-'"Wfwm^^ #1 9^, Cornell University Library BT75 .M95 1882 Republic of God. olin 1924 029 308 009 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924029308009 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE NATION. The Foundations of Civil Order and Political Life in the United States. By Elisha Mulford, LL. D. i vol. crown 8vo, $2.50. From Hon. James A. Garfield, President of the United States. It is a very able discussion of what is to me one of the most important branches of political philosophy. Every page I have read surprises me with the extent and thoroughness of the author's study, and the freshness and vigor of his discussion. From Hon. Wayne MacVeagh, Attorney General 0/ the United States. It is so complete in its argument, moves so steadily to its own high end, and is so novel in American literature, for its wealth of political knowledge. Fro7n Hon. Charles Sumner. I have read "The Nation -' from the first to the last with constant interest and sympathy. It is a most important contribution to our political literature, and can- not fail to strengthen and elevate our national life- In a letter to Dr. Francis Lieber Mr. Sumner said : " If you write to Mr. Mul- ford let him know that I am one of his pupils." From James B. Angell, President 0/ the University 0/ Michigan^ and recently Minister to China. It is the most valuable contribution to political philosophy which has been writ- ten in the English language in this generation. Its hearty recognition of ihe moral element in the national life carries us back to the good old times of Hooker and Milton. Fro7n J, L. DiMAN, late Professor of History in Bro-wn Uiiiversiiy. Mr. Mulford's " The Nation "_ is not only by far the most profound and exhaust- ive study in the field of speculative politics that American scholarship has yet pro- duced, but we shall be obliged to go very far back in the literary annals of our mother country to find anything worthy of comparison with it. From F. D. Maurice, late Professor of Moral Philosophy^ Cambridge University^ E?igland. The bracing effect of your late contest for freedom is manifest in its protest against commercial theories and pale abstractions which are wearing at the life of England. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Publishers, Boston, Mass. THE REPUBLIC OF GOD. aw %mtitutt of Cj^eoiogr* ELISHA MULFORD, LL.D. FOURTH EDITION, BOSTON: HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. gCjje EiijerfiiUe Press, (IDamtiriUffc. 1882. Copyright, 1881, By ELISHA MULFORD. All rights reserved* The Riverside Press, Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by H. 0. Hougliton & Co. TO MY OHILBREN. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGI The Being of God 1 The consciousness of God, 1. The ontological argument. The manifestation of God. The name of God. The knowledge of God through experience. 2. The cosmological argument. Causality. 3. The teleologic^l argument. The imperfection of the physical process. The strife in nature. The reconciliation. Necessity is not inconsistent with freedom. Freedom is not manifested in necessity. The enduring element in religion and philosophy. 4. The moral argument. Righteousness and freedom. CHAPTER H. The Personality of God 22 Personality, the highest attainment of man. 1, The relation of the personality of man to the personality of God. The foundation of the personality of man in the person- ality of God. The knowledge of personality. Personality the central principle of the world. IV CONTENTS PAOl 2. The attributes of God. The personality of God, the ground of the knowledge of God. The person of God and the scheme of divinity. CHAPTER III. The Precedent Relations of Religion and Philoso- phy TO THE Revelation of God ..... 40 1. Definition of religion. The nature and end of religion. The history of religion. The influence of physical conditions on the growth of religion. Correlation of religion and philosophy. Conflict between religion and philosophy. 2. Definition of philosophy. The relative influence of religion and philosophy on the ethical life of man. 3. The revelation of Christ is not a religion nor a philosophy. The Christ does not come as the founder of a religion. The Old Testament is not the record of a religion. The preface to the Commandments. The Commandments. The New Testament is not the record of a religion. The Christ was not the founder of a sect of Christians. The conflict of the revelation of the Christ with the pa- gan religions. The goal of religion and philosophy. CHAPTER IV. The Revelation of God 81 This revelation is from God, but primarily it is o/God. The divine self revelation. The revelation for another. The revelation of and through and to a person. The revelation through Sonship. The knowledge of God. Revelation and science. The correspondence between discovery in the physical process and revelation in the spiritual life. CONTENTS. This revelation alone can satisfy humanity. The mysteries -which become the subject of knowledge. Revelation is light. Kevelation is through relations. This revelation is not spectacular. The revelation to faith and reason and conscience. CHAPTER V. The Revelation of God in the Christ . . . 10? The revelation in a person. The revelation which is not external to God, nor exter- nal to man. There is in the Christ: — (a.) The consciousness in the world of perfect unity with God. (J.) The consciousness in the world of perfect unity with man. The manifestation of God in a person. The manifestation of God in a person; always in rela- tions. The realization of the freedom of man is in relations with God. The record in the Evangelists of the coming of the Son of man. Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of history. The biographical life of Jesus. An apologetic notice of recent theories: — (a.) That Jesus came, through a religious disposition and reflection, to adopt the idea of tbe Christ. (6.) That Jesus did not recognize a system of econ- omy, nor the culture of art. (c.) That Jesus conceived an ethical aim, as the en- thusiasm for humanity. The Incarnation as physical, and as ethical, and as formative of the perfect and perfected life of hu- manity. The Christ, the head of the human race. The Trinity. The coming of the Spirit. VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER VL PAOX The Conviction of the World 133 The conviction of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. 1. The conTiction of sin. The nature of sin. Sin is an alienation from God and from humanity, through selfishness. The transgression of the law. The contradiction of life. It is incident in the imperfect development of freedom. 2. The conviction of righteousness. Righteousness is in the fulfillment of the law of God, and the law of the life of humanity. It is manifested in the life of the Christ. It is recognized through the conscience and the con- sciousness of men. 3. The conviction of judgment. The judgment is in the revelation of the light. The judgment an object of desire. The law of the divine judgment in the oneness of the Christ with humanity. The judgment in the coming of the kingdom of God. CHAPTER Vn. The Revelation of Heaven to the World . . 165 The Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven. The signs of the Kingdom. The representations of the pagan religions. The life of man verified in the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven realized in the coming of the Christ, in the Holy Spirit. The Kingdoms of this world become the Kingdom of the Christ. The glory of the conquest of death not yet manifest, but Jesus has that glory. CONTENTS. VU CHAPTER VIII. PASI The Justification of the World 173 Kighteousness by faith. The source and object of faith. Faith in a righteous person. Faith in another, and being in another. Faith works with hope and love. Faith in a righteous person, in the fulfillment of whose will is the unity and life of the family and the nation. Justification by faith, and the unity and freedom of the nation in modern history. CHAPTER IX. The Redemption of the World 18C The world is redeemed. The Christ redeemed the world : — (a.) In becoming himself the perfect redeemer, (6.) In a life in the fulfillment of perfect righteous- ness. (c.) In a life in the Spirit, (t/.) In a life consistent with the knowledge of the destination of mankind. (fi.) In a life in oneness with God, and oneness with humanity. The sacrifice of the Christ. The law of sacrifice. The redemption through love. The redemption through knowledge. The redemption through sacrifice. The work of the Christ the fulfillment of the will of God. The work of the Christ the manifestation of the love of God. The world is not redeemed through a legend nor through a scheme of divinity. The end of the redemption. The deliverance from evil. The redemption is from sin and unto righteousness. The redemption is from the slavery of sin into the free- dom of