as I have give I thee : in the 
 ' name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. 
 ' And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him 
 ' up, and immediately his feet and ancle-bones received 
 ' strength. And he, leaping up, stood, and walked, and 
 ' entered with them into the Temple, walking and leaping 
 ' and praising God.' St. Peter finds two occasions for 
 interpreting this act. On both, he makes it bear witness 
 to his risen Lord, the Prince of Life. It is He who has 
 invigorated the impotent members of the lame man. 
 ' Ye killed the Prince (or Author, apxniov) of life, 
 ' whom God hath raised from the dead ; whereof we are 
 ' witnesses. And His name, through faith in His namCj 
 ' hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know ; 
 ' yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this 
 ' perfect soundness in the presence of you all.' These 
 words were spoken to the multitude who gathered round 
 the lame man and the Apostles. On the next day, the 
 two Apostles were brought before the council, and asked, 
 ' By what power, or by what name, have ye done this?' 
 In the answer of St. Peter, our English translation fails 
 to give the verbal agreement on which the significance 
 of the explanation depends. St. Peter speaks of the 
 man as having been ' saved ' or made sound, and then 
 proceeds to ascribe all saving or making sound to the 
 Risen Jesus. ' Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, 
 ' said unto them. Ye rulers of the people, and elders of 
 ' Israel, if we this day be examined of the good deed 
 ' done to the impotent man, by what means he has been 
 
22 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 ' made sound [aeamaTaC) ; be it known unto you all, and 
 ' to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus 
 ' Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God 
 ' raised from the dead, even by Him doth this man 
 ' stand here before you whole. This is the stone which 
 ' was set at nought of you builders, Which is become 
 ' the head of the comer. Neither is there saving health 
 ' {a-coTrjpia) in any other ; for there is none other name 
 ' under heaven given amongst men, whereby we must 
 ' be made sound {a-ooOrjvai).'' This act of power is the 
 one which is made most prominent in the Acts : and 
 this is plainly set forth as an intelligible sign of a 
 spiritual reality, testifying of the Lord of life as the 
 fountain of all health and strength to men. 
 
 It would be easy to extend these illustrations further. 
 But these may suffice to shew with what precision and 
 clearness the mighty works of our Lord and of His 
 Apostles were interpreted, as tokens of His glory 
 who was the Light and Life and Saviour of mankind. 
 
 It is not the purpose of this tract to explain the 
 difficulties of the Scriptural narratives. I refer there- 
 fore, in this place, to two miracles which are the two ex- 
 ceptions to the beneficent or restorative character of our 
 Lord's works — the destruction of the swine into which 
 the devils entered, and the withering of the ban-en fig- 
 tree — only to observe that, in harmony with the general 
 significance of the miracles, these may be taken as signs 
 that the lower products of nature are to be freely spent 
 upon the spiritual instruction of men. 
 
 4. I have said that we do not know why signs and 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OF HFJFFN. 23 
 
 wonders were done at one time and place, and not at 
 another. The Scriptures do not profess to give a com- 
 plete account of the mighty works done by the Lord 
 and His apostles, nor do they set forth any theory 
 which governed the distribution of these works. But 
 they give us some important hints as to the mental 
 states to which physical wonders were intended to 
 appeal : and this subject^ — the relation between the New 
 Testament ' miracles ' and those in whose sight they 
 were wrought — is well deserving our consideration. 
 
 The apparently easy theory which accounts for 
 miracles by the principle that a supernatural revela- 
 tion requires to be supernaturally attested, that is, by 
 miracles, would find it hard to surmount one difficulty in 
 the fact which we have already noticed, that our Lord 
 and His apostles contemplate the possibility of signs and 
 wonders being wrought by false Christs and false 
 prophets, — of a Gospel being preached by an angel 
 from Heaven, which true men ought to reject with 
 curses. Another difficulty presents itself in the reserve 
 with which the wonderful works of the Gospel were 
 exhibited, and the corresponding slightness of the 
 evidence by which, for things difficult of belief, they 
 are enforced upon modern inquirers. It has been found 
 necessary to add the supplementary theory that the 
 miracles themselves were intended to be a trial of faith ; 
 that those who are favourably disposed will believe 
 them without demanding stronger evidence ; that those 
 who insist upon more conclusive evidence exhibit a 
 hostile state of mind which deserves no encouragement. 
 
24 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLK [No. 
 
 It would not be fair to urge tte taunt that this is only 
 arguing in a circle ; that we are asked to helieve in the 
 revelation because of the miracles, and in the miracles 
 because of the revelation. The reply would be that 
 the miracles and the revelation mutually support one 
 another, and that the evidence for the one and the good- 
 ness of the other combine to make up just enough proof 
 to satisfy a rightly disposed person. This is the posi- 
 tion which has been taken up by the greater number of 
 moderate divines. I mention it partly to remind my 
 readers how seriously this view, that the miracles are 
 themselves a trial of faith, qualifies that which makes 
 them the foundation of faith ; but more particularly to 
 contend, that in following Scripture we have a better ex- 
 planation of the reserve in question than to suppose it 
 was intended to make miracles just not too easy to 
 believe. 
 
 We may, perhaps, distinguish three aspects of the 
 wonderful works of Christ and His apostles. 
 
 The first is the most general and superficial. They 
 were wrought in the face of the multitude, in an age 
 and in countries in which some kind of supernatural 
 action was not considered a great rarity, to excite an 
 interest and to bear a public witness. They produced 
 both a favourable and a hostile feeling towards those 
 who wrought them; and the favourable feeling had 
 often some evil, sometimes little that was good, in it. 
 
 We can perceive, secondly, a reason for the working 
 of more abundant and more striking signs in particular 
 places. Where the people believed, rightly or wrongly, 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF TEH KINGDOM OF HEirFN. 25 
 
 in evil spirits and sorcery, in malignant and disorderly 
 influences proceeding from the spiritual world, there 
 the powers of the true kingdom, the powers of order 
 and freedom and beneficence, were put forth in acts 
 which appealed directly to the minds of the ignorant 
 and superstitious, and which proclaimed an authority 
 stronger than that of demons. The common multitudes 
 of Judaea were of the class which thus required to 
 he treated like spoilt and frightened children. When 
 the Gospel of the Kingdom went forth from Jerusalem 
 after the day of Pentecost, ' it came first to Samaria, 
 where the people had heen bewitched by the sorceries 
 of Simon, of whom they said. This man is the great 
 power of God. Philip went amongst them as the 
 preacher of Christ, using no sorceries, but healing the 
 possessed, the paralytic, and the lame. Seeing these 
 signs, the people gave heed to what Philip had to 
 say. In barbarous Lycaonia, Paul doing a work like 
 that of Peter and John at the gate of the temple, 
 caused Barnabas and himself to be taken for Jupiter 
 and Mercurius ; and then bore witness to the excited 
 multitude of the one living God, maker of heaven and 
 earth and sea and all things therein, who had given 
 signs of Himself unto men in filling their hearts with 
 food and gladness. At Ephesus, where the bondage 
 to magical arts was so strong that the books of charms, 
 the E^eo-m ypd/ji.fiara, which were offered up in sacrifice 
 to the Gospel, were found to be worth 50,000 pieces 
 of silver, ' God wrought special mighty works [Bwdfiei.^ 
 oil rap TV'Xova-a'i) by the hands of Paul.' Amongst 
 
26 TRACTS TOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLB. [No. 
 
 the kindly barbarians of Melita, there was a general 
 healing of those who had diseases. But we do not 
 hear of marvellous works being done at Athens, at 
 Corinth, or at Rome. The sagacious mind of Luther 
 observed this purpose of ' the visible and hodily wonders ' 
 of the kingdom of Christ, — their direct antagonism to 
 vulgar heathen superstitions, — as we may gather from 
 the following passage in his Table-talk : ' So long as 
 ' Jupiter, Mars, &c., ruled among the heathen, — that 
 ' is, were held and worshipped for gods, the Jews 
 ' having also very many idols which they served, it 
 ' was necessary that first Christ, and after Him the 
 ' apostles, should do many miracles, corporal and 
 ' spiritual, both among the Jews and Gentiles, to con- 
 ' firm this doctrine of faith in Christ, and to take away 
 ' and root out all worshipping of idols. The visible 
 ' and bodily wonders flourished until the doctrine of 
 ' the Gospel was planted and received, and Baptism and 
 ' the Lord's Supper established. But the spiritual 
 ' miracles, which Our Saviour Christ holds for miracles 
 ' indeed, are daily wrought, and will remain to the 
 ' world's end.' (Luther's Table-talk, ccxxvii.) 
 
 There is a third use of the mighty works of Christ, 
 as telling upon the minds of men, which is perhaps 
 their highest. St. John directs our thoughts to tliis, 
 when he tells us that the first sign which Jesus wrought, 
 done quietly and almost secretly, manifested His glory 
 to His disciples, so that they believed on Him. It was 
 the especial purpose of the Lord Jesus to educate the 
 minds of His companions and disciples into the true 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OF HFAFEN. 27 
 
 knowledge of Himself. This education was gradual 
 and manifold. It could not be accomplished at one 
 stroke by an assertion or a miracle. Through a daily- 
 awakening and nourishing and feeding of their spiritual 
 apprehensions, they were to be brought to hnow Him as 
 the Son of the Father, as the Word of the Eternal 
 Maker manifest in flesh. Now every mighty work, in 
 proportion to its significance, was instructive to the 
 minds of the disciples. Let it be borne in mind, that an 
 act which was not thoroughly understood at the time 
 might be treasured in the memory, and be there a seed 
 which would afterwards germinate and spring up into 
 fruit of wisdom. For those who believed in Jesus, it 
 was not necessary that His wonderful works should be 
 displayed publicly, should be tested by investigation, 
 should be separated from works of other men. It was 
 only necessary that each act should open out more 
 clearly to their eyes that glory of which they already 
 had some perception. 
 
 No one who is really acquainted with the Gospels 
 will doubt that this view of the works of Christ, as 
 being lessons concerning His nature and the Father's 
 which would have a growing significance to the minds 
 of those who believed in Him and loved Him, is one 
 which was most familiar to the evangelists. Those 
 Divines, both in ancient and modern times, who have 
 drunk deepest into the spirit of the Gospels, have de- 
 lighted to illustrate this view. A well-known example 
 is to be found in the discourse of the great Augus- 
 tine upon the sign of Cana in Galilee. A quotation 
 
28 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 from this discourse will test bring home to the reader's 
 mind the method of interpretation which has such 
 high sanction, ' It is the same God, who throughout 
 'the whole creation, daily worketh miracles, which 
 ' have become cheap in men's eyes, not through their 
 ' easiness, but through their constancy ; whereas those 
 ' rare and unusual actions, which were done by the same 
 ' Lord, that is, by the Word, for our sakes become in- 
 ' carnate, excited far greater wonder, not because they 
 ' were greater than those which He does every day in 
 ' the creation, but because, as for these which are done 
 ' every day, it is as it were in the natural course of things 
 ' that they are brought about ; while, as for 'those, it is 
 ' by the efficacy of a power, which is as it were im- 
 ' mediately present, that they are exhibited in the sight 
 ' of men's eyes. We said, as ye remember, one dead 
 ' man rose again, and people were amazed : and yet the 
 ' daily births of those who before were not, excite no 
 ' wonder. So, at water turned into wine, who does not 
 ' marvel, though God doth the same in vines every 
 ' year? But forasmuch as whatsoever things were done hy 
 ' the Lord Jesus, serve not only to stir up our hearts hy 
 ' their marvellous nature, hut also to edify those hearts in 
 ' the doctrine of faith, it behoves us to search diligently 
 ' what all these things mean, that is, of what they are 
 'signs.'' (Homilies on St. John, IX. § 1.) 
 
 It may be a slight help in the consideration of this 
 aspect of the signs of the Heavenly Kingdom, to com- 
 pare them to the experiments which scientific teachers 
 exhibit in order to illustrate the working of the laws of 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVFN. 29 
 
 nature. A lecturer who wishes to make manifest the 
 ordinary unperceived effects of oxygen and of carbonic 
 acid, can easily produce by his skill certain unusual 
 phenomena, which strike the ignorant as marvellous 
 and arbitrary, but which the instructed know to be 
 really the operation of the self-same powers which are 
 working every day around us. 
 
 I have thus far been endeavouring to persuade the 
 reader to look at the ' miracles ' of the Gospel as they 
 are presented to us in that Book which tells us all we 
 can know about them. In the following reflections, 
 which I offer with less confidence, we shall regard the 
 subject from the position we occupy in this age and at 
 the present crisis. 
 
 (1.) The main problem before us, with reference to 
 which alone the question of miracles has any importance, 
 is the intensely serious one, What is to be believed 
 concerning a God and His dealings with men ? The 
 answer which the faith of Christendom gives to such a 
 question is essentially this, that the Eternal God, the 
 maker of all, has manifested Himself in His Son, Jesus 
 of Nazareth, and in Him has claimed us as His children, 
 partakers of His Spirit. This is the word which went 
 forth with the apostles from Jerusalem into the world. 
 By this word the Church was called into being ; of this 
 it exists to bear witness. Whatever have been the 
 varieties of opinion and belief amongst Christians, every 
 section of the Christian world has confessed a supreme 
 God, who made Himself known through a Son, who 
 was born, died, and rose again. Now it is just this, the 
 
30 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PBOPLE. [No. 
 
 universal faith of Christendom, which seems doubtful 
 to the scepticism of our day. We cannot shut our eyes 
 to the fundamental nature of modern unbelief or doubt ; 
 the boldness of sceptics compels us to recognise it 
 openly. The conflict between that simple word, and 
 the unbelief which rejects it, is not, indeed, new or 
 modern. In all ages, even the most orthodox, when 
 scarcely a whisper of infidelity has been heard, the testi- 
 mony that the Eternal God has redeemed the world out 
 of darkness by the death and resurrection of His Son, has 
 been resisted by an amount of conscious, but secret, 
 unbelief which God only knows — by a hundred times as 
 much of practical unconscious unbelief But at the 
 present day, the arguments and influences which tell 
 upon the minds of men, and which are used against the 
 Christian faith, professedly go to the root of the matter. 
 And how many of those who live in orthodox acqui- 
 escence might not be startled by these arguments into 
 asking themselves the question, ' Do I then, honestly for 
 ' myself, believe that the Being who made me sent His 
 ' Son to be the Saviour of the world and the Lord of 
 ' men ? Does this fact govern my thoughts and doings as 
 ' it would if I believed it ? ' The influences which move 
 out-spoken unbelievers to utterance are at work upon us 
 all. Those scientific and historical principles which are 
 declared to make impossible the belief in a God who 
 sent His Son into the world, and constituted Him the 
 Head of mankind, are very generally accepted amongst 
 us. If, by some few, the victory of these principles over 
 the faith of Christians is loudly proclaimed, by more it 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF TEE KINGDOM OF HFAVEN. 31 
 
 is secretly confessed; and in still more, they struggle 
 with tincertain success against the dear traditions and 
 convictions to which the heart still clings, and of which 
 it refuses to be bereaved. 
 
 These things being so, we have heard, or a former 
 generation has handed down to us, an appeal to 
 miracles. It is saidj ' This manifestation of God, which 
 ' seems so incredible, might well and safely be rejected 
 ' if it had nothing but naked assertion to rest upon. 
 ' But it has attestations in works done by Jesus Christ 
 ' and His apostles which no human power could have 
 ' wrought, which are departures from the course of nature, 
 ' and which could only be Divine. Whatever was spoken 
 ' with authority by one who had the power of working 
 ' miracles must have come from God, and therefore, what- 
 ' ever we might otherwise think of it, is to be received as 
 ' true.' But this appeal is replied to by doubts thrown 
 upon the nature and the reality of the miracles themselves. 
 ' The evidence supplied by the report of the miracles is 
 ' not strong enough to convince us.' ' Hardly any 
 ' evidence would persuade us of the real occurrence of 
 ' anything so unnatural as a miracle ; we take the liberty 
 ' to disbelieve the eyes of other men when they tell us 
 ' they saw one, for we would not believe our own.' I 
 need not do more than allude to the ordinary arguments 
 against miracles which are set forth by Professor Baden 
 Powell in his Essay. These arguments, professing as 
 they do to rest upon principles now universally received, 
 might well have suggested, as they have suggested to 
 many, a reconsideration of the nature and bearing of 
 
32 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 what are called miracles. But they have been met too 
 commonly with a loud outcry, and with a most dangerous 
 innovation upon the old creeds of the Church. It is 
 attempted to impose miracles as if by Divine authority 
 upon the faith of men. Those who will not believe them 
 are denounced as atheists. The Church formerly called 
 men to a belief in the Father, the Son^ and the Holy Ghost. 
 Now you may hear it more than insinuated that such 
 belief is secondary, compared with a belief in miracles 
 and in the infallibility of the Bible. The true Word of 
 God, the Gospel concerning His Son Jesus Christ, is 
 thrust into the background; and our generation is in- 
 vited to witness the struggle, whether by authority, by 
 arguments offensive and defensive, and, above all, by the 
 fear of the alternative of atheism, men may be compelled 
 to believe in Divine interferences to suspend the order of 
 nature. 
 
 God forbid that English Christians should accept the 
 issue thus proposed to them. If there is any truth in 
 the Scriptures, His blessing will rest upon those who 
 bring forward His Gospel in advance of all arguments 
 or traditions, even if they can do nothing but seriously 
 repeat it, and trust to its being its own evidence. ' If I 
 ' say the truth, why do ye not believe me ? ' ' We are 
 ' his witnesses of these things ; and so is also the Holy 
 ' Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey Him.' 
 ' By manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves 
 ' to every man's conscience in the sight of God.' These 
 sayings, and such as these, are a sufficient wan-ant to 
 us for expecting that the truth concerning God and His 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OF EJEAFEN. 33 
 
 redemption of mankind will commend itself to the hearts 
 of men, without requiring suspensions of the order of 
 nature to introduce it. If God has ceased to give His 
 living testimony to His own word, human testimony- 
 will be of little avail : if He still gives it, we ought to 
 beware how we let any other recommendations appear 
 to take its place. I do not say that God may not make 
 His voice heard through the signs and wonders recorded 
 in the New Testament, but that He may choose other 
 modes of appeal to many minds ; and that if we rever- 
 ence the Word of God, and His Holy Spirit bearing 
 witness to it, we shall be careful how we limit by any 
 theory the freedom of His persuasions. It is infinitely 
 the safest thing for us, and times of confused opinions 
 like the present will bring it home forcibly to our minds, 
 to be as simple as we can in our testimony. If we build 
 walls of our own, and daub them with untempered 
 mortar, however strong or necessary we may think 
 them, God will break them down and bring them to the 
 ground. 
 
 Professor Stanley, in his interesting account of the 
 Nicsean Council, relates two stories, which, whether 
 they are true, or whether they express a conviction in 
 the mind of the Church, are almost equally instructive. 
 Many popular discussions of doctrine took place, he 
 says, previously to the formal opening of the Council. 
 In one of these, after divines had been endlessly disput- 
 ing, a layman stepped forward, and abruptly said, 
 ' Christ and the apostles left us, not a system of logic, 
 ' nor a vain deceit, but a naked truth, to be guarded by 
 
 D 
 
34 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 ' faith and good works.' On another occasion, a heathen 
 philosopher had heen contending with learned Chris- 
 tians, and had always slipped, velut anguis lubricus, out 
 of the grasp of their arguments. An aged confessor 
 hereupon stepped forth to meet him. ' In the name of 
 ' Jesus Christ,' he said, ' hear me, philosopher. There 
 ' is one God, maker of heaven and earth, and of all 
 ' things visible and invisible : Who made aU things by 
 ' the power of His Word, and by the holirtess of His 
 ' Holy Spirit. This Word, by which name we call the 
 ' Son of Grod, took compassion on men for their wan- 
 ' dering astray, and for their savage condition, and 
 ' chose to be born of a woman, and to converse with 
 ' men, and to die for them ; and he shall come again to 
 ' judge every one for the things done in this life. These 
 ' things we believe without curious inquiry.' After a 
 few more direct words like these, the philosopher yielded. 
 ' Hear,' he said, ' my learned friends. So long as it was 
 ' a matter of words, I opposed words to words ; and 
 ' whatever was spoken I overthrew by my skill in 
 ' speaking; but when, in the place of words, power came 
 ' out of the speaker's lips, words could no longer resist 
 ' power, man could no longer resist. If any of you felt 
 ' as I have felt, let him believe in Christ, and let him 
 ' follow this old man in whom God has spoken.' — 
 [Eastern Church, p. 132.) 
 
 It would be foolish, no doubt, to imagine that unbe- 
 lievers may be captured by a coup de main, through the 
 mere reiteration of any such simple statements. But it 
 is not foolish to bring out the unspeakable importance 
 
IV,] SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OF HFAVEN. 35 
 
 of giving its due prominence to the simplest affirmation 
 of what God is, and what He has done for men. The 
 acts called the miracles have their place in the records 
 of the life of Christ. They are so hound up with all 
 . else that is told us regarding Him, that the history must 
 be torn in fragments if we attempt to sever the signs 
 and wonders from the other acts and discourses of Jesus. 
 But we may fairly ask men to receive such a message 
 as St. Paul delivered at Athens or at Eome, hefore we 
 press them to make up their minds on the subject of 
 miracles. If they will not believe in a Father who has 
 communicated His Will to men for reasons independent 
 of miracles, they are not likely to be persuaded, though 
 a man rose from the dead. If they do believe that the 
 Maker has sent His Son into the world to save the world, 
 they are not likely to find any offence in such acts as 
 the Gospels ascribe to Christ. The miracle of miracles 
 must be the existence of a Living God. If we do not 
 believe this, it is impossible that any smaller miracles 
 should prove it to us. If we do believe in a Living 
 God, no acts, however marvellous, which are in harmony 
 with His nature and will, can seem to us incredible. 
 The signs and wonders of the Gospel should keep their 
 subordinate place in the history which contains them, 
 and should be studied each where it is, if we would try 
 with what force they appeal to our reasonable belief. 
 
 (2.) But after that the miracles have been restored to 
 their right place, we shall still be bound to listen re- 
 spectfully to whatever science has to say concerning 
 them. To make light of science is not only foolish and 
 
 d2 
 
36 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 ruinous, but it also Tjetrays a want of reverence towards 
 the Creator, and of faith in the Creation as His work. 
 
 If, as some assert, the conclusions of science directly 
 contradict the faith in a living God, then indeed it is 
 extremely superfluous to attempt a defence of miracles. 
 The philosopher who supposes that the course of nature 
 proclaims, ' There is no God,' is not likely to be con- 
 verted by the description of certain improbable pheno- 
 mena reported by persons whose whole soul was 
 possessed by belief in a God. The confession, ' Ccelo 
 tonantem credidimus Jovem regnare,' may come na- 
 turally enough from the ignorant; it could never be 
 extorted from a student of science. But it is worth 
 while considering whether, in the few cases in which 
 science leads men to atheistic conclusions, the God who 
 is denied is the true God of order, justice, and benefi- 
 cence, upholding a universal harmony; or a Being 
 outside of nature, manifesting Himself by occasional 
 irruptions into her regular course. 
 
 But it has been said that science, because it testifies 
 of such a God as we have named, necessarily discredits 
 the miraculous. Now, it may be fair and reasonable to 
 ask the philosopher, first of all, whether there is any- 
 thing in the course of nature which forbids him to 
 believe that God should speak to men by a Son. 
 Science will not tell him that God has done so : but 
 when this is declared to him, with strong presumptions 
 in support of it, has science, we may rightly ask, any- 
 tliing to say against it? The previous settlement of 
 the essential question will make subordinate questions 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OF HFAVEN. 2>7 
 
 easier to consider. But the student may reply, ' The 
 ' history which is everywhere hrought to me as the 
 ' authentic account of God's revelation of Himself in 
 ' His Son, contains certain acts of the kind called 
 ' miraculous. They are interferences with the course of 
 ' nature, effected, it is assumed, by supernatural power. 
 ' In such acts my knowledge of nature teaches me to 
 ' disbelieve : and this, of course, discredits the very 
 ' history on which you rely.' And it must be admitted, 
 that an attempt to cut out from the Gospel narratives 
 ' the supernatural element,' would make such havoc in 
 them, that we should no longer know what to make of 
 them, or how to trust them. 
 
 The battle about miracles is not one of logic. The 
 uniformity which has been observed in nature, however 
 exact and all-pervading, is no proof that the Creator 
 could not or would not, upon sufficient cause, interfere 
 with the order which He otherwise upholds. But if 
 the contemplation of natural laws makes an irresistible 
 impression upon the minds of all who study them, that 
 impression is rightly more powerful than a logical 
 argument. What, then, is the impression thus made 
 upon the minds of those who are familiar with nature? 
 Certainly not, as 1 have already said, that there is 
 nothing wonderful in the universe, or that whatever 
 they cannot explain is an imposture. According to all 
 testimony, the wonder that is nourished by knowledge 
 is at least as deep and real as the wonder that is the 
 offspring of ignorance. And the wisest of philosophers 
 are the readiest to confess that they are surrounded by 
 
38 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOFLK [No. 
 
 phenomena whicli they cannot explain ; that they are 
 daily and hourly conversant with problems which they 
 cannot solve. But in their knowledge and their igno- 
 rance alike, they assure us, they learn to worship and 
 trust in order. What they marvel at is the subtlety of 
 the harmonies which increasing knowledge enables them 
 to discover. They will not call anything knowledge 
 except the apprehension of relations. To explain a 
 phenomenon is to discover a cause for it, to reduce it 
 to its place in the universal order. 
 
 Now, this is surely not a feeling to guard against. 
 It is one which we should all desire to receive and to 
 cherish. When we fancy that we have to complain of 
 it, we are not complaining of the worship of order, but 
 of some narrowness or conceit which limits and perverts 
 it. Examples of such perversion are common enougli. 
 Every year shows us some new discovery, possibly 
 introduced and vaunted by quacks, derided in the name 
 of the laws of nature by hasty and arrogant philo- 
 sophers, but ultimately understood, received, and shin- 
 ing as a light in a region which formerly had been 
 dark. Some physiologists have been so engrossed by 
 the laws of human existence which they themselves 
 investigate, as to forget that there are other laws not 
 less necessary to recognise, and have proclaimed that 
 the science of the human body leads men inevitably to 
 the lowest conclusions of materialism. Others, not so 
 grossly materialistic, insist upon reducing human voli- 
 tion to a necessary and invariable sequence. Beginning 
 with the laws which they know in the external world, 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF TEE KINGDOM OF EEAFEN. 39 
 
 tliey seek to construct a system of nature so vast that it 
 shall include all that we mean when we speak of the 
 freedom of the human will. A little more courage 
 would enable them to include God also in their system 
 of nature ; and they would then have no more difficulty 
 in finding a place for miracles than for any unusual 
 exercise of human volition. But more modest and 
 cautious men of science, who worship order with a 
 more perfect worship, shrink from such system-huilding, 
 which they know to be fatal to the discovery of truth. 
 With the true spirit of science, which desires to find 
 out an order, and not to impose a system, the Christian 
 is bound to sympathise. 
 
 Let us go heartily then with the student of science in 
 his aversion to prodigies. Let us be as sure as he 
 is, that the true God will rather reveal Himself in 
 wisdom, justice, and beneficence,' than in startling 
 anomalies. And let us ask him to come with us to the 
 New Testament. He knows the tendency of ignorant 
 human nature to delight in prodigies. He knows the 
 multitudes of astonishing miracles that fill the legends 
 of superstitious ages. He knows that in the time of 
 our Lord even the most cultivated of mankind were 
 victims of magic and sorcery and enchantments. He 
 knows that the East was the home from which these 
 superstitions flowed. He knows that in Judea a pecu- 
 liarly dark and irrational fanaticism prevailed. He is 
 informed that om- sacred books were not written by 
 some well-known authors, but were the legendary 
 product of convictions and sentiments working in the 
 
40 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 popular mind. Well, we open these tooks ; and thougli 
 we find there the loftiest pretensions quietly put 
 forth, though we read of a Son of the Eternal God 
 speaking and acting upon the earth, though He is said 
 to have done countless wonderful works, we do not find 
 one single irrational prodigy related. Nothing is done 
 as a mere exercise of power ; there is no attempt on the 
 part of the writers to give an imposing theatrical air to 
 the works which they describe. We helieve that we 
 can trace a moral and spiritual meaning, a wise purpose, 
 in every act which Jesus Christ is said to have done. 
 Is there nothing wonderful here ? Is it not just such a 
 wonder as the student of science would delightedly 
 recognise, — the marvel of a beautiful spiritual order 
 asserted in the midst of confusion? We see in the 
 world about us a continual struggle of life against death, 
 of well-being against decay. The whole of the won- 
 derful works of the New Testament (with only a few 
 apparent exceptions) are illustrations of this struggle; 
 triumphs of the beneficent tendencies of nature over the 
 tendencies to misery and dissolution. Surely these 
 are not works which should repel one who watches with 
 reverence the course of nature. 
 
 The signs of extraordinary power in the works of 
 Christ, we will suppose, do not attract him. It is 
 difficult to imagine the mind upon which the element of 
 power would not tell with some force ; but we are at 
 liberty, I think, to assume that the cultivated mind 
 might be impervious to such an argument. But will not 
 the philosopher, assuming the hypothesis of God speak- 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF TEE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 41 
 
 ing to men through Jesus Christ in that country and at 
 that age, at least excuse the superhuman power put 
 forth? It we go to savage tribes and wish to raise 
 them out of their idolatrous superstitions, do we not 
 legitimately do miracles in their eyes, shewing both 
 knowledge and power which to them are simply super- 
 human? It is sometimes asked, Why the power of 
 doing miracles is not granted now to those who go forth 
 to convert the heathen ? It is granted. The same kind 
 of advantages which the Apostles possessed and used 
 in those mighty works by which their Gospel was com- 
 mended, we also possess and use. Missionaries like Dr. 
 Livingstone, who bear with them into savage countries 
 the civilized arts, the powers of healing, and the mental 
 and moral superiority of European Christendom, are 
 only too readily taken for superhuman personages. 
 If we do not awe the Brahmins of India by mighty 
 works, neither did St. Paul thus awe the philosophers 
 of Athens or of Rome. 
 
 I am speaking of the miracles now as tending to 
 attract men to an acknowledgment of Christ, or to repel 
 them from it. I allow that, antecedent to the acknowledg- 
 ment of Christ, the doing of a mighty work by such a 
 command over the resources of nature as must have be- 
 longed to the Son of God, whilst it would strike the 
 ignorant and superstitious, might not be the best way of 
 appealing to the modern student of science. He would 
 naturally be called upon to use his own methods. The 
 Gospel comes to him in this age with immense presump- 
 tions in its favour. It was believed by his fathers, it is 
 
42 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 believed by those whom be loves and honours ; it has 
 wrought changes and created societies of the highest 
 character in the world's history. It tells him of a living 
 God who calls men to come to Him, that they may 
 worship Him as His children in spirit and in truth. It 
 tells him of a Son of God, who is also Son of Man, the 
 • Redeemer and Restorer of the race, in whom all men 
 may have trust and hope, to whose invincible authority 
 every man and every nation owes homage. It tells him 
 of a Spirit of Truth, One and Divine, through whom 
 men may have fellowship with God and with one 
 another. Whether the Gospel is true or not must be 
 proved by all the facts of history and life. If we act 
 upon it as true, do we find ourselves guided or led astray? 
 Do the facts of history bear witness to it, or do they 
 confound it? Do the principles of morality and the 
 laws of action refer themselves to some such ground as 
 the nature of God and our relation to Him as His 
 children, or to some other, and not to this? Is the 
 existence of the Church to be accounted for best on the 
 hypothesis that there is a Divine calling for mankind, or 
 on some other? We might go on multiplying such 
 questions, and no one has a right to limit them. The 
 revelation of God must stand the test of facts in all re- 
 gions into which it enters, and some proofs commend 
 themselves to one mind, others to another. The Church, 
 with its sacred Book and its permanent ordinances, is 
 charged with delivering the witness ; the Spirit of God, 
 through any of His manifold operations, through science, 
 through history^ through His touch on the secret chords 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OF SFAFEK 43 
 
 of the heart, confirms the witness. This was St. John's 
 theory of evidences ; this was Luther's. We depend on 
 the Living God, who teaches the hearts of men, to prove 
 the truth of what His Word and Sacraments convey. 
 We dare not refer doubters to any teacher less wise than 
 Grod Himself. 
 
 The Jews of old, angry at heing referred to the • 
 Father, demanded a sign from heaven. It seems to me by 
 no means certain that many sceptics of the present day are 
 not imconsciously doing the same thing. They practically 
 ask some proof of the Gospel which their own better philo- 
 sophy would teach them not to look for. The proof of 
 the Gospel is in everyday facts, in their own inward 
 experience, in the wants of mankind, in the nobler 
 instincts and convictions of the human race, in the order 
 of nature and the harmony of society. These things do 
 not produce the Gospel, which has come from God, and 
 is the heritage of Christendom ; but they are the facts 
 by which, when it is doubted, it is practically and neces- 
 sarily tried. 
 