God. VUl CONTENTS. PAQB The redemption of every creature. The final cause of the world manifest in the redemption of the world. The relation of the redemption to eternal life. The communion of earth and heaven. The death of the Christ brings to life its infinite signifi- cance. CHAPTER X. The Life of the Spirit 207 The coming of the Spirit. The going away of the Christ, the manifestation and re- alization of the divine relations of humanity. The procession of the Spirit. The Church the witness to the continuing life of the Christ in the world. The Church ; the communion of saints. The Scriptures. The Scriptures; the record of the revelation of God. The Scriptures ; the difference, in their method, from the religious books of the world. The Sacraments. The Sacraments; the manifestation of the character and end of domestic and national worship. The coming of the Spirit; the Lord and Giver of Life. The law of Christ, the law of humanity. The foundation of human society. The prayer of human society, " Show me thy righteous- ness.'' The realization of manhood. The resurrection. The ascension. The conquest of death. The new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth right- eousness. essarily a paraphrase, simply conveying the substance; but these may be readily verified, and in some instances another translation has been given, but only when sustained by the most critical author- ities. Montrose, Susquehanna County, Penn. THE REPUBLIC OF GOD. CHAPTER I. THE BEING OF GOD. The being of God is the precedent and the postulate of the thought of God. It is the ground in man of his conscious life. From the beginning, and with the growth of the human consciousness, there is the consciousness of the being of God, and of a relation to God. Man is conscious of the being of the external world, and lives and acts in this consciousness, and the being of the external world so comes to be ap- prehended by him. And, further, man • is con- scious of the being of God, and lives and acts in this consciousness, and the reality of the being of God so comes to him. "We cannot deduce the being of God from the existence of the world, nor the eternal from the temporal, nor the infinite from the finite ; and yet the temporal has its ground in the eternal, and 2 THE BEING OF GOD. the finite in the infinite. The eternal is not the continuation of the temporal, nor the infinite the extension of the finite, and God is not the se- quence nor the limitation of the world. In this process of the consciousness of the be- ing of God, man does not start from the finite ex- istence which is within the conditions of space and time, -^ that which consequently is placed.^ Being is of itself, in finite conditions, a vacant phase of thought. It is not that we have to ask its apphca- tion, as derived from the finite existences, to God. The notion of God is derivative from the being of God. It is not necessary to supplement the notion of God with the empty category of being as derived from finite conditions.^ 1 " We must find something like God before we reach God, or we shall not in our thoughts attain unto him.*' (Bascom, Philosophy of Religion, p. 74.) It is necessarily the reverse of this. We know God, and then we find that which in a higher or lower measure is like him. 2 Kant (TTerte, vol. i. p. 90) does not prove the difference between being and notion. It is assumed in a popular way, but it is a phase of thought which applies only to imperfect or incomplete things. Thus, in society the state advances in its normal process into the realization of the idea of the state, and the course of the physical world may be a development, after its germinal or radical type, through the succession of its forms. But this process does not per- tain to the being of God. He is not the sequence of an evolution, though his manifestation may be through the process of an evolu- tion. God is the perfect being, and incompleteness does not attach to him. If Kant's postulate is correct we can know nothing of God ; we can make up various notions about God, but that is not to say that THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD. 3 The being of God is not an attribute which, is to be appended to some abstract notion of reality, or of the sum of all realities, or to the notion of perfection, and if it were in this constructive method to be thus apprehended, it would have the place of an attribute and not of the subject. Thus it is not necessary to the knowledge of the being of God to assume that it is one among several objects of immediate intuition ; nor that it is a requisition of the emotions, — the require- ment that there shall be placed before them the highest end ; nor that it is arrived at, as a con- clusion, through the formulas of logic. The knowledge of God thenceforth, in this pro- cess of consciousness, comes through experience. It is the experience of the individual and the fam- ily and the nation in the life of humanity. The being of God is the primal truth. It is primitive in human thought : there is nothing be- fore it nor apart from it, from which it is to be derived. Thus the being of God has not its foun- dation in the life of humanity, but humanity has its foundation in the life of God. Theology has not its ground in psychology. The idea of God is in and with and through the these notions are so, nor is the existence of God implied by theia See Hegel's Philosophie der Religion^ vol. ii. p. 214. 4 THE BEING OF GOD. being of God. The idea and the being of God > are one. In Him is the oneness of the ideal and the real. It is only in and from the being of God that we discern the infinite and the eternal in" their realization.-^ The infinite is not subject to the conditions of the finite, nor the eternal to the conditions of the temporal. In the physical process we can attain only to the negative infinite, the temporal and spatial infinite^ that is, the quantitative infinite. The imagination is dissatisfied with this^ and passes beyond it, but only through its ideal qualities. That the conditions and conclusions of thought are not the same in the finite — the temporal and spatial — is no argument against this position.^ 1 It has been said of one form of the ontological argument, "It infers the being of God from the ideal necessity of being to the con- ception of infinite attributes. It thus accepts a connection of ideas as a proof of facts." (Bascom, Philosophy of Religion, p. 60.) This is critical of a merely formal process of thought that assumes " infinite attributes," and then assumes " being " also, as an attribute that is attached to them through a *' connection of ideas." But in the on- tological argument strictly there is no " connection of ideas " as- sumed. For the idea and the being of God are one, and it is only in and from the being of God that we discern what are called his "infinite attributes." Again, it is not from the notion of a perfect being — " the con- ception of infinite attributes " — that the reality of being is deduced, for the argument does not assume an attribute of perfection to which existence is to be appended, and if existence be an attribute or per- fection of God it must take the place of an attribute and not of the subject. 2 The ontological argument of S. Anselm, as it has been represent- ed in the interpretation of a school of formal logic, has for its postu* THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD. 5 There is no demonstration of the being of God. It is itself the principle of demonstration. In every mode of demonstration whose object is to arrive at it, it is assumed. It can form no term in the formulas of logic. It is not a truth which is to be counted among the achievements of human thought. There can be no demonstration of the being of God by man: there may be the manifes- tation of God to man. The name of God is that name which passes into the common forms of thought. In its deriva- tion it may have an ethical significance. It has late the thought of a perfect being — a being than which none greater can be conceived, and then it attaches the attribute of being to the thought as necessary to its perfection — as that lacking which it would lack perfection. But S. Anselm's argument strictly is as follows: God is something than which nothing greater can be conceived: but that cannot be in the intellect alone. If it were only a thought it might be con- ceived as existing, and that would be something greater, therefore existence is necessarily implied in it. The representation of S. Anselm's argument by a school of formal logic, as Hegel says, implies an antithesis of thought and being. But S. Anselra compares two modes of conceiving the perfect be- ing, that which conceives him as a mere abstraction, simply an object of thought, and that which conceives him as really existing, and he maintains that so long as God is conceived only as an object of thought — that is, as a product of the human mind — we do not conceive that than which nothing greater can be conceived, in which the definition of God consists. Thus Hegel says: *' The profound thought which the argument involves has acquired a. false and shal- low aspect from being forced into the form of a conclusion of the understanding." See Hegel's Philosophie der Religion^ vol. ii.p. 541 ^ Hedge's Ways of the Spirit, p. 176. 6 THE BEING OF GOD. a definite place in the laiiguage and literature of English-speaking men. The substitution for it of forms which denote some special phase of thought is an indication of weakness. These terms are often the sequence of an argument for the bei-.ig of God. ' They often have the stamp of certain schools upon them. Thus the term " supreme be- ing" implies the notion of being which is rela- tively more and higher than other forms of being.^ It has no content, and implies only the empty abstraction of indeterminate^ but yet relative, be- ing. It has not a certain strength which is in the term "central being/' as in Dante's phrase, "truth deep as the centre." The term "first cause" in- dicates only one, if it be counted the first, in the sequence of the forces of the world, and these forces often apparently move through forms ad- vancing from less to greater. The term " provi- dence " indicates a notion as to the determina- tion of these forces, in what it further defines as a special or general way toward a certain end. These phrases were widely prevalent in the style of the last century. The terms " the absolute," which is characteristic of the Greek thought, and 1 This phrase is used by Edwards, and becomes the basis of his theory of the nature of virtue, tlie love of the more and higher ovpr the less and lower being, which has thus only a quantitative charat,- ter. An ethical content is imported from some incidental refert'iicc, or some other writings of Edwards, but it is lacking in his theory of virtue. The same conception is carried, in another form, into the sovereignty of God, which is thus a bare sovereignty, — the starker stronjrer force. THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 7 ^' the infinite " and " the eternal/' are more signifi- cant and comprehensive than the preceding, and denote the high service of philosophy. Thus the terms " the word/' or " the divine word/' or ^^ the eternal word/' indicate a truth of the deepest sig- nificance, while yet they retain, in their literal form, the trace of certain schools and epochs, and recall their relation to these in the history of phi- losophy. The evidence of the being of God from the being and condition of the physical world is not to be traced in the common lines of thought in which this argument is presented. The argument which has this inference for its object has been called, in the term of the schools, the cosmological argument. A special form of this argument is based upon the notion of causality. The process of causality appears in the physical process. But causality here is the transference of force. And the cause is always contained in the effect, and the effect measures the cause from which it proceeds. We cannot transcend the effect as we pass through the being and condition of the physical world to its cause. And the law of causality, which is ad- duced, itself forbids a stop in its numeric preces- siouj which is to be designated as a first cause, it- self having no precedent. This would subvert the very principle which is assumed as the foundation 8 THE BEING OF GOD. of the whole structure. And the cause^ which is physical, can be invested with no other qualities, for instance, with no intellectual or moral quality which is not in the effect. The argument aims to transcend the physical process by the application of a law in which that process and the persistence of that process are constantly implied. There is no recession through which we pass, in the process of the physical world with its finite changes, to the being of God.^ But the mind of man is left unsatisfied. It is still led to follow that which is beyond and still beyond. There is an argument derived from the being and condition of the physical world, on the ground that the universe bears traces of intelligence, — of thought and will. This has been called the argu- ment from design, — the teleological argument. This argument in one form rests on an analogy between the physical process and the works of man ; as when from the design, in the tools, the buildings, and the streets, we infer a designer of them. This strictly would involve by way of an- alogy, man as an animal, and then, also, other ani- mals of certain lower forms, as the bird that builds a nest, and the insect that makes a cell. But while man as involved in this physical pro- ^ " The universe lies forever back of the universe.'* (Bascom, Philosophy of Religion^ p. 41.) THE TELEOLOGICAL AEGUMENT. 9 cess has intelligence, this product cannot carry ns beyond the process itself in which it exists. The indications of intelligence, moreover, are not lim- ited to conscious action, but they appear in un- conscious movements, as in the structural uses and functions of the human body. The argument, in- stead of showing thought as antecedent, shows it as pervading the whole, and in a process whose apparent mode of operation is that of necessity.^ And there are in the works of man other and higher qualities than those which appear in the physical process. The music of the storm, of the sweep of the surges of the ocean, is not so impres- sive as that of great orchestras. The tree that sways in the wind has no tones to compare with those that are brought out by the viol and the flute. It is the human element that gives to the landscape its deepest attraction. It is said in the old phrase, that in the physical process there is an adaptation of means to an end. But if this phrase be allowed an application to the physical process it is only the evidence of in- telligence, and the degree of intelligence is in the completeness of the adaptation of the means to the end. This adaptation is also modified by the relative imperfection of the physical process, which ^ " The being tliat emerges under the teleological proof is the universe itself, as an organic unconscious conscious being. The teleological argunaent breaks down, not because it does not reach in- telligence, but because it includes it, and includes it among neces* sary forces.*' (Bascom, PkilosopJiy of Religion, p. 68.) 10 THE BEING OF GOD. appears in the fact, for instance, that in every class or species the individuals are comparatively few that attain to the normal type. In any evolu- tion of forms the variations are but slowly ef- fected, and the forms displaced still in some in- stances remain, and in individuals recur when all use for them is gone. This led Hegel to say, that in the physical process the idea is slowly and with difficulty developed, and in its processes there are many divergences, as if nature were not always very clear in her own intent. There is, however, in the physical process only the evidence of adap- tation to the circumjacent condition, and not to a determinate end. And this adaptation of means to an end, or of the individual to the environment, bears, in the physical f)i'ocess, the evidence of no moral quality.^ In the physical process, the beak 1 The ■witches in Macbeth, that are gathered on the lonely heath in *'fog and foul air," stand very near to nature. They begin their strain of dolor, with "Fair is foul, and foul is fair,'* in her indifference. They gather at hand, to throw into their seeth- ing cauldron, " Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting." Macbeth calls to them in the same moral indifference, out of the course of nature, "Though the yesty waves Confound and swallow navigation up; Though bladed com be lodged^ and trees blown down; Though castles topple on their warders' heads; Though palaces and pyramids do slope Their heaas to their foundations; though the treasure THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 11 and talons of the hawk are adapted to clutch its prey with almost no pause in its swift flight. The flower is formed for the distillation of poison, and plants which are useful are so mimicked by those which are hurtful that only constant scrutiny^ after fatal experiences, can detect the difference. The toadstool grows close by the mushroom. The fruit which the tempter found already growing was fair to tiie eye. Hegel says, the earth declares the goodness of God, and that his goodness appears in this adaptation of means to an end, but it is only when this physical process is considered with ref- erence to that which is beyond it, to an end which it brings not within our obsei^vation, that these words are justified. The conditions of this process are those of con- flict, a struggle for existence, it is ** The rack of this tough world," and one form passes beyond another form by sur- Of nature's germens tumble all together, Even till destruction sicken ; answer me." Macbeth, Act IV., Scene 1. Man, as involved in the physical process, and as an object o£ physical science, in a school which holds these limitations, has no other dignity than attaches to any other animal. His cunning may outmatch the fox, but it has no other quality; his powers of digestion are the same as those of the rat; the fly does copulate as he; the dog may quarrel with him for his food; the shark may prey upon him, as he on the shark, and with advantage when it finds him in its own element; he learns the conditions of physical existence from the anatomy of other animals; vegetable and animal parasites grow and feed on him; his life as involved in the physical process has no othor dignity, it is of the earth, earthy. 