 (3.) I have only a few words more to say upon a 
 mighty significance which the signs and wonders and 
 powers of the Kingdom of Heaven possess, to those who 
 can look upon them as real acts of the Son of God. 
 There is a tendency in modern philosophy, — if it is not 
 a false one we may as well give up our whole cause at 
 once, — to separate Earth from Heaven, the acts and rela- 
 tions and powers of our visible life from the influence 
 and government of God. Those who choose to take the 
 actual condition of things in society and in nature as 
 
44 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 the only state or order of which they can have any 
 cognizance, find it easier in some respects to account for 
 it by putting God at a certain distance from it. The 
 thought of God as really present in nature and society 
 implies an idea of something better, a hope of reaching 
 it, a struggle after much change and renewal. If you 
 •have once pronounced these things to be vain and 
 chimerical, you must begin to thrust out God from your 
 world. And then there is no chance of retaining long 
 a real belief in God at all. The sanguine divines who 
 wish to make the acquiescent philosophy compatible 
 with something of the old religion, by keeping the actual 
 course of things in one sphere, and ' faith ' in another, 
 will satisfy neither the cravings of the believing soul nor 
 the rational instincts of the philosopher. God's hand 
 must be felt, His will must be confessed, in nature and 
 in human life, or we shall not believe in God at all. 
 
 The most vital principle in the New Testament is a 
 mistake and a snare, unless Heaven and Earth are actually 
 wedded together in the Son of God made Man. Unless 
 the Will of God is the living spring and guide of all 
 things, everything said and done by our Lord and His 
 Apostles was a vanity. ' You shall see heaven opened, 
 ' and angels of God ascending and descending upon the 
 ' Son of Man,' was their Master's promise, which the 
 Apostles believed to have been most strictly fulfilled. 
 Now if we cling to the same faith, and dai-e not cast 
 away, for ourselves and for the world, the hope with 
 which it inspires us we shall find much light and comfort 
 in the contemplation of the mighty works of Christ as 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF TEH KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 45 
 
 true signs that this earth and the human beings upon it 
 are subjects of the Kingdom of Heaven. They will be 
 signs to us that the order and well-being of all things 
 are indeed sustained by the Word of God ; that He gives 
 their skill to the physician, to the cultivator of the ground, 
 to the rulers of nations ; that all those who are trying 
 to do good are working in unison with a Will that is at 
 the heart of the universe. 
 
 We do not say that the knowledge and the will of a 
 man, when they come into play, suspend the laws of 
 nature. If I hold a stone in my hand, or set a magnet 
 so as to hold up a heavy piece of iron, the law of gravity 
 acts as regularly as if the stone or the iron fell to the 
 ground. If the skill of a physician cures a patient of 
 a fever, no physiological law is suspended any more than 
 if the patient were left alone to die. But the human 
 knowledge and will do effect results. Suppose them 
 withdrawn, and things would be very different from 
 what they are. So with the Divine Will. We ought 
 not to say that any operation of it, however miraculous, 
 suspends the laws of nature : we cannot possibly know 
 that it does, and why should we suppose it ? But we 
 may rightly recognise the working of the Divine Will 
 as making the forces of nature its instruments. We 
 may see it tending by subtle and harmonious processes, 
 through much that seems destructive and irregular, 
 towards order and beauty and life. We may see it 
 using external things for the training of the spirits of 
 men. And in this contemplation the works of Christ 
 will be, as they have been, a constant aid. It belongs 
 
46 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 to their true nature, not to discourage the efforts of 
 science, but to inspire them with hope. But they are an 
 abiding witness that God holds the spiritual interests of 
 mankind to be more precious than the outward things 
 which minister to them. 
 
 When we have learned to regard the miracles of Christ 
 as interpreting rather than suspending the laws of nature, 
 we shall undoubtedly expect that an acknowledgment of 
 Him would in a high degree promote the true ends of 
 science. We may rejoice to think that homage has been 
 often paid to Him when His name has not been spoken 
 by the lips. The humility and teachableness, the devo- 
 tion to truth, the freedom from baseness, the admiration 
 of order and beauty, which characterise the truly scien- 
 tific mind, are in essence a worship of Him in whom the 
 just and wise and loving God is revealed to men. But 
 if the Person who died that He might redeem the whole 
 world, and in whose clear manifestation both we and the 
 things about us shall find our freedom and glory, be 
 more distinctly recognised as holding the operations of 
 nature in His hand in order that they may serve the 
 Father's will, the laws of natm-e themselves ought to 
 shine out more clearly and gloriously, and the relations 
 of external things to the spii-it of man ought to be more 
 accurately understood. To, this test, as to so many 
 others, we must desire that the Revelation of God in 
 Christ should be practically brought. Let us only trust 
 it enough, and refi-ain from corrupting it with oui- own 
 conceits. We shall then have no need to guard it with 
 threats and definitions. It will prove itself to be the 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF TEE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 47 
 
 power of God and the wisdom of God, stronger than all 
 its apologists on the one side, and all its assailants on 
 the other. 
 
 In the excellent and comprehensive work of Dean 
 Trench, entitled ' Notes on the Miracles of our Lord,' 
 these acts are expounded on Scriptural principles, and 
 with much illustration from the great fathers and other 
 divines of the Church. From the wide circulation and 
 high authority of this treatise, it might have been hoped 
 that sound views on the subject of the miracles had taken 
 a more thorough hold of the religious mind of the country 
 than recent publications show them to have gained. A 
 more recent work of Mr. Westcott, ' Characteristics of 
 the Gospel Miracles,' is very valuable for its exhibition 
 of the general relations of all the miracles to the nature 
 and manifestation of Christ. In addition to these I may 
 name an essay by Sir Edward Strachey, on 'Miracles 
 and Science,' the production of a well-informed, thought- 
 ful and devout mind, which well deserves the attention 
 of the students of modern science. 
 
 NOTES. 
 (a.) On the Uniformity of Nature. 
 
 Mr, Buckle, in his recent volume (' History of Civi- 
 lization in England,' vol. ii.), stands forth as a most 
 uncompromising champion of the uniformity or regu- 
 larity of nature. In the foregoing essay I have contended 
 
48 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 that a reverence for the actual order of the universe is 
 not condemned, but encouraged, by the accounts of the 
 Gospel miracles, on the following grounds : — that no 
 violation or suspension of any natural law is asserted, 
 or need be assumed, to have accompanied those works ; 
 that they are in harmony with the observed tendencies 
 of nature ; that they are ascribed to the One Creating 
 Power, and not to any irregular interference with His 
 will ; and that, conjointly with their manifestation, the 
 worship of wonders or prodigies is distinctly and 
 strongly denounced. But Mr. Buckle draws inferences 
 from the regularity of nature which may well make any 
 controversy about miracles seem an idle waste of time. 
 In his view, it excludes all ' moral government ' of 
 mankind ; it makes the belief in a God who rewards 
 and punishes no better than ' the draff and offal ' of a 
 worn-out superstition. Most of his readers wiU be 
 inclined to ask, how so mechanical a theory of the 
 universe accounts for Mr. Buckle himself? If the 
 world is not under a moral government, Mr. Buckle's 
 desire to impart to the Scotch people the benefit of a 
 moral reformation is as impassioned as if it were. If 
 there is no supremely wise distribution of rewards and 
 punishments, Mr. Buckle does his best to supply the 
 deficiency by dispensing honest praises in the way of 
 reward, and by an uncommonly vigorous use of the lash 
 for punishment. That system, which includes the mind 
 and works of this author, must be elastic enough to 
 make us hesitate before excluding anything from it, on 
 the ground of its being irregular. It is diflacult to 
 
IV.] SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 49 
 
 understand how Mr. Buckle himself, with his ardent 
 and not ungenerous temper, can endure to contemplate 
 the dreary ahomination which history must become 
 when all the thoughts and deeds which have grown 
 out of a belief in an active Divine government of 
 the world are pronounced false and mischievous, and 
 when the love of money is exalted to the second 
 place amongst the principles to which the world 
 is indebted. But, when' we find the presumed 
 uniformity of nature appealed to in support of such 
 conclusions, we have a right to ask philosophers to 
 explain carefully what they understand by it. If they 
 hold, with Mr. Buckle, that it is incompatible with a 
 moral government of the world, they must show why 
 it is more incompatible with this than with the actual 
 progress of mankind, with the lives and acts of every 
 father and ruler and citizen, of every philosopher and 
 reformer, in the world. If they do not agree with him, 
 they will feel called upon by this conspicuous applica- 
 tion of the term, to do their best to guard it from 
 becoming a cant phrase of controversy, and to interpret 
 with scientific caution the real testimony of nature. 
 The miracles which we have been considering ought 
 not to override or to restrain the pursuit of truth ; but 
 their voice is serious enough to claim a hearing when 
 they testify of a Son of Man not subject to nature, but 
 using her methods as His own, of a Father whose will 
 is at the centre of the universe, and who works towards 
 the freedom and perfection of all His creatures, and of 
 a universal Spirit of truth and love and life:^^ How it is 
 
50 TRACTS FOB PRIHSTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 possible for science to disprove the existence of a right- 
 eous God, is not easy to imagine. It will only do the 
 reverse, by giving evidence of the order and harmony 
 which are declared by those who believe in such a God 
 to be most characteristic of His mind. Whether history 
 bears witness to a Divine Lord of men or not, the study 
 of history must determine. Mr. Buckle is at least an 
 unflinching combatant on the negative side; and the 
 aspect of the laws and conditions of human existence 
 which his theory gives us can scarcely be reproached 
 as an ad capixmdum representation. 
 
 (b.) On the Influence of the Imagination upon Science. 
 
 I HAVE spoken of the possibility that the laws of nature 
 themselves might shine out more clearly and gloriously 
 in the light of such an acknowledgment of Christ as 
 would be learnt from a true study of the miracles. That 
 modern science wants some aid of this kind is asserted, 
 with his usual force, by the same author to whom we 
 have just referred. In a striking digression (vol. ii. pp. 
 501 — 507), Mr. Buckle complains that 'the advance of 
 ' physical science is retarded by our neglect of the imagi- 
 ' native and emotional faculties.' ' There is in poetry,' 
 he says, ' a divine and prophetic power, and an insight 
 ' into the turn and aspect of things, which, if properly 
 ' used, would make it the ally of science instead of 
 ' the enemy.' ' Our age . . . has a certain material, 
 ' unimaginative, and unheroic character, which has made 
 ' several observers tremble for the future.' He therefore 
 
IT.] SIGNS OF THE KINGDOM 01 HBAVEN. 51 
 
 urges that ' it is incumljent on physical philosophers to 
 cultivate the imagination.' Now, does not all experi- 
 ence teach, that the true nurse of the imaginative in 
 thought, as well as of the heroic in action, is the recog- 
 nition of the Divine presence and Will in the things 
 about us ? The spirit of worship, rather than the mere 
 effort to generalize, is that hj which men rise above the 
 material, the unimaginative, and the unheroic. There 
 is a Divine judgment on those who, when they know 
 God, do not glorify Him as God, neither are thankful ; 
 and this is, first, that they become vain in their imagi- 
 nations, and their foolish heart is darkened; and then, 
 when they have changed the truth of God into a lie, 
 and worshipped and served the creature more than the 
 Creator, who is blessed for ever, God gives them over 
 to a reprobate or undiscerning mind, and to moral 
 corruption. What, on the other hand, is so character- 
 istic of that ' noble English poetry of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries,' which Mr. Buckle regards as the 
 mother of the noblest English science, as its confession 
 of the righteous Will of God, in the creation, and in 
 the affairs of men? Now, as ever, that which quickens 
 and inspires the intellect, is the belief that the world is 
 no dead self-acting machine, but is alive with the 
 purposes of a just and loving God. 
 
LONDON : 
 CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, 
 BREAD STREET HILL. 
 
TEACTS FOR PBI.ESTS AND PEOPLE. 
 
 No. V. 
 
 TERMS OF COMMUNION. 
 
 1. The Boundakies of ihe Church of Enqland. 
 
 By Eev. C. K. p. 
 
 2. The Chueoh asv Dissent. 
 
 Bt J. A, Lanqlet. 
 
 [It was announced that the first of these Tracts should 
 appear with one upon the ' Controversy between the 
 Bishop of Oxford and a Layman.' A Tract express- 
 ing the motives which have led a person, brought up 
 in the strictest school of Dissent, to join the English 
 Church, seems a more suitable pendant to it. _ The 
 Clergyman who is the author of the first Tract, thinks, 
 as mapy excellent Clergymen think, that the main 
 characteristic of the English Church is comprehensive- 
 ness ; and that it may be made still more comprehen- 
 sive. The writer of the second shows in what sense 
 he sought and found comprehensiveness in the Chui-ch j 
 But that he also sought for distinct and permanent 
 truth, and found that. It seems good for Priests and 
 
 B 
 
2 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 People to compare two statements expressing such dif- 
 ferent habits of mind, and proceeding from such 
 different quarters.] 
 
 THE BOUNDABIES OF THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 The writer wishes it to ie distinctly understood that he alone is respon- 
 sible for the opinions contained in this Tract ; and fJiat where he has 
 used the word 'we' he must be understood as speaking, not in the name 
 of the contributors to this series, but in his own and that of some friends 
 whose views a/re, as he believes, in the main expressed by him. 
 
 ' Our little systems haye their day ; 
 
 ' They have their day and cease to be ; 
 
 ' They are but broken lights of Thee, 
 ' And Thou, Lord, art more than they.' 
 
 The Preface to the Book of Common Prayer is careful 
 to assert an identity between the Church of England 
 ■before and the Church of England after the Reformation. 
 ' The Service in this Church of England these many 
 * years hath been read in Latin to the people.' And it 
 would not be difficult to show that there is, politically 
 and ecclesiastically, a greater coherence between our- 
 selves and our unreformed fathers in the faith, than 
 between even the Church of Eome before and the 
 Church of Eome after the Council of Trent. 
 
 Yet, to keep pace with the vast outburst of free 
 thought from, speaking generally, the accession of Henry 
 VIII. to that of Charles II., a great yet gradual deve- 
 lopment! took place in the ritual, doctrine, and discipline 
 
v.] TERMS OF COMMUmOIf. ^ 
 
 of the Church of England ; and it were easy to mistake 
 the sameness of the features, were we to look first to one 
 and then to the other period without marking inter- 
 mediate years of change. For the growth has heen a 
 human growth, and the change as it were the change 
 of a man. In her youth, calling herself Catholic and 
 large-hearted, she held blindly by the opinions of her 
 teachers, and, though at times she resented his power, 
 allowed none to call in question the doctrine of him who 
 sat in the chair of St. Peter. Then, Catholic still, yet 
 setting less store by the name, it was her ' wisdom to 
 ' keep the mean between the two extremes of too much 
 ' stiffness in refusing, and too much easiness in admit- 
 ' ting any variation.' Now, Catholic more than ever, 
 her children in great number call her Protestant, a 
 name to them implying larger freedom of thought, and 
 adaptation to the needs of a changing time ; and many 
 of them exult in seeing that there is scarce a mode of 
 English opinion which does not find its representative 
 and exponent among those who minister and who teach 
 in her name. 
 
 It cannot, however, be denied that within and without 
 her own pale are those who object strongly to the present 
 position of the Church of England. Within — ^members 
 of each of the two great parties into which the majority 
 of her sons are divided, protest against the sanctioned 
 teaching of the other side \ and assail still more vehe- 
 mently those who join neither section, as men who have 
 no true standing-place in her borders : without — she is 
 considered narrow and exclusive, because formularies, 
 
 b2 
 
4 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 however elastic, are found to have some limit, and 
 articles, however vague, some definite grammatical con- 
 struction. Moreover, each section within,' each sect 
 without, has some pet gi^evance, some creed, some 
 service, some expression, some ceremony, which they 
 would fain eradicate. Some ohject to the old traditions, 
 and some to the new accretions ; while all agree to 
 ignore or forget the for6e of j^Esop's fable, and the con- 
 sequences which ensued when the old and the young 
 wife each plucked out the hairs she disliked from! the 
 brows of a husband whom both revered, and both 
 desired to improve. 
 
 We must look more closejy at what is actually taught 
 and done within the Church of England, before we can 
 consider the desirableness of such practice and doctrine, 
 or the objections of objectors. 
 
 It would not be denied by many that in adjoining 
 parishes, or even in adjoining streets of our large towns, 
 there stand churches between whose ritual is almost as 
 great a difference as between the ceremonial of Italy and 
 Scotland. A foreigner who should spend one Sunday 
 among us^ and afterwards attempt to tell his countrymen 
 what he had seen in an English church, would describe 
 one out of many very varied scenes. He might speak of a 
 building in all the pomp of decoration, or of mere white- 
 washed walls ; of chanted services. In different places, or 
 read from one high pulpit ; of much that could touch the 
 uneducated sense, or of that which' cOuld appeal only to 
 the spirit of one who cared not for outward emblems. 
 He might tell of doctriues preached whichj except for 
 
v.] TEBMS OF COMMJmiON. 5 
 
 mere technicalities, could have heen delivered in a Eoman 
 Basilica, or, on the other hand, have been heard with 
 approval in Geneva itself. And, therefore, if he made a 
 longer stay among us, and were of an inquisitive turn of 
 mind, he might he somewhat puzzled to give a consistent 
 report of us. Yet one thing would strike him ; that 
 these churches all had but one form of prayer, which 
 spread a vast unity round all their differences; they 
 would all appeal to the sanction, at least, of the Prayer 
 Book and Articles for their customs ; and each preacher 
 would wish to be bound by the Bible, and judged as to the 
 truth of his message by his agreement with it. And so 
 hie might come to the belief that our Church is, in these 
 modern days, more inclusive than it seemed possible a 
 definite Church could be ; and would admire or dislike 
 her, as his mind inclined him to a narrow view of truth, 
 or to the admission that truth was many-sided, even if 
 most people can se? only one side, and often need not, 
 for practical purposes, see more than one. 
 
 Let me say openly, in the outset of these inquiries, 
 that as I believe this is the view an intelligent person 
 would take were he disengaged from our religious pre- 
 judices, so is it that which some among the clergy of the 
 Church of England would wish to assert, and in which 
 they glory. It may, of course, be suspected and said that 
 finding ourselves' in an inconsistent and assailable posi- 
 tion, we try to defend it by a paradox ; and to such an 
 argument there is no answer but a denial. There are 
 those, and I am of the number, who gladly welcome 
 the^fapt that our Insular Qhurch touches on each side on 
 
6 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PJEOPLK [No. 
 
 some mode of continental thought ; and while adapting 
 herself to the present, loses none of her sympathy with 
 the past. Souls under Roman teaching were ransomed 
 from their bondage to sin, and brought near to Christ, 
 and so she retains what was good in Roman doctrine and 
 rite ; souls now are saved from evil, and men are trained 
 by spiritual influences working under less of form and 
 fetter, and therefore she gives free play to such influences, 
 leaving her children now to walk ail-but alone, now 
 affording aid to weak wayfarers, and now almost carry- 
 ing those who nearly fall. The Church of England; 
 sinking so far as is possible technical differences, using 
 words manifestly able to bear various meanings, is 
 Catholic and Protestant at once; scarce placing any 
 terms of agreement beyond a tacit and general approval 
 on her Ijiy members, and allowing to her ministers a 
 wider difference of opinion than is given by any other 
 religious body, with or without a definite rule of faith. 
 To this position are two great classes of objectors, taken 
 from among those who would not deny the facts before 
 their eyes. The one class would reduce the bounds of 
 the Church of England either by adding to, or restricting 
 the meaning of, her authorized expressions. It is cer- 
 tain that so soon as men are agreed on the acceptation of 
 a narrow shibboleth, they are for a time stronger and 
 more united. But only for a time. Thought wakes, 
 and men divide, and the tie which bound them bursts 
 asunder if it be not very elastic. Thus sects mul- 
 tiply with an ever increasing rapidity; and men who 
 are not sectarian, and long to consider themselves as 
 
v.] TERMS OF communion: 7 
 
 members of the traditionally Apostolic CHurch, often 
 prefer to stifle their honest convictions rather than be 
 counted memhers only of some small and dividing sect. It 
 is a miserable thoughtj too, for a loving mind, that even, 
 if itself holds the truth, multitudes are falling a'way 
 from time-honoured symbols for the lack of some small 
 concession, and that men, one in soul, are kept asunder 
 by outward differences, 
 
 We must perforce choose between a National Church 
 allowing a vast variety of opinion, or a number of sects 
 fenced off from each other, at first by slight barriers, which 
 gradually condense into impassable walls of separation. 
 
 There are others who object to all fences and land- 
 marks whatever within the broad field of Christendom, 
 who would ' sit apart, holding no forms of creed, yet 
 contemplating all.' 
 
 They think that this enables them to judge dispas^ 
 sionately of others, and would therefore disapprove a 
 National Church, inasmuch as in a measure it seems to 
 bind the nation to some theological propositions. And 
 they assert that the standing place actually afforded by 
 that Church is but ' a quicksand of proprieties and 
 anathemas,' on which men are afraid to move. We may 
 say at once that this ' sitting apart ' does not enable men 
 to judge of others. We require distinct ground of our 
 own before we can distinguish and understand the 
 position of others on other hill-tops above the sea of 
 doubt ; but better were it to toss about for ever, to ' lie 
 in hell,' and let ' death gnaw upon us,' than be raised 
 out of hell merely to damn others. 
 
8 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 The allusion in the sentence above quoted is of course 
 to the Athaiiasian Creed, to which it is often said, and 
 aonjetimes believed, every member of the Church of 
 England is bound to assent. We, on the contrary, hold 
 that a lay member of the Church of England is bound 
 to no creed but that called the ' Apostles' Creed,' and to 
 that only as interpreted by himself. He is boxmd, so 
 far, by his baptism; and if he repudiates that creed, he 
 repudiates the Church of his baptism, but not otherwise. 
 And we would further believe that a man may be a good 
 Christian, and in lay-communion with the Church of 
 England, who was unable to accept all the historical 
 facts of the Lord's life, provided he accepted the spirit, 
 and tried to act according to its teaching. Such is all 
 required of members as a condition of membership ; 
 there are indeed other blessings of belief offered but not 
 imposed. Before she will allow a man to teach, she 
 requires assent to other pointSj which are indeed her 
 doctrines ; yet not in any such sense as to exclude lay- 
 men who hold them not. It is required of the clergy 
 that they accept the Prayer Book and Articles. To 
 these each clergyman agrees at his ordination, both as 
 deacon and as priest, at each change of cm-acy, at each 
 institution to preferment, and whenever called on so to 
 do by his bishop. The Articles are absolutely binding 
 on all clergymen, so are the Rubrics, ' subject,' as has 
 been well said, ' to this proviso, that the rule prescribed 
 ' be a thing practicable, which perhaps cannot be said 
 ' of all rubrics in all Churches, or in all places of the 
 ' kingdom, — nay, that it be a thing which falls within 
 
v.] TERMS OF COMMUNIOm 9 
 
 ' the minister's own power, so that he he not deprived 
 ' of his liberty in acting, or restrained in it by the pre- 
 ' vious acts of other pebplfe, whereby that which would 
 ' be practicable VQ itself is rendered not practicable by 
 ' him.' The question of course rises, ' How are these 
 ' rubrics and formularies to be understood? is it possible 
 ' to agree exactly in the meaning of the words used ? ' 
 Probably no words in amy book convey precisely the 
 same ideas to the minds of all who read them, and 
 within the limits of grammar and common sense a man 
 must put his own construction on the words common to 
 all ; so that a clergymen who can agree to them need not 
 distress himself with doubts as to his true position, 
 because he does not agree with either school in the 
 Church as to their interpretation. Or, indeed, with any 
 existing interpretation whatever. 
 
 As to the Canons, a clergyman subscribes only to the 
 three articles contained in the 36th Canon: 1st, con- 
 taining the declaration of the royal supremacy; 2d, the 
 adherence to the Book of Common Prayer; 3d, agree- 
 ment to the Articles of Religion. 'I believe,' says a 
 writer of authority, 'no one. will say ^e are bound to 
 ' pay obedience to them all according to the letter of 
 ' them. For the alteration of customs, change of habits, 
 ' and other circumstances of time and place, and the 
 ' manner of the country, have made some of them im- 
 ' practicable — I mean prudentially so, if not literally. Yet, 
 ' on the other hand, they are of very considerable autho- 
 rity.' To all which we may assent, adding this further, 
 That this present century, as it has brought about, so 
 
10 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND^ PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 great a change In the opinions of thinking men, has, by 
 that change, given us a ' general tacit dispensation ' with 
 regard to the Canons, though, for the sake of many, it 
 might be well if they could be revised, modified, or 
 abolished. Still, the Church's laws stand on the same 
 ground as many disused civil laws, which no man 
 thinks binding, and no judicial authority would enforce. 
 
 And surely in fixing these more definite rules of faith 
 for her clergyman and for her laity, the Church is doing 
 nothing hard or unnatural. She is acting on an 
 universal and recognised law, that the teacher or the 
 law-giver shall be more strictly governed than those 
 under them ; even if the rules be self-imposed, they 
 must be there, or all becomes confasion. 
 
 But though the clergy are thus enclosed in a narrower 
 boundary than are the laity, no liberty of teaching can 
 be greater than is theirs. It is the wisdom of the 
 Church of England that her limits are. so large, or if it 
 be pleasing so to call them, vague, that she includes 
 many varied opinions. If she were foimd too strait to 
 contain them all, there are those who would equally 
 regret the expulsion from her pale of the extremest 
 professors of her extremest schools. AU these claim to 
 find their doctrines in the Bible, that ultimate appeal of 
 all theology, nor have we a right to say that any of 
 them does not believe he finds his teaching there ; and it 
 is a great blessing that men so at issue, can find a com- 
 mon meeting-place, where they can harmonize some, at 
 least, of their many difierences. 
 
 Unquestionably, however, all who join or remain in 
 
v.] TBBMS OF COMMUNION, \\ 
 
 any tody ecclesiastical or civil, do thereby give a tacit 
 assent to the general doctrines and propositions of the 
 body, so far as they are laid down, even though they do 
 not commit themselves to any exact statements. And 
 it may be well to consider, what are the points on which 
 is left to English Churchmen an absolute liberty of 
 opinion; and what are those wherein thought is prescribed 
 a certain direction, however various in that direction 
 may be the pathways she may tread. 
 
 Some matters which once seemed of the highest 
 importance, need not now be discussed. For the diffi- 
 culties of one age are not those of the years which 
 follow. Those who are now, as of old, troubled by such 
 questions as the use of the surplice, of the cross in bap- 
 tism, and the ring in marriage, are very few in number, 
 and very childish in mind. On all hands it is admitted 
 that these things are mere unimportant accidents of wor- 
 ship and rule, involving no doctrine, asserting no great 
 principle. When the nation was but recently freed from 
 papal rule, when it was desired to mark as widely as 
 possible the severance which had taken place, it is easy 
 to understand how these trifles became of significance, 
 as even straws on the gale are important when the 
 tempest is drawing near. It is not these things which 
 now draw towards Rome those who seek a shelter in 
 her pale, but rather desires after an unity which she 
 seems to possess, and a quietus for tender consciences, 
 which she seems to offer. 
 
 But the great heart of England now only fears 
 doctrines which straiten thought; Roman teaching, 
 
12 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 because narrowness seems the result of it ; Calvinistic 
 teaching, for the same reason ; and not because of the 
 quarter whence they come. 
 
 There is^ perhaps, no subject on which thinking 
 Englishmen dread dogmatism more than on the In- 
 spiration of Scripture. The Bible is that which all 
 Christians prize as the record of their faith, their 
 deliverance, and their hope. They feel its essential 
 unity with itself, that it is a great and Divine drama. 
 They acknowledge that a Spirit breathes through Its 
 words and several parts as through those of no other 
 book. They admit its wonderfal coherence, and the 
 shadowing forth of the New Testament in the Old, 
 They read in it a parable of the mystic march of all 
 human nature. ' The Bible,'' says Novalis, ' begins 
 ' nobly with Paradise, the symbol of youth, and con- 
 ' eludes with the Eternal Kingdom, the Holy City.' 
 But as to the nature of that inspiration. Christians are 
 not agreed, nor are they likely to agree. Modem 
 thought has raised new questions on various books of 
 the Bible, and asks in louder voice some that were 
 raised of old. Modern criticism would alter the date 
 of one, and the authorship of another, and reject verses 
 and whole passages from the Canon ; finds mistakes in 
 facts and dates ; expectations of events which could not, 
 foretellings of others which never did occur. Such 
 criticism may be, often is, rash and rude, so that some 
 are tempted to reject it with scorn and indignation, and 
 others accept it gladly, and swallow it without discrimi- 
 nation, But clearly the whole matter is just now in so 
 
v.] TERMS OF COMMUNION. . 13 
 
 unsSettled a state, that a distinct definition of Inspiration, 
 which gave place to any one theory alone, would offend 
 many who, in the present condition of their knowledge, 
 can accept entirely no one of the explanations offered 
 them. It cannot, then, be too often repeated, that the 
 Church of England has never defined the word Inspi- 
 ration ; that wherever she uses it in her services, it is in 
 the largest and loosest sense — a Divine inbreathing, yet 
 with no dogmatism as to its manner or extent. And 
 while there is no doubt that the very narrowest views 
 evfen of verbal dictation inay be, and are preached, as 
 explanations of Inspiration, so also, thank God ! are' 
 such words as these written by an English historian, or 
 delivered in English pulpits. Inspiration is 'the in- 
 ' flexible love of truth, which, being inseparable from 
 ' the spirit of Christianity, would of itself be a sufficient 
 ' guarantee for fidelity and honesty.' (Dean Milman : 
 ' History of Christianity.') 
 
 Again : Inspiration is ' a clear perception of those 
 ' heavenly truths which the Holy Ghost reveals to man 
 ' as the abiding thoughts of God, which ever repeat 
 ' themselves in His eternal plan,' (Rowland Williains, 
 D.D. : ' Eational Godliness,' Serm. 12.) 
 
 Again : it ' has not as yet been defined what is meant 
 ' by the Inspiration of Scripture — a definition which 
 ' must itself be referred to the common consent of those 
 ' to whom the Scripture shall come.' (Wilson : ' Bamp- 
 ton Lectures,' Lect. I.) 
 
 While so brave and noble words as these are written 
 and preached uncenswed, and authority cannot censure 
 
14 TRACTS FOE PRIESTS ANT) PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 them, who shall dare say the Church of England's 
 teaching is narrow on this matter of Inspiration ? 
 
 In the whole range of literature is no such crying 
 want as an English 'Bibelwerk fur die Gemeinde.' 
 ' Who,' said Mr. Kingsley many years ago, by the 
 mouth of Alton Locke, ' who will write us a people's 
 commentary on the Bible?' It was not hard to recog- 
 nise the ' fine Roman hand,' which in part answered 
 the question, under the signature of ' Parson Lot,' and 
 under the name of ' Bible Politics, or God justified to 
 the People.' These papers became too controversial, 
 perhaps unavoidably, and then ceased ; but there was in 
 them enough to show that the work could be done, and 
 that a clergyman or layman of the Church of England 
 was, and perhaps they alone, free enough from trammels 
 to do it. 
 
 It is not many years since a great outcry was heard 
 because a clergyman, beloved and honoured above the 
 average, was supposed to have denied the eternity 
 of punishment. He was deprived of an oflBce he held 
 in a college which was a private body; but even re- 
 ligious rancour could not shake his position as a teacher 
 in the Church of England. The whole subject of future 
 punishment is involved in the deepest mystery. A vast 
 deal that is said in the New Testament thereon resolves 
 itself into sensible imagery taken from the valley in 
 which the filth of Jerusalem was consumed. A parable 
 of our Lord, which seemed to many decisive, bears, on 
 further examination, if indeed it conveys any dogmatic 
 teaching, a lesson of hope rather than of despair ; inas- 
 
v.] TERMS OF COMMUNION. 15 
 
 much as the spiritual condition of Mm who desired to 
 send help and warning to his brethren was a clear im- 
 provement on that state in which he merely demanded 
 relief for himself; and there is a growing conviction 
 that the veil is in no degree withdrawn by the faint 
 hints and allusions, or anxious guessings of inspired 
 men. It is felt that since truly to know God is ever- 
 lasting life, whether in this world or in the world to 
 come, so not to know God is everlasting death, whether 
 men seem to live or no. And we are content to leave 
 conditions and places, as God has left them, unknown, 
 and to think of them with hope, and not with terror. 
 
 We may be thankful that when the attempt was 
 made to impose an article on Eternal Punishment on 
 the Church of England, it failed ; nor need we care why 
 it was not imposed. And finding that the Athanasian 
 Creed frames its expressions on the very words of 
 Scripture, we can accept these in the sense, and only 
 in the sense, in which we take the original sentences. 
 When we find too, that that creed, translated as it is 
 into Latinized and not into Saxon English, uses words 
 in quite other than their present and popular use, that 
 the words ' eternal,' ' persons,' ' substance,' ' comprehen- 
 sible,' ' salvation,' ' reasonable,' ^ subsisting,' have 
 changed their meaning in the parlance of our ordinary 
 congregations, we can fully assent to that creed in its 
 real and theological sense. Yet we may freely confess 
 that, peeing how great an ofience it is to many among 
 us, and to many who, but for it, would come among us, 
 we should not regret it were it removed from our 
 
16 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 serrlces, or used merely as the American Episcopal 
 Church uses it, as a hymn of praise, like the Te Deum ; 
 which is indeed just as much a creed, though not 
 received as a symhol of faith. 
 
 The doctrine somewhat vaguely described as the 
 Atonement, — vaguely, inasmuch as grammarians are 
 hardly in agreement on the meaning and derivation of the 
 word, — has undoubtedly received freer treatment in the 
 hands of this than in those of the last generation. The 
 hard and technical terms, such as 'the signing and sealing 
 a bond,' ' the satisfaction of the Father's anger,' and so 
 on, have given place, or are giving place to other descrip- 
 tions more human and more rational. Sermons like those 
 of the late Mr. Robertson ; essays like that of Professor 
 Jowett, in his book on St. Paul's Epistles, are daily 
 attracting more and more readers. Not that these writers 
 are always consistent one with another, or with them- 
 selves. The mystery and the love are too great for words, 
 which can only in part express the fulness of thought. 
 And while the heart of man knows the love of God, the 
 tongue of man stammers as it attempts to declare it. 
 Here again, the Chm'ch of England does not attempt 
 to define. She has, indeed, adopted one unfortunate 
 expression in her second Article. She speaks of the 
 death of Christ as that which ' reconciles His Father to 
 us,' which many would wish to read, ' reconciles us to 
 the Father.' Yet, for those on whom the Article is 
 binding, the expression is no real stumbling-block, inas- 
 much as each man, knowing that he himself is an 
 aggressor against God, may see in that death such mani- 
 
v.] TERMS OF COMMUNION. VJ 
 
 festations of love as he needs to assure him that He is 
 not for ever angry against those who have sinned 
 against Him. Man, when he is led hack to God, requires 
 some pledge, or what seems to him a pledge, that God is 
 near and not very far off. 
 
 In nothing is the temper and judgment of the Church 
 of England more shown than in her absence of dogma- 
 tism on the subject of miracles and prophecy. Once, 
 and now by many, miracles were regarded as a test of 
 doctrine, and as interruptions of order ; prophecy was 
 mere prediction, and the moral element in the prophets' 
 words of quite secondary importance. But there is a 
 growing conviction Ijhat, on the contrary, doctrines are 
 a test of miracles ; and so strong a faith is there in the 
 perfection of order, that men would first prefer in all 
 possible cases to explain a miracle, and when that is 
 not possible, to refer it to some as yet unknown law. 
 Prophecy, again, is increasingly considered as the 
 preaching of the men of old, with only such reference 
 to the future as there must of necessity be in the words 
 of those who, having learnt to understand God's deal- 
 ings in the present, understand also by analogy what 
 will be His dealings under like circumstances in the 
 future. On miracles the Church of England says 
 nothing. Neither does she define what she means by 
 prophecy; but, as one of the hymns of her ordinary ser- 
 vices, we find the song of Simeon, in which ik^ predictive 
 element of prophecy is spoken of in the vaguest terpis. 
 It sings of a redemption of Israel as the fulfilment of 
 what was spoken by the prophets of old, but it does not 
 
 C 
 
18 TRACTS FOB PBTESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 assert that they had foreseen details. God ' hath raised 
 up a ' mighty salvation for us in the house of His servant 
 ' David, as He spake hy the mouth of His holy pro- 
 ' phets, which have heen since the world began, that we 
 ' should he saved from our enemies. ..... To perform 
 
 'the oath which He sware to our forefather Abraham, 
 ' that He would grant unto us, that we heing delivered out 
 ' of the hand of our enemies might serve Him without fear.'' 
 
 These three are the great questions of the day ; and 
 if there be any others which occur, I assert boldly that 
 on all which may be an open matter between Christian 
 men, the Church of England is equally free. In a 
 paper like the present, I can only indicate the freedom, 
 and not prove it exhaustively in every conceivable 
 particular. 
 
 It is matter for sincere regret that, in some recent 
 instances, those who could not square their views with 
 the interpretations either of Laud or Calvin, have 
 thought it needful to endeavour to explain the modes 
 in which it seemed to them certain words of the Church 
 might be made looser than a plain man would read them 
 to be. Whoever is able to sign them, or agree to them, 
 is surely not bound to give his reasons. There are 
 many things which are felt instinctively to be possible, 
 which yet cannot be explained. And, certainly, in 
 recent publications, which have been written in an 
 earnest desire to widen the terms of communion, words 
 have been tortured beyond their plain grammatical mean- 
 ing, and elastic bonds have been strained till they bui-st 
 asunder. Better would it have been to show that free 
 
v.] TERMS OF COMMUNION. 19 
 
 thought is possible, than, in some cases to endeavour 
 to show how it is possible ; better to speak of those 
 points on which there is no definition ; better to sufier 
 the easy charge of inconsistency than that of dishonesty, 
 harder to bear and to refute. 
 
 But if on these so many <juestions the Church of 
 England's teaching is negative, there are others on 
 which, at least by implication, it is positive enough. 
 
 It is certain that she considers an ordered form of 
 worship, and a systematic reading of the whole Bible, 
 are better than prayer according to the mind of the 
 minister alone, and the reading the Bible at choice. 
 It is wonderful how this custom of public prayer, ds-aws 
 a man off from his own self. He comes to church sad 
 and downcast, and is called on to join in hymns of 
 praise ; or his heart is merry within him, and he hears 
 the solemn petitions of the Litany. What greater proof 
 can there be to him that ' no man liveth to himself,' 
 that 'if one member rejoice, all the members rejoice with 
 ' it ; if one member suffer, all the members suffer with 
 'it?' The history, again, of all sects shows how prone 
 men are to pick and choose their doctrines. It was not 
 on critical grounds that Luther was once disposed to 
 reject the Epistle of St. James, but because he had for 
 a time adopted a shibboleth with which it interfered. 
 Because their creed was bloody and their natures stern, 
 the Covenanters of Scotland and the Puritans of the 
 New World, and in some measure the Puritans of Eng- 
 land, practically set aside the New Testament to regulate 
 their conduct by the maxims, and their tongues by the 
 
 c2 
 
20 TRACTS FOR PRIBSTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 phraseology of the Old Testament. It may be that the 
 Church of England is not absolutely free from weakness 
 on this point, in that the prophecies of Ezekiel and the 
 Eevelation of St. John are all hut ignored in her ser- 
 Tices ; yet it has surely been this general reading of 
 the whole Bible that has kept her large-hearted and 
 Catholic, has held the balance of truth while each sect 
 has grasped at some one portion of truth, and read the 
 Bible accordingly ; yet at the same time there is in 
 her calendar a noble protest against BibHolatiy. There 
 are lessons from the Apocrypha, some most unsuited to 
 us, and which we may wish to change, yet, in adopting 
 them at aU, she admits the principle that the Canon does 
 not contain all the teaching she would bring her chil- 
 dren, and that God gives lessons by the mouths of men, 
 technically speaking, uninspired. In both these points, 
 prayer and reading, there is, however, a power of choice 
 left the minister. It is but a few weeks since an Irish 
 bishop spoke strongly in favour of extempore prayer 
 before sermon, pleading for what he called the liberty 
 of the pulpit. And by some of our greatest divines we 
 find him anticipated. Prefixed, e.g. to some of Jeremy 
 Taylor's sermons we find ' the prayer before sermon ' in 
 his own words, and in his highest flights of oratory, 
 a magnificent prayer, and a shorter sermon, as it were, 
 in one. So, again, in the sermon itself, the passage of 
 Scripture, its length and its treatment, are absolutely 
 left' to the preacher's own discretion. 
 
 Then, as to whom that prayer offered in public is 
 addressed, the Church of England is very clear. 
 
v.] TERMS OF COMMUNION. 21 
 
 To God the Father, in the name of God the Son, to 
 God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to God as 
 Creator, Eedeemer, Sanctifier, all worship is paid. 
 Yet here, again, she is careful, except in the one rarely- 
 used creed, of which I have spoken, to define in no 
 way the mysterious being of God; nor does she at 
 other times speak metaphysically of such deep mysteries, 
 but leaves them to be apprehended by feeling and by 
 faith. 
 
 Again, she fences round her most sacred rites by 
 certain solemn warnings, and once did so by outward 
 tests, such as that of parishioners giving notice to the 
 minister before presenting themselves at the Commu- 
 nion. But here the test applied, whether to the con- 
 science alone or more formally, is one wholly moral. 
 She does require of her members that they lead godly 
 and Christian lives. And as far as can be gathered 
 from her own expressions, he who lives ungodly, not 
 he who worships the God of his fathers after a way 
 which some call heresy, is an inconsistent member. 
 
 There is yet another question on which the Church of 
 England gives no uncertain sound : the position in 
 which her sons stand to the State. That none are good 
 churchmen who are not also good citizens, is implied 
 in every public service, in the preface to the Prayer 
 Bookj in the Articles, and in the very fact of her 
 existence. 
 
 One of the gi'eatest of those who in late years have 
 left the Church of England for the narrower pale of 
 Kome, thinking there to find a greater freedom, endea- 
 
22 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 voured, before he went, to prove that he and others 
 might hold all Roman doctrine, and yet not go out from 
 among us. But the liberty for which he pleaded was 
 to be all one-sided, and therefore no true liberty. In 
 eloquent and touching words he found fault with the 
 formularies to which he still clung, and consoled him- 
 self for his hard position by the thought of great men of 
 old in one, as it seemed, not unlike his own. ' Let us 
 ' submit,' he said, 'to our imperfection as a punishment; 
 ' let us go on teaching through the medium of indeter- 
 ' minate statements and inconsistent precedents and 
 ' principles but partially developed. We are not better 
 ' than our fathers : let us bear to be what Hammond 
 ' was, or Andrews or Hooker.' Shall we adopt these 
 touching words, leaving out their wail of sadness, and 
 altering the names of the fathers? Kather let us be 
 thankful in these our times, when ' all but God is chang- 
 ing day by day,' that our statements are indeterminate, 
 our precedents of two kinds, our principles but partially 
 developed. Let us be thankful that we have the same 
 ' liberty of prophesying ' as had our great father in the 
 faith. Bishop Jeremy Taylor, that if we are inconsistent 
 we are so with him ; let us be content to be under the 
 same restrictions as he was, and Barrow and Hooker 
 and Tillotson. 
 
 Yet, because we are content, we need not therefore be 
 opposed to liturgical revision. As has been well said, 
 ' Liturgies are but temporary expressions of the Church's 
 ' heart. . . . She must go on from grace to grace, and 
 ' grow from age to age, and her ancient melodies become 
 
v.] TERMS OF COMMUNION. 23 
 
 ' unfitted to express Iter feelings.' I have already indi- 
 cated some not undesirable changes. I would fain see 
 her rid of all merely human definitions of faith — 
 
 ' Those wounding cords which bind and strain 
 ' The heart until it bleeds.' 
 
 I would alter all archaic expressions which have lost 
 their primary meaning. I would change into intelligible 
 English others which are a mere 'tongue not under- 
 standed of the people' in our poor and uneducated 
 parishes, such as the words in the marriage service, 
 ' thereto I plight thee my troth.' I would wish to see 
 Christianised the very Jewish tone of that same mar- 
 riage service; and, while fixing certain prayers for all 
 offices, would leave the minister a certain liberty of 
 choice. At the same time we should not be keen to 
 bring about these changes, for we see that the clamour 
 for revision is very one-sided ; and we should dread all 
 those more deadly kinds of narrowness of heart and of 
 faith, which shelter themselves so often under a spurious 
 liberalism. In any future revision a doubt will assuredly 
 arise about the retention of Saints' Days, strictly so 
 called, as distinct firom Holy Days, which commemorate 
 some event in the history of Christ Himself. And 
 should these observances, binding now on such of the 
 clergy as find it possible or expedient to open their 
 churches for daily prayer, be found in any way really 
 painful to tender consciences; if the old definition of 
 saints which we learnt in our childhood, 'holy men, 
 ' whose example we pray God to be permitted to imi- 
 * tate,' seems to be obscured, and honour paid them over- 
 
24 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 much, then let them go, not all unregretted, but regretted 
 far less than would be the interposition of any cloud 
 between the Church and her Lord. 
 
 I have shown, then, that in my own opinion, and, as 
 I believe, in that of a large number of liberal Churchmen, 
 there is scarce a phase of Christian faith which may not 
 be, as there is scarce one which is not, held within the 
 Church of England. One difficulty which presents itself 
 first to many minds I have reserved to the last. Wherever 
 there are any forms and any creeds, however large, it is 
 not possible that some shall not be excluded, or exclude 
 themselves, who yet are members of the one Church in- 
 visible, and who shall one day be found truer Church- 
 men than many who are not only within the pale, but 
 fenced round also by their own opinions. And this dif- 
 ficulty applies to Christianity itself. There are, we may 
 well believe, now, as when the visible Church was tied 
 up in Jewish swaddling-clothes, many unknown who 
 ' shall come from the east and the west, and sit down in 
 ' the kingdom of God.' When our eyes are opened, 
 and the crust of error and opinion falls away, we shall 
 find among the heathen of old, as well as among the 
 Jews, many a Christian before Christ, many a Church- 
 man who never heard of the Church. 
 
 We too, may, with our great poetess .... 
 
 ' telieve 
 
 ' In one Priest and one temple, with ita floors 
 
 ' Of shining jasper, gloomed at morn and eve 
 ' By countless knees of earnest auditors ; 
 
 ' And crystal walls too lucid to perceive, 
 ' That none may take the meamre of the place.' 
 
v.] TERMS OF COMMUNIOm 25 
 
 Yet, if there be a profession of a common Chri-stianity 
 by a nation and a State, there must of necessity be some 
 terms of communion; and it is seemly and fitting that 
 whatever Christian body in England is the broadest, 
 and includes the widest differences, should be called and 
 considered the Church of England, though such a name 
 is by no means co-extensive with, and perhaps never can 
 be co-extensive with the Church of Christ in England. 
 
 The tendency of these late years has been to abolish 
 all tests of membership so far as the laity are concerned. 
 There still remains somewhat to be done in this particular. 
 So long as certificates of Church baptism are required, 
 while yet the Church of England herself does not regard 
 such baptism as essential, the members of the Church 
 make less liberal concessions than do the forms and 
 customs which they profess to take as their guides. So 
 long as dissent is considered vulgar, and its adherents 
 as men of necessarily weaker intellect than Churchmen, 
 so long will a natural, and even praiseworthy, anta- 
 gonism make men cling more firmly to that over which 
 there broods even the dimmest shadow of a possible 
 persecution. 
 
 Thus have I attempted to show, in plain words, how, 
 in these times of change and doubt, there is room for a 
 vast variety of opinions, and yet some firm standing- 
 place within the limits of the Church of England, that 
 her pretensions are by no means exclusive, nor her con- 
 ditions damnatory of those who dissent from some or all 
 of them. Should these words tend to keep within her 
 borders one who, in search for truth, might leave her, and 
 
26 TRACTS FOB. PRIBSTS AND PEOPLE. [No. V. 
 
 seek hereafter shelter in a narrower fold, despairing of 
 true freedom ; should it show one outside her that at least 
 she does not condemn his opinions, and, indeed, offers a 
 freer vent for them than perhaps he has elsewhere found, 
 this tract will not have heen in vain, and the presumption 
 of writing it 'for Priests and People' will stand excused. 
 Proof has been offered of but few propositions. It would 
 have taken too great space, and indeed is not required. 
 For here, as in other things, ' solvitur amhulando ; ' the 
 writers of these papers are members of the Church 
 of England; their freedom and variety of thought, 
 their differences one with the other, are not incompatible 
 with their hearty fellow-work, and their love for those 
 forms which unite their discrepancies, and their 
 apparent, not real, inconsistencies. 
 
 May God grant that each Englishman, layman or 
 priest, may remember to be very tender of the liberty of 
 another, while he asserts his own! For a terrible Nemesis 
 overtakes the persecutor. It should not be forgotten by 
 those who decry liberty of thought, that one of the boldest 
 thinkers protested but a few years since against conces- 
 sions not unlike his own, though in another direction; 
 and we, too, if we persecute, whether by word or deed, 
 may one day need that toleration which now we refuse 
 
 to others. 
 
 C. K. P. 
 
THE MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 BY AN EX-DISSENTER. 
 
 Amid the upheaving of thought and opinion now going 
 on around us, the Church of England, naturally enough, 
 comes in for no small share of suspicion and dislike. 
 A formidable and energetic baud of earnest men has 
 been gathered together for the specific purpose of 
 despoiling her of her supremacy as the ' Established ' 
 Church of the land. ' She may continue to exist, if she 
 ' chooses, as one sect among many, but she shall not 
 ' continue to be in any sense the National Church — the 
 ' representative of our nation^s religious life and faith. 
 ' Talk as we will of her venerable antiquity, — her historic 
 ' associations, — in these days of commercial activity and 
 ' political turmoil, we have no time to be looking back- 
 ' wards — no enthusiasm to spare for the noblest bead-roll 
 ' of history, or the most venerable prestige of antiquity. 
 ' Her doctrines, her practices, her institutions, may be all 
 ' very good — just as good as those of her neighbours, but 
 ' no better — certainly not so much better as to warrant 
 ' her riding rough-shod over all other forms of religious 
 ' faith, and claiming and exercising a hateful domination 
 ' over them. The grand boast of this nineteenth century 
 ' is the gradual demolition of all artificial distinctions. 
 ' As in the eye^ of the English law all men are equal, so 
 ' must all religions be equal, and the rights of conscience 
 
28 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLK [No. 
 
 * must be dealt with scrupulous accuracy in equal shares 
 ' to all. If the Church is really founded on a true foun- 
 ' dation, surely she can stand without the burdensome 
 ' and treacherous protection of Government. To doubt 
 ' this is to deny God's power, or His will to fulfil His 
 ' own promise. The advancing knowledge of political 
 ' science, which has resulted in the beneficial discovery of 
 ' free trade, the claims of religious liberty, the welfare of 
 ' the Church itself, the reverence and faith due to God, 
 ' the spiritual nature of His kingdom upon earth, all 
 ' unite in demanding that the days of that Church's legal 
 ' supremacy be numbered, that she be stripped of her 
 ' borrowed glories, and thus become a more faithful, 
 ' because more humble, servant of her great Master.' 
 
 Well, be it so. I am not going to defend the Church. 
 I have no right to arrogate such an office to myself — no 
 claim to be heard if I did. But what I may do, without 
 giving offence to any I hope, is to say what message the 
 Church has brought to my soul, and does daily bring, 
 amid the anxieties and toils of a somewhat anxious and 
 toilsome profession; how she helps me to live and 
 work ; to suffer and hope. I must necessarily speak of 
 myself, at the risk of being thought egotistical. For I 
 do feel that what we want in these days is not a theory 
 that may look very fine on paper, or that may have the 
 most approved orthodox ring, but an actual practical' 
 experience that may help us in the rough every-day life 
 of this busy time. 
 
 I cannot shelter myself behind the plea of hereditary 
 faith and educational prejudice, for I was born and edu- 
 
v.] THE MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH 29 
 
 cated without her pale, and only in maturer years have I . 
 deliberately imposed upon myself the 'shackles of an 
 establishment.' I know well what is commonly said 
 about the intemperate zeal of the convert. In the first 
 burst of joy and enthusiasm with his new-found treasure, 
 he may see glories which exist only in his own imagi- 
 nation, and be blind to defects which older and wiser 
 friends mourn over and strive to remedy. I will try to 
 resist this temptation. I owe more than I can ever 
 repay to those Dissenters among whom my early lot was 
 cast. The memories of holy example and precept which 
 I have inherited from them crowd around me as I write, 
 and make me blush to think how much better I might 
 have been, and ought to have been. I have known 
 many among them whom any Church might thankfully 
 claim as her adherents, and I still number them among 
 my most valued friends. My ecclesiastical separation has 
 not weakened the bond of mutual friendship and esteem. 
 I was no half-hearted Dissenter. As the divinely- 
 appointed representative of God's kingdom on earth, as 
 the home of God's elect, as the special refuge from all 
 earthly cares and anxieties, as the chosen channel of 
 spiritual life and strength to the soul of man, — as a 
 sacred institution, based on spiritual principles, existing 
 for purely spiritual purposes — the Church, I maintained, 
 must hold herself absolutely aloof from all earthly 
 powers and principalities. Governments, I said, are of 
 earth, earthy, — devoid of all spiritual meaning ; swayed 
 and moulded only by motives and influences drawn from 
 the most earthly sources. Into the sublime region of 
 
30 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 conscience and spiritual life, the oflScers of siich a 
 government cannot for one moment claim admission. 
 Union in any form, to any degree, between bodies so 
 dissimilar in principle, in pm-pose, in working, is abso- 
 lutely impossible. The statesman, under the mistaken 
 idea of protecting the Church, introduces into the 
 machinery or government an element of endless strife 
 and ill-will, and finds himself compelled either to sacri- 
 fice the claims of the favoured Church to the righteous 
 demands of conscience, or — fearful alternative! — ^to 
 trample on the sanctities of conscience and earnest 
 religious conviction in order to preserve the Church. 
 The Churchman who accepts such an alliance on any 
 terms, is guilty,! thought, of the veriest treason to Christ, 
 the Church's only Head. As though he were doubtful of 
 the Divine protection of the Church, he must fain seek 
 the showy but dangerous protection of monarchs and 
 statesmen ; and terrible indeed is the price he must pay. 
 He must be the advocate of despotism and tyranny; 
 the foe of righteous government and freedom ; acting in 
 the name of the Prince of Peace, he must carry strife 
 and cruelty into many a happy home, and seize, under 
 the dread penalties of law, contributions that can only 
 be accepted as the free-will offerings of loving hearts ; 
 he must abandon all claims to be a member of a spiritual 
 society, that he may devote himself unreservedly to do 
 the dirty work of the most worldly society. 
 
 Holding these convictions of the absolute sinfulness of 
 an Established Church, I hailed with joy the formation of 
 the ' Anti-State-Church Association,' now more widely 
 
v.] THJE MBSSAGE OF THE CHURCH. 31 
 
 known under its new title of the ' Liberation Society ; ' 
 or, the ' Society for the Liberation of Eeligion from 
 State Patronage and Control.' I looked upon the 
 founders and promoters of that association with a 
 reverence amounting almost to idolatry ; and I must say 
 more truly earnest, self-denying men can rarely be 
 found. With a straightforwardness and zeal worthy of 
 a better cause, daunted neither by the lukewarmness and 
 often active suspicions of friends, nor by the threats of 
 foes, they work steadily and hopefully on. Nor do I believe 
 they will work in vain. I believe God will make them 
 the means of arousing the Church's life and energy; of 
 compelling Englishmen to see on what foundation the 
 Church is really standing — of removing the dust and 
 rubbish which have well-nigh hidden that foundation. 
 Depend upon it, this is daily becoming more and mofe 
 the question for us Englishmen : ' Does the Church of 
 ' England stand on a good solid foundation or not ? If 
 ' so, what is it — let us see it. If not — then, away with 
 ' her : " Why cumbereth she the ground ? " Differing as 
 I do most widely from these men, I most devoutly thank 
 God, that leading me by the way which seemed best to 
 Him, He permitted me for a time to sit at their feet, 
 and learn what they could teach me of the Kingdom of 
 God. They have taught me truths concerning the 
 spiritual nature of that kingdom which I have never had 
 to unlearn, but of which I have found the freest, fullest 
 development in the Church of England. 
 
 It was while holding these views of the Church, 
 that I was called to wage a far fiercer conflict. The 
 
32 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLK [No. 
 
 darker side of Calvinism repelled and horrified me. 
 The ' Sovereignty of God ' seemed but a decent cloak 
 to cover a worse than Asiatic despotism. I could not 
 accept such a theology without doing violence to the 
 innermost dictates of conscience and reason. Such a 
 theology seemed to he based on a depravity which I 
 could in no way help, and to terminate in an arbitrary- 
 will which I could in no way control. I will pass 
 hastily over these dark passages of doubt and diflSculty. 
 I would not recall them, but that I know they 
 did not then, they do not now, belong to me alone. 
 Hundreds and thousands of young men are at this 
 moment passing along that same terrible and dangerous 
 path. When, in order not to answer, but to crush these 
 growing doubts, the authority of the Bible was held up 
 before me, the natural and necessary result followed. I 
 began to doubt that authority altogether. The Bible 
 was a grand and noble book; but I could not acknow- 
 ledge it as in any sense a Revelation. Jesus Christ was 
 one of the divinest of human beings. I could not 
 accept Him as the Redeemer from sin and death — the 
 Son of God and Son of Man. 
 
 To this conclusion — almost the deepest depth of a 
 negative theology — I most firmly believe I was led hy 
 God, not that I might remain there, but that through 
 doubts and conflicts I might attain, under the same 
 Divine guidance, to a higher, firmer faith. For I 
 am bound to say that underneath these negations, 
 amid many shortcomings and backslidings, there ever 
 remained an unshaken faith in the presence and loving 
 
v.] THE MESSA&B OF THE CHUnCH, 33 
 
 sympathy of God. It was because I felt my notions 
 of the Bible and of the Saviour to interfere with this 
 faith that I was led to reject the authority of both. 
 Religious controversialists in the heat of their zeal for 
 their recognised standards, are sadly too apt to ignore 
 and pour contempt upon the faith which underlies and 
 sustains these difficulties and doubts. They see the 
 denials, but they do not, or they will not, see the truths 
 which shine, though dimly perhaps, beneath them. 
 They rush to redeem the Bible from attack, while they 
 forget the love and righteousness of that God whom it is 
 the Bible's blessed mission to declare to man. They 
 rally with firm front around the doctrine of the atone- 
 ment, while they forget that it was the specific purpose 
 of Him who made that atonement to reveal the name of 
 our Father which is in heaven. In order to vindicate 
 the claims of the Bible, they will too often so speak as 
 though they made light of the claims of that in us to 
 which the Bible speaks. I speak from what I have 
 felt of the general tone of religious controversy. Reve- 
 rence for the Bible would seem, as gathered from the 
 general tone and spirit of these controversial writings, — 
 especially such as fill the columns of the most popular 
 ' religious newspapers,' — to imply a corresponding lack 
 of reverence for the human heart and conscience. I 
 am bound thankfully tc> admit that in the more genial 
 and unrestrained intercourse of social and private life, 
 I often met with a more sympathetic and kindly 
 treatment. 
 
 I was reminded over and over again that all my 
 D 
 
34 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLH. [No. 
 
 doubts and denials arose from my not realizing the sin- 
 fulness of sin — the utter depravity of the human heart. 
 To such arguments I could only reply inwardly ; that 1 
 was conscious of the awfulness and reality of sin within 
 me, hut that I was also conscious of something else — 
 something which was not sinful, which was ever striving 
 against my most secret and cherished sins, which, 
 though ever baffled and defeated by the resistance 
 of an evil will, returned again and again to the con- 
 flict — something which was deeper and more real than 
 my very sins. The more painful and vivid became 
 my consciousness of sin, the stronger — I may also add 
 the more painful, too — became the consciousness of this 
 other element within me. The theology which is based 
 on total depravity as its solitary foundation did not then, 
 oes not now, express to me the whole truth. I believe 
 it does not meet the whole consciousness of any man. 
 So long as I believed that that was the theology of the 
 Bible, I could not accept it as the solution of all the 
 problems of my daily life and thought. 
 
 The position in which I found myself placed is that 
 in which hundreds and thousands of my fellows were, 
 and still are, placed. Many an anxious parent is at this 
 moment anxiously watching the career of some promising- 
 son; all the bright dreams of his future success are 
 darkened by the dread of his imbibing these ' German 
 notions ; ' and many a scheme is carefully elaborated to 
 guard him against their seductive tendency. Surely a 
 more living trust in the fatherly care and guidance of God 
 would mitigate these fears. That there are many and 
 
v.] THE MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH. 35 
 
 serious dangers thrown around tke path of such young 
 men none can doubt. But I can scarcely bring myself 
 to believe that a doubter who is really in earnest, whose 
 one desire is to know the truth, whose daily life-prayer 
 is that of the Psalmist — ' " Lead me in Thy truth, and 
 ' teach me : for Thou art the God of my salvation ; on 
 ' Thee do I wait all the day," ' who longs to find some 
 sure resting-place to stand on^ — that such a one, whatever 
 may be his mistakes, his failures, his conceits, will be 
 ever forsaken by One who alone can remove all doubts 
 by His own most blessed gift of faith. Our precautions, 
 our arguments, our warnings, may all ignominiously fail, 
 but God will fulfil His own purposes, and reveal Him- 
 self in His own way to the distracted spirit. 
 
 This was the turning point of my career. The hand 
 that had led me thus far was still guiding and leading 
 me. Those simple words of that prayer, taught by Him 
 who knew its meaning as none else can ever know it, 
 words which I had been taught from earliest childhood 
 to repeat at a mother's knee — ' Our Father which art in 
 heaven ' — came home to me with a new force and mean- 
 ing. I had thought that the Christian Church, if she 
 were to retain her standing ground at all, required some- 
 thing more refined, more comprehensive. I had to learn 
 that what the Church required, what each member re- 
 quired, what most of all I required for my help and guid- 
 ance, was to return to the simplest rudiments of our faith, 
 and learn how fdly and divinely they met all our needs, 
 answered to every demand of the human heart, and 
 fitted us to fight the good fight of faith in life and death. 
 
 d2 
 
36 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PSOFLE. [No. 
 
 ' Our Father ! ' — these are simple words, unqnalified and 
 unlimited. I am not to separate myself from my fellows, 
 and say ' M]/ Father.' I am not to draw any line 
 between man and man, and say, ' God is the Father of 
 ' all men in a certain sense, but He is really the Father 
 ' only of the converted man.' I do not find the hint of 
 any such distinctions in that prayer; I may not put 
 them there. Nay, more, there is the most emphatic 
 condemnation of such distinctions in the structure of the 
 prayer itself. Though first uttered by One who knew 
 no sin, who was Himself the object of prayer, as well as 
 its teacher and author, still it bids me pray as a sinner, 
 guilty of trespasses, ever ready to find an excuse for 
 withholding from others that forgiveness of which I daily 
 stand in need of myself; liable to fall into temptation, 
 and to become the slave of evil. It commands me — 
 shall I not say He, who had taken our nature that He 
 might redeem it from sin — He commands me ' after this 
 manner ' to pray, to put myself side by side with the 
 greatest sinner, the holiest saint, and there, one and all, 
 as men, to pray ' Our Father ! ' 
 
 But I found I could not stop there. This prayer 
 seemed to teach me that this relation to God as Our 
 Father is one utterly independent of any feelings or 
 affections of ours. ' I am in very deed His child whether 
 I know it or not, whether I care for it or not ! ' I had 
 rejected the Bible as a Divine revelation because it 
 seemed to teach me a dark, narrow, inhuman theology, 
 which I could not accept without doing violence to reason 
 and conscience. But I was compelled to ask, could con- 
 
v.] THE MESSAGE 01 THE CHURCH. 37 
 
 science or reason ask for any revelation of God broader, 
 more comprehensive than this ? Could they of them- 
 selves supply one? And to these questions I was 
 compelled to answer, No. I began to see that a theology 
 which does not correspond to the deepest thoughts and 
 feelings of human beings cannot be a true theology, but 
 that these thoughts and feelings can never be the mea- 
 sure of such a theology. It must meet the human heart 
 at all points ; it must respond alike to the demands of 
 conscience and reason ; but it may, and it will, infinitely 
 transcend them. In these words of the ' Lord's Prayer ' 
 was the opening scene to my heart of this great revela- 
 tion ; here was the foundation on which I felt I could 
 stand for time or for eternity. 
 
 Among the minor Popish superstitions with which I 
 had always believed the Church of England to be dis- 
 figured was the unseemly repetition of the Lord's 
 Prayer, one among many of the proofs of the slavish 
 subjection of the State-bound Church to the traditions 
 of the past. Brought into existence amid the early 
 throes of the Eeformation rather as a political than a 
 religious necessity, before the full clear knowledge of the 
 spiritual nature of Christ's kingdom had been attained 
 under the Puritans and their modern representatives, 
 that Church seemed to me a miserable, awkward com- 
 promise between Eomanism and Protestantism, between 
 ritualism and spiritualism. And, as the necessary 
 result of her unhallowed connexion with the State, she 
 was compelled to remain where Parliament first put her, 
 like a huge petrifaction — imposing in form, but devoid 
 
38 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 of all life and sympathy with tlie busy world around. 
 What I had ridiculed as a superstition I now began to 
 venerate as a blessed witness for an eternal truth. And I 
 soon found that this Lord's Prayer occupied no accidental 
 position in the Liturgy, that it cohered with all the other 
 teaching of the Prayer-Book, shedding its divine radiance 
 over the whole of the Church's life. 
 