12 THE BEING OF GOD. vival. There are in nature elements of subsist- ence for production and for destruction. One race to subsist must prey with ravin upon an- other race.^ There is the adaptation of the wing of the crow and of the tooth of the shark. There is a strange intermingling in the poison that fills the chalice of the most beautiful flower^ the malaria that is borne upon the softest airs, the color that gleams resplendently in the sinuous folds of the serpent. There is the fair light that illumines the dawn and empurples the evening, but throws its radiance over mists and exhalations. There are smooth waters that bear the reflection of the clouds which hold the tempest, and are changed with the clouds which burst over them into the rage of cruel seas. The tides rise and fall with almost changeless precision, but they are swept by the storm that marks their lines with wreck. By the cleft and broken strata of the rocks, one may still seem to hear " the sea rehearse Its ancient song of chaos.' ^ There is a school which assumes the identity of God with the physical process of the world, or with what it calls ^' the nature of things." It identifies God actually with the course of physical nat- ure, with the nature of things in the current physical condition of the world. Then that which is apparently inexorable and cruel ia directly ascribed to him. That which in its transient course is dark is ascribed to Him in whom is light and no darkness. But it would not be true even to assert the identity of man thus with the nature of things. It would be a degradation of man in whom is the life of the spirit. THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 13 There is in nature that which is beautiful and that which is fantastic and monstrous. These aspects of nature become more apparent in tropical coun- tries, where there is a stronger movement of the impulse, the passion of nature, with more im- petuous energies. Thus in India there are more images and shrines of supplication to Siva the de- stroyer, than to Brahma the creator, and Vishnu the preserver. For individuals and races this physical process is one of successive survivals followed by cessa- tions of existence. There is the extinction in this succession of individuals and races, and whatever may be the effect of means, or of conformance to that which is contingent, death is the end. The research of geology indicates the mutations of cold and heat, through long epochs and over vast continents, which would bring a termination to every form of life within our knowledge. We may admit the strength of the force working in material moulds, and the persistence of the move- ment in this evolution which slowly modifies itself with its environment, and maintains unbroken ad- hesion to its types, but there is no evidence that that which is lower is always displaced by that which is higher, nor that any displacement is per- manent.^ 1 It has been truly said that the Darwinian is the derivative, not the development hypothesis. It is not always from the lower to the higher, nor in that sense does the fittest survive. Strictly it fur- 14 THE BEING 0^ GOD. These indications of ugliness, of rapacity, of cruelty in nature, it is said, are on the whole not to be noticed. But they are there. They per- vade the whole, and are involved in the whole process of the physical world. They have in cer- tain lands and ages a potency that overmasters the imagination and fills it with images of dread, and so they mould the thoughts of men, as they have found expression in literature and art. It is said that a balance is to be struck between the fair and foul, the beneficent and cruel ; but this, however the balance swayed, would only indicate, and in that exact degree, a mixed quality of indif- ferent good and evil in the intelligence which formed the world, or appears in the evolution of its forms.-^ nishes evidence only of the survival of the one best adapted to the situation, nor does it furnish evidence that the situation materially improves ; on the contrary there are indications that would show the recurrence at long, and it may be, periodic intervals, of ages of gradual extinction, as the geological ages of ice. And while, in the physical process from and through geological periods, there has been in ph^'sical forms apparently an increase in the complexity of organization, there has been a diminution of physical force and bulk. ^ This argument in one form is based on the order in nature. Janet says "the order supposes an end, and the very principle of order is the end." (Final Causes, p. 215.) The doctrine of final causes has its justification in philosophy. But in the physical pro- cess tliere is no evidence for a final cause and end, nor against it, and no evidence of the character of that end. There are around U3 only the circling suns — flamentia mcenia mundi. This argument identifies the current, the existent process with order, and then as* Bumes that this order, which is the existent process, is the final cause THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 15 There is in the process of the physical world no moral quality, no manifestation of the will, as in the life of the spirit; it is as Hegel says, "the other" of the spirit: it is only elevated and in- formed with a moral attainment through the me- diation of the spirit. There is in the physical process no manifesta- tion of freedom, nor is it in man, as he is involved in the physical process. There is in it no trace of personality. There is in nature no strain of sympathy that breaks its indifference, no love interrupts its inex- orable course. No appeal can stay its falling rocks. No entreaty can restrain its beating waves. It has no power to help man in his calamity. It does not turn to avert his injury, nor to mitigate his pain. The clown says to the old man in the storm — " Here 's a night that pities Neither wise men nor fools." It is only in a figurative way that there is any declaration of a moral quality in the physical process. It is simply without the moral. and end. This is simply a change of phrases, while the actualization is the same. The end o£ this order for individuals and races is death, and the inference is that this order is continuous. And order is not so pro- found a conception as life, and, in the physical process, the final cause and end of life is death. The adaptation to a circumjacent condition may be a degradation with the extinction of higher ener- gies. This process is not in any moment in itself what Kenan calls it, '* an eternal order," nor the end in nature. 16 THE BEING OF GOD. These facts must be brought into a more pro- found synthesis, and it is the merit of the cos- mological argument, however crude and deficient, that it has made an effort toward this. In this synthesis, the oneness of the hfe of man in its physical process with the physical process of the world, the physical conditions of the attain- ment of the ethical life ; the recognition of the finiteness of the finite, the transience of the transient in the world, through the negation of the finite, and the fulfillment of the finite in its life in the infinite ; and the necessity of reconcil- iation for the satisfaction of the spirit, — these are brought to their resolution in thought. These are postulates of this synthesis that have found expression in the most profound and enduring forms of the religion and the philosophy of the world. It is not from the physical process with its finite conditions that there is the evidence of the being of God. There is no discovery of him in the furthest research into the elements of the sims, no traces of him in the strata of the rocks, there is no finding of him at the roots of the tree, or in the dust of the stars .^ 1 "It is indeed not on the finite ground occupied by the physical Bciences that we can expect to meet the indwelling presence of the infinite, and thus Lalande has said, he had swept the whole heavens with his glass and seen no God.'