 The Baptismal service — that service to which Noncon- 
 formists have ever referred as the undeniable evidence of 
 the Popish tendencies of the Anglican Church — that 
 service which those clergymen in the Church, technically 
 described by the word 'Evangelical,' are compelled 
 to use with silent misgivings and earnest prayers that 
 relief from its bondage may soon be granted — for the 
 alteration of which an agitation has recently been 
 attempted — now stood forth bright and beautiful in the 
 light reflected on it from the prayer taught by our 
 Saviour Himself to His disciples. 
 
 The Church, I had been taught to believe, was a 
 society of faithful men gathered out of the world, fluc- 
 tuating day by day with new gains and losses or trans- 
 ferences from the Church on earth to that in heaven. 
 At the solemn season of conversion we become membei-s 
 of the Church. Previous to that time, we were out of 
 all relation to God, or to His Church ; tlien we are made 
 the children of God, we are permitted and invited to 
 call Him 'our Father.' According to this view, the 
 starting-point of life is a state of alienation from God. 
 The Lord's Prayer, the parable of the prodigal son, and 
 afterwards the whole of the Bible, seemed and still 
 
v.] THB MESSAGE OP THE CHURCH. 39 
 
 seems to me, to teach precisely the opposite doctrine. 
 We are God's children, members of His Church, inhe- 
 ritors of His kingdom ; and we are in this position 
 Independently of our feelings or affections — nay, in spite 
 of them. This Is the starting-point of all life, all educa- 
 tion, all hope for each individual man, all fellowship 
 between men ; and this I take to be the plain, simple, 
 and glorious meaning of the baptismal service. The 
 hirth and education of my children have translated this 
 doctrine out of the region of theory and opinion into 
 that of daily life and hope. That sacred relationship 
 which unites me to them is but the type and shadow 
 of that deeper and more hallowed relationship uniting 
 both them and myself to our Father. The doctrine of 
 Grod the Father, and God the Son, which once seemed 
 so hard, is now no more a doctrine, but the explanation 
 and foundation of the family life of earth ; of yours, 
 reader — of mine — of every man's ; and the doctrine of 
 God the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the 
 Son, the author and sustainer of all spiritual life among 
 men, is the complete revelation of the Divine ground 
 on which all created beings stand, in which they all find 
 their one eternal centre and home. The responsibilities 
 of fatherhood, its duties, its principles, have seemed 
 more awful, and yet more precious, as I have stood with 
 my own children at the baptismal font. No service 
 of the Church, I believe, is more wonderfully calculated 
 to raise a man above himself — above his doubts, and 
 difficulties, and contradictions — than the baptismal ser- 
 vice ; because none appeals more directly to his deepest 
 
40 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 feelings as a man, or his holiest hopes as a father ; none 
 brings home to his heart more forcibly the glorious 
 message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ ; none helps him 
 more fully to understand the meaning of these simple 
 words, ' our Father.' 
 
 It may be worth while to dwell for a moment longer 
 on these two contrasted modes of thought, lying, as ther 
 do, at the very foundation of two distinct systems, net 
 only of theology, but of life. The one says, that at a, 
 certain crisis of life I become a member of God's family: 
 the other says, that I am already/ a member of that 
 family, and that at the crisis of conversion I return to 
 my rightful state in the home and family of my heavenly 
 Father. If the former be the true representation, it is 
 clear that my connexion with God as my Father is not 
 so close, so real as that with our earthly parent. The 
 Church is not a family in the same sense in which the 
 brothers and sisters in one house are. I am the son of 
 a certain father before I know it ; I take my place in 
 the family circle before the dawn of reason, or even of 
 consciousness ; all my associations and education assume 
 this fact; I grow into it, and my earliest affections 
 instinctively twine around those dear ones whose name 
 I bear, and whose nature I share. I may become a 
 member of a society, of a joint-stock company, of a club, 
 but I cannot become the member of any family by any 
 act of my own will ; this place is taken for me, not by 
 me. If, then, I am to be described as lecoming God's 
 child by any act of mine, by any change in my feelings, 
 whatever be the agency by which that change is effected, 
 
v.] THE MUSSAQE OF TEE CHURCH. 41 
 
 of being admitted into the Clnirch by any determination 
 of my will, my connexion with God and with His 
 Church is not, I repeat, so close, so real, as that with 
 my earthly family. I cannot say God is my Father in 
 the same sense in, which I can claim that relationship 
 with a human being. And it is a fact, that those Dis- 
 senters who openly object to and disayow the baptismal 
 teaching of the Church, and that those clergymen 
 who, though they are bound to use that service, do so 
 with many compunctions of conscience which they 
 are at no pains to conceal, represent God far more 
 emphatically as a Sovereign than &, Father. This ' filial 
 relationship,' says one of the most eminent living 
 Scotch divines, 'in which we are supposed to stand 
 ' simply as creatures to God as our Father,' is ' a rela- 
 ' tionship for which, unless it be in some very vague 
 ' and figurative sense, I find no warrant, either in reason, 
 ' or in conscience, or in Scripture.' ^ 
 
 But if the doctrine of the Church of England be in 
 very deed a faithful transcript of the Scripture revela- 
 tion, then the whole aspect of our family life on earth 
 is sanctified and hallowed, because it is seen to stand 
 on a Divine ground, to spring from a Divine root. The 
 numerous families of earth, each and all, find their 
 centre in the Church as the family of God. 
 
 It was when I had realized this baptismal teaching 
 as the very foundation of all the Church's teaching, it 
 
 ' Dr. Candlish. — Lecture at Exeter Hall, February, 1834. Published 
 among the Lectures delivered to the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
 ciation, 
 
42 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 was then, and not until then, that I could reconcile that 
 conflicting consciousness respecting sin of which I have 
 already spoken ; it was then, and not until then, that 
 I could realize the enormity and exceeding sinfulness of 
 sin. On no point, I believe, is the popular theological 
 teaching of the day, that of orthodox Dissenters and of 
 evangelical clergymen, more vitally defective than on 
 this very question of sin. Judging from the vehemence 
 of their denunciations, one might imagine that they could 
 not fail to produce in the minds of their hearers the 
 most dreadful apprehensions of its heinousness. They 
 make sin the foundation of their whole teaching, on 
 which alone the noble superstructure of Christian truth 
 is to stand. ' They look upon it as the violation of the 
 ' decrees of an omnipotent Being who has affixed an 
 ' infinite penalty to the commission of it.' The Bible 
 and the Church, I think, look upon it as the contradic- 
 tion of the Divine nature ; as a separation from one who 
 is Himself love ; who has acknowledged us as His 
 children, members of His Son, inheritors of His king- 
 dom ; who has given unto us His Spirit, that we may be 
 made daily like unto Him. The doctrine of original 
 sin has been, and still will be, a stumbling-block to 
 many an inquiring spirit. ' It is a hard thing to think 
 ' there is a " corruption naturally engendered in the 
 ' offspring of Adam," hard, undoubtedly, because facts 
 • are hard.' This surely is no new revelation. The 
 blurred and blotted page of history, the sad and secret 
 records of eacli man's consciousness bear fearful testi- 
 mony to the truth of this statement ; but the Bible and 
 
v.] THE MESSAGE OF TEE CHURCH. 43 
 
 the Church explain to us those other facts of conscious- 
 ness which seem to he at variance with this appaUing 
 sense of sin. They tell us that God's Spirit is ever 
 striving within us against this sin ; that though our 
 Adapi-nature is totally corrupt, there is within us some- 
 thing higher than that nature ; that by yielding to our 
 own nature, we are transgressing the very law of our 
 existence ; we are resisting Grod's Holy Spirit ; we are 
 wilfully shutting out God's light and love. Does this 
 doctrine explain away and palliate the heinousness of 
 sin ? Does it not rather make it more real, more awful ? 
 The consciousness of every man who has not succeeded 
 in utterly and finally quenching God's Spirit within 
 him, does bear distinct and unceasing evidence of natural 
 corruption and depravity ; but it also bears witness with 
 equal persistency and equal clearness to the existence of 
 something within which is not sin ; something which 
 is not his own; something — call it by what name we 
 will — which the Church teaches us to call the gift of 
 the Holy Spirit. She assumes that each man has 
 received this gift, and that from that source ' all holy 
 desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed.' 
 The teaching of the baptismal service, the claiming God 
 as our Father, the union with Him and with His Son 
 through the Spirit, is the one glorious principle which 
 unites, explains, and permeates the whole Liturgy ; and 
 just because she lays this down as the fundamental fact 
 on which all her teaching is based, her first fact of united 
 worship in which she calls us to engage is that of con- 
 fession of sin. It is as children — children who had erred 
 
44 TRACTS FOB PRIJESTS AND PWFLB. [No. 
 
 and strayed from God's ways ; children to whom God 
 had given the Holy Spirit ; children who had been 
 surrounded by all the privileges and blessings of our 
 Father's home; — it is thus that the whole congregation, 
 priests as well as people, the highest and the lowest, the 
 holiest and the vilest, have to unite in the solemn act 
 of confession to their ' Almighty and most merciful 
 Father.' 
 
 It is to such beings as these, erring, wayward children 
 of a Heavenly Father, that the Life and Work of Christ, 
 as the Incarnate God, the Son of Man, 'the Lord of 
 ' men, the King of their spirits, the Source of all the 
 ' light which ever visited them, the Person for whom all 
 ' nations longed as their real Head and Deliverer, the 
 ' root of righteousness in each man ' is presented. In 
 Him all the Church's teaching finds its eternal centre, 
 from Him all her life, the life, the hope, the strength, 
 the grace of each individual member is derived, to Him 
 all her prayers, her sacraments point. Perfect man, sub- 
 mitting to all our temptations, experiencing all our 
 weaknesses, but overcoming all ; perfect God, ' dwelling 
 in the bosom of the Father,' declaring His name, and 
 revealing His will as that of perfect Love and Righteous- 
 ness ; His incarnation becomes the central fact of human 
 history, the true basis of human society, and of indi- 
 vidual strength and holiness. In His perfect obedience 
 to His Father's will, in His completed sacrifice of Him- 
 self on the cross, in His finished victory over sin and 
 death and hell, is found the all-sufficient atonement for 
 the sins of man. His Cross is the meeting-place between 
 
v.] THE MESSAOH OF THE CHURCH. 45 
 
 man and man, between man and God, where all middle 
 walls of partition are broken down ; and all in His name, 
 by virtue of His atoning sacrifice, can unite in prayer 
 and praise as the redeemed children of their Heavenly 
 Father. Thus the atonement is the fulfilment of 
 the Church's Baptismal teaching, or rather, it is the 
 Divine ground on which that teaching is based. It is by 
 the works and words, the life and death of Jesus Christ, 
 that we are assured that God is really our Father ; it is 
 only through the revelation of the Son that we can 
 know the unchanging love and righteousness of the 
 Father. 
 
 If the Church has thus taught me to look upon the 
 family as a sacred thing, it has also taught me to look 
 upon the Nation in a far different light from that in which 
 I had been accustomed to view it. I began to see in the 
 final revelation of the New Testament, not the contra- 
 diction or abrogation of the Old Testament, but rather 
 its fulfilment and completion. By the regular and fixed 
 lessons taken from the Old Testament, the Church has 
 taught me to see the gradual unfoldings of God's method 
 of government of the world, and His successive revela- 
 tions of Himself. I had been accustomed to look upon 
 Jewish history as exceptional, as a declaration of what all 
 other history could never be. The Jewish government 
 was theocratic. God was the revealed king and head of 
 the nation, and this very fact was alleged in proof of 
 the assertion, that God was king and head of no other 
 nation. I could no longer accept this view of any part 
 of the Bible. If that book is in any sense a revelation, 
 
46 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLK [No. 
 
 it must be the revelation, the unveiling of that which is 
 eternally true; if it is a revelation of God, I must 
 suppose it is meant to teach me what God actually is, 
 and how He governs the world, and ' orders the unruly- 
 wills and affections of sinful men.' The Jewish history 
 and polity seemed to be the explanation of all other 
 history, the unveiling of God, as the source and root of 
 all national life and unity, by whom alone all ' kings 
 reign, and princes decree justice.' This history has 
 taught me that my national and civil life is a holy 
 thing; that they who are appointed to govern are so 
 appointed as God's ministers and servants ; that the 
 nation and the Church are indissolubly united according 
 to God's eternal law ; the nation acknowledging her 
 Divine standing-ground in the Church, the Church em- 
 bracing, sustaining, hallowing the nation. It is not 
 surprising to find that Dissenters, who denounce a 
 State-Church as an ungodly thing, should neglect, 
 as they do, the connected historic teaching of the Old 
 Testament. Let me not be misunderstood. Many 
 valuable lessons of high spiritual significance, many 
 precious foreshadowings of our Saviour's work and 
 mission, are constantly drawn from that varied treasure- 
 house ; but its lessons, as foiming a regular, complete 
 history, as an integral part of God's revelation of Him- 
 self, are practically ignored. The Mosaic dispensation 
 is a 'carnal' one, destined to be obliterated by the 
 brighter glories of the spiritual dispensation of the 
 Gospel. A religious establishment was a part of that 
 carnal dispensation ; it is an eyesore and a blasphemy 
 
v.] THE message: op tee church. 47 
 
 in the freer dispensation of the Spirit. I confess the 
 Church has not taught me thus to understand the Old 
 Testament ; or if she had, the most natural comment on 
 her teachings would have been, to burn it, as a useless, 
 even a dangerous, book, setting before us principles 
 which it is dangerous to believe, and examples which it 
 is criminal to follow. I have learnt alike from Dissent- 
 ing teaching and from the Church, that its types and 
 shadows are abolished bj the Incarnation of the Son of 
 God, the fulfilment of all types,, the realization of all 
 shadows ; but I have still to learn that the very principle 
 on which the Jewish na,tion and government was based, 
 the recognition of God as the source and centre of all 
 authority and power, the very principle which that 
 nation and government was designed to teach to all men 
 and nations, has been rendered useless and dangerous by 
 any subsequent revelation. Are we, in this nineteenth 
 century, to learn the sad and humiliating lesson that 
 national life is a life without God; that governments 
 and rulers have nothing to do with the King of kings, 
 nor He with them ; that all they have to do is to obey 
 those dictates of the popular will which for the moment 
 happen to be proclaimed with the most noisy persistence ; 
 that all questions of right and truth are beyond their 
 jurisdiction ; that the Sovereign People is their highest, 
 their only God? Are we now to learn — not from 
 German neologians and philosophers, but from practical 
 orthodox Englishmen — that all which the Old Testament 
 says about God as the Head and King of the Jewish 
 nation is not true in any sense of the English nation ? 
 
48 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 Can this be the result of the agitations and heart- 
 burnings of the last thirty years, that nations may rise 
 and fall by force or fraud, as they are only of the earth, 
 earthy; that a national religion is an absurdity; that to 
 attempt in any way to connect our national life with 
 God's kingdom on earth is a violation of liberty, an 
 insult to truth, and a blasphemy against God ? 
 
 If I thus discarded my anti-state-chm-ch teaching 
 respecting the State, because it was so fearfully negative, 
 I soon found that much as I had learned from it of the 
 sacredness of the Church, I was in reality stiU further 
 removed from my teachers on the other side of the 
 question as to the meaning and nature of the Church. 
 
 The Church, I was told, was a society taken out of the 
 world especially by God — a society of believers — a 
 society whose members were penetrated and guided by 
 God's spirit; this society was the representative of 
 God's kingdom upon earth. This, indeed, sounds well ; 
 but practically the society is split up into innumerable 
 divisions — each distinguished by a set of opinions more 
 or less clearly defined ; these opinions are the real badge 
 of separation from the world and from one another. 
 Each new opinion, as it becomes more distinct and more 
 clearly defined, becomes the foundation of a new sect, 
 each sect claiming the title of ' Church.' I am far-, 
 very far, from wishing to imply that the religion of Dis- 
 senters is a religion of opinions merely. I believe that 
 there are numbers of them — numbers far gTcater than 
 their most sanguine advocates could ever dare to hope — 
 of whom it will be found that their life has indeed ' been 
 
v.] THE MESSAQB OF THE CHURCH. 49 
 
 hid witli Christ in God,' that faith in the Son of God 
 has been their stay, their hope, their life. But the 
 position and existence of each sect is determined by 
 opinions, and opinions only. These opinions are the 
 test of admission to their communion, the bond which 
 binds the different members of the body together in one 
 ' denomination.' The assumption which lies at the root 
 of all this teaching, and which has come out with marked 
 prominence in the Anti-State-Church controversy, is 
 this— that ' Religion is simply and solely a matter 
 between a man's soul and God.' Against this assump- 
 tion, as a Churchman, I am bound most earnestly to 
 protest, as a weak and miserable exhibition of what the 
 Gospel has done and is designed to do for man. Religion 
 — especially the Christian religion — has to do with every 
 element of any life. And how much of that life is really 
 and strictly individual? how much belongs to myself 
 alone ? I was the member of a certain family ; I had 
 entered into the relations of son and brother before I was 
 capable of thought ; each new step in life has brought 
 me into some n«w relationship: just as my life has 
 become deeper and fuller, it has become less individual. 
 Am I to say that my Christian profession inverts a,ll 
 this; that it proceeds on a totally different principle; 
 that it claims directly only that part of me which belongs 
 to myself alone, and influences only indirectly that far 
 deeper part of me which binds me to the men around? 
 On this point the Church speaks out with no doubtful or 
 faltering tone. In that solemn Tjaptismal rite in which 
 we were made members of Christ, we were also made 
 
50 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 members one of another. With all our diverse and often 
 opposing sentiments and opinions, still all are members 
 of the one Divine family ; all unite in the worship of the 
 One Common Father ; all approach Him through the One 
 Elder Brother; all are sealed by the One Spirit; all 
 washed by the waters of one baptismal tide ; all invited 
 to unite in one Holy Communion. In this highest act 
 of earthly service, that which is most universal is found 
 to be most individual : here, where the Church excludes 
 none, save those who have excluded themselves, where 
 all are invited to come, each communicant is reminded 
 most solemnly of his individual responsibilities as a 
 member of the universal Church. I have said that 
 opinions about God the Father, or about His Son Jesus 
 Christ, or about the Holy Spirit, or about some Christian 
 doctrine, are the tests of admission to communion among 
 the various Dissenting bodies. For instance, in many 
 ' churches ' of the Baptist denomination no man, however 
 holy his life, can be admitted to the 'Lord's Table,' 
 unless he holds certain views about the mode of baptism, 
 and about its limitation to adults. The Church invites 
 all to partake of the eucharistic feast who are willing to 
 acknowledge God as their Father; who, though con- 
 scious of ' manifold sins and wickedness, which they from 
 time to time most grievously have committed,' rest in 
 the finished Atonement of His Son; who believe that 
 God's Holy Spirit has really been given to them to 
 enable them to overcome the world, the flesh, and the 
 devil. Though, as a layman, I have not been called 
 upon to express any formal belief in the Articles, yet I 
 
v.] THE MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH. 51 
 
 cannot be too thankful for the protection which the 
 twenty-sixth Article affords me against the narrowness, 
 the prejudices, the moral unfitness of the administering 
 priest: — 'Although in the visible Church the evil be 
 ' ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil 
 ' have chief authority in the ministration of the Word 
 ' and Sacraments, yet forasmuch as they do not the same 
 ' in their own name, but in Christ's, and do minister by 
 ' His commission and authority, we may use their 
 ' ministry both in hearing the Word of God, and in 
 ' receiving of the Sacraments. Neither is the effect of 
 ' Christ's ordinance taken away by their wickedness, 
 ' nor the grace of God's gifts diminished from such as by 
 ' faith and rightly do receive the Sacraments ministered 
 ' unto them : which be effectual, because of Christ's 
 ' institution and promise, although they be ministered 
 * by evil men.' 
 
 The Sacraments of Holy Baptism and the Lord's 
 Supper owe all their deep significance, their life-giving 
 power, only to Him who is their centre and ground — 
 Jesus Christ. No clergyman has the right or power to 
 impose any convictions or prejudices of his between the 
 communicant and the Church's ever-living Head. The 
 creed which bids us believe in God the Father Al- 
 mighty, in His only Son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy 
 Ghost, is our deliverance from the fleeting forms and 
 traditions of human opinion — the deliverance from the 
 sectarian passions and bigotries of our own hearts. 
 
 Many hearts are now crying out for a broader, more 
 comprehensive Church, Is not the narrowness, the 
 
 e2 
 
52 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 exclusiveness of which they complain so bitterly, the 
 reflection of their own confused misapprehensions and 
 dark notions of the Church, and of her glorious mes- 
 sage? She speaks to me as a human being, as the 
 member of a family, of a nation ; she speaks to me as 
 burdened with the consciousness of sin, and as no less 
 burdened with the haunting, often crushing conviction 
 that I was meant to be something far different from 
 that; as possessed of a power to resist and overcome sin 
 — of a power not my own, which the moment I claim 
 it for myself, slips from my gTasp ; she tells me that 
 God Himself is seeking me; that He has sent His 
 only-begotten Son to take my nature, to die for me — ^to 
 go down into the dark grave, to grapple with the foes 
 who were claiming me as their own, and to overcome 
 them, and to claim me as His own, to be my Lord and 
 King; that He has given me His blessed Spirit to 
 dwell in me, the source of all righteousness, the bond 
 of all fellowship, the guide of my understanding, the 
 strength of my life. What message can be broader, 
 more comprehensive, and yet more searching, more 
 humbling, more distinctively Christian than this ? Can 
 rationalism, can the latest and most approved form of 
 German or English neology give us any message better 
 than this? Nay, is it not this for which all earnest 
 rationalism is but the confused cry ? We may refute 
 it over and over again ; we may denounce it ; religious 
 newspapers may trace it in its faintest embryo, and seek 
 to crush it ere it is ushered into life ; we may expose its 
 arrogance, unmask its sophisms, draw its premises to 
 
¥.] THE MESSd&E OF THE CHURCH. 53 
 
 their logical conclusions, and then hold thens, up in 
 horror; but we cannot drive it out of human hearts, 
 except by pointing them to Him for whom they are 
 seeking. We may use the Bible as an armoury of 
 texts, of which we can avail ourselves with unexampled 
 dexterity, and draw them forth to hurl at our foes ; but 
 never, by this method, shall we turn our foes into friends 
 — never shall we teach them to see and feel how blessed 
 and glorious, how fitted for human hearts, the revelation 
 of that Bible is. What our arguments and denuncia- 
 tions cannot do, I believe the simple, earnest, hearty 
 deliverance of the Church's message will eifect. Taking 
 our stand upon her practice, listening to and believing 
 the message she brings to us in the different stages and 
 circumstances of life, beginning with the baptismal font, 
 and ending in this ■^orld by the dying bed and the open 
 grave, I believe we may meet Rationalists on the one 
 hand, and Dissenters on the other, and invite all in God's 
 name to unite in one Christian home, in one Common 
 J*rayer, in one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. 
 
 But there is still another class, larger than either that 
 of Kationalists or Dissenters, to which the Church'iS 
 message has been, and may still be brought home with 
 Divine power — the great outlying world around — the 
 poor, the outcast, the negligent — the men immersed in 
 money- getting, the women to whom life ig all one ever- 
 lasting round of fashion and frivolity. 
 
 The Church, as I have said, speaking from my own 
 experience, has taught me to look upon family, social, 
 and national life as gacred institutions, each finding 
 
54 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 their centre in God. These various relations of life 
 belong equally to the most worldly as to the most saint- 
 like men. What, then, is the distinction between the 
 Church and the world ? ' The world contains the 
 ' elements of which the Church is composed. In the 
 
 * Church these elements are penetrated by a uniting, 
 ' reconciling power. The Church is, therefore, human 
 ' society in its normal state ; the world, that same 
 
 * society irregular and abnormal. The world is the 
 ' Church without God ; the Church is the world restored 
 ' to its relation with God, taken back by Him into the 
 ' state for which He created it.' 
 
 Of course, to those who, whether in the Church, or 
 openly dissenting from her, reject her baptismal teaching, 
 who maintain that it is a ' soul-destroying delusion ' to 
 believe that baptized children have received the Holy 
 Spirit, who address mankind generally as in a state of 
 alienation from God, this representation of the dis- 
 tinction between the Church and the world seems very 
 unsatisfactory, very mystical, very unsound. They 
 make the Church the separate exclusive element ; they 
 describe men as leaving the world, and joining them- 
 selves to a separate and distinct society; and thus 
 becoming members of God's Church, and entitled to 
 call Him Father. The convert thus coming out of the 
 world, takes up entirely a new position, one which did 
 not in any way belong to him as a man, or as a member " 
 of a family. His earthly relationships are simply of the 
 earth, earthy ; they are . no integral part of the new 
 Christian position which he has been led to assume ; 
 
v.] THE MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH, 55 
 
 they have nothing to do with him specifically as a 
 believer. Of course, as an earnest Christian, he will 
 do all he can to influence those around him, to bring 
 them to the, foot of that same cross at which he has 
 found pardon and peace ; but his position as a member 
 of a Christian Church has nothing to do with his 
 position as a member of a family or a nation; The 
 latter class of relationships belong to the dispensation of 
 nature, the former to the dispensation of grace; the 
 latter belong to him as a man, the former belong to him 
 as a Christian. Henceforth his life must run as it were 
 in two parallel directions : the human, with all the 
 claims of home, country, kindred, friends ; the spiritual, 
 with all the hopes, the conflicts, the joys, the fears, 
 involved in the Christian life ; the human centering in 
 and resting upon earth, the spiritual centering in and 
 (resting upon God. Seeing how deep and heroic a 
 faith often springs out of this representation of the 
 relation of the Church and world, it were hard indeed 
 to deny that there must be in it some truth, some power 
 of moulding the heart. But receiving as the very 
 foundation of all hope for the life that now is, and for 
 that which is to come, the baptismal teaching of the 
 Church of England ; believing it a glorious truth, which 
 I must cling to, despite of all the waywardness and 
 contradictions of my own heart — despite all the mis- 
 representations and denunciations of Churchmen and 
 Dissenters — that I have actually received the gift of 
 God's Spirit, that every baptized child has received that 
 precious gift ^ I cannot find any rest for my spirit in any 
 
56 . TBAGTS IVB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 Chiirch which stands so related, or rather, should I not 
 say — unrelated to my whole human life. And sure JE 
 am that this statement of the contrast between the 
 Church and the world has caused, and still continues to 
 cause, no small amount of disquiet to many hearts. It 
 is a terrible thing to have to learn that the bond which 
 binds us to one another in the same household is only an 
 earthly one; it is a difficult thing to learn that the 
 bond which binds us to the members of the same Church 
 is more sacred, more spiritual, than that which binds us 
 to our own brothers and sisters, or to our children. The 
 bond that binds the different members of a Church 
 together, is a bond of opinion. So long as our opinions 
 agree, we remain members of the same Church. We 
 are members of an Independent or a Baptist Church, or 
 a Wesleyan Society, according to the varying com- 
 plexion of our opinions or the determinations of our 
 wills. The bond that binds the different members of a 
 family together, rests on a far deeper — can I resist saying? 
 — more sacred foundation. .1 thank God that it is hard, 
 terrible, impossible ever to learn these lessons — to learn 
 that a Church thus constituted is more sacred than the 
 solemn ties of home and family. 
 
 We hear much in the present day of the ' equality of 
 all religions,' as one of the blessed and desirable con- 
 summations towards which the advancing growth of 
 democracy is slowly but surely conducting us. We are 
 asked in the name of religious liberty to aid in bringing 
 about this equality. By equality of religions, we are to 
 understand equality of religious opinions ; and, we are 
 
v.] THE MESSAGE 9F THE CHURCH. 5/ 
 
 asked if it is just tliat one set of opinions about episco- 
 pacy, about the use of liturgies, about the sacraments, 
 or saints' days, should have and enjoy any favour or 
 pre-eminence over another. If this really were the 
 question, no man, however great his love for the Church, 
 could, I think, hesitate to swell the cry. But this is 
 not the question. Under the plausible pretext of liberty 
 and equality, we are asked to destroy that Church which 
 alone bears witness to the sacredness of our whole life. 
 We are asked to destroy that platform — the revelation 
 of God as the Head and King of the nation, as the 
 Guide and Teacher, the Redeemer and Sanctifier of 
 each individual man — on which alone national unity 
 and liberty can stand. We are asked to make our 
 Christian religion no longer the acceptance of a Divine 
 revelation to us ; but the transcript, the ever-varying 
 and confused transcript, of each man's changing feelings 
 and opinions about that revelation. From such liberty 
 and equality my prayer shall ever be, 'Good Lord, 
 deliver this beloved England of ours.' 
 
 Every baptized child is required previous to con- 
 firmation to learn the catechism, in which he is taught 
 to say that * he heartily thanks his Heavenly Father 
 * that He hath called him to this state of salvation, 
 ' through Jesus Christ his Saviour : and he prays 
 ' nnto God to give him His grace, that he may 
 ' continue in the same unto his life's end.' To be 
 a Christian, then, according to the Church's teaching, is 
 to be in the right state for which each man was created. 
 It is not the adoption of a new position nor of new 
 
58 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 opinions, but simply believing, not with Lis lips only, 
 but with the whole energy of his life and heart, that 
 Grod has really given him His Spirit, that He has really 
 redeemed him by His Son, that He is really the ground 
 and centre of every relationship of his human life, the 
 inspirer of all holy resolutions, the source of all spiritual 
 strength, for weal or woe, for life or death. As a man 
 of the world, he enters into various relationships and 
 duties ; as a Christian, he recognises and adores God as 
 the ground and centre of each one. As a man of the 
 world, self is the great end of life ; as a Christian, God 
 is the great end. The Christian stands on no new 
 ground, in no new position ; he sees how Divine is the 
 ground on which he is already standing; how solemn 
 and sublime the position which he already occupies. 
 It is at the hour of his conversion, when first he turns 
 with sin-sti-icken conscience and bleeding heart to his 
 Father and God, that - he learns the true sanctity of 
 family and national life : the same message which brings 
 peace to his troubled spirit as a sinner, also gives him 
 new joy and hope as a man, a citizen, a father. 
 
 I have spoken of the ' darker side of Calvinism ' as 
 repelling and horrifying me in days long gone past. 
 The Church has taught me to see the blessed truth 
 underlying the darkest and dreariest representations of 
 Calvinism — that truth expressed in the words of our 
 Saviour : ' Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen 
 you.' Most assuredly the Church teaches her members, 
 by every prayer in her Liturgy, by every confession, by 
 every song of thanksgiving and praise, by every act of 
 
v.] THE MESSAOE OF THE CHURCH. 59 
 
 Holy Communion, to refer all the good that is in them, 
 all their wisdom, all their righteousness, to the Father of 
 Lights, the God of all gr^ce. She bids us refer every- 
 thing to the Divine Will ; but she has proclaimed that 
 Will to he the Will of a Loving Father, who is ever 
 seeking us ; who imparts His Spirit unto us even before 
 the dawn of consciousness or reason ; and not the Will 
 of an arbitrary— sovereign. The proclamation of the 
 Divine Fatherhood precedes and explains the proclama- 
 tion of the Divine Sovereignty. 
 
 Such has been the Church's message to my heart, — 
 such is the message, I believe, to thousands of hearts in 
 this land, — a message not borncto me in the witching 
 accents of some popular preacher, but in the Creeds, the 
 Common Prayer, the Baptismal and Communion offices 
 of the Church itself. I know too well how this message 
 is oft times darkened by the confused utterances of her 
 priests, by the misunderstandings and dissensions of her 
 people, — above all, by the darkness, the waywardness of 
 my own heart; but I pray God that all the religious 
 agitations of the present day — the movements to and 
 fro — the sounds of war and strife in her midst — the on- 
 ward march of her foes, with liberty and equality 
 inscribed on their standard, while seeking to destroy the 
 divinest witness in the nation to our true liberty and 
 equality as God's redeemed children ; that all these cir- 
 cumstances may arouse her priests to deliver that message 
 with more unfaltering earnestness, and our people to 
 accept it with more zealous and self-denying sympathy. 
 Dark days may, in God's Providence, be in store for 
 
60 TRACTS fOR PRIBSTS AND PEOPLE. [No. V. 
 
 that Church. Her foes may he permitted to succeed in 
 impairing her privileges, in diminishing her resources ; 
 those within her fold who sympathize least with that 
 part of her teaching which is most distinctive, and there- 
 fore most universal, may weaken the faith of some in 
 the teachings of her Prayer-Book ; but I firmly believe 
 that God will turn all these trials into blessings, if with 
 unshaken confidence we trust in Him ; if our hope, our 
 prayer, is ever directed to Him, to Whom we have been 
 taught, first by His own Son, and through all succeed- 
 ing ages by His Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, 
 by her offices and Sacraments, to pray : ' Our Father 
 which art in Heaven.' 
 
 B. OLATf self, AHD TAYLOR, PRItTFEliS, BRVA'D aTB££T mu. 
 
TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. 
 
 No. VI. 
 I. 
 
 A DIALOGUE ON DOUBT. 
 
 BY J. M, LUDLOW. 1 
 
 Inteblocutobs :^Grby (a safe mem). 
 
 Williams {a plam-speaJcimg mam). 
 
 G. I HEAE, Mr. Williams, you have been taking 
 some pains towards getting that poor fellow Smith out 
 of his present slough of infidelity. Do you think 
 you have produced any effect upon him? 
 
 W. I cannot say, 
 
 G. Ah! I thought not. When once such douhts 
 as his come in and are entertained, there is very little 
 hope from argument. 
 
 W. I quite agree with you. Argument very, very 
 
 seldom changes a man's mind. Still, there are many 
 
 minds that require argument, not to change them, hut 
 
 to enable them to change themselves, or rather to 
 
 admit change into themselves. They run away 
 
 with the notion that all the argument is on one side — > 
 
 1 This dialogue was intended by the author to follow two which 
 are announced on the back of this tract. It was thought advisable, 
 however, rather to publish it in its present connexion. 
 
 B 
 
2 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 i.e., against religion — and it is only by seeing that 
 there is just as much argument on the other side, that 
 they become capable of rising above argument, and 
 surrendering themselves to a higher teaching, which 
 otherwise they would have spurned at. 
 
 G. I am afraid the only chance is to fling doubt . 
 from one at its first entrance, as the Bishop of Oxford 
 says, like a loaded shell. By the way, have you read 
 his ' Two Sermons Preached before the University of 
 Oxford,' in which the striking image I have referred to 
 occurs ? That is the true way to deal with doubters. 
 
 W. The true way, certainly, to make faith easy 
 to those who only need it as a pillow to sleep on ; but 
 a very false way to meet a single honest_ doubt in a 
 single honest mind. 
 
 G. Mr. Williams ! I am astonished 
 
 W. Come, Mr. Grey, — Do you think that any man 
 fit to be called a man could ever be worked upon for any 
 good purpose by that highly-wrought picture of the 
 doubter's death ? ^ 
 
 G. What can be more impressive ? 
 
 W. Is there not many an equally impressive, and 
 almost entirely analogous passage in the discourses 
 of Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and 
 Zophar the Naamathite ? ^ 
 
 • ' The Revelation of God the Probation of Man,' by Samuel, Lord 
 Bishop of Oxford ; see p. 35. 
 
 ^ e.g. ' Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out, and the spark 
 ' of his fire shall not shine ; the light shall be dark in his tabernacle, 
 ' and his candle shall be put out with him. The steps of his strength 
 ■ shall be straitened, and his own counsel shall oast him down; for he 
 ' is oast into a net by his own feet, and he walketh upon a snare. . . . 
 
VI.] A DULOaVE ON DOUBT. 3 
 
 G. Surely you don't mean to compare the Bishop 
 of Oxford 
 
 TFi I do mean tO' say that the style of pleading 
 adopted, I will not say in the first, but in the second 
 of the sermons you refer to, is exactly the same as 
 that of those three friends of Job, against whom God's 
 wrath was kindled, because they had not spoken of Him 
 the thing that was right, as His servant Job had. There 
 is the same hardness and want of sympathy with one of 
 the most acute, I would almost say the most sacred of 
 human miseries ; the same use of threats and bullying 
 to crush struggles which need rather the tenderest help. 
 
 G. You cannot speak seriously. 
 
 W. I do speak most seriously and deliberately. 
 Tou must erase the book of Job from the Bible, and the 
 remembrance of it from human speech, before you can 
 prove that the honest doubts of a man are to be quelled 
 by any means short of that of raising his troubled spirit 
 into the higher sphere of a wisdom, and justice, and 
 power in which he and all the universe lie folded. 
 
 G. "What do you mean by ' honest doubt ? ' Surely 
 you cannot intend that a man should cherish every 
 crotchet that comes into his head, and think himself a 
 Job for his pains ? 
 
 W. By honest doubt I mean simply the sincere 
 struggling of a mind for the truth, even when that truth 
 
 ' Terrors shall make him afraid on every side, and shaU drive him to 
 'his feet. . . . Hia confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and 
 ' it shall bring him to the king of terrors. . . . He shall be driven from 
 ' light into darkness, and chased out of the world.' — Job xviii. v. 5 and 
 following. 
 
 b2 
 
4 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 seems to come to it in the most portentous form. Nor 
 will that struggle, if sincere, ever be one for a mere 
 intellectual, but for a moral trutb. Honest doubt is, in 
 short, at bottom, moral doubt — not doubt respecting the 
 certain or imcertain, but doubt respecting good and evil. 
 That was the doubt of Job, the doubt of David, the 
 doubt of Jeremiah, the doubt of almost every one of the 
 heroes of the Old Testament. That doubt — which, I 
 say, is a sacred agony of man's nature — though ordained 
 bishops and ranting itinerants may rail at it and bid us 
 with threats to drive it out, the Scripture all through 
 treats with the utmost tenderness, never attempts to 
 terrify it, but only meets it with a fuller revelation of 
 God's nature and His counsels. 
 
 (r. Of course there is doubt and doubt. The 
 Bishop of Oxford himself speaks of those doubts which, 
 ' instead of being the resource of evil, are the trouble of 
 ' holy souls ; ' which, ' whether the result of a peculiar 
 ' constitution of body or of mind, or the fruit of an 
 ' unhappy training, or the bitter consequences of past 
 ' sin, rise unbidden,' and ' need the tenderest care, and 
 ' the wisest and most loving discipline.' 
 
 W. I deny altogether that the doubt I speak of is 
 either ' the result of a peculiar constitution,' or ' the fi-uit 
 ' of an unhappy ti-aining,' or ' the bitter consequence of 
 ' past sin.' I say distinctly it is an agony of human 
 nature, in its noblest, most typical embodiments. Take 
 Job, take Asaph,' take Jeremiah,^ where will you find 
 
 1 See Psalms Ixxlii, Isxiv, Ixxvii, Ixxix, IsxxiL 
 ^ See Chapters xii, sir, xv, xx, or Lam. iii. 
 
VI.] A mAwav:E on boubt. 5 
 
 men more devoid of ' peculiarities,' less warped bj 
 ' unhappy training,' less polluted by ' past sin? ' Take 
 David, and see wlietber the psalms through which that 
 feeling rings are not precisely those which are freest 
 from the burthen of remembered sin.''^ 
 
 G. But do you mean to say that doubt is not in 
 its nature sinful? 
 
 W. Wilful doubt of course is — ^T mean the raking 
 up of questions in one's own mind as to whether good 
 is good, and evil evil ; whether truth is truth, and false- 
 hood falsehood. But the doubt which is forced upon 
 US by the weight and pressure of the outward contra- 
 dictions of this fallen world — the whole Bible, I say, 
 declares that that doubt is no sin, but the trial by fire of 
 God's own children. They may look back upon it as 
 ' foolishness ' or ' ignorance ' when once fi-eed from it, 
 but they only free themselves from it by facing it, and 
 going into the ' sanctuary of God ' to wrestle it off. 
 
 G. It may be that in the dim light of the older 
 economy such doubts as you speak of were not accounted 
 to sin in the holy men whom the Bible speaks of; but 
 in the full light of the Christian dispensation surely it 
 must be otherwise. 
 
 W. Nay. You must take down the cross from 
 Calvary before you can convict earnest doubt of sin. 
 ' My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? ' — 
 such is its final consecration. He who was tempted in 
 all things like as we are, yet without sin, endured it, 
 and that holy agony is bound up for ever with the very 
 
 ^ See for instance, Psalms x, xlir. 
 
6 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 fulfilment of man's salvation. When we can once 
 enter into the reality of that awful mystery, the Son of 
 God, for man's sake, doubting God Himself, we shall 
 feel that to try to stifle doubt by death-bed terrors is to 
 crucify the Lord afresh. 
 
 G. You must be aware that very different interpreta- 
 tions have been put on the mysterious words you refer to. 
 
 W, I am aware of it. No man who starts by treating 
 doubt as sin can ever dare to realize those words in their 
 awful fulness and simplicity. No candid child can ever 
 take them in any other sense than that awfully simple 
 one. So read, they are but the crowning anguish of 
 that inward Passion of doubt, if I may so call it, that 
 hidden struggle which must have accompanied our 
 Lord's whole work upon earth, into which the Scripture 
 only affords to us a few glimpses, according to the 
 various stages of its development; first, the doubt re- 
 specting His own mission, as exemplified through the 
 temptation in the wilderness ; next, the doubt as to His 
 own capacity to fulfil that mission, first clearly exhibited 
 in the answer to Andrew and Philip as the spokesmen of 
 the Greeks ; ^ then unveiled in all its terror in the various 
 narratives of the struggle in Gethsemane ; lastly, the 
 doubt beyond which there is nothing, that doubt on the 
 cross as to there being any help for Him in God. 
 
 G. It is quite impossible for me to follow you in 
 such speculations. They seem to me to run directly 
 in the teeth of St. Paul's saying, that 'whatsoever is not 
 of faith is sin.' 
 
 1 John xii. 27. 
 
VI.] A DIALOGUE ON DOUBT. 7 
 
 W. But the doutt I am referring to is full of faith. 
 It is precisely that douht which justifies the golden lines 
 of our poet — 
 
 ' There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds.' 
 
 The fact is, honest doubt is impossible without faith. 
 Why is it that though Job had darkened counsel by 
 words without knowledge, yet he had spoken of God 
 the thing that was right, which his three friends had 
 not ? Why, but because through all his most passionate 
 pleadings against God's seeming injustice there runs 
 nevertheless a rooted ineradicable faith that He must be 
 just, that the Judge of all the earth must do right. That 
 it is precisely which gives him, and Jeremiah, and David, 
 and Asaph, such courage to plead with God, to fling, so 
 to speak, in His face the contradictions of life, the riddles 
 of the universe, to upbraid Him as it were with what 
 they feel at the time as His desertion of them. ' Eigh- 
 ' teous art Thou, O Lord, when I plead with Thee, yet 
 ' let me talk with Thee of Thy judgments : Wherefore 
 ' doth the way of the wicked prosper ? ' — sueh, to use 
 the words of Jeremiah, is their constant controversy. 
 They know very well that He, the God of truth, 
 will not punish them or be wroth with them for 
 thus struggling to reach the truth of what seems 
 a fearful and bewildering lie. And so that supreme 
 doubt on the cross is equally at bottom but a cry of 
 the deepest faith. It witnesses to earth and heaven, 
 to all time and to all eternity, that there is a God, 
 
8 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PHOPLE. [No. 
 
 and that this God is One who belongs to the most 
 apparently deserted sufferer, who is his own, to whom 
 he can always cry, ' My God, my God.' It witnesses 
 that that God is just, and One whose nature forhids 
 Him to forsake the sufferer, else would the sufferer not 
 cry to Him that he is forsaken. It witnesses that in 
 the depths of His counsel alone is hidden the cause of 
 suffering, else would the sufferer cry to some other his 
 torturing why. 
 
 G. Once more ; I do not pretend to follow you in 
 your present path. But you must allow me to warn you, 
 that there is already far too much doubt in the world, 
 without your encouraging it by a sort of canonization. 
 
 W. So far from thinking that there is too much 
 doubt — of the kind I am speaking of, honest, earnest, 
 righteous doubt — in the world, I don't think there is 
 half enough. 
 
 G. Why, I have heard you lament youi-self the 
 absence of positive faith amongst our young men. 
 
 W. Certainly ; the absence of positive faith and of 
 righteous doubt are exactly correlative ; they are twin 
 symptoms of the same decadence. I hardly know one 
 young man who has strength and courage enough for righ- 
 teous doubt. There is plenty of indifference, plenty of 
 denial, plenty of cool passing by of whatever cannot be 
 understood, plenty of complacent setting up or adoption 
 of new philosophical theories, but of the resolute struggle 
 for truth very little. Perhaps it has been undergone 
 once on some subordinate point, and the result having 
 been that the truth has been found to dwell outside 
 
VI.] A BIALOGVE ON DOUBT. 9 
 
 of some preconceived opinion, the conclusion has teen 
 come to that it dwells, prohahly, outside of all received 
 opinions, and that from the moment one has left these, 
 anything that looks like truth 'may very likely be true, 
 so that it is no longer worth struggling with. If Comte 
 or Eenan, or any other of our ruling philosophers, had 
 had half the courage to doubt their own systems, as 
 they probably have had to doubt the systems in which 
 they had been brought up, how different would be the 
 result of their labours ! 
 
 G. Then, according to you, the prevalent evil of the 
 age is not doubt ? 
 
 W. I hold it to be rather the prevalence and mul- 
 tiplication of all manner of lazy beliefs in the easily 
 credible ; or again, in either the credible or incredible, 
 so long as neither makes much demand on men's 
 hearts and conduct. The state of mind, I take it, which 
 is thus shown, is one closely analogous to that which 
 was exhibited in the multiplication of gods at and after 
 the Christian era, when all received beliefs sat loosely 
 on men, and they were always ready to receive new 
 ones with the old, or instead of them, so long as the 
 change required was one of formulas or ceremonies only, 
 and not of the life itself, In such a state of mind a 
 setter up of a new philosophy, as of old the setter forth 
 of strange gods, is sure of a curious hearing. He who 
 simply seeks to unveil the name, and nature, and pur- 
 pose, and will of the Unknown God and Father, is 
 treated as a mere babbler. 
 
 G. And what do you think will all this lead to ? 
 
10 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 W. I think the issue must be precisely the same in 
 the nineteenth, and prohably the next century, as it 
 was in the first and following centuries — the fall of all 
 the new philosophic idols, as of the old religious ones, 
 before One whose name is King of Kings, and Lord 
 of Lords. 
 
VI.] MOBALIir AND DIVINITY. 11 
 
 II. 
 
 MORALITY AND DIVINITY. 
 
 BY THE RET. F. D. MAUEIOE. 
 
 A PAMPHLET appeared atout two months ago in 
 Oxford, bearing this title, The Suppression of Doubt is 
 not Faith. A Letter to the Bishop of Oxford on his two 
 Sermons, entitled, ' The Revelation of God the Proba- 
 tion of Man.' By A Layman. The subject is one of 
 permanent interest. The author criticised is the most 
 eloquent of modern divines. The critic represents a 
 widely diffused lay feeling. Pamphlets have appeared 
 in answer to the Layman, He has rejoined. The 
 controversy, which has risen out of that concerning the 
 ' Essays and Reviews,' may continue when they are for- 
 gotten. 
 
 Upon the main question — the innocence or sinfulness 
 of doubt — I shall not enter at present. A subordinate 
 question which is inseparable from it, and is not less 
 important, is suggested in the following passage. 
 
 'The present crisis is, no doubt, a dangerous one. 
 ' It owes its dangerous character mainly to the injurious 
 ' action of the Established Church in checking the course 
 ' of opinion, which, if left to itself, would flow quietly 
 ' and calmly, but which, when dammed up, acquires 
 ' unnatural force and fury. Yet the state of affairs is 
 
12 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND FWBL'E. [No. 
 
 ' not quite so tad as your Lordship seems to suppose. 
 ' The agony of alarm which thrills through your 
 ' Sermons arises, I trust, from an exaggerated view of 
 'the peril — not, perhaps, as it affects the Anglican 
 ' Episcopate, but as it affects the mass of Christians. I 
 ' wish you were in a position to see and admit that 
 'the "creeds and confessions drawn up by men," the 
 ' " Church's terminology," and the " authoritative decla- 
 ' rations of the faith," whether they or any of them be 
 ' true or false, stand on a very different footing from the 
 ' Christianity which was delivered to the hearers of the 
 ' Sermon on the Mount. I think it too probable that 
 ' very different inferences from those which you desire 
 ' to suggest will be drawn by independent minds as to 
 ' all the parts of our religion to which your warnings 
 ' and denunciations apply, and I am therefore anxious 
 ' that the range of their application should not be unduly 
 ' enlarged. You are a Bishop, and are bound to main- 
 ' tain aU that a dogmatic Chm"ch declares, by her 
 ' authority, to be matter of faith. I am a Layman, and 
 ' shall be content to preserve the religious truth by 
 ' which we live. The inevitable effect of your language, 
 ' as it appears to me, will be to taint with the deepest 
 ' suspicion every article of our belief, into which you 
 ' would scare us from inquiring. I fear this suspicion 
 ' will fall unjustly on some matters which, if fairly 
 ' inquired into, will bear the inquiry well.' 
 
 It is intimated in this passage, that the Christianity 
 which was delivered to the hearers of ' the Sermon on 
 the Mount ' will bear inquiry far better, and is a much 
 
VI.] MOBALITT AND DIVINITY. 13 
 
 more real and comprehensive bond of Communion 
 than the Creeds and Confessions, which our Church has 
 adopted. This is ' the religious truth by which' laymen 
 'live.' The others concern the 'Established Church' 
 and the Anglican Episcopate. 
 
 This sentiment is one which Clergymen ought 
 thoroughly to understand and deeply to ponder. They 
 can easily dismiss it by saying, 'We have heard all 
 that before.' No doubt they may have heard it any 
 time during the last 160 years. The doctrine to which 
 the Layman has given utterance was more prevalent in 
 the middle of the last century than it has been in our 
 centuiy. The Evangelical movements in the Church 
 and among the Dissenters, the political crisis at the 
 end of the last age, various dogmatic tendencies in 
 this, produced for some time a reaction against it. 
 But there must . be some reason for its reappearance. 
 The writer who has just adopted it, is not the least in- 
 clined to be a repeater of bygone notions and objections. 
 He connects his opinions with the most recent phases of 
 religious thought among us. We ought to find out why 
 he does so. He may not convince us that he is right ; 
 he may show us where we have been wrong. 
 
 I. 'The Christianity which was delivered to those 
 who heard the Sermon on the Mount' I am sure 
 the Layman does not intend that to remain a vague 
 phrase. He is proposing a substitute for inventions 
 of ours. He goes back to a Divine ground. He dis- 
 likes loose and rhetorical phrases. He would have us 
 consider seriously what this Christianity is; what the 
 
14 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 words of Him who spoke with 'authority and not as 
 the Scribes' really were. 
 
 Let us take His last words first; none are more 
 weighty ; none set forth better the spirit of the whole 
 discourse. 
 
 ' Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, 
 ' and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which 
 ' huiU his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and 
 ' the floods came, and the winds hlew, and beat upon that 
 ' house ; and it fell not : for it was founded upon a rock. 
 ' And every one that heareth these sayings of rnine, and 
 ' doeth them not, shall he likened unto a foolish man, which 
 ' built his house upon the sand : and the rain descended, 
 ' and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon 
 ' that house ; and it fell : and great was the fall of it, 
 ' And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, 
 ' the people were astonished at his doctrine.^ 
 
 We know from these sentences that He from whom 
 this Christianity proceeded means it to he done, not 
 talked about. It must enter into the whole life of 
 a man and a society. It must govern the whole life 
 of a man and a society. The Layman speaks of 
 ' the religious truth by which we live.' This is the 
 religious truth by which we live: the announcement 
 that any foundation which will not support acts that 
 are in conformity with Christ's words is a sandy and 
 false foundation. The Clergy should thank the Layman 
 for reminding them of this. We must all know for oui-- 
 selves how terrible the temptation is to forget it The 
 habit of talking to others, of setting before them great 
 
VI.] MORALITT AND BIVINITT. 15 
 
 duties, of telling them that if they are Christians, they 
 ought to perform them ; who is not aware of the peril 
 to our own sincerity in this ! He is a true lay preacher 
 who tells us that the religious truth hy which we live, 
 demands of us the actual fulfilment of Christ's com- 
 mands. 
 
 In the beginning of the chapter which is concluded 
 by these tremendous sentences, we have some of the 
 words which must be not only heard but done. 
 
 ' Judge not, that ye he not judged. For with what 
 judgment ye judge, ye shall he judged : and with what 
 measure ye mete, it shall he measured to you again. And 
 why heholdest thou the mote that is in thy hrother's eye, 
 hut considerest not the heam that is in thine own eye ? 
 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the 
 mote out of thine eye ; and, hehold, a heam is in thine own 
 eye ? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the heam out of thine 
 own eye ; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the 
 mote out of thy brother s eye. Give not that which is 
 holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before 
 swine, lest they should t/rample them under their feet, and 
 turn again and rend you.^ 
 These surely are not words which have passed 
 away. They do not belong to the myths which a 
 refined criticism eliminates from the Gospel. They 
 cannot be thought to have a fitness for earlier days 
 which they have not for ours. They strike at the very 
 heart of the acts, which procure us most credit among 
 our fellows, which make us most pleased with our- 
 selves. Judge not ! Why, judging is the very business 
 
16 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PWPLK [No. 
 
 of our lives, the main function of our Christianity! 
 What are we all doing, high churchmen, low church- 
 men, hroad churchmen, but passing judgment upon one 
 another ? We are very tolerant no doubt, some of us. 
 But what a cheering exercise it is to find some one else 
 out in intolerance. So that the transgression of the 
 command which issues with such awfulness from the 
 mouth of our King, which is connected with the tremen- 
 dous expression, ' Thou hypocrite,' has becomehahitual 
 to us. Every sect, every school is encouraged by its 
 religious organ to discover any fault that can be found 
 in every sect and school except its own ; to think that 
 all virtues and graces are to be found in itself. And 
 this spirit which is exhibited in those organs is diffused 
 through our whole religious society. After we have 
 complained bitterly of it in others, we find that we are 
 nursing it in our own hearts. We are angry because 
 it touches us and our friends. We take the privilege of 
 indulging it because we have suffered from it. What 
 tremendous satire does the Layman indulge in when he 
 tells us that this is the religious truth by which we live ! 
 But may it not be most salutary satire ? May it not 
 induce us to inquire how it has come to pass, that we 
 are so little doing the acts which our Lord says we 
 must do if our houses are not to fall and crush us ? 
 
 Some words occur at an earlier part of the sermon 
 to which I would refer, because they have led Professor 
 Jowett to adopt an opinion which is precisely the reverse 
 of the Layman's. 
 
 'Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.' 
 
VI.] MORALITY AND LTFINITY. 17 
 
 What a justification is here for the notion that the 
 Sermon on the Mount gathers together certain ' counsels 
 of perfection,' upon which saintly souls may form them^ 
 selves, but which have no application to the world at 
 large I I own for myself that hut for those words, I 
 should have been tempted — or rather forced — to agree 
 with Professor Jowett; those words enable me to 
 retain the older and simpler sentiment of the Layman, 
 that we have in this Sermon the universal human mo- 
 rality by which every age and every nation should live. 
 When I read those other passages which I have quoted 
 without these, and compare them with my own practice 
 and with the practice of my times, they drive me very 
 nearly to despair. I feel them to be profoundly, infinitely 
 true ; I feel them to be the truth which we most want, 
 without which I do not see there can be anything but 
 an ever-growing discord and hatred among us — a hatred 
 between sects, schools, classes, individuals, — which will 
 break through all seeming disguises and affectations, 
 and will rend the commonwealth asunder. And yet I 
 feel that the mere possession of the rules, so far 
 from enabling me to keep them, is a perpetual witness 
 against me that I do not keep them — a perpetual sore 
 and torment to my conscience if I pretend that I am 
 keeping them. It is only when I learn from this verse 
 of the Sermon, and from the whole tenor of it, that 
 there is a Father in heaven who is perfect charity and 
 love ; who, because He is that, sends His rains upon the 
 just and the unjust, the good and the evil; who, because 
 He is that, wishes to make us after His image ; it is only 
 
 c 
 
18 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 then that I can see any light through this darkness ; it is 
 only then that I know I may arise and go to this Father, 
 and tell Him how I have sinned against His children 
 and Him ; it is only then I can believe in the possibility 
 of repentance and reformation for myself, for my country, 
 for the Church. 
 
 And as I have been led back by this consideration 
 from the very natural and very sincere dogma of Pro- 
 fessor Jowett to the older and manlier creed of the 
 Layman, so I have been led still further to ask myself 
 whether, admitting the interests of practical morality to 
 be paramount to all others, I may not, for the sake of 
 those interests, be wiser to hold fast by the ancient 
 creeds which the Layman regards as a heavy biirden, 
 than to substitute for them a formal acknowledgment of 
 the ' Christianity which was delivered to those who 
 heard the Sermon on the Mount' 
 
 The main reason for preferring the latter to the 
 former is obviously this, that what is human and bears 
 directly upon human life must be more within the 
 range of human apprehension — must concern men who 
 want to act — more than any doctrines about the 
 Divine Nature. It seems self-evident to a number 
 of Laymen, and perhaps to as many Clergymen, that 
 if he who runneth is to read, the preachers of Law 
 and Gospel must desert the transcendent ground, and 
 confine themselves to rules and maxims which touch 
 upon the doings of earth. And yet experience shows 
 that, whenever this course has been followed, boors 
 have cared as little for the preacher as gentlemen. The 
 
,VI.] MORALITY AND DIVINITY. 19 
 
 Puritans in the seventeenth century, the Methodists in 
 the eighteenth, exercised an influence, as the Layman 
 will be eager to remind us, which the Establishment did 
 not exercise. But the Puritans and the Methodists 
 both ascended into the Divine region. The established 
 Clergy, in the latter period at least, kept the safe 
 earthly grormd. They spoke of the morality of the 
 Sermon on the Mount. And the courtiers, the wits in 
 the clubs, the lacqueys, the fine ladies, did not trouble 
 themselves about the Sermon on the Mount. The 
 people generally never supposed that what was said in 
 learned sermons could concern them. Till they were 
 told that God cared for them, and had sent His Son to 
 redeem them, and His Spirit to sanctify them, the notion 
 of not judging others, of not rendering evil for evil, of 
 doing their alms in secret, of believing that they should 
 be more cared for than the ravens, was utterly strange 
 to their minds. The words were not disagreeable, 
 because they suggested no duty or course of action ; 
 they signified nothing. 
 
 And any one who knows what this Methodist 
 preaching was, will be aware that it did not only 
 or chiefly refer to a Father. It spoke much more 
 of a Son, It -connected all thought of the Father 
 with a Son. It told ignorant men that they could 
 not come to the Father but through the Son, who had 
 taken their flesh, and died for them. And if those 
 preachers did not always say, as that ' party leadet ' 
 .Athanasius would have taught them to say, that what 
 was true of the Father was also true of the Son— if they 
 
 c2 
 
20 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 sometimes represented the Son as very different from the 
 Father, as much more gracious than the Father — I am not 
 aware that they helped the cause of practical morality 
 much by this departure from orthodoxy. I apprehend 
 that it was precisely this departure which led them to 
 exhibit God according to some notions of their own, 
 often injurious and immoral notions. Instead of being 
 saved from metaphysics by their forgetfulness of the 
 language of the creeds, it was this which involved 
 them in metaphysics. They were obliged to speculate 
 about the purposes of the Father whenever they lost 
 sight of His union with the Son. So far as their Chris- 
 tianity was that which was delivered to those who 
 heard ' the Sermon on the Mount,' its power was derived 
 from the Person of Christ. 
 
 Of the place which the Holy Spirit held in this 
 Methodist teaching I shall speak presently. All will at 
 once confess that the power of it would have been 
 nothing if that element had been wanting in it. 
 
 And I believe that the more we examine into the 
 fanaticism which was rightly charged upon them, and 
 was rightly connected with their notions of spiritual 
 influences, the more we shall perceive that it arose 
 mainly from their confounding the acts and character of 
 the Spirit with their own acts and characters. Had they 
 fully recognised the assertion that the Spirit proceedeth 
 from the Father and the Son, and with the Father and 
 Son together is worshipped and glorified, they would 
 never have subjected the Divine to their eai-thly mea- 
 sures and corruptions. They would have recognised the 
 
VI.] MORALITY AND DIVINITY. 21 
 
 Spirit as the Spirit of Power and Love and a sound 
 mind. They would have confessed His operations in 
 their calmest moments ; they would have asked Him 
 to distinguish the varying moods of their minds, the 
 varying conditions of their bodies, from that which is 
 permanent and universal. The acts of the Spirit of God 
 would have become intelligible to them through the 
 morality of the Sermon on the Mount ; the morality of 
 the Sermon on the Mount would have been possible to 
 them through the power of the Divine Spirit. 
 
 I take this example, to which I shall return again, 
 because I am anxious to admit as fully as I can the 
 charges of the Layman against the Establishment, and 
 at the same time to show what I think its teachers might 
 have done and may still do — if they adhere to their own 
 lessons — for the correction and elevation of that teaching 
 which they once in their folly tried to extinguish. I do 
 not mean that we want the creeds to help out the teachr 
 ing of Christ. I mean that His teaching is leading us 
 step by step to the confession of a Father, whose perfect 
 image He was, whose will of grace and love He came to 
 manifest, and to the confession of a Spirit of love and 
 grace who dwelt in Him, whom He bestows on man, by 
 whom He binds the members of the Church into one, by 
 whom He illuminates the nations. Only in this Spirit I 
 believe can we really confess the unity of the Godhead ; 
 only by the Spirit can there be that unity among men, 
 which our evil tempers are setting at nought, and which 
 will be realized when the Sermon on the Mount 
 becomes not in name but in deed the law of our lives. 
 
22 TRACTS FOR JPRISSTS AND FEOPLE. [No. 
 
 I am pleading for no theological theory. I am inquir- 
 ing how wayfaring men may be that which they are 
 created to he, may do that which they are created 
 to do. 
 
 II. I have been led by these considerations to think 
 that I should not honour the Sermon on the Mount> 
 as a practical code of morals, if I substituted it for the 
 creeds. But I cannot pretend that I should adhere to 
 that opinion if the creeds were what the Layman infers, 
 from the discourses of the Bishop of Oxford, that Clergy- 
 men take them to be. That a mere terminology — that 
 a mere ' authoritative declaration of faith ' carries any 
 moral power with it, I dare not persuade myself. I 
 trust and hope however that that was not the meaning 
 of the Bishop of Oxford. 
 
 The subject upon which he writes is the Revelation of 
 God. That word is connected with light, life, 
 discovery. It interprets itself through the voice of 
 Psalmists and Prophets, who learnt what God is through 
 their temptations, their doubts, their sins, whose histories 
 and struggles remain as the great testimonies to us that 
 He was in the days of old what He is now and ever 
 vrill be. In his first Sermon on ' the neglect of this 
 Revelation ' the Bishop dwells vrith much eloquence 
 upon the exceeding peril which we are in of receiving it 
 as if it were a mere heir-loom. He says that the evil 
 in the case of the Jews was, that Christ's 'words 
 ' appealed to nothing in themselves which answered to 
 ' them.' And it is equally ti-ue, he says, of numbers 
 among us that ' they have grown up with the sights and 
 
VI.] MOSALITT AND BIVINITr. 23 
 
 ' sounds of Christianity around them ; they learnt its 
 ' creed in their childhood, they have inherited in some 
 * degree, at least, its standard of morals ; they deny 
 ' nothing, and they believe nothing. In no true sense 
 ' do they believe in Ilim who works these miracles 
 ' before their eyes.' Such lessons are most valuable^ 
 If there is not a conscience in us to meet Christ's words 
 they fall dead. If the Revelation kindles no inquiry 
 it kindles no faith. The Bishop may have used strange 
 language in his second sermon, about * doubts being cast 
 out as shells shot into the fortress of the soul.' Yet he 
 recognises in his preface ' a religious inquiry into 
 Revelation.' ■ Where no doubt is inquiry is a farce, and 
 a religious farce must be the worst kind of farce. 
 
 But though these expressions may not convey to the 
 Bishop's mind that sense which they have conveyed to 
 the Layman's, I am greatly afraid that many Clergy- 
 men do receive them and will receive them precisely 
 in that sense. And therefore I cannot merely coni- 
 plaln that the Layman's doctrine respecting the Sermon 
 on the Mount is confuted by the experience of the last 
 century. I hold that it is confuted by that experience. 
 But much has happened since that century which 
 obliges us to reconsider our position both as divines 
 and moralists;, to ask ourselves why laymen again 
 regard divinity and morality as hopelessly separated; 
 to ask ourselves, whether our opposite schools may not 
 both be promoting this separation; to ask ourselves 
 whether their quarrels might not be healed if this quarrel 
 were healed ; whether the secret of reconciliation in both 
 
24 ■ TRACTS FOB, PRIESTS AND PBOPLB. [No. 
 
 pases may not be the same. I believe the Letter to the 
 Bishop of Oxford will be helpful iu promoting these 
 inquiries. The writer of it has spoken very strongly of 
 the moral decay and degi-adation which has been the 
 result in some countries of stifling doubt. He has not 
 spoken too strongly. Such facts require to be thrust 
 upon us again and again. This is especially the 
 time for dwelling upon them. Roman Catholic coun- 
 tries are passing through a great crisis. We are pass- 
 ing through a crisis perhaps more serious, because less 
 palpable. I believe we shall understand the condition 
 of other lands better, and shall be able to help them 
 more, if we devote a little steady thought to the religious 
 history of our own. 
 
 That which changed John and Charles Wesley from 
 rather formal Oxford divines into messengers of life to 
 colliers and ruffians, was the discovery to their own 
 minds and hearts of a Spirit who showed them their 
 evil beneath all their respectability and devotion; who 
 showed them a Deliverer from that evil; who showed 
 them that He was not less a deliverer for the most dis- 
 reputable and the most indevout. It was strictly a 
 discovery or revelation to them and their fellow-workers. 
 The evprjKa which followed it was in each case as 
 genuine as it was in Archimedes. Nevertheless, they 
 rejoiced to see and to proclaim that the discovery had 
 been made before ; that all the services of the Church 
 were full of it; that prayers and sacraments would 
 mean nothing if it were not true. The enormous dif- 
 ference between them and tliose to whom they preached, 
 
yi.] MORALITT AND DIFINITT. 25 
 
 made them feel that it was a common truth, however 
 each person might have to learn it afresh for himself. 
 But it was hard to retain that conviction when so many 
 in high places seemed to set their doctrine at nought; 
 when every day showed them what resistance there was 
 to it in the minds of rich and poor, learned and 
 unlearned ; in their hearers and in themselves. 
 