* (Hegel, EncyJclopadie, vol. i. p. 128.) *' Though we allow that this argument from design and therefore THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 17 The thouglit of man passes through the physi- cal process to the apprehensioxij through the suc- cession of its phenomena, of the imiversalj but this is only by its ideal quality. Thus the transient recalls to the mind that which is not itself transient, and is not subject to transient conditions. The flower fades while the maiden gazes upon it, but with it beauty itself does not fade : that is imperishable. But nature in herself does not intimate this. The beauty that fades with the fading flower is cast aside by her with weeds and worn-out faces. There is in the physical process a necessity, and there are relations of sequence, from which may be derived the inference of natural laws, a law of nature. This necessity is, however, not inconsistent with the attainment of freedom, al- though freedom has not its manifestation or reali- zation in it. It always subsists as an element in freedom, and may be taken up and transmuted into freedom. There is, whatever may be the ex- tent of its range, a mode of action or a law of the physical process by which that which is lower may be carried on to that which is higher, and retained as a moment in the higher.-^ Thus man, a designer, furnishes an explanation of physical phenomena, the fact of an infinite and perfect being does not follow.'* (Hedge, Wai/, of the Spirit, p. 161.) ^ '* In the gradual series of earthly existences the law holds good that the higher essence takes up into it the character of the lower as a moment." (Ueberweg, History of Logical Doctrines, p. 93.1 2 ly THE BEING OF GOD. who is representative of the higher forms of life, is connected with the lowest forms, and subject to the incident of the lowest conditions of earth. Thus necessity inheres as an element in freedom, but it is taken up and transmuted in freedom. Therefore man may advance through the school of necessity toward freedom. There is always the institution and recognition of law in the real- ization of freedom in the nation. Thus instead of forming an adverse element in the freedom of the will, necessity is involved and transmuted in it. There is in freedom the negation and transporta- tion of necessity. But one is not therefore to identify the presence of necessity, the current of physical forces, with freedom or the will in the realization of personality .■•• There is in man the recognition of the limita- tions of nature. But in recognizing this limit, and in defining it as limit, he has himself over- Uebenveg finds an intimation of this doctrine which has had so wide an application in recent philosophy, and so wide an illustration in recent science, in the school of Pythagoras. 1 In Mr. Martineau's argument the conception of the will in man as a person is inserted into, and carried by transfer over to the phys- ical process. This would identify the will with mere force, and force acting in and through necessity. It is true that necessity is an element in the freedom of the will, and the education of the will at its first schooling is through necessity in the course of human life. But the physical process is not in its courses of necessity in identity with the will in personality. The conception of the will derived from the process of the physical world in itself is not even BO high as that of fate. THE MORAL AEGUMENT. 19 passed it. But this implies an ideal element in the mind of man.-^ We pass from the physical process of the world to the historical process of the world. The phys- ical process of the world is taken up and trans- muted in the historical process of the world. There is an argument for the being of God de- rived from the historical process of the world. This carries thought on to the conscious life of man, and the realization of an ethical idea and freedom. There is in this ethical order the organization and institution of the family and the nation. The family is not simply the product of physical con- ditions, to sustain no other relations and to sub- serve no other end ; and the nation is not merely the method of physical life, and to have its end in physical growth and bulk. Thus Hegel says, " the bond of the family is in love ; " and Aris- totle says, " the end of the state is not simply to live, but to live nobly." This process of the historical world which, in the realization of an ethical life, tends towards right- eousness and freedom, must proceed from a force in which subsist qualities of righteousness and freedom. But these are the qualities of the will. ^ " No one is aware that anything is a limit or defect until at the same time he is above and beyond it." (Hegel, Encyklopadie^ vol. i. p. 121.) 20 THE BEING OF GOD. They are the very elements of personality. The energy working in righteousness and towards free- dom cannot be an indeterminate force as a thing, and cannot be determined by contingency, as a thing in relation with a thing.^ Thus it may be said that there is a revelation in history of the truth, or that the foundation of human society is in the truth. But truth is to be apprehended here not as the result of external ob- servation, and not as a series of abstract propo- sitions to be applied to the course and conditions of human life. This is not simply the construction and applica- tion of an abstract idea, but the idea is realized in and through the determination of the moral order of the world. It is realized in the sphere of freedom ; and in freedom there is the self-de- termination which is the integral element of per- sonality. 1 A recent writer finds, as the result of his research, " something in us not ourselves that works for righteousness." It is here and now; it is in us; it is not ourselves; it works for righteousness. This tendency, it is said, is not aimless; it works for righteousness and presumptively against unrighteousness. But this is the deter- mination of a will, and of a will working in freedom, — that is, ir. a moral determination. The writer in~plies only an empty notion of something with its drift or working. But the inference is not of an indefinite some- thing, and it is not in things to work for righteousness. And if this be something in us *' not ourselves," then man in his own per- sonaUty, in the freedom of the spirit, must reject it as alien, for there can be no ground of action or of relation to it, as there would be of a person to a person. THE MOEAL ARGUMENT. 21 This in one form is the evidence of the being of God I in another form it is the evidence of the presence of God through the courses of history and in the experience of the life of humanity. CHAPTER n. THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. The personalty of God is implied in the self- determination, — the perfect determination — of the being of God. There is in personality the highest that is within the knowledge of man. It is the steepest, lofti- est summit toward which we move in our attain- ment. The germ and growth of grains and plants, the ebb and flow of waters, the rise and change of winds, the results of the most recent inquiry into the constitution of the suns, have not the worth and significance of personality. In the course of human life, the relations of man as a person and with persons are deeper than his relations with that which is impersonal. That which is impersonal, in so far as it comes within the scope of our knowledge, exists in subjection to conditions of necessity, and has no power to transmute them in its process, and does not pass beyond them. It has no self-determination ; it is not determined from within, whatever be its rela- tions to that which is without. PERSONALITY. 23 From that which is personal, and as the ex- pression of its life, have come the arts and laws and literatures of the world. This appears in the highest forms of human thought, in some single phase, in the writings of ^schylus and of Shake- speare, and there the personality of ^schylus and Shakespeare is greater than their works, while their works give forms of thought which, in their elements of freedom through their ethical life and conflict, are other and higher than those which subsist in the necessary process of the physical world. That which is personal is also construed in the institutions of society. It is involved in the life of the family and the nation. It exists in corre- lation with them, and through them it has its real- ization. There comes thence the recognition of the foundation in and through God, of the life of the family and the nation, in the historical courses of the world. The personality of God is thus in consistence with that process of thought, through the realiza- tion of righteousness and freedom, by which there comes the manifestation of God, and from which there is derivative the knowledge of God. The personality of God does not involve limita- tion. The only limitation is seK-limitation, — the limit which it sets in its own seU-determination. 24 THE PERSONALITY OE GOD. This is its own action and for its own end, and personality in and through this is manifested. Personahty does not involve limitation. Per- sonality has not its ground in the difference of the me and the not-me, but in the realization of the me. It has not its ground external to itself as in the limitation of the me by the not-me, but it has its ground within itself. Personality in man exists among the limitations of the finite, but it has not its ground in these limitations. It is not prescribed and determined by physical conditions. It is not the consequent of its circumjacent condition, — and this, among finite forms, would make it only a contingency. It is not the result of certain potencies in a phys- ical sequence ; this would leave it in their opera- tion merely a residuum. It has not its end in a determination or dissolution into the elements of the physical process. The personality of man in its realization tends to overcome the limitations of the finite. It does this in the assertion of its own being, its own self- determination, its own freedom. It recognizes these limitations, this " Muddy vesture of decay That doth so grossly close us in." It does not here and now exist beyond these limitations, but it exists in them in a life which THE PERSONALITY OF MAN. 25 is self-determined, and may not be determined by them. Personality in man is impaired in the same measure in which it is determined from without. It suffers, then, the mutations which exist in the necessary process of the world, but it does not carry through them a clear and increasing pur- pose, and does not transmute them into freedom. Personality with God is in substance the same as personality in man. The elements in the will, and in freedom, and in righteousness are the same. The personality of God is infinite. There is the perfect oneness of the ideal and the real. Thought and will with him are one. In him is the absolute righteousness, the eternal truth, the infinite life. Then to man, in the realization of his own per- sonality, there is open the life that is infinite. The will of God is manifest that man may become one with God. God suffers the limitations of the finite that man may rise to the life that is infinite. God becomes subject to the conditions of time that man may enter into the life that is eternal. The personality of man has its foundation in the personality of God. It could have no lower and no other ground, as there is for it the realiza- tion of the life that is infinite and eternal.^ 1 liOtze says: '* Perfect personality is to be found only in God, 26 THE PERSONALITY OP GOD. These words are the expression of a person, Because I live, ye shall live also. The personality of man is not to be represented as a reflection of the personahty of God. It is no remote imitation, and no faint impression of the personality of God. It is real. It has the strength of the free spirit. It moves among the fleeting forms and fading images of the finite, where shadow pursues shadow, but it is not of them. In the accident of time it is conscious of a life — " Builded far from accident." The personality of God is the ground of his re- lation with the personality of man. Without per- sonality in God, he would, so far as the knowl- edge of man goes, be lower than man, and with- out personality in man, there would be no ground of relation to God. while in all finite spirits there exists only a weak imitation of per- sonality." {Mikrol'osmus, vol. iii. p. 576.) But personality is real : it is most real. It is not some pale outline, some dim semblance. In its advance, even, it is not, to use Shakespeare^s phrase, merely *' a simular of virtue." When it is said that in man there is only a weak imitation of personality, the words involve a contradiction, and in weak imitation personality is not realized but impaired. Personalit}^ is real. It is free and enters into the freedom of God. It advances in its moral being, but this is in the life with God. It advances through relations, but its relations are not to God as to something external; it is not simply an external relation. Lotze says truly, " the relation of a being to another being is not between them but in them.'' The relation, in human life, of a father and a son, which is but imperfect as the expression of the relation of the human personality to the divine personality, is yet not merely an external relation. THE PERSONAiITT OE MAN. 27 The personality of God is the condition of the communion of man with God. If the personality of man was only a weak resemblance, and an imperfect reflection, then also, there could be no groimd of communion. There is, further, no conception of knowledge or love, which are in- volved in a communion, that man can attach to ^' a something not ourselves," or "a universum," or " an unknown," and with these terms and for- mulas there can be no ground for a commimion. In the -course of this human life, and these human relations, man is conscious of a communion which has other and higher qualities, and is not formed of physical elements, and is not subject to their conditions.^ The personality of God is the postulate of the knowledge of God. In this human life and these human relations, in the knowledge of a person by a person, there are elements of strength and love, elements of freedom which are deeper than those which exist in the knowledge of the physical world. The knowledge of the physical process is 1 There is no ground in the physical process, for personality or for freedom. The school of Mr. Tyndall is correct within the limi- tations of its own thought. For in the physical process the law is that of necessity, and a person is only a sequent in the evolution of things, or a contingency in the incident of things. The distinction of a person and a thing is supei-fluous. For personality is then at the most only a product of physical forces, a congeries of heredi- tary hahit^ and tendencies. 28 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. the result of observation and comparison ; it is the fruit of research ; but in human relations there are other elements. There is a knowledge which is not the result of experiment, and yet may come through experience. Thus, for in- stance, one will not experiment on a friend, and sympathy and love are not among the results of research. There may be in the words, I know Mm in whom I have believed^ a deeper knowledge than that which man oJDtains through the external ob- servation of phenomena.-^ As the personality of man has its foundation in the personality of God, so the realization of person- ality brings man always nearer to God. Through the deeper knowledge of himself, through self- knowledge, man comes to the knowledge of God. As the higher realization of personality is not simply through the realization of the me and the not-me, so in the family and the nation there is a relation for man that is beyond this, it is through the me and God. Thus the institution and con- 1 *' For morality you must have affections, and for affections you must have beings: and atheism does not provide beings. The beings it provides are not substances and spirits. Can you love phenom- ena? Nature is moved indeed; and a spirit half volatile and half melancholy breathes in light, classic poetry toward all vanishing be- ings, even upon the synfipatbetic ground of a common transiency; but love by its very law tends toward a substance; it wants the so- lemnity of eternal being; it wants a beyond; and no being that is without this beyond can duly answer to it as an object.' ' (Mozley, University Sermons, p. 47.) THE FOUNDATION OF PERSONALITY. 29 tinuance of the life of the family and the nation is in God. The personality of God is the foundation and the condition of the freedom of man. It is the source of moral strength. It is the condition of the moral responsibility of man, for this imj)lies a relation that is other than that which exists to- ward phenomena or the law which is inferred from the sequences of phenomena. The self-de- termination of God in righteousness and freedom is the ground of the self-determination of man. It lifts man beyond the absence of nihilism, with its negations and mere transpositions^ and beyond the indefinite phases of pantheism, that concep- tion that is spatial more than siDiritual, in which man loses himself, but comes not to himself. It is in contrast with the ignorance and servility that breed superstitions. The superstitious man is one who is not self-determined, and trusts in righteous- ness, but is determined by external and occult potencies; and yields the control of his own action to his conceit of these. The recognition of this forbids all that is abject, the degradation of reason, and the prostration of will. It overthrows all idolatries, whether before the idols of the school or the market, of the street of the city, or the as- sembly of the people. It makes personality the central principle of the worlds, and, for us, the first principle of hu- 30 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. man emotion and human thought. It is the / am who was before all worlds ; it is one who saith I am that I am. In this finite existence man exists m conditions of necessity, but necessity is taken up and transmuted in the self-determination of the free spirit. The personality of man not only has its founda- tion in the personality of God, but in that alone is its eternal life. If man had no relation beyond the physical process, if personality had no other relations, it might not avoid the conclusion that it was to be resolved again into the physical ele- ments,^ to be reproduced in other chemical poten- ' It is apart from this, that life becomes ephemeral and phenome- nal. From a recent school, Mr. Tyndall has a representation of the personality of man, as determined within the limitations of the finite. It is the apprehension of the life of man simply as ephemeral and phenomenal. Its movement is regarded as automatic and void of real freedom. The only hope for man is that in the mingling of the physical elements he may impart some tint of blue to the cloud, while the mists and exhalations of earth are mainly gray. Shake- speare has a representation of life as phenomenal, where all person- ality is gone, but it is portrayed as a consequence of evil courses, it is the issue of a life, the steps of whose advancement have been through falsehood and murder, it is the issue of a course of awful crime, until at last the energy of the free spirit has failed, and the consciousness of its divine relation has gone. In the closing scenes of the play of Macbeth, the death of Lady Macbeth is announced, with the comment on it. Macbeth. Wherefore was that cry ? Seyton. The Queen, my lord, is dead. • Macbeth. She should have died hereafter ; There would have been a time for such a word. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time. THE FOUNDATION OF PERSONALITY. 31 cies and forms, and could have no existence apart from them. This Socrates, who drank the hem- lock, might have no other hope but that he him- self in the mingling of the elements might be changed into the root and liquor of that tree of hemlock. In its chemical changes it could only anticipate the shaping of the curvature of the bones of some other animal, or the imparting of some tint to the sky of some later day. This an- And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle / Life 's hut a walking shadow^ a poor player That stimts and frets his hour upon th& stage And then is heard no more : it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury ^ Signifying nothing. But this portrayal of life as merely phenomenal, with no ground for personality and with no realization of divine and eternal relations, is given with the contrast of another life. In these closing scenes, there is the announcement of another death. Ross. Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt: He only lived but till he was a man; . . , Siward. Then he is dead V Boss. Ay, and brought o£E the field: your cause of sorrow Must not be measured by his worth, for then It hath no end, Siward. Had he his hurts before ? Boss. Ay, on the front. Siward. Why then, God^s soldier he he ! , . , And so, his knell is knoU'd. Malcom. He 's worth more sorrow, Ami that I Ml spend for him. Siward. He 's worth no more : They say he parted well, and paid his score : And so, God be with him ! This life is with God. This life, that is not that of fribble or of crime, is not ephemeral, it has a worth that hath no end* 32 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. ticipation would involve some knowledge or as- sumption of knowledge of another and continuous existence, wliicli would be in suspicious contradic- tion to man's present brief existence. But it would be all that man would have. There would be no relation beyond the physical to justify the thought of continuous being. The personality of God is the ground of the continuous being of the personality of man. The personality of man in its relation with men involves individuality. This individuality exists in the relations of the individual to the race, and in the development of personality through an ex- istence subject to finite conditions. In the reali- zation of personality as it advances in man toward the universal, this element of individuality tends to recede and disappear. But the personality of God, in his own infinite being, is not formed in the differences of a finite process, that the element of individuality should attach to it. The perfect self-determination of the self-moved one is the eternal and the infinite. The personality of God must determine our ap- prehension of the attributes of God and not be determined by them. God is a person : the chief- est attribute of God is freedom, he is the self- determined one, his determination is the perfect manifestation of himself, this is the significance of the Will of God : the holiness of God is the cen- THE ATTRIBUTES OE GOD. 33 tral principle in that Will, the principle in which he cannot become other than himself : the right- eousness of God is the assertion of that Will on the earth ; the love of God is the expression of a person toward those who are persons. There is a certain representation of these attri- butes, in which the ground assumed for them is an abstract system, a mere formalism of thought. They are subjected to formal distinctions as posi- tive and negative, or absolute and relative, or natural and moral. These terms have no substan- tial ground. They indicate a mere collection of qualities which are detached and divided as the elements of some component power. They bring before us a mere accumulation of powers and then leave us to consider the attachment of these to the personality of God.^ The attributes of God which are thus predicated of him pi-oceed from no inner unity as in person- ality. They are collected and held as something external, and then applied to him. They are 1 S. Augustine says, Quidquid de Deo dicitur, non qualiias est sed essentia. This is true, but it is ignored in the common representa- tions of the attributes of God, and these are enumerated not merely in their attribution to him, but in their detachment as a catalogue of qualities. *' We do not worship a law however simple and fruitful it may be; we do not worsJaip a force if it is blind, however powerful, however universal it may be; nor an ideal however pure, if it is an abstrac- tion; we worship only a being who is living perfection, perfection under the highest forms, — thought, love." (Caro quoted by Van Oosterzee, Dogmatikj vol. i. p. 247.) 3 34 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. often conceptions derived from another source. They would in some instances even involve defect, and be regarded as alien when applied to the per- sonality of man. They may become in many ways a diversion of thought from God. They in- dicate notions about God and are not derivative from God. Their postulate to which they are for- mally appended is often the empty notion of being, as derived from the finite existences.^ These attributes are often described in terms ^ " When it is said of God what he is, then the attributes or prop- erties are enumerated. Thus God is defined by predicates, that is, special qualities, characteristics, etc. " These predicates are not immediate properties which are essen- tial to his nature, but through reflection they are made subsistent, and thus the definite content for them becomes as immovably fixed as is the natural content under which God was represented in the religion of nature. The natural objects in that religion, as the sun, moon, etc., exist and these characterizations of reflection are held in the same way. " Because the Orientals have the feeling that this is not the true way to represent God, they say that he is * the many-named,' and that his nature is not exhausted in this specification of attributes. *' The defect in this method of defining God through predicates, from which this various and unenuraerated series of attributes comes, is this, — that these predicates are only special characteristics, and there are many such whose ground is the subject in itself. " These predicates are to express the relation of God to the world. As special properties they are not correspondent to his nature, — so the other way is adopted, — to regard them as relations of God to the world. They do not thus indicate the true relation of God to himself, but to another, — that is, to the world. So they are limited and so they come into contradiction. We are conscious that God is not thus repr^,sented in a living way, when so many properties are enumerated, one after another.'