 The belief that they came first into a spiritual 
 economy when they were first awakened to the clear 
 perception of one, was sure to intrude itself into their 
 minds. Soon it would gain possession of them. The 
 experiences and struggles through which they had passed 
 were the tests of their relationship to God. They were 
 His children ; they had the tokens of His grace ; other 
 men must be regarded as natural creatures ; with great 
 affection, with great zeal for their temporal good now, 
 and for their conversion to spiritual blessings — but still 
 as exiles from the commonwealth of Israel, as having 
 only the possibility and the capacity of obtaining tlie 
 Grace of God, should He be pleased hereafter to bestow it. 
 
 Questions were involved in this view of things which 
 could not even from the first be concealed. Was there 
 a common morality for those who belonged to those two 
 different spheres ? If not, how were the moralities to be 
 distinguished ? Were worldly men to be left merely to 
 the policeman, or to the codes of honour which they de- 
 vised for themselves ? Were spiritual men to disclaim 
 the kind of obligations which held families and nations 
 together ? Those excellent men who first felt the power 
 of the Evangelical movement discovered a practical 
 
26 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOFLH. [No. 
 
 answer to these questions ; troubled themselves little 
 about the theoretical. They exhibited a better and 
 nobler morality in the family, the counting-house, the 
 senate than had been ordinarily recognised there ; they 
 acted, on the whole, upon the principle that they were to 
 do more than publicans and heathens of those acts 
 which publicans and heathens recognised as good. They 
 were to be more just, humane, courteous than other 
 men. I say on ike whole. There are, of course, great 
 exceptions — great deviations in the conduct of the best 
 men. It was never quite certain how far they regarded 
 what they called their secular politics as part of their 
 Divine service; how far as a concession to the world. 
 Much confusion was occasioned by this difficulty, and 
 some discreditable acts. But that they adhered generally 
 to these maxims, is evident from the leavening effect 
 which they have produced on society in the upper and 
 middle classes. It is since that effect has been pro- 
 duced — since their phrases have ceased to be unpopular 
 a,nd have become adopted as the dialect of respectable 
 people — since they have had leligious organs to repeat 
 and diffuse their opinions, and to assail those who dissent 
 from them — that this moral confusion has come out in all 
 its strength. Now it thrusts itself into every religious 
 family ; it is the embarrassing question to nearly every 
 young man who is entering life ; it comes complicated 
 with a thousand venerable recollections and a thousand 
 vulgar debasing facts — with the thought of noble 
 parents who did their work in the sight of God — with 
 the spectacle of a professional religious morality from 
 
VI.] MOEALITT AND DiriNITT. 27 
 
 which men of experience — whatever their opinions may 
 be — turn away with suspicion and disgust, saying 
 plainly that in the affairs of life anything is more trust- 
 worthy than that. 
 
 But while these facts have chiefly attracted the notice 
 of laymen, ecclesiastics have been lifting up their pro- 
 test against the doctrines which have been inherited 
 from the evangelical teachers of the last century upon 
 another ground. They have said that these doctrines 
 depend upon the feelings and experiences of those who 
 have received them ; whereas theology must be given 
 to us, not created or wrought out by us. Such language 
 makes a strong appeal to the sense in all our minds that 
 there must be a truth which is different from our 
 perceptions of it, which must regulate them, not be 
 regulated by them. It appeals still more effectively to 
 the hearts and minds of those who are conscious of 
 insincerity in giving themselves credit for feelings and 
 experiences which they have never had, or which have 
 passed away. Of late years it has gained strength 
 from discoveries which have startled and confounded 
 those who used to speak of religious experience as the 
 one sure test of religious knowledge. That conviction 
 has been fully embraced by many who have grown up 
 under their education. It has led to a rebellion against 
 the very conclusions which the evangelical teachers hold 
 to be most vital and necessary. 
 
 That a doctrine which has those arguments in 
 its favour should have acquired much popularity was 
 inevitable. That it should have ■ raised up many 
 
28 TRACTS FOB PBISSTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 opponents, would have teen a proof of its strength rather 
 than its weakness. But it has enlisted against it some 
 of the strongest convictions of those who had turned to it 
 for help, who had hoped that it might lead them to some 
 deeper foundation, and the Church to a real unity. For 
 it has taken that form of demanding man's assent to ' an 
 authoritative document,' 'a confession drawn up by 
 men,' a mere * terminology,' which has so scan- 
 dalized this Layman. In that form it strikes not against 
 some of the errors into which the evangelical school 
 has fallen since it became popular and feeble, but against 
 the principle to which it owed all its moral power. In 
 that form it awakens the indignation of those men of 
 science who would most readily acknowledge the worth 
 of fixed truths, and the danger of subjecting them to 
 the caprice of individual minds, if they were not 
 told that these fixed truths were to be received, not on 
 evidence which satisfies the reason, but as decrees 
 coming down from another generation. In this form 
 it demands precisely that moral slavery, that prostration 
 of heart as well as intellect which the Layman has 
 traced in foreign lands. In this form it involves all 
 those fatal consequences which the Bishop of Oxford 
 has pointed out in his first sermon, and which he so 
 happily describes as ' a neglect of revelation.^ 
 
 A neglect of revelation altogether, at all events of 
 that revelation which our creeds set forth, must be the 
 effect of. treating them merely as a set of propositions 
 wliich we adopt because certain doctors and councils 
 have transmitted them to us. TertuUian, in his book 
 
VI.] MORALITT AND BTFINITT. 29 
 
 ' De Prcescrvptiombus Hxreticorum,^ which is said to he 
 used hy some of our bishops in the examination for orders, 
 teaches that the words, ' Ask, and ye shall receive ; 
 seek, and ye shall find,' are intended only for those who 
 have not received the Christian faith; to those who have 
 received it they are utterly incapable. Surely in this 
 treatment of Christ's words lay the seeds of this father's 
 heresy. Holding such a doctrine he could not prac- 
 tically confess an inward Paraclete. He could only 
 recognise some outward teacher whom Christ would 
 send to impart a wisdom which He had not imparted. 
 In one form or another the same result must always 
 follow the same denial. If the creeds announce a dead 
 dogma, I have all I want ; I know all. If they announce 
 a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost, they compel us to 
 ask continually; to receive continually. And, if they 
 announce this, what have I to do with councils or doctors 
 who disputed about it? They either did not believe 
 their own proclamation, or they remitted me to the God 
 whom they proclaimed. He must reveal Himself to me; 
 they cannot reveal Him. If I do not hold this I reject 
 the creed. If I think the Church is above God, or 
 that I derive my knowledge of God from the Church and 
 not from Him, I shall be obliged to put the last articles of 
 the creed before the first ; I shall be obliged to change 
 its method and its substance. And if I receive it as 
 it stands — if I confess that I am actually baptized in 
 the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost — dare I use my own discretion in casting doubts 
 out of the fortress of my soul ? May not these doubts 
 
30 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND FWPLE. [No. 
 
 have teen cast into it by a gracious Spirit who wishes 
 to break down its pride and self-sufficiency? Am I 
 trusting Him, if I trust my own wisdom and discernment 
 in determining which are sinful, which are holy, if I do 
 not submit them to Him who knows me, and knows 
 what He would make of me ? 
 
 III. This is an awful view of the subject, but no treat- 
 ment of it, which is not awful, is fitting to its greatness, 
 or to the seriousness of our position. It is the habit of 
 trifling which is so perilous to us all — the habit of speak- 
 ing of God as if He were a distant or imaginary Being, 
 about whom we may have many notions, but who does 
 not really dwell in us or govern us. We must, by any 
 means, be delivered from this state of mind. It is the 
 source of infinite vanity, pettiness, bitterness. If we can 
 be raised out of it, if we can really come to think of the 
 Trinity not as set forth in a document, but as three 
 distinct Persons united in the one Godhead of infinite 
 love and charity, I believe the rewards will be these : — 
 
 1. Divinity will be felt to be inseparable from^ 
 morality : the Sermon on the Mount will set forth to us 
 what God is, how this righteousness has come forth in 
 human acts, how He makes those acts possible for us. 
 
 2. There will not be two moralities, one for the holy, 
 one for the unholy. We shall understand that all 
 morality is derived from God; that all immorality comes 
 from ourselves. The holy will not dare to think that he 
 is different from others. He will not dare to deny that 
 God has redeemed all by His Son, and is claiming all by 
 His Spirit, as heirs of His kingdom. He will therefore 
 
VI.] MOBALITT AND DIFINITY. 31 
 
 refer all good thoughts, feelings that have been in any 
 man, — all laws, customs, manners, which have had a 
 gracious influence on families and nations — to Him ; all 
 evil, whenever it is found in good men or had men, 
 to rebellion against His light. 
 
 3. There will be no hostility between that spiritual 
 revelation which was made to the mind of Wesley, 
 and which gave the life to all the Methodist preaching, 
 and the belief of an absolute truth which is not de- 
 pendent upon any apprehensions, perceptions, feelings^ 
 of human beings. For we shall know that that which 
 we perceive partially through the operation of the 
 Holy Spirit is the righteousness and truth which has 
 existed perfectly and eternally in the nature of God, and 
 which was fully revealed in Jesus Christ, the Son of 
 God, and the Head of every man. 
 
 4. We shall feel that the processes in our own hearts 
 and understandings are, indeed, very serious and 
 terrible, as the Bishop of Oxford tells us that they are. 
 Therefore we shall come to the light, that our deeds 
 may be made manifest, whether they are wrought in 
 God. We shall be afraid of crushing any thoughts, 
 doubts, discoveries. We shall ask Him to use them all 
 for the revelation of Himself to our minds. We shall 
 ask Him to deliver us from that sloth and worldliness 
 which make us ready to acquiesce, which make us 
 impatient of anything that disturbs our ease, as well as 
 from that equally lazy scepticism which is content to be 
 without certainty, to abide in perpetual fluctuation. 
 
 5. We shall not venture to make such formal opposi- 
 
32 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 tions as the Bishop of Oxford has made between God's 
 discoveries to us in the kingdom of Nature and in the 
 kingdom of Grace. We shall accept both as a revela- 
 tion of Himself. We shall remember our Lord's 
 parables. We shall remember St. Paul's words in the 
 Epistle to the Eomans, We shall not confound the 
 two regions. We shall believe that the communications 
 in both must be analogous, and that the methods in 
 which we receive them must be analogous. We 
 endanger both equally if we make the eye which 
 receives the light the source of the light. We endanger 
 both equally if we suppose that there is not an eye in 
 each case to receive the light. Make the conscience or 
 the reason into God, and you set at nought the witness 
 of the conscience and the reason; you kill them that 
 you may glorify them. Deny the conscience or the 
 reason that you may glorify God, and you set at nought 
 the God of whom the Bible speaks, the God who 
 reveals Himself: you create another God out of your 
 own imaginations; you enthrone an idol who enslaves 
 our spirits in place of Him who has redeemed them by 
 His Son, who quickens them by His own free Spirit. 
 
 6. We shall terminate the long strife between those 
 who say that creeds and those who say that the Bible 
 ought to be the bond of Christian communion. That 
 strife must be perpetual if it is a question about authorita- 
 tive documents. For the advocates of creeds will always 
 say that there must be some document to interpret the 
 Bible and gather up its contents. The supporters of 
 the Bible will always say that, as it is a Divine book, 
 
VI.] MORALITY AND mriNlTY. 33 
 
 all other books must look up to it. And both, in the 
 heat of the controversy, will practically set their own 
 judgment above Creeds and Bible. But this is not 
 what those men design who seriously and with a good 
 heart contend for either of these courses. The sup- 
 porters of the Bible feel that it is a living Book, a 
 progressive Revelation; they cannot abandon it for a 
 mere formula. The supporters of creeds believe that 
 a progressive revelation must have an issue; that some- 
 thing must be revealed. If that which is revealed is 
 the Living Grod, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, the 
 more we confess the creed, the more we shall find all 
 the living records of the Bible precious and intelligible ; 
 the less we shall be disposed to turn them into mere 
 dry dogmas; the more we shall be sure that what 
 was revealed to prophets and apostles through their 
 spiritual and national trials, may be revealed to us 
 through ours. 
 
 7. We shall learn what is to be sacrificed and what 
 is not to be sacrificed, that we may establish con- 
 cord among ourselves and concord with the sects around 
 us. Everythiiig which belongs to precedence, etiquette, 
 our own tastes, habits, notions, tempers, we shall sacri- 
 fice if we yield ourselves to the Spirit of God who is 
 working in us, if we are really conformed to those 
 maxims of the Sermon on the Mount which the Lay- 
 man wishes us to follow. We shall discover how true 
 it is that the wars and fightings without have come from 
 the lusts that war in our members; how impossible it 
 is ever to establish peace in the Church while we are 
 
 D 
 
34 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 indulging ambitions, rivalries, envy in our hearts. But 
 we cannot part with that which witnesses to us of the 
 uniting Name. We cannot give up the belief that the 
 Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, because if 
 we do, we give up the prayer ' That they may all be one 
 in us.' And this prayer, we shall be sure, does com- 
 prehend all Churches whatsoever, the members of all 
 schools and sects whatsoever, the positive principles 
 of all schools and sects whatsoever. But it anathema- 
 tizes and extinguishes schools and sects as such. Those 
 who wish to have names of their own may have them; 
 but they cannot keep them and yet confess the one 
 Body of Christ. 
 
 8. We shall begin to perceive, therefore, that to 
 accomplish this end we have need of a battle with 
 principalities and powers. We shall feel that we 
 have to fight with the giants of the present rathe^r 
 than with the giants of the past; with all those organs 
 of religious schools and parties which are endea- 
 vouring to keep them apart from one another, and 
 to make them hate each other, rather than with the 
 forms which have descended to us from other times. 
 And yet we shall have the greatest dread of worship- 
 ping those forms, because we know that we are to wor- 
 ship God. and Him only. And we shall try not to be 
 bitter with those organs of public opinion in our day 
 whom we regard as the great foes of unity, because 
 bitterness is of the spirit of division and not of the spirit 
 of unity; because they discover to us the tempers and 
 tendencies which are in ourselves; because in their 
 
VI.] MOBALITT AND DIFINITr. 35 
 
 position we might be much more ministers of strife and 
 division than they are. We cannot seek peace with 
 them, therefore we must not he angry if they wage 
 perpetual war with us. For what they want, is certain 
 forms of communion which shall include themselves 
 and as many as adopt opinions not very widely different 
 from theirs. And what we want, is a ground in the 
 name of the Eternal God, which shall embrace all, and 
 at last subdue all to itself. We cannot draw lines like 
 those of the Evangelical Alliance, which shall cut off 
 the whole Latin and Greek Churches. Nothing can 
 satisfy us which does not show us why they have been 
 divided from us and from each other, and which shall 
 remove the division. We shall find the causes of their 
 division in their substitution of some other bond of 
 union for the union in Christ the Eternal King and 
 High Priest; in their changing the Name which they 
 profess, and for which their fathers fought, into a mere 
 dogma derived from an external authority. Once 
 persuade them that that Name is the living bond of 
 union, and you remove the causes of their separation, as 
 well as of that moral degradation which the Layman 
 has so rightly traced to fear of inquiry — a fear which 
 only the God of Love can cast out. 
 
 9. And since it is He who reveals Himself to men, 
 and who brings men to be of one mind, and since no 
 compromises or controversies of ours can do that, we 
 cannot feel that the Mlest, broadest proclamation of 
 this Name, such as we have in the creeds, is any 
 sentence upon those who have not learnt the full 
 
36 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 meaning of it, or who in terms are denying it. I know- 
 well enough how good men have complained of the 
 Athanasian Creed — how they do complain of it — on 
 this ground. I respect their opinions. I do not ask 
 them to respect mine, or not to call me ' sophist,' 
 ' perverter of words from their natural sense,' ' cheat,' 
 or by any other name which occurs to them, while I say 
 again, what I have often said hefore, that the Athanasian 
 Creed has had the effect of compelling me to see that in 
 spe?iking of the Trinity we cannot he speaking of a 
 dogma ; that we cannot think of the Trinity as the Creed 
 bids us think of it while we treat it as a dogma ; that to 
 confound the Persons and divide the substances must be 
 a moral offence with which any the most orthodox of 
 those who accept the creed may be chargeable, cannot 
 be an intellectual offence, which we may rightly charge 
 upon those who do not enter into the terminology of 
 it, or who cast it aside. I may have adopted this 
 conclusion from pure wilfulness, or love of paradox 
 — God is the judge of that. If I have, I would 
 warn young men that the pleasure which arises from 
 those feelings compensates very ill the pain of being 
 at variance with the dearest friends, or the suspicion of 
 deliberate dishonesty. But whether I am right or 
 wrong, and whatever becomes of the Athanasian Creed 
 •^which, if it does canonise a mere dogma, and anathe- 
 matise those who dissent from it, I should wish to 
 perish utterly and for ever — I hold that our position 
 as Christians and as maintainers of the Trinity obliges 
 us to believe that all men whatsoever are living, moving 
 
VI.] MOBILITY AND DIFINITT. 3/ 
 
 and having their being in that Name which has been 
 declared to us ; that we all know that Name most 
 imperfectly, seeing it in little glimpses as hard 
 struggles with death and sin enable us to see it and 
 take refuge in it ; that it will at last be revealed in all 
 its fulness and glory, and that that will be the new 
 birth-day of the universe for which the travails and 
 groans of all creation are preparing. 
 
 10. It will be shown what those meant who have 
 called our Church a compromise, and our Articles com- 
 promises between different parties among the Clergy. 
 The word is to me a very offensive one. It speaks to me 
 of that which is opposed to confession and martyrdom, 
 it savours of diplomacy and of cowardice. When 
 Lord Macaulay says that our Church is a compromise 
 between Romish and Protestant doctrines, a compromise 
 devised by Archbishop Cranmer, I am utterly at a loss 
 to understand how an arrangement so foreign to the 
 mind of the sixteenth century, which never could con- 
 trive any scheme for uniting Lutherans and Calvinists — 
 to say nothing of Lutherans and Eomanists — could have 
 been invented by so commonplace a man, or how a 
 society based on such a compromise, could have stood 
 for twenty years. Whereas, in some way or other, the 
 English Church has lasted three centuries since that 
 time ; has passed through the convulsion of one civil 
 war in which Scotch Covenanters and English Puritans 
 triumphed; through the reigns of two monarchs con- 
 spiring to deliver it over to Eome; through the 
 reigns of at least three monarchs, whose religious sym- 
 
38 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 pathies were entirely with Dutch or German Protes- 
 tantism. It must have been a cunning compromise, 
 surely, which has borne these shocks. But yet so 
 eminent an historian could not have adopted the 
 phrase, — so many amiable and intelligent Churchmen 
 could not have accepted it, — if there had not been a 
 deep meaning involved in it. It has evidently not 
 been the will of God that we should become Puritans, 
 Covenanters, Romanists, Dutch or German Protestants. 
 It has been the will of God that we should receive 
 influences from all these quarters, that they should all 
 leave their mark upon us. That mark may be a mere 
 negative one ; the Puritan element may be the mere 
 contradiction of the Romanist, the Romish of the Cal- 
 vinist, the Anglican of the- foreign. There may be 
 something weaker than each of these, each of them 
 being received as the mere modification or dilution of 
 the other. There may be something stronger than aU 
 of them, each contributing to that strength what the 
 other cannot contribute, each being restrained from its 
 natural tendency to exclude or extinguish the other. 
 Which of these is to be the result, is the question, I 
 conceive, upon which the fate of England turns. I say 
 the fate of England. For though the Oxford Layman 
 contemplates a condition of things in which the Anglican 
 Episcopate and all that is connected with it may fall, 
 and the other classes of society only feel that a great 
 incubus is removed from them, I cannot understand 
 such a doctrine. The last words of the Sermon on 
 the Mount ring in my ears. The foundation upon 
 
VI.] MORALITY AND LiriNITT: 39 
 
 which the Church stands is the foundation upon which 
 the Nation stands. If the spiritual foundation is a 
 sandy one, the whole house will fall, and great will be 
 the fall of it. I do trust, therefore, that the Anglican 
 Episcopate and the Anglican Clergy will earnestly con- 
 sider what their spiritual foundation is, whether it is an 
 authoritative document, or an everlasting Name. I trust 
 that by no hasty or rhetorical words of theirs, they will 
 weaken in men's minds the sense of this great distinction. 
 I trust they will not, in trying to enforce the authority of 
 documents, divide the Church which has been united in 
 this Name, or lead men to think that it stands upon 
 some opinions of theirs. The Articles have been a pro- 
 tection of the Church against the opinions of particular 
 times, and of particular rulers. They have borne 
 witness of opposing truths, none of which we can afford 
 to lose. If the time is come when they are to do this 
 work no longer, when we are to be left to the mercy of 
 individual Bishops, who will enforce the decrees of 
 religious newspapers, so let it be. God knows what is 
 best for His Church ; we do not. Those will have to 
 answer for this result who snatch at the Articles for the 
 condemnation of this or that partial opinion, who cannot 
 let them bear witness for God's truth without assisting 
 them by prosecutions, which will equally expose our 
 formularies to contempt by their failure or their suc- 
 cess ; but in the latter case will lead to the greatest 
 confusion respecting the nature of the Church itself. I 
 trust the Bishops and the Clergy will be led to feel that 
 the revelation of God is their probation, that God is 
 
40 TRACTS FOB PBIESTS AND PWPLH. [No. 
 
 asking them whether they can trust it, or whether they 
 trust rather in their own notions and opinions. If they 
 answer that question in one way, our probation, I fear, 
 will soon be at an end ; our National Church will perish. 
 If they answer the question in the other way, they may 
 be able to tell men that this Eevelation is not merely 
 their probation, though it may be, that — since all 
 discoveries which stir our minds to their roots are a 
 probation — that it is a light which may scatter our 
 dark thoughts of God, and our dark thoughts of each 
 other ; a light which may penetrate to the furthest ends 
 of the earth. 
 
 POSTSCEIPT. 
 
 The pamphlets referred to in this Tract are — 
 
 1. Two Sermons of the Bishop of Oxford, entitled 
 ' The Eevelation of God the Probation of Man,' preached 
 before the University of Oxford in February last. Ox- 
 ford and London : J. H. and James Parker. 
 
 2. ' The Suppression of Doubt is not Faith.' A 
 Letter to the Lord Bishop of Oxford, by a Layman. 
 Oxford : Wheeler. Whittaker and Co., London. 
 
 3. ' Concerning Doubt.' A Letter to a Layman, by a 
 Clergyman. Oxford and London : J. H. and Jas. Parker. 
 
 4. ' Concerning Doubt.' A Eeply to a Clergyman, 
 by a Layman. Oxford : Wheeler. 
 
 The passage from Tertullian to Avhich I have alluded 
 
VI.] MORALITY AND DiriNITT. 41 
 
 is the classical one against Inquiry. It is contained in 
 
 the chapters, from the eighth to the twelfth inclusive, in 
 
 the Treatise De Prcescriptionibus. In no passage of Ter- 
 
 tullian are the arts of the Eoman lawyer more blended 
 
 with the ferocity of the African. In none are they 
 
 more vigorously directed to the purpose of destroying 
 
 the arguments of heretics, and of establishing the pro- 
 
 foundest of all heresies. Whether Montanist or not 
 
 when he wrote this treatise, there is contained in it not 
 
 only his Montanism, but that of all who, in subsequent 
 
 times, have accepted the decrees of some external 
 
 prophet, male or female, because they have distrusted 
 
 the presence and guidance of the Spirit of Christ. A 
 
 person really receiving the doctrine of the passage to 
 
 which I have alluded, must cease at once to be a 
 
 disciple — must become the most self-satisfied and 
 
 arrogant of doctors and disputers. And he must tell 
 
 simple Christians that their faith in the most blessed 
 
 promise of our Lord, upon which they have fed and 
 
 lived, is a delusion; that they have nothing to 
 
 ask, or seek, or knock for; that they have all they 
 
 want in the dogmas which they have learnt by 
 
 heart; that if they need more, they must go to some 
 
 other than to Him in whom they supposed all the 
 
 treasures of wisdom and knowledge were hid. It is 
 
 easy to say, ' Oh, of course, this was only meant to 
 
 check the pride of Gnostical heretics.' Miserable 
 
 apology ! You invent an argument for one use, which 
 
 you are obliged to unsay and contradict the moment 
 
 it is applied to another. Speaking to A, you say, 
 
42 TRACTS FOB PBIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. VI.] 
 
 'These words cannot mean what you pretend they 
 mean.' You turn to B, and tell him that they do mean 
 exactly that for him. Who that accepts these lessons 
 can accuse his neighhours of playing fast and loose with 
 God's word ? 
 
 a. CLAY, 80H, AND TAYLOE, PRINTERS, BREAD STREET HILL> 
 
TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. 
 
 No. VII. 
 
 TWO LAY DIALOGUES. 
 
 BY 1. M. LUDLOW. 
 
 Inteelooutoes : Smith {aw enlightened mam). 
 
 Williams {a plain-speakmg mem). 
 
 I. 
 
 ON LAWS OF NATURE, AND THE FAITH THEREIN. 
 
 8. I THOUGHT one had done with all that church 
 cackle about ' Essays and Reviews,' hut now this report 
 of the Lower House of Convocation has revived it. 
 What do you say to it, Mr. Churchman ? 
 
 W. It is diiEcult for me to say how much I deplore 
 the drawing up of such a document. That, after all the 
 discussion which has taken place on the subject, any set 
 of ordinarily honest and sensible men should have signed 
 a report dealing with the ' Essays ' as a whole, and 
 cataloguing the heresies in them as if they belonged to 
 each and all of the writers, is to me almost incredible. 
 T trust, however, the' returning good sense of the 
 Bishops, as shown in their declining to proceed to 
 synodical action, may stop further mischief 
 
2 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 8. But I suppose you don't deny that there does lie 
 a collective responsibility upon the Essayists ? 
 
 W. A responsibility of imprudence, amounting to an 
 adverse presumption, certainly, but no responsibility of 
 conspiracy; no adverse presumption which can stand 
 against facts. The thing which most struck me on 
 reading the book, — after its general intrinsic dulness 
 and feebleness, which render it such an unworthy occa- 
 sion for all the pother that has been made about it, — 
 was the entirely contradictory character of the conclusions 
 come to by its various authors. Dr. Williams is quite 
 at issue with Professor Powell; both of them again 
 with Mr. "Wilson ; whilst Mr. Pattison seems almost to 
 have nothing in common with any of his fellow- 
 writers. 
 
 jS". Well, admit that the Essayists are not so formid- 
 able as, from the howling and uproar they have stirred up 
 amongst you Churchmen, they may have seemed to be. 
 What matter ? The great cause is not hindered by the 
 weakness of such allies of the eleventh hour. 
 
 W. What great cause ? 
 
 8. The great cause of science, and civilization, and 
 modern advancement. Surely the Chui-ch cannot stand 
 ten years on her present footing after such a book. 
 
 W. Why so ? 
 
 8. Because, however the Essayists may upset each 
 other, or their own selves, there is one thing which they 
 all help to upset, and that is the Bible. 
 
 W. How so ? 
 
 8. When I say the Bible, I mean, of course, the 
 
VIL] ON LAWS OF NATURE, ^-c. 3 
 
 infallible authority of the Bible. Sincere bibllolatiy, 
 I maintain, is impossible to any one who has once read 
 that volume. 
 
 W. Thank Grod if it were so ! 
 
 8. How ? What other foundation has your Church 
 than the infallible authority of the Bible ? 
 
 W. ' Other foundation can no man lay than is laid — 
 Jesus Christ.' I believe that there are three parallel 
 idolatries which infect the Church in all ages and 
 countries — the idolatry of an infallible Man, which comes 
 out specially in the Papolatry of Eome ; the idolatry of 
 an infallible Church; and the idolatry of an infallible 
 Book, which is the special idolatry of us Protestants. 
 All three tend equally to obscure the face and mask the 
 voice of the infallible God, whom alone we have to 
 worship. 
 
 8. Then you throw the Bible overboard ? 
 
 W. God forbid ! God's word and God's work are the 
 Two Witnesses which are for ever prophesying of Him, 
 which man's brutal passions, ignorance or conceit may 
 seem to slay, but which always rise up anew to give 
 their testimony. 
 
 8. Too mystical by half for me. But to come to the 
 point. You seem to admit that the Bible is not infallible. 
 What good can a fallible Bible do for you ? 
 
 W. All the good which the fallible men have done 
 by whom it was written. 
 
 S. But your orthodox theory is that they were 
 inspired. 
 
 W. Certainly. 
 
 b2 
 
4 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 S. In charity to yourself, I must say that inspiration 
 seems to me to involve infallibility. What could a 
 fallible inspiration amount to ? 
 
 W. Of course all inspiration from God is infallible as 
 its author. But to conclude from the infallibility of the 
 inspiration to the infallibility of the inspired man or 
 inspired thing, appears to me the greatest of fallacies. 
 What St. Paul says of himself and his brother apostles 
 applies equally to all their sayings and writings — ' We 
 have this treasure in earthen vessels.' 
 
 8. Then, although some apostle says ' all Scripture 
 was inspired of God,' inspired Scripture may err just as 
 an inspired apostle ? 
 
 W. The text of inspired Scripture certainly may err, 
 just as we are taught by Scripture itself that inspired 
 apostles did err. A single various reading is sufficient 
 to prove that point. 
 
 5f. Where, then, do you find your standing-point ? 
 
 W. I seek it nowhere but in the God of Truth Him- 
 self, who I believe is perpetually revealing Himself 
 through all manner of fallible instruments, as the sun is 
 for ever shining through all manner of refracting and 
 distorting media. 
 
 S. And you hold the Bible a distorting medium ? 
 
 W. So far as the text of it is a human work, neces- 
 sarily a refracting one ; distorting only, if anywhere the 
 human element in it overpowers and stifles the divine. 
 
 S. I must say I do not see what you gain in certainty 
 from your infallible God, with only fallible witnesses to 
 vouch for Him. 
 
VII.] ON LAWS OF NATURE, ^c. 5 
 
 W. I do not look for certainty — that intellectual cer- 
 tainty which you speak of. If I could find it, I should 
 lose faith. There is a grand thought in one of Luther's 
 early theses, to the effect, that if the article of the Holy 
 Trinity could be proved by a syllogism, it would be 
 known, and not belieYcd.' The same principle applies 
 to all the objects of Religion. Thank God that all 
 Anselmian or Cartesian arguments to prove logically the 
 existence of a God, to construct Him as it were a priori, 
 have proved fallacious ! The failure of such reasonings 
 is the very saving of faith. 
 
 8. Then you don't think the existence of a Deity can 
 be proved by reasoning? 
 
 W. No, thank God, — no more than the sun's shining. 
 The spiritual Sun, like the natural one, simply reveals 
 Himself in light. 
 
 8. What then is your theory of Inspiration ? 
 
 W., Never mind what my theory of inspiration is. 
 The real question at issue is this, — is there an inspiring 
 God? 
 
 8. But tell me ; — You say you hold the Bible to be 
 inspired ; you speak of it as the Word of God. Do 
 you seriously think, after all our late discoveries in phy- 
 sical, and I might say in social science, that it can 
 possibly retain that character, if once it be freely 
 treated? 
 
 ' "Si forma syllogiBtioa tenet in divinis, artioulus Trinitatis erit 
 acitus, et non oreditus." Luther's Works, by Melanchthon, vol. I. p. 67. 
 Or see Merle D'Aubign^'s ' Histoire de la Reformation,' vol. I. p. 303. 
 The proposition is one of those which Luther did not himself maintain, 
 but had argued before him by Guuther, in 1617. 
 
6 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 W. If once it be freely treated ! Why, my dear sir, 
 it is precisely because it is the Word of God that the 
 Bible has a right to be freely treated, — treated with a 
 freedom exceeding all that can be applied to any other 
 book whatsoever. If it is, as I believe it, the chosen 
 receptacle of that truth which shall make us free, how 
 can it be afraid of any kind of freedom ? You might 
 as well tell me that the sun could not bear examination 
 by the light of a candle, as that God's Bible could not 
 bear man's freedom. Do not, however, confound free- 
 dom with insolence, _/rei/^ei< -m.'da. frecliheit. 
 
 8. Do you mean to say that the Bible as it stands 
 could bear even the free sifting of the Canon ? I am 
 really afraid, Williams, you are a terrible heretic ! 
 
 W. I believe I am simply following the true doctrine 
 of the Church throughout all ages. The veiy fixing 
 of the Canon implies the most absolute freedom of 
 treatment in respect to Scripture. You may search in 
 vain, at the origin of any one book of Scripture, for any 
 of those expedients which seek to elude the grasp of 
 human freedom, for the buried gold plates, and the 
 unknown characters, and the revealing vision of the 
 book of Mormon. Two or three centuries elapse after 
 the Christian era, during which there is no Canon, during 
 which confessors live and martyrs die for the faith, never 
 doubting that there is a God revealed in human form, a 
 Heavenly Father, who has manifested Himself in a well- 
 beloved Son, who speaks by the mouth of a Holy Spirit, 
 to whom the written word gives witness ; and yet blun- 
 dering often in the exercise of their free faith and love, 
 
VII.] ON LAWS OF NATURE, Sfc. 7 
 
 Setting religious novelets, like the Shepherd of Hermas, 
 and codes of traditional rules like the Apostolical Con- 
 stitutions, on the same line as the most authentic records 
 of our Lord's life. Then the Church takes the matter 
 in hand, and strong in her assurance of inspired freedom, 
 chooses, sanctions, canonizes. Did she abdicate her 
 once exercised freedom thereupon? By no means. 
 Eight or wrong, the adoption of the so-called Apocrypha 
 into the Canon by the Romish Church, the qualified use 
 or the rejection of them by the Protestant churches, 
 bear equal witness to that freedom. Either act testifies 
 to a faith that God's word can and will reveal itself as 
 such to human minds, whether called Scripture or not. 
 How much of prejudice or self-will may have warped 
 the judgment of either party, I care not here to inquire. 
 
 8. Your fixings or reformings of the Canon by 
 councils and churches are at least as much instances of 
 collective authority, as of Christian freedom. But the 
 human mind has shaken ofi", or is fast shaking ofi" the 
 fetters of collective authority in such matters. We are 
 learning more and more to judge for ourselves, if only at 
 second hand. Those who think at all on such matters 
 would prefer the sole authority of Tischendorf as to a 
 text to that of the whole Nicene Council. It is that 
 individual sifting of the Canon which the Church 
 cannot stand. 
 
 W. Cannot stand I Why, it has stood it for eighteen 
 and a half centuries ! Chrysostom rejected the narrative 
 of the woman taken in adultery; Luther, the whole 
 epistle of St. James ; others, the Apocalypse ; others 
 
8 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 the epistle of Jude; Coleridge, what he terms the 
 ' christopsedia ' in hoth Matthew and Luke ; Calvin 
 doubted the 2d of Peter. But whether they were right, 
 or whether they were mistaken, do you suppose that it 
 was because they did not think the Bible the inspired 
 Word of God, or because they did not love it, that they 
 so dealt with certain portions of it? No, a thousand 
 times, no ! It was because they deemed it God's Word, 
 because they loved it with that perfect love which 
 casteth out fear, that they held it their duty to weed 
 out of it what they deemed to be foreign and insititious. 
 
 S. But if one man strikes out a narrative, and ano- 
 ther a chapter, and a third a whole book, there may 
 remain at last nothing at all. It becomes a veiy Babel 
 of private judgments, such as Romanists are always 
 taunting Protestants for fostering. I cannot help think- 
 ing that, if you are to build anything upon the Bible at 
 all, you had better claim infallibility for it at once. 
 
 W. To claim infallibility for any created person or 
 thing is, as it seems to me, the very way to that Babel 
 you speak of by a roundabout ; the way to self- worship, 
 and the utter dissolution of all authority. Tou have, 
 we will say, an infallible Book. — But what is the use 
 of it, asks the High Churchman, if you have not an 
 infallible interpreter of that Book ? Infallible as it may 
 be, if its meaning be obscure or perverted, it can but 
 lead you astray. The Bible, interpreted by the general 
 Councils of the Church, such is your only infallible 
 guide. — And of what use, asks the Romanist, are your 
 Councils alone, meeting at long intervals, disused now 
 
VII.] ON LAWS OF NATURE, ^c. 9 
 
 for centuries, against ever recurring perplexities of in- 
 terpretation ? You need a living interpreter who shall 
 be always accessible. Councils are infallible, no doubt ; 
 but their decrees thenaselves require interpretation ; their 
 infallibility needs to be carried out, supplemented, con- 
 tinued, by an infallible Pope. — And what is the use of 
 an infallible interpreter, it has long since been asked, if 
 there is not to be an infallible discemer of such inter- 
 preter ? Between the infallible Pope and the infallible 
 anti-Pope, what fallible man shall decide? And so, 
 reeling on from rock to rock after its phantom of earthly 
 certainty, the human mind comes to this at last, that a 
 Stirner will treat a Bruno Bauer's Homo homini Beus 
 as ' Pfaffenthum ' : Homo sibi Deus is the last end of all 
 knowledge. 
 
 S. I see you are driving me back to your former posi- 
 tion, as to faith, not certainty, being, the rule of spiritual 
 life. I grant you that it seems to be one aspect of the 
 Pauline dogma, which took so mighty a hold upon 
 Luther, 'The just shall live by faith.' But I rather 
 think you will find the Protestant world at least as far 
 from accepting the doctrine in the light in which you 
 place it, as the Romish world was in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury from accepting it in the light in which Luther 
 placed it. Certainty — realized, embodied certainty — is 
 that which we care for. Wherever we seem to find it 
 — whether in a book, a church, a man, in the laws of 
 nature, in the laws of mathematics, in the laws of 
 political economy, or even in the mere power of wealth 
 — ^there we must bide, by that we must cling. We 
 
10 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND FEOPLE. [No. 
 
 long for something fixed, immutable, some footing that 
 shall never fail us, some rock on which we may securely 
 build. 
 
 W. God forbid that that longing should ever fail 
 or be weakened in us ! I only ask you to take care 
 not to shift certainty from its source to its manifestations, 
 still less to our own perception of it. The last I hold 
 to be the primeval devilish temptation. ' To be as gods, 
 knowing good and evil ;' to escape in matters of right and 
 wrong out of the sphere of dependent living faith into a 
 serene but dead sphere of pure knowledge, where duty 
 and law become as mere mathematical equations, — such 
 is what our intellect is always soliciting us to do. The 
 attempt passes under different names ; in one age it 
 calls itself ' scholastic theology,' in another ' positive 
 philosophy;' but the tendency is always the same, to 
 substitute knowledge for faith, intellect for conscience, 
 man for God. 
 
 8. Aye ; but how is it that one is di-iven from the 
 Bible to positive philosophy ? I who speak to you, I 
 once believed in the Bible as firmly and undoubtingly 
 as the most absolute Bibliolater himself. I held it to 
 be * one entire and perfect chrysolite,' flawless, speck- 
 less. I built my whole life — I am afraid I cannot say 
 my outward conduct, but the inmost life of my thoughts 
 — upon its authority. That which it blessed I blessed, 
 that which it cursed I cursed. "What a wrench it was 
 to my whole being, when physical science, philology, 
 history, logic, convinced me that it could be at fault — 
 when I had to give up, first the sun's standing still on 
 
VII.] ON LAWS OF NATURE, ^c. 1 ] 
 
 Ajalon, then the geological sequency of the first chapter 
 of Genesis, then the verse of the three witnesses, &c. &c. 
 you would smile if I attempted to describe. For- 
 tunately, the balm' was at hand with the antidote. It 
 was only by plunging deeper into science that I escaped 
 utter shipwreck ; and then I saw rise before me that 
 form of absolute and infallible certainty which I had 
 fancied to have seen enthroned on the pedestal of the 
 Scriptures. The oxygen and the carbon, the iron and 
 the platinum — these were certain things ; certain in 
 their nature, certain in their qualities, certain in their 
 actions ; ruled by fixed laws, whether in their com- 
 binations, or in the resolutions of their compounds. 
 Chemistry thus afibrded me my first standing-point, as 
 mathematics have to others ; then physics, then natural 
 science in general. I rather came back from these, 
 through asti-onomy, to mathematics. For the laws of 
 mathematics, until applied, are dead laws ; the laws of 
 physical science are laws of life. A pebble has a poten- 
 tiality of life about it which a triangle has not. Dull 
 and dead as it seems, you know that every one such 
 is really a living Proteus, capable of putting on unnum- 
 bered myriads of forms. Yet mathematics led me on 
 to political economy, which seemed in turn to introduce 
 some fixed elements into the shapeless chaos of history. 
 And then came the revelation of Positive Philosophy, 
 reducing all moral facts, as well as physical ones, under 
 the sway of its generalizations, and by simply taking 
 things as they are, and renouncing all impotent chasing 
 after the will-o'-the-wisps of primary or final causes. 
 
12 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 shedding through all nature, all knowledge, the hlaze 
 of fixed law and universal order. When once that 
 light had come, the notion of a capricious, wonder- 
 working God, at one time interrupting the course and 
 harmony of nature for some inscrutable purposes of his 
 own ; at others, suffering it to run on unperturbed,' at 
 whatever cost of doubt and contempt for his own divi- 
 nity — the notion of particular men endowed with excep- 
 tional gifts, which, however wonderful in themselves, 
 yet reduced the holders of them, as passive instruments, 
 such as they were represented to be, below the level 
 of ordinary intelligence — the notion of a particular book 
 exceptionally written, to be exceptionally treated, and 
 exceptionally construed — became no longer unsatisfying 
 only, but positively insufferable. I see no longer any 
 room for a God. If there be one, as I own the instincts 
 of mankind, often prescient of hidden truth, seem to 
 indicate, he must be a part of the universal mechanism ; 
 his place and functions in the economy of the world 
 must some day be scientifically determined. 
 
 W. Perhaps the mode in which the Bible has been 
 commonly treated has had a good deal to say to the 
 course which you have taken. But I told you the ques- 
 tion was at bottom, as to the existence of an inspiring 
 God. 
 
 S. I did not wish to shock you, as I fear I must have 
 done ; but, somehow, you have wrested the avowal from 
 me. Pray forgive me if I have pained you. 
 
 W. I am extremely thankful to you for having 
 spoken out the thoughts which I believe ai-e fermenting 
 
VII.] ON LAWS OF NATURE, §-c. 13 
 
 in the hearts of thousands. The only way of ever 
 getting rid of our douhts is by turning them manfully 
 inside out to the light. But now tell me — those laws, 
 that order, that harmony of which you speak — do you 
 think they are certainties ? 
 
 ;Si. Unquestionably. 
 
 W. Demonstrable a priori ? 
 
 8. No. To spare time, let me say at once, that I 
 consider the world has got beyond the shallow logical 
 scepticism of former days. Of course, I can't prove 
 a priori that black is black, or that I am myself, or 
 that you are you; but nothing can come out of that 
 sort, of arguing. It is a dry, barren exercise of the 
 intellect, a mere clatter of dead bones. No man who 
 has once felt the might and fruitfulness of facts can 
 ever amuse himself with such senile child's play, 
 which only reminds one of the kite-flying of ancient 
 grey-beards among the Chinese. Work, growth, deve- 
 lopment, progress, are what the world wants. To 
 achieve these, facts we must accept, or we can do 
 nothing. 
 
 W, Then do you think the law and order you speak 
 of are the subject of observation ? 
 
 S. No. I grant you, that phenomena are the only 
 field of observation. All that observation can reach to 
 amidst phenomena, are certain successions and resem- 
 blances. What we call laws, are the various relations 
 themselves of succession and resemblance, being inva- 
 riable ones. The succession differs from its law, as a 
 progression differs from its ratio. 
 
14 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND FEOPLR [No. 
 
 W. Aye, — a pert critic of Mr. Kingsley, in a late No. 
 of the Westminster, explains law as *a uniformity 
 observed in the course of nature.' But stilly how do 
 you reach beyond the ' succession ' and the ' similitude ' 
 to the ' relation ' itself, beyond the ' course of nature * to 
 its ' uniformity ? ' 
 
 S. By induction, that leaps from the succession to the 
 law which constitutes it. 
 
 W. Is the leap a necessary one ? 
 
 S. The first who take such leaps are the great dis- 
 coverers of the world. It is easy work following them. 
 
 W. Is the law, then, in your mind, or in the facts ? 
 
 S. The idealist may say, in the mind ; for me, un- 
 doubtedly in the facts. The mind, as it seems to me, 
 no more makes the law than it makes the facts them- 
 selves. 
 
 W. Your postulates, therefore, seem to be two — 
 acceptance of phenomena (shall we say facts?) by obser- 
 vation ; acceptance of law by induction. 
 
 S. Certainly. 
 
 W. Where, then, do you find the certainty you speak 
 of ? How do you prove it ? 
 
 8. My dear fellow, I do not prove the certainty of 
 the law ; it proves itself. That law of specific gra- 
 vity, comparative density, call it what you will, accord- 
 ing to which a cork floats and does not sink in the 
 water, needs no demonstration but that of its own exist- 
 ence. I cannot choose but accept it. 
 
 W. If you saw a cork sink instead of floating, should 
 you deem the law at fault ? 
 
VII.] ON LAWS OF NATUm, Sfc. 15 
 
 S. The law could not be at fault ; the fault must be 
 in my appli .... Ah! I see what you are after. 
 Well, I had better admit it at once. Your doctrine of 
 an infallible God, indemonstrable, yet revealing Him- 
 self to and through fallible instruments, stands much 
 on the same footing as mine of alike indemonstrable, 
 yet infallible laws, exhibiting themselves to fallible 
 minds through phenomena which may be fallacious. 
 
 W. You must go further still. You must admit that 
 the relation between you and the law is equally one of 
 faith. Unless you have that, the law remains dead to 
 you ; you cannot build upon it. 
 
 B. How so? 
 
 W. What you call induction is really a belief that 
 the law is, a trust in its reality. However dimly, you 
 must somehow have looked for it, forefelt it, before 
 finding it. When you talk of seeing it, it is with no 
 bodily eye. That only takes in the phenomena in and 
 beneath which it lies. What you call the knowledge of 
 it is at bottom only ' the substance of things hoped for, 
 the evidence of things not seen.' 
 
 B. Well, I have faith in laws, as you have faith in 
 God. Apart from the facts upon which each rests, your 
 faith is perhaps as reasonable as mine. Will that satisfy 
 you? 
 
 W. What do you mean by ' apart from the facts upon 
 which each rests ? ' 
 
 8. I mean that the facts upon which my faith rests 
 are certain facts, facts which command the reasonable 
 assent of every man who looks at them; whereas the 
 
]6 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 so-called facts upon which yoiurs rests, if accepted by 
 some reasonable men, are absolutely denied by many 
 other quite as reasonable men, and therefore cannot pass 
 for certain facts. 
 
 W. Well, that there may be no mistake about it, I 
 affirm that the Being of God, His power and His good- 
 ness, the existence of an evil spirit, the existence of a 
 nature in man capable of communication both with God 
 and with the evil one, the reality of such communica- 
 tion, the struggle of the evil one against Good, the 
 assured victory of Good, the human sympathies of the 
 Power of Goodness, are (amongst others of a similar 
 order) facts to me of personal experience, no less cer- 
 tain than that of my own existence, or any which 
 you can name in the physical world ; and yet facts 
 which lie only, as it were, on the threshold of a whole 
 world of spiritual facts beyond. 
 
 S. Possibly (though some of your affirmations, I con- 
 fess, rather stagger me) ; but, once more, however 
 certain these facts may be to you, they are not even 
 reasonable to others. 
 
 W. But suppose the primary character of these facts 
 which I affirm were not to be reasonable ; suppose they 
 belonged to a sphere above that of reason, just as the 
 sphere of reason, in which your faith realises the law, is 
 above that of observation, wherein your perception only 
 realizes the fact ? 
 
 S. Why are you in that highest sphere and I not ? 
 
 W. Why was the world for thousands of years only 
 in the sphere of observation with reference to electricity 
 
VII.] ON LAWS OF NATUBi:, ^e. 17 
 
 emerging only quite recently into the sphere of reason ? 
 Did you not yourself admit just now that it was only 
 the great discoverers who took that first leap of induction 
 which reveals the law ? 
 
 B. A bad argument. As soon as the facts of electri- 
 city were discovered to be subject to a law, all the 
 world, so far as it occupied itself with the subject, in- 
 stantly emerged into that sphere of reason. Physicists 
 might dispute as to particular theories and particular 
 applications ; but that there was a law of electricity 
 they all henceforth accepted. Whereas, since the world 
 was almost, some men have asserted that there was this 
 sphere of faith, of religion, or of the spirit — whatever 
 you may choose to call it — without the laws which they 
 pretended to have discovered in it coming the least 
 home to the apprehensions of others, 
 
 W. If you will think of it, the heliocentric view of 
 astronomy, after having been pointed out by Pythagoras, 
 was denied and rejected by almost all reasonable men 
 and professed astronomers for thousands of years, and 
 was actually succeeded by the elaborately false geocen- 
 tric theory of Ptolemy ; and when brought out into 
 new light by Copernicus, it was again hotly denied, 
 argued against, denounced, by most reasonable men and 
 professed astronomers (to say nothing of cardinals and 
 popes), for nearly a century. And on the other hand — 
 if you keep up the distinction, which I think you would 
 find an untenable one, according to your own principles, 
 between the acceptance of the existence of a law, and the 
 .acceptance of the law, — I think you will here equally 
 
 C 
 
18 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PWPLB. [No. 
 
 admit that the acceptance of the existence of a God, a 
 spiritual world, has been quite as general as that of any 
 so-called laws of nature. But are you not introducing 
 into the question a wholly new criterion of certainty — 
 viz., that of a consensus of the majority — Joseph de 
 Maistre's last device for upholding Romanism ? 
 
 8. I say that the certain, infallible law proves — no, 
 approves itself to be such — ^by forcing its acceptance on 
 the vast majority of reasonable men who look into the 
 matter. 
 
 W. In short, you make the infallible law for its sanc- 
 tion depend upon the assent of a certain number of 
 fallible men. I repeat that, upon such data, you cannot 
 but admit the existence of a God. 
 
 S. Perhaps so ; except that as to myself, whilst ad- 
 mitting the consensus, I cannot see the self-demonstra- 
 tion. The fact is, if there be a God, I don't know what 
 to do with him. 
 
 W. I quite agree with you that such a God as we 
 have found hitherto, the mere expression of a puzzle of 
 the intellect, is not worth having. In the meanwhile, I 
 think you will admit that the faith of us Christians, 
 except so far as it wants, for the facts upon which 
 it professes to rest, a certain consensus on the part of 
 certain enlightened men in the nineteenth and other cen- 
 turies, stands upon the same footing as that of the said 
 enlightened men in law, and harmony, and order. Now, 
 we Christian men claim to hold quite as strong a faith 
 in law, and order, and hai-mony, as the very strongest 
 believers amongst you enlightened men; only we say 
 
VTI.] ON LAWS OF NATUBH, #0. 19 
 
 that that faith is itself a puzzle without a higher faith 
 still. Charles Fourier, the Phalansterian — than ■whom, 
 in many respects, a more acute observer or reasone'^ 
 never lived in this century— used, in support of his 
 theories of co-operation, to employ an illustration, which 
 seems to me perfectly appropriate here. The existence 
 of a new world, he observes, was denied, not only before 
 Columbus found it, but after he did so. It was a fact, 
 nevertheless; and from the moment that fact was 
 realized by any one, the testimony of the one man who 
 had realized it was worth any number of adverse ■ testi- 
 monies of those who had not. So, I contend, are we 
 Christians, asserting the facts of a spiritual order of the 
 world from experience, better worth listening to than 
 any number of mere worshippers of law and order who 
 know not of them. 
 
 8. The very argument of the spirit-rappers for the 
 existence of an order of facts beyond Christianity itself 
 However, to come to the point, I don't want your 
 spiritual order of facts, whether inclusive or exclusive of 
 turning tables and air-borne humbugs. 
 
 W. Are, then, law and order altogether sufficient to 
 you for the explanation of all the facts of the universe ? 
 
 8. No, they are not. There is a very puzzling 
 element besides, which is force. I say force, without 
 fear of taking a metaphysical abstraction for a reality, 
 because aU scientific observation tends to show that all 
 force is one, however varied may be its phenomena. 
 There is something that produces or evolves phenomena ; 
 there is some definite relation between them ; according 
 
 C2 
 
20 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 to that relation they arrange themselves in what I per- 
 ceive as a certain symmetry. Thus, force and law, with 
 order for the joint manifestation of both : these I find 
 everywhere and in all things. 
 
 W. My dear friend, how tight you shut your eyes not 
 to see God ! Why, your triad of force, law, and order 
 tells distinctly of a far higher triad, one of power, and 
 justice, and goodness, which, when the human spirit 
 once takes hold of them fully, reveal themselves to it as 
 a personal triune God! But tell me something more 
 about this force. 
 
 8. Well, I have admitted, and I must admit, that it 
 is a great puzzle. I see that it is absolutely necessary 
 to bring out law and make it fruitful, since without it 
 law would be dead or nowhere. And yet it seems in 
 some strange way to be subject to law, and only when 
 working with it to evoke order. 
 
 W. Does it not always work with it ? 
 
 8. Of course it must, but often it does not seem so. 
 When the lightning strikes a tree, and puts an end to 
 all the orderly development of vegetation, it seems at 
 first a bare conflict of force with law. Then one dis- 
 covers that the lightning itself follows a law of its own : 
 but the puzzle seems only the greater ; how should law 
 conflict with law ? how should one relation of succession 
 between phenomena be altogether at variance with ano- 
 ther and interrupt it? Then comes the higher dis- 
 covery that the very inten-uptions have a sequency of 
 their own ; that there are meteorologic laws to which 
 both the lightning and the vegetation are subject. Still 
 
VIL] ON LAWS OF NATURE, Sfc. 21 
 
 I must say that in the struggle, apparent or real, 
 between force and law, or between law and law, and the 
 ultimate triumph of law in a higher shape, and its 
 beautiful results, there seems at the first to be some- 
 thing strangely personal. 
 
 W. How do you mean ? 
 
 B. I mean that one perceives somehow in outer 
 nature as it were a shadow of what one feels to be going 
 on in one's own self. There meets us a sort of summary 
 of that seeming or real struggle which I have mentioned 
 in the workings of our will. How extraordinary are 
 those statistics of Qudtelet's as to the fixed proportions of 
 certain relations in marriages, as respects age, status, 
 complexion, &c. ! What can seem more spontaneous, 
 more removed from the domain of law than my falling 
 in love with and marrying a particular woman ! And 
 yet after all, my doing so goes to make up certain fixed 
 figures of the number of men who marry women 
 younger than themselves or older ; of light-haired men 
 who marry light or dark haired women, &c. &c. 
 
 W. You admit then the existence of a wiU in man ? 
 
 S. I denied it for many years ; as long, in sooth, as 
 I could. But at last it struck me that there was an 
 affectation in denying it. I must admit it as a fact, 
 like other facts. I can't do without it. And no doubt 
 it is the highest manifestation of force we know of. 
 
 W. You admit then fully that the will is subject to 
 law? 
 
 8. Certainly. I can conceive of nothing which shall 
 not be subject to it. 
 
22 TRACTS FOR PRWSTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 W. What you have said about force and the will 
 appears to me pregnant with more meaning than you 
 seem yourself to attribute to your words. Meanwhile 
 however, tell me — since you reckon law's domain to 
 be universal, you would not assent to that bold idea 
 thrown out by Mr. Mill, that there may conceivably 
 be, ' in distant parts of the stellar regions,' worlds where 
 events follow each other without regularity, and all, as 
 we should say, is subject to chance ? ^ 
 
 8. If there were such, the very existence of them 
 must be in some definite relation to other worlds where 
 law reigned. 
 
 W. Then supposing an atom of that chance-ruled 
 world suddenly endowed with consciousness, and con- 
 ceiving the notion of law, that notion would be a true 
 one, although every fact around it without exception 
 seemed to prove it false ? 
 
 S. Certainly. 
 
 TT''. Then there can be such a thing as a ti-ue faith 
 which shall be beyond and against all facts of obser- 
 vation ? 
 
 8. You are pressing me veiy hard ; but I suppose I 
 had best admit it. 
 
 W. Such faith would not be in the least needed to 
 explain the world of immediate observation, but only to 
 explain other worlds beyond, and the relation of the 
 former to them ? 
 
 1 " The uniformity in the course of events, otherwise called the law 
 pf causation, must be received, not as a law of the universe, but of 
 that portion of it only which is within the range of our means of 
 sure observation, with a reasonable degree of extension to adjacent 
 oases." — See Mill's Logic, vol. ii. pp. 117, 118. 
 
VII.] ON LAWS OF NATURE, §-c. 23 
 
 8. Of course. 
 
 W. Then your answer, " I do not need them," to my 
 assertion of the facts and laws of a spiritual world, would 
 appear to be no answer at all. 
 
 S. Go on ; 1 shall perhaps be able to answer you by 
 and by. 
 
 W. A thoroughly honest reply, and one which I 
 always respect. But in this world of chance, if any 
 one single manifestation of order took place, it would 
 be really " an interruption of the course of nature." 
 Yet it would only- be a fact, but a fact from another 
 sphere, and ruled by a higher law. 
 
 8, I see what you are after. You are going to infer 
 that what are called miracles are really manifestations 
 of a higher invisible order of things, and therefore no 
 stumbling-blocks to a faith in visible order. 
 
 W. I do assert it most strongly, not as my own infer- 
 ence, but as the testimony of the whole Bible. Indeed, 
 it is most unfortunate, as has i)een • observed, that the 
 low word "miracles," should ever have crept into our 
 Bible at all. It by no means translates the (TTjf^eia, signs, 
 or the Svvafiet<;, virtues, of the Greek texts. Neither the 
 Vulgate nor Wycliff are guilty of the misrendering. 
 
 S. But now come, do you really wish me to accept 
 miracles on the authority of the Bible ? 
 
 W. When you accept the Bible as God's word, as the 
 witness to Christ's kingdom, certainly; till then cer- 
 tainly not. 
 
 S. But how am I to accept the Bible as God's word 
 if I am to treat it as any other book, which I think you 
 
24 TRACTS FOB PBIESTS AND PEOPLB. [No. 
 
 admitted was the treatment to be applied to it ? Is the 
 Bible like any other book or not ? 
 
 W. I never admitted that the Bible was to be ti-eated 
 like any other book. I should never think of asking 
 you to treat Homer or Shakspeare like any other book. 
 I should think you a fool or a brute if you treated either 
 as you might do a penny newspaper. Want of reverence 
 in our treatment of great books and great authors is, I 
 am convinced, both a common and a serious fault 
 amongst us. You cannot judge of the Bible fairly, as a 
 mere fact, with a view to the evolution of a Comtian 
 law, without taking into account that it is a book on 
 which, for thousands of years now, an ever-increasing 
 proportion of the world's noblest races have fed, which 
 has been a mighty influence in their development, which 
 has helped, more than we can ever measure, to make 
 you and me what we are. 
 
 S. Do you suppose that Christian missionaries in 
 India or Turkey apply to the Vedas or the Koran 
 the measure which you require me to apply to the 
 Bible ? 
 
 W. If they do not, they will bear the penalty either 
 in ill-success, or in the weakening of the sense of rever- 
 ence amongst their converts. 
 
 S. Well, I amend my question, — Is the Bible like 
 any other great book or not ? 
 
 W. It is, as its name implies, the Book of Books, the 
 Book ; not an exception to a law, but the type of it. 
 
 S. But still, why is it to be treated differently from 
 other books ? Why is it to bear a witness that other 
 
VII.] ON LAWS OF NATURE, 8fc, 25 
 
 books are not expected to bear ? Why are miracles to 
 be accepted by any one on its authority ? 
 
 W. I would expressly guard myself from asserting 
 that there are no miracles recorded in other books than 
 the Bible. But my answer is very simple. Because the 
 purpose of the Bible is different from that of all other 
 books, as being the very crown and summit of all their 
 different purposes— to bear witness, as I said before, of 
 the spiritual world and of its King. 
 
 S. But do not other books bear such witness ? The 
 Vedas and Koran, for instance, of which we have been 
 speaking, or the book of Mormon ? 
 
 W. Certainly other books do bear such witness, and 
 thank God that they do 1 Certainly the Vedas, the 
 Koran, the book of Mormon, do in their measure bear 
 such witness, or they would never have had the hold 
 they have had, and have still, on men's minds, never 
 would have moulded nations and polities to themselves. 
 But as between the Bible and these books, and all 
 other like books in the world, facts have decided. The 
 history and condition of India, the Mohammedan races, 
 Utah, as compared with our Christendom, ought suffi- 
 ciently to show that a greater book than Koran or Veda 
 is here. 
 
 S. Well, but without going out of the pale of Chris- 
 tendom, why is the Bible to stand apart from all other 
 religious books, if they bear the same witness ? Why, 
 for instance, if there is to be a Canon of Scripture, 
 should not the ' Imitation of Christ ' be canonized ? 
 
 W. All the stones of a pyramid help to point upwards. 
 
26 TRACTS FOB PEIBSTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 But it is only the last stone or tier of stones that form 
 the summit, and express the purpose of all the others ; 
 and precisely because they form the summit, they 
 must open prospects which can be obtained from no 
 others. 
 
 S. I cannot see why, if there is to be a Canon, it ever 
 should be closed. There seems something so — unpro- 
 gressive, I must call it, in the idea. 
 
 W. You cannot see why Babel should not be ever a- 
 building. To me, viewing as I do the Incarnation of 
 Christ as the centre-point of all the world's history, it 
 seems quite natural that when a design is fulfilled the 
 edifice should stop. Don't confound progress with mere 
 motion. To use a homely comparison, which is the 
 most progressive, the jackass who is turning a well- 
 wheel, or the one who is standing stock still munching 
 a bunch of thistles ? I should say the latter. 
 
 S. Blasphemer of progress ! to use such a comparison ! 
 But I am beginning to feel somehow as if I had been 
 treading a wheel myself. I must think over what you 
 have said. But I don't fancy you will be able to carry 
 me altogether along with you. 
 
 W. 1 could not if I tried. I have travelled myself 
 by a very different road. I have simply gone over to 
 yours in the hope of showing you that it led, more than 
 probably you thought, in the same direction as my own. 
 Understand me clearly. I have not endeavoui-ed to 
 prove to you God or Christianity. I have simply 
 endeavoured to show you, on the ground of yom* faith in 
 Cosmic law and order, as self-manifested in facts, that a 
 
VII.] ON LAWS OF NATURE, #c. 27 
 
 faith in a Divine law and order, which you deny and we 
 assert to be thus self-manifested, might be quite as true 
 and reasonable, even if apparently contradicted by all 
 facts whatsoever within your own observation ; that the 
 Divine law and order might entirely override and over- 
 come such facts and their Cosmic law and order ; and that 
 therefore a book, bearing witness to such Divine law and 
 order, was not to be rejected, because it recorded facts at 
 variance with the Cosmic law and order, but coherent 
 with the Divine law and order. Whether the Divine 
 law and order are or are not absolutely needed by the 
 Cosmical facts, and their law and order, to explain and 
 support them, is a deeper question, over the brink of 
 which we have sometimes ventured without entering it 
 altogether. But, in the meanwhile, I have the right to 
 tell you that we do really agree much more than you 
 yet fancy ; that our faiths are not contradictory, however 
 diiFerent on many points ; that you worship an Unknown 
 God. I have the right to repeat to you what I said 
 before, that the Force, and the Law, and the Order 
 which you bow to, which you hold to with a faith so 
 robust that you would extend their dominion over the 
 realms of chance itself, are no dry principles, but the 
 very God whom we adore, Father, Son, and Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 8. I do not see it yet. 
 
28 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 II. 
 
 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 S. I HAVE been thinking a good deal about our conver- 
 sation of the other day. I see that at bottom you want 
 me to throw my Positive Philosophy overboard. 
 
 W. Not by any means. I think Positive Philosophy 
 has its appointed province, for which it is well fitted ; 
 but your mistake, and that of its votaries, is to extend 
 its application far beyond its capacity. 
 
 S. "Well, I can only say that the first time I read 
 Comte it seemed to me that I had never read a book 
 before in my life, 
 
 W. The very same expression that was once used to 
 me by a French ' Procureur-Gen^ral ' of great ability, 
 respecting a book the very opposite of Comte's. Just 
 guess one or two. 
 
 S. Aristotle, Plato, A'Kempis, Jacob Behmen, Rous- 
 seau, Hegel. 
 
 W. An impartial selection no doubt, but still wide 
 from the mark. No, Montaigne's Essays. 
 
 S. From which, I suppose, you wish me to conclude 
 that faith in Comte and faith in Montaigne are both 
 matters of idiosyncrasy ? 
 
 W. Not quite that. But I wish you English Comtians 
 would open your eyes to the fact that, except with a 
 very few devotees, on the Continent, where he has 
 
VII.] POSITIVE PHILOSOPET. 29 
 
 been longest and best known, Comte has simply, like 
 Hegel, settled down into his place in the history of 
 philosophy, as a man of original mind, who has brought 
 a few useful truths into fuller light, but who neither 
 deserves to be set up as an oracle, nor to be denounced 
 as a portent, any more than Montaigne himself 
 
 S. No man, you know, is a prophet in his own coun- 
 try. Eeverencing Comte as I do, I feel rather proud 
 that England should have appreciated him the best of 
 any nation yet. 
 