* (Hegel, Philosophie der Religion^ vol. ii. p. 230.) THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 35 correspondent to some abstract argument for the existence of God. Thus the argument constructed from the physical order of the world determines the reference to him primarily of force. This conception assumes that which exists in the phys- ical world in a certain degree and through certain correlations, and ascribes it to him in its com- pleteness. The conception of God which we derive from the physical process of the world and the attri- butes we attach to him from his relation to nat- ure, will not be very far beyond the deification of the powers of nature. It may indicate an ad- vance, but a very slight advance, in our knowl- edge of God. It may bring to us the knowledge of an energy, a first principle of force or might, — and this is always an element in personality, — and this knowledge may come to man in the be- ginnings of time, but it is not then that this is known as the energy of the eternal love and life. It may lead the steps of man through the cloud and whirlwind and tempest; but when their tu- mult is stayed there may be the recognition of a diviner voice in the conscience and the con- sciousness of men. The attributes of necessity are relatively lower which are suggested through the physical process of the world. They have not the attraction which belongs to the life of the spirit, in freedom and personality. This omnipresence indicates only a 36 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. force wide as the expanse of the unmeasured air. This omnipotence in the same relation indicates power which excites dread as something to be averted, except in the measure in which it is brought within the knowledge of man. There is the source of awe and terror in phys- ical powers, and the physical life of men in the course of necessity is frail and brief. But there are no powers adequate to those of personality, no elements of freedom, no traces of sympathy or love. Nature, in the stillness of the forest, with indifference to man, weaves the web of the leaf and the flower. The storm will not wait for his journey, nor the night delay for his toil.^ There is thus always attached to these attri- butes, which are the inference of the identifica- tion of God with the physical process of nature, a certain characteristic, a trace of indifference or passivity. There is power, as there is in nature, but a repose that in relation to man is constant and passionless. But the personality of God, the self-moved, the self-determined one, while it im- plies the highest energy, does not allow apathy. 1 It is true that *' we are by nature the children of impulse:*' but this is not a complete representation. This power of nature working in man, and this indifference of nature to man, have their expression in that awful tragedy, — the most solemn and lofty trag- edy of our literature, — King Lear. It is this power by nature work- ing in man that becomes the subject of the drama. Thus the court- ier says of the course of King Lear, '*it was the bias of nature; '* and thus Edmund, with his hereditary fault, is led to say, at the close, *' I thought to do some good, despite my nature." THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 37 The natural attributes of God, as derived from the expression assumed for the course of physical nature, must only indicate a passionless repose, — for instance, the type in art of the face of Brahma. The attributes of God, when wrested from per- sonality, nor centered in its unity, are constructed after the notion of some abstract system of ethics. This scheme is set forth with certain definitions, and the attributes of God are defined in conso- nance with it. Thus an abstract and empty con- ception of sovereignty which has no ethical con- tent is assumed; but this, in the self-determination and freedom of the will, even in a human rela- tion, would be a defect. It is a barren conception, and is annulled in the realization of righteousness and freedom on the earth.^ Thus in another way the attributes of justice, of relative and distribu- tive justice, are primarily ascribed to God, while truth and love and mercy, in conformance with this scheme, are placed in a secondary grade, and are regarded in a special and reserved way. Thus a scheme of divinity is held in the place of a per- son. The attributes of God are not relative, as the 1 " The story of the prophets and the kings of the Old Testament is applicable to the modern world, because it is a continual witness for a God of righteousness, not only against idolatry, but against that notion of a mere sovereign Baal or Bel, which underlies all idola- try, all tyranny, all immorality." (Maurice, Prophets and Kings ^ p. 9.) 38 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD term might imply ; they are essential. They are not relative, as if they were involved in certain relations, and subsisted only in these relations. They are not contingent to the world. The attributes are not, then, the expression of certain notions in which the being of God is con- strued. They are not the i-eflective phases of human thought. They are not elements which conform to the changes of human desire ; they are not measured in the varying conflict of human emotion.^ But in this recognition of the attributes of God the freedom, the righteousness^ the goodness, which belong to God, while in him they are abso- lute, are in their nature the same as those exist- ent in the personality of man. If they were not, then the goodness which appears in the life of man would be illusive, and we would be left in a world of forms, — a phantasmal world, in which the ethical is not real, and is itself void of sincer- ity. Then one in sincerity must come to hate it. The perfect manifestation of God to man is in a person; it is through personality. It is only in freedom that Ave know the infinite, and that hu- manity realizes its divine and eternal relations. It is only in the fulfillment of the life of humanity ^ " They are not simply the product of our intellect in reflecting on God, but have existed in essential objectivity in God, and will exist, though the activity of the distinguishing human intellect exist not." (Rothe, Dogmatik, vol. i. p. 45.) THE ATTRIBUTES OE GOD. 39 in God that there is the perfect satisfaction of the spirit. In the reahzation of personality in freedom man rises above the hmitations of the finite, and in this, and this alone, man is brought into rela- tions with the infinite. Thus, as man, in the realization of personality, rises through and above the finite, it is into rela- tions with the personality of God. It is in this that he enters into the life that is immortal. That which is open to him is the life of God. We can rightly apprehend God, not when we consider his attributes in relation to the finite ; and thus to consider his omnipresence, his omnip- otence, his omniscience, involves trivial confusions and superficial perplexities, because the ground is itself the finite, and subject to transient condi- tions. We can only rightly apprehend him in the life of the spirit ; we can only truly contemplate him suh specie eternitatis ; we can only really know his attributes of being in his own infinity and his own eternity. CHAPTER ni. THE PRECEDENT KELATIONS OF EELIGION AJ^TD PHI- LOSOPHY TO THE REVELATION OF GOB. Religion has been defined as the disposition and conduct of man, impelled by motives of hope and fear toward a power conceived as above man ; or as the active and passive relations of the finite consciousness toward an unknown ; or as the rec- ognition of the relation of man to the invisible.-^ ^ There are certain definitions of religion to be noticed. These definitions are often the representation of abstractions. They are inconsistent with the facts in the history of religion and the facts which the writer brings in with them. They often identify the re- ligious with the ethical, which they are necessarily led to do by their assumption that the Christ was the founder of a religion. Their defect is thus in this assumption, — that the Christ was the founder of a religion. Then they proceed to contrive a definition that will correspond with their notion or system of this religion, and also be in some way consistent with the facts in the history of re- ligion. Van Gosterzee says, "Religion is the life of man in communion with God." In the preceding sentence he has said: " AVe discern in the most savage fetish worshiper, an inward compulsion to rise not merely above themselves and this visible world, but to the Di- vine." But the worshiper of the fetish is not then, as the definition impl'es, in communion with God. So again he says: " Religion is as old and widespread as mankind upon the earth." (Dogmatik, vol. i. p. 76.) But this again subverts the definition it is to expound. " Religion is an acknowledgment of our duties toward the law of God." EELIGION. , 41 The inquiry as to