 W. Come, what do you find in him ? 
 
 8. Infinite deliverance from all your heart-bewildering 
 theology and brain-muddling metaphysics. I declare I 
 never felt myself a free man, — intellectually — till the 
 day when I read that noble passage in the introduction 
 to the Philosophy, where he teaches us to confine our 
 reasoning and observation to the invariable relations of 
 succession and similitude between phenomena.^ In fact, 
 though, as I told you before, political economy had given 
 me my first glimmering sense of a meaning in history, 
 the world of physical and mathematical science was 
 really the only one which existed for me till I had read 
 
 1 ' In the positive state, the human mind, recognising the impossi- 
 bility of obtaining absolute notions, gives up seeking for the origin 
 and destination of the universe, and for a knowledge of the intrinsic 
 causes of phenomena, in order to attach itself solely to the discovery, 
 by the well-combined use of reasoning and observation, of their actual 
 laws (JyCwrs lois effectives) i.e. of their invariable relations, of succes- 
 sion and similitude. The explanation of facts, being reduced then to 
 its true terms, becomes nothing more than the connexion established 
 between the different particular phenomena, and some general facts, of 
 which the progress of science tends always to diminish the number.' — 
 PhUosophie Positive, vol. I. pp. 4, 5. 
 
30 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 Comte. The luminous distinction between tlie three 
 stages of development, — theological, metaphysical, posi- 
 tive — has shone out since then to me more and more 
 throughout all history. 
 
 W. I do not quarrel with the distinction, still less 
 with the order of development. To me there is a pro- 
 found meaning in the admission, which Comte's view 
 implies, that the fountain-head of all knowledge is 
 theological^ — that the metaphysical, or as a Greek would 
 probably call it", the psychical stage comes next, — the 
 merely practical or positive the last. The three-fold 
 division thus pointed out corresponds exactly, as it seems 
 to me, to that triad of man's personality which St. Paul 
 terms the spirit, soul, and body. The great fault of Comte 
 lies in not seeing that the three, though distinct, are yet 
 one ; that the distinction, instead of being one of time, 
 is one of eternity ; that the harmonious fellow-working 
 — synergy (to use a happy term of his own) — of the 
 theological, the metaphysical, the positive elements is 
 essential to the full development of humanity. 
 
 S. What are you after ? You are not going to swal- 
 low my Comte whole and disgorge him an orthodox 
 Trinitarian Christian, sm-ely? Besides, if you are 
 hinting at the Trinity, what have the three stages of 
 development really to say to it ? 
 
 W. No ; you need not be afi-aid of my proving Comte 
 orthodox. But believing as I do that the divine Three- 
 in-One lies at the foundation of the universe, and there- 
 fore of the nature of man made in God's image, I do 
 rejoice when I find a witness to that truth borne, as it 
 
VII.] POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 31 
 
 seems to_ine, in so striking a manner, from so unexpected 
 a quarter. 
 
 8. The talk about man being made in God's image 
 appears to me utterly void of meaning. But you don't 
 forget that Comte utterly denies that sheet-anchor of the 
 Christian system, a future life ? 
 
 W. I deny absolutely that a future life is the sheet- 
 anchor of (as you call it) the Christian system. But I 
 bear in mind the passage you probably refer to from the 
 6th Yolume of the Philosophy, about the advantages to 
 be looked for from the general extinction of a chimerical 
 hope, including a great increase of tenderness for human 
 life.'^ By the way, do you seriously consider this to be a 
 positive conclusion ? 
 
 8. Why not ? Philanthropy does not flow from the 
 doctrine of eternal life, but from the spread of civilization. 
 
 W. Why not? Because I have hitherto laboured 
 under the delusion, if it be one, that there is no more 
 positive conclusion of experience than this, — that the 
 tribes and the individuals who are the most absolutely 
 reckless of human life are those who have never had, or 
 have utterly lost, the notion of an hereafter. 
 
 1 ' The restriction even of all our hopes to real life, individual or 
 colleotiye, may easily supply, under a wise philosophical direction, new 
 means of combining individual impulse with universal advancement, 
 of which the consideration, gradually preponderant, will constitute 
 from thenceforth the sole appropriate way of satisfying as far as possi- 
 ble that need of eternity always inherent in our nature. For instance, 
 that scrupulous respect for human life which has always gone on in- 
 creasing as our sociability became developed, can certainly but largely 
 increase through the universal extinction of a chimerical hope.' — Phil. 
 Pos. vol. VI. p. 861. 
 
32 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 8. Yes, because at present, as a general rule, the most 
 degraded races and individuals, in a still theistic world, 
 are naturally the atheistic. But Comte supposes the 
 conditions reversed. 
 
 W. And he argues from a hypothetical fature against 
 all the practical results of the past. Is that worthy of 
 Positive Philosophy? 
 
 S. Well, it may be a rather bold conclusion. But 
 surely it is but natural that one should value the more 
 that which, once destroyed, can never be replaced ? 
 
 W. Do you think that the lives of 'the beasts that 
 perish ' are more valued than those of men ? 
 
 8. Trusting to be in Inverness-shire on the 12th of 
 August, I am afraid I must say, — No. But then grouse 
 and partridges, and other innocents who have their 
 yearly St. Bartholomew's days of massacre, are animals, 
 and we are men, that is the difference. 
 
 W. You are obliged to insist upon the difference, 
 whilst yourself taking away one of the most commonly 
 (perhaps not most correctly) received points of difference. 
 Take care lest you make it the interest of every individual 
 or collective tyrant or ruffian to efface that difference 
 more and more. Already, as you know, the black man's 
 right to reckon as part of humanity is denied by scien- 
 tific Southern Americans. I am afraid the last lingering 
 ground of tenderness for many an African slave's life, 
 when old, or disabled, or refractory, lies in the vague sense 
 that there may be some truth even for him in that ' chimeri- 
 cal hope,' — which is a terror too, — which M. Comte's 
 benevolence would fain see generally extinguished. 
 
VII.] POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 33 
 
 .S". I must admit that I should feel inclined to leave 
 that side of the doctrine in the background in preaching 
 to a Mississippi slave-owner. It is a strange thiffg how 
 false doctrines do sometimes have good eifects. 
 
 W. We will say, then, that the ' general extinction of 
 a chimerical hope ' has at least to be adjourned as 
 respects slave-owners. In the meanwhile, let me just 
 observe to you, that I think in this instance, as in many 
 others, Comte has been chiefly influenced by his Roman- 
 ist training. Carelessness about the life of baptized 
 infants in particular, on the ground of their assurance of 
 future bliss, or rapid transit through purgatory, is no 
 doubt very prevalent amongst the poor of Romanist 
 countries ; something of the same feeling is even 
 observable amongst our own. I believe that the source 
 of Comte's grossly fallacious conclusion (I cannot use 
 any milder words) lies here. But we have probably 
 spent more time over this detail than it is worth. Now, 
 let me ask you in turn. Is there not something that 
 strikes you in what Comte says of ' that need of eternity 
 always inherent in our nature,' which, he tells us, is to 
 be satisfied ' as far as possible ' by the consideration of 
 universal advancement ? Why satisfied as far as pos- 
 sible ? Why not entirely ? How ' always inherent in 
 our nature ? ' 
 
 8. Really I cannot feel called upon to justify or to 
 explain all Comte's speculations. 
 
 W, Do you admit the ' need always inherent in our 
 nature ? ' 
 
 8. Well — probably. I admit a need of eternity so far 
 
34 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 as humanity is concerned, but not so far as respects 
 individual man. That notion appears to me to flow 
 from a mere inability to think of ourselves as non- 
 existing. 
 
 W. I will not press your latter words. But anyhow, 
 once more, why is that need so inherent ? Is it a con- 
 sequent without an antecedent ? 
 S. Impossible. 
 
 W. Then where is its antecedent ? 
 S. Well — I can't tell at present. 
 W. Again, I will not press you, especially as I 
 suspect we shall pass very nearly by this way again. 
 I will only ask you to reflect whether this consequent, 
 as you admit it to be, does not necessarily imply an 
 antecedent out of positive philosophy. For me it is 
 another of those startling admissions of spiritual truth 
 which occur not unfrequently in Comte, and which are 
 all the more remarkable because wrung out of him by 
 the strength of facts which he is too honest to deny. 
 I say with him that there is a ' need of eternity always 
 inherent in our nature.' But I say that that need is not 
 only to be satisfied ' as far as possible ' with the strug- 
 glings and stumblings, even if they be always onwards, 
 of our poor humanity, but to be absolutely and wholly 
 fulfilled in the Eternal God Himself. So only do we 
 learn whence that need comes, whither it tends. 
 
 8. Yes, but you recollect that the ignoring of the 
 origin and destination of things is of the very essence of 
 Positive Philosophy. 
 
 W, And are you really satisfied with that ? 
 
Vlt] POSITtri! PEILOSOPHT. 35 
 
 S. I tell you it was an unspeakable deliverance to me 
 to be able to look facts straight in the face, and study 
 them in their actual relations, without theories of causa- 
 tion or fears of consequences, without the obstacle of 
 religion. 
 
 W. Most assuredly, if your theories, or your fears, or 
 your religion, did hinder you from looking facts straight 
 in the face, and studying them in their actual relations, 
 anything or anybody, Comte's philosophy or what not, 
 that rid you from those theories or fears, or that religion, 
 must have been a great deliverance to you. I thought, 
 however, that long before reading Comte you had cast 
 religion aside for ' facts ? ' 
 
 8. Yes, but I never quite felt that I was right in doing 
 so till he showed me that I was.- 
 
 W. The question, however, remains, whether you are 
 right in tabooing metaphysics because your theory was a 
 hindrance to you ; or religion, because your religion— or 
 at least religion as you conceived it — was a fear of con- 
 sequences. 
 
 S. Let eveiy one speak well of the bridge that carries 
 him over. I must say that since I became a Comtian I 
 have felt a clearness, a spring in my work that I never 
 knew before. 
 
 W. I began by saying that I looked upon Comtianism 
 as having its appointed province, for which it is well 
 fitted. No doubt the practical study of facts is best 
 carried on by going into it with the lightest possible 
 baggage of theory, by looking as little as possible to 
 consequences and contingencies. One of the most valu- 
 
 d2 
 
36 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS JNB PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 ■able portions of Comte's book is that in which he shows 
 that Positive Philosophy, viewed in this light, is no new 
 discovery, but a method which has been employed more 
 or less consciously by all true men of science and philo- 
 sophers since the world began. But not less valuable is 
 that in which he insists on the need of theory as essential 
 to observation. You remember, no doubt, the passage ? ^ 
 
 S. Yes. 
 
 W. So that we are placed, it would seem, in this 
 dilemma : we cannot observe without a theory, cannot 
 perceive the relations of facts without something which 
 runs before our perception and overleaps it, — to use 
 Comte's expressions, primarily directs and finally inter- 
 prets observation ; yet that theory must not be such as 
 to cramp it. I think, if. you will consider this, you will 
 see that there is involved in it that inter-dependence, at 
 least of the positive (or practical) and metaphysical (or 
 psychical) elements, of which I originally spoke. But 
 now I ask you further, why should there be this relation 
 between observation and theory ? 
 
 S. Because, as Gomte tells you, observation would 
 not otherwise be true. 
 
 W. Why should it be true ? 
 
 1 ' In whatever order of phenomena it may be, even as towards the 
 moat simple, no true observation {aiicune vintable obserraiion) is possi- 
 ble except as far as it is primarily directed and finally interpreted by 
 some theory. ... It is henceforth evident, from a purely scientific 
 point of view, that every isolated, entirely empirical observation, is 
 essentially idle, and even radically uncertain ; science can only employ 
 those which connect themselves, at least hypothetically, with some 
 law ; it is such a connexion which constitutes the chief characteristic 
 difference between the observations of the man of science and those of 
 the vulgar.'— Phil. Pos. Vol. IV. p. 418. 
 
VII.] POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY, 37 
 
 S. Why?— 
 
 W. Shall I help you to an answer ? Because truth 
 must lie at the bottom of all things. 
 
 S. No, by no means. You forget that the denial of 
 absolute truth is essential to the Comtian system. 
 
 W. I believe that the recognition of an absolute truth 
 underlies it all. 
 
 S. How is it possible for you to prove that ? 
 
 W. Surely all the Comtian philosophy turns upon 
 this, that things stand in some true relation to each 
 other. 
 
 S. No ; not ' true.' 
 
 W. Correct. 
 
 S. Say - actual.' 
 
 W. Very well, — it is a word we have used already,—- 
 that things stand in some actual relation to each other, 
 which relation is capable of discovery by man. His 
 philosophy, in short, is not sceptical, but dogmatical. 
 
 S. Quite so. 
 
 W. And his whole effort is to reduce all historical, 
 social, &c. phenomena, as far as possible, to the same 
 precise relations as exist in mathematics. 
 
 S. What then ? 
 
 W. If there are these true, or correct, or actual rela- 
 tions between things, which are capable of discovery, 
 amongst all the false, or incorrect, or apparent relations 
 which we think to see, then is there something absolute 
 beneath all phenomena of relation, which something other 
 men call truth ; and faith, unswerving faith, in the 
 existence of such absolutely correct relations, as under- 
 
38 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PBOPIE. [No. 
 
 lying all phenomena, is the sole guiding clue to the 
 Positive Philosopher. He starts from the necessary- 
 existence of such correct or actual relations, as from a 
 universal antecedent ; otherwise he would have no cer- 
 tainty to look forward to, no object of search in his 
 observations. And thus Comte, though apparently an 
 Aristotelian, and certainly an open opponent of Platon- 
 ism, is in fact a Platonist at bottom; only that the 
 absolute which he has faith in, and is searching for, is 
 one not in the things themselves, but in the relations of 
 them. And this absolute of relation — if one may nse 
 a term seemingly self-repugnant — may in like manner 
 be connected with the whole theory of Platonic ideas, 
 as applied to relations, except that these would float as 
 it were unsphered, having no Divine essence for their 
 dwelling-place. 
 
 S. Pardon me if I insist on turning a deaf ear — as far 
 as I can — to your metaphysics. But, supposing I admit 
 all that you say about correct or actual relations, there 
 would still be an enormous gap between the existence of 
 such actual relations and that of an absolute truth. Of 
 course there is some one relation in which things actually 
 do stand to each other, and there may be an infinite 
 number of others in which they only seem to stand, but 
 do not stand : all Comte says is, that man can discover 
 that actual relation. 
 
 W. Generalize what you have just been saying, and I 
 think you will feel that I have misrepresented nothing. 
 You seem to have been speaking of things in pairs; 
 think of them in their universality. All things, which 
 
VII.] POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 39 
 
 seem to be related together in all manner of phenomenal, 
 fallacious ways, are in fact actually related, together in 
 a certain Koa-fux: of solely correct relations, which under- 
 lies the apparent Koa/aoi;, and that underlying Kocrfio'; is 
 discoverable by man. Surely I am only using a dif- 
 ferent phraseology from that of your school when I say 
 that this view implies that truth is at the ground of all 
 things. 
 
 iS. Well, suppose I admitted that there is no medium 
 between mere useless, purposeless, hopeless Pyrrhonism 
 and the acknowledgment of a necessary Truth as being 
 at the ground of all things ? 
 
 JV. You would not yet be at the end of the series of 
 questions which the mere admission of ' actual ' relations 
 between things opens up. For how is it that man per- 
 ceives these actual relations ? how is it that he perceives 
 those which are not actual ? how is it that he is deceived 
 by the one set, enlightened by the other? how is it that 
 he is capable of discovering that he is deceived or enlight- 
 ened? Reflect upon it, and I think you will see that 
 the acknowledgment of a necessary truth, though only 
 consisting for you primarily in the actual relations of all 
 things to one another, involves the recognition of it as 
 either (1) a metaphysical entity, in which shape I think 
 you will find the conception utterly unsatisfactory ; or (2) 
 as a God of Truth, who, and not which, is the ground of 
 all things. In other words, Comtianism, for all its pre- 
 tensions, necessarily involves a ttoO cttw out of itself, 
 an antecedent which transcends the whole series of its 
 consequents. I hold it to be nothing more than a 
 
40 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 convenient method for practical science, which has been 
 puffed out into a universal theory. In its cool denials 
 of causation and purpose in the world, it always puts me 
 in mind of a child who, finding that to eat a herring or 
 a mackerel it is handy to cut off the head and the tail, 
 should fancy that there was no use in either appendage, 
 as being utterly unprofitable for the 'positive philosophy' 
 of his dinner; whereas without them the fish would 
 never have breathed or fed or swum, and he would have 
 had no dinner at all. 
 
 & You surely don't hold that Comtianism implies 
 Christianity ? Was there ever a man who judged re- 
 ligion so dispassionately, indifferently, so entirely ah 
 extra, as Comte ? 
 
 W. I see that Comtianism, so far as it has anything 
 ' positive ' or practical in it, is pervaded by Christianity, 
 rests upon it, looks up to it, and in Christianity lives, 
 moves, and has its being. But then it is Christianity 
 according to the Romanist pattern. As to Protestantism, 
 so far from looking at it dispassionately and indifferently, 
 Comte never can look at it without prejudice. So blind 
 is he to the spiritual strength which it contains, that he 
 looks upon the English faith as having died out whilst 
 Milton was singing its swan-dirge in " Paradise Lost ; " 
 entirely ignoring that mighty movement of religious 
 regeneration led in the eighteenth century, among the 
 many by the Wesleys and Whitfield, among the few by 
 William Law, and which, as it takes hold by degrees of 
 the vitals of the Anglican Church, gives birth, through 
 Alexander Knox to the Anglo-Catholic ; through Simeon 
 
VII.] POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 41 
 
 to the Evangelical ; through Coleridge to what may be 
 called the essentially theological school of our renewed 
 Divinity. Whilst this marvellous movement is going on, 
 which threw up, as I believe, the most effective barrier 
 for all Europe against the anarchic tendencies of the 
 French eighteenth century, what does Comte see in Eng- 
 land? Nothing but just such influences as might happen 
 to square in with his theory of historic development into 
 positivism — Hume, Adam Smith, the Scotch School of 
 Philosophy, and, at last, Byron and Walter Scott. In a 
 word, the deep, vital meaning of a century of English 
 history is obscured for him by his system. 
 
 8. But it is precisely from all chance of bewilderment 
 between Tractarianism, and Evangelicalism, and Cole- 
 ridgeanism, that I feel so happy to have been delivered 
 by Positive Philosophy. 
 
 W. Are you delivered from them by it ? 
 
 S. Yes, as much as in faithfully studying a wild 
 flower I am delivered from speculations as to how vege- 
 table life came to exist, or what is to be the end of it. 
 
 W. If your study, in very proportion to its faithful- 
 ness, does not lead you backwards and forwards, sooner 
 or later, to such puzzles or others, you must have a very 
 differently constituted mind from almost every great 
 student of nature that has ever lived. But don't you see 
 that by such a use of Positive Philosophy you reduce it 
 to a mere recipe for self-forgetfulness, a sleep from all 
 highest and deepest questionings — a sort of wilful philo- 
 sophic drunkenness with the outward and visible ? And 
 indeed, I believe it is precisely such an influence which 
 
42 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 it has exercised, and is exercising, upon the contem- 
 porary art and literature of France. Viewed closely, it 
 seems to me the Epicurism of the nineteenth century. 
 
 8. I thought you began by saying that Comte had 
 settled down to his true level in France ? 
 
 W. Comte has, and Comtianism as a system. But 
 the ignoring of the above and the below ; the absorption 
 in the material, temporary, visible, is one of the evil 
 influences of this age and of all ages, which it has simply 
 been given to him to deck with a new name, to shape 
 into a new system. Comte is but one of the products of 
 that influence, as were Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, and 
 Stimer, as is, above all, Louis Napoleon, fit king for 
 such a priesthood. 
 
 S. I don't know where to have you. Sometimes you 
 seem to approve of Comtianism, sometimes you denounce 
 it. You spoke of Comte a little while back as an 
 honest man, now he is a priest of evil. 
 
 W. There is no real contradiction. I repeat that, 
 as a method of observation and study. Positive Philo- 
 sophy appears to me very valuable ; but it must rest 
 on something below, it must look to something above. 
 So far as it attempts to stand by itself, it must crumble 
 into the grossest materialism ; so far as it is sought to 
 be set up as a creed, it must lead to the most crushing 
 despotism. So I believe Comte, as a man of science, 
 as an observer, to have been singularly honest ; but so 
 far as he seeks to raise Positive Philosophy upon the 
 ruins of all religion, and all metaphysics, I accept your 
 words, and I denounce him as a priest of evil. 
 
VII.] POSITim PHILOSOPHY. 43 
 
 S. I cannot see why Positive Philosophy should not 
 stand by itself, upon the basis of those facts with which 
 alone it deals. 
 
 W. Because facts are perpetually leading us out of 
 themselves; because the visible has its roots in the 
 invisible, the known in the unknown, the world and 
 man in God. Take, for instance (I must revert to a 
 point I touched on before), those wants and tendencies 
 of human nature, which Comte is too sincere not to 
 recognise, — that ' inherent need of eternity,' or again, 
 that ' instinctive predilection for order and harmony,' 
 which he speaks of in his sixth volume ; or still again, 
 what he calls in the same volume, in the teeth of his 
 own earliest formula, the 'great destination' of man's 
 action over nature. Is it possible to stop short with 
 him at such a need, such a predilection, such a destina- 
 tion, without asking whence and whither? What is 
 eternity? Is it a fact within the domain of Positive 
 Philosophy ? Is it a conception ? Why should human 
 nature have an inherent need of a conception ? Why 
 are order and harmony ? Why has man a destination ? 
 
 8. Facts ! I must once more recall you to facts ! con- 
 fine yourself to facts ! facts in their successions ! facts 
 in their similitudes ! 
 
 W. Do you think you can silence these obstinate 
 questionings of man's spirit by that parrot-cry of ' facts !' 
 ' confine yourself to facts ' ? — ' Confine myself to facts ?' 
 the spirit answers, ' Why, I struggle to do so, but they 
 ' will not let me ; they drive me away from them to 
 ' where they seem facts no longer, but mere shadows 
 
44 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 ' and semblances of mightier realities, of a world unseen, 
 ' of a kingdom which cannot be moved. Facts ! But 
 ' your participle implies a verb, quis fecit? Who made 
 ' these facts which you tell me to study, and wherefore 
 ' were they made ? You bid me observe succession ; 
 ' but where is the first, and where the last ? You bid 
 ' me dwell on similitude ; but where is the pattern from 
 ' whence it flows, the standard whereby it is to be mea- 
 ' sured? You speak of order and harmony; I crave 
 ' for them ; I have glimpses of them every now and 
 ' then, never lasting, never satisfying ; merely as flashes 
 ' from a hidden realm of light. But as often that order 
 ' and harmony seem to have entirely vanished amid 
 ' disorder and confusion inextricable, or else they are 
 ' themselves stern, pitiless, crushing. I cannot believe 
 ' in them when I miss their presence ; I cannot cherish 
 ' them when I feel them grating on me and overwhelm- 
 ' ing me, unless I believe in a quenchless source from 
 ' which they spring, in an unseen sphere wherein they 
 ' dwell, in an abiding Power which uses them with unfail- 
 ' ing wisdom, for purposes of all-embracing love. Give 
 ' me that faith, and I shall be able, with the great Floren- 
 ' tine, to see written on the very gates of everlasting 
 ' woe the words of fire — 
 
 ' Feoenii la Divina Potestate, 
 La Somma Sapienza o'l Primo A-niore ;' 
 
 ' Deny me that faith, and if I am to forego all looking 
 ' before and after ; if I am to shut myself up with the 
 ' everlasting riddle of this universe, having no other 
 ' occupation than to observe the relations between " my 
 
VII.] POSITIVE FHIIOSOFHY. 45 
 
 ' first," " my second," " my third," and " my whole," 
 ' carefully abstaining from the word itself, I tell you 
 ' that two pennyworth of gin will give me an easier 
 ' and pleasanter anoesiliesia than all your Positive 
 ' Philosophy!' 
 
 S. Come, come, Williams, a little less indignant 
 eloquence. You are most unfair towards Comte, who 
 certainly advocates no ancesihesia for the purpose of 
 deadening action, but only seeks to stimulate it by 
 cutting off deadening influences. But, anyhow, admit- 
 ting that possibly there are more things in heaven and 
 earth than are dreamt of even in Comte's philosophy, 
 still that is no reason for not making what use of it 
 one can. 
 
 W. Certainly ; that is precisely what I asked you 
 to do. 
 
 8. Comte + a?, I confess, is my present stand-point. 
 It may be that Positive Philosophy stretches far beyond 
 the limits assigned to it by its author. It may be, 
 though I don't see it, that the realm of facts which is 
 cognizable by it includes God, a spiritual world, a life 
 everlasting. It may be, though I can't conceive it, 
 that the doctrine of the Trinity, or that of the Atone- 
 ment, expresses a true relation of facts within such 
 realm. But in the meanwhile, can you deny the grasp 
 which Positive Philosophy has laid on the facts of the 
 past — the pregnant fruitfulness, for instance, of the 
 theory as to the three stages of religious development, 
 fetishism, polytheism, monotheism ? 
 
 W. Once more ; so far as Positive Philosophy has 
 
46 TRACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No. 
 
 evolved any new truth, I am most glad to recognise and 
 to use it. The distinctioa between these three stages 
 undoubtedly affords a most valuable hint for the study 
 of history, besides offering an additional witness to that 
 cardinal truth of which I have so often reminded you. 
 
 S. You seem to me really Trinity-mad, as Spinoza 
 was said to be Grod-drunk. It is impossible for a man 
 to use any threefold classification without your seeing 
 at once some testimony to your pet dogma. What a 
 mere succession of three periods has to say to a mystery 
 of three co-eternals, I cannot well divine. 
 
 W. Pardon me ; I do not admit that the hint I spoke 
 of is one simply of a succession of periods. I believe 
 the value of it lies precisely in this, that it points to 
 three essential sides or faces of religious faith and truth, 
 which is incomplete, unless it embraces all three. 
 
 8. Mercy on us ! — what next ? Do yon mean to say 
 that fetishism and polytheism are essential elements of 
 religion ? 
 
 W. I mean that both fetishism and polytheism are 
 mere outward phenomena, corresponding each, Hke 
 monotheism, to a single side of truth, and each im- 
 perfect on that account. The side of truth which 
 lies beneath fetishism is, that God is to be seen in 
 nature; that nature is all divine. The con-uption of 
 • that truth is, that this or that object in nature, or all 
 nature, is God. The side of truth which lies beneath 
 polytheism is, that there is distinction of functions, of 
 personality, in God. The corruption of that tnith is, 
 that the distinct persons are individual Gods ; that their 
 
VII.] POSITIVE PHIL0S0PH7. 47 
 
 distinct functions may jar, and thwart each other. The 
 side of truth which lies beneath monotheism is, that 
 there is a Divine unity overruling all. The corruption 
 of that truth is, that such unity is a hairen and abstract 
 one, separate from all besides. The conciliation of all 
 these fragmentary truths lies, I once more repeat it, in 
 the revelation of the Divine Three-in-One, eternally 
 self-manifested in creation. Without this conciliation 
 — without the synergy, to use once more the Comtian 
 term — of these three principles of religious faith, religion 
 is for ever turning upon itself, and unmitigated fetish- 
 ism is its last state, as in man's degradation it is its first. 
 Every one admits that the act of the Italian brigand 
 in covering his Madonna's face during the commission 
 of his crimes, is an act of fetishism ; and yet such 
 fetishism is the product of that so-called Romish mono- 
 theism, most inappropriately, indeed, as I think, 
 so termed by Comte, but which he has scarcely words 
 enough to admire. The close connexion between 
 fetishism and positivism, you will recollect, is clearly 
 and repeatedly set forth by Comte himself^ And, 
 could one conceive of the Positivist worship becoming 
 anywhere prevalent, what but pure fetishism would be, 
 for the great bulk of mankind, the result of that com- 
 bination of ' signs, images, and feelings,' — from the 
 statue of the Mother-and-child, as the symbol of the 
 
 1 ' Taking complete positmty as the normal type of our mental ma- 
 ' turity, the fetishist is less distant from it than any theologist. ' ' The 
 ' better one compares fetishism and positiTism, the more one recognises 
 ' their fundamental affinity.'— SysStoe de PoUtigne Positii!e,Yo\. III. pp. 
 85, 119; and see Vol. IV. p. 43. 
 
48 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. [No- 
 
 goddess Humanity, downwards, — whicli is to constitute 
 the new worship ? Do you really think that the ' Great 
 Being,' the ' continuous sum of all convergent beings,' 
 — that ' Humanity,' the ' sum of human beings past, 
 future, and present ' (exclusive, indeed, of those not 
 really ' assimilable,' but inclusive of ' worthy animal 
 auxiliaries ' ^), — are likely to elicit much fervent adora- 
 tion ? Whereas, indeed, many a poor old dame, who had 
 worshipped a Romish Mother-and-child all her life, 
 might easily be brought to worship a Positivist one, 
 without finding out the difference. . . . 
 
 8. You forget that the Comtian use of symbols is 
 only to help one's thoughts and feelings, and is without 
 anything of the fetishist's notion, that there is a virtue 
 in them which will communicate itself to us. 
 
 W. The very plea for all image- worship, used by all 
 enlightened Romanists, Brahmins, Buddhists, &c., and 
 which results invariably for the multitude in the deadest 
 superstition. The question of the use of symbols itself 
 is, indeed, a far deeper one, into which we need not 
 enter. But observe, again, how prone Comtianism must 
 be to relic-worship. In that adoration of the dead 
 which it inculcates, will not the efibrt to ' contemplate 
 habitually the catastrophe which deprived us of them ' ' 
 lead naturally to the use of any skinny fragments of 
 departed mortality which may serve to quicken and fix 
 
 ■^ Systime de Politique Positive, Vol. IV. p. 30, 
 
 2 CatSchisme Po^tiviste, pp. 30, 31. 
 
 ' ' For e.ich of these beings objectiTely extinct, we should not fear to 
 
 ■ contemplate habitually the catastrophe which depiived us of them," 
 
 Politique Positive, Vol. IV. p, 119. 
 
"VII.] POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 49 
 
 tliat contemplation? May not Positivism sink thus 
 again into the most ghastly fetishism ? 
 
 8. Not until it wholly belies the intentions of its 
 founder. 
 
 W. Well, — ask yourself, for I will not myself claim 
 the answer from you : Which worship is really worthiest 
 of man, and most appropriate to his nature — the public 
 ceremonies by which the ' necessary ' fusion of fetishism 
 and positivism is to be achieved, and due homage paid 
 to a goddess slave to death ^ ' fatally impotent against 
 outward laws,'^ or the private efforts of ' cerebral evoca- 
 tion,' by which the dead are to be ' supposed ' alive,^ 
 on the one hand, — or, on the other, the sharing at the 
 communion rails of the nourishing bread and the 
 quickening wine, the ever-renewed symbols of a solemn 
 victory of life over death, in the benefits of which all are 
 called upon to participate ? I tell you that that bread 
 and that wine will serve as spiritual food and drink to 
 far-off generations, amongst which the words of Positive 
 Philosophy shall sound but as the faint echo, in an 
 unknown tongue, of a forgotten voice. 
 
 Noie. — In the former issue of this Tract reference was 
 made to a statement published by M. Pierre Leroux^ 
 
 ' ' Each time I see thus disappear before the time a really superior 
 ' being, I deplore the fatal impotence of humanity against outward laws 
 ' {la fatale impuisswnce de VhumaniU contre les lois exterieures), which 
 rob her of her best organs.' — Politique Positive, Vol. III. p. xvii. 
 2 ' Far from forgetting thee, I must endeavour to suppose thee alive, 
 ' in order that we may continue to identify ourselves more and more.' 
 — (Invocation to Madame de Vaux.) Ibid. Vol. I. p. xvi. 
 
 E 
 
50 TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLH. [No. VII. 
 
 that Comte used to perform his daily worship to 
 Humanity after Madame Clotilda de Vaux's death, 
 before her two arms crossed over her portrait. This has 
 been denied, in no measured terms, by two members of 
 the Positivist school, as ' a gross falsehood,' a ' gross 
 and silly calumny.' From what I know of Comte's life 
 and writings, I can see no antecedent improbability in 
 the story (a passage in the ' Politique Positive,' Vol. IV. 
 p. 437, as to post-mortem examinations, to which I am 
 referred by Mr. R. Congreve, being, as it seems to me, 
 entirely beside the question as to a matter of worship) ; 
 whilst of the portrait itself Comte speaks {ibid. p. 554) 
 as ' perhaps destined to supply soon to regenerate souls 
 the best emblem of the Great Being.' Of the good 
 faith of the author of the article in which the statement 
 appeared (M. Luc Desages), or of that of M. Pierre 
 Leroux himself, I have no doubt ; the story appears 
 to have been currently believed by persons well ac- 
 quainted with Comte, and who were in a position to 
 know the truth ; and it seems to oiFer the only clue 
 I am aware of to the meaning of a passage in his invo- 
 cation to her, about his recollections of her being fortified 
 by a ' characteristic correspondence.' But as the anec- 
 dote, as such, is wholly immaterial to my argument, from 
 the moment it is put in question, I prefer, of course, 
 withdrawing all reference to it. 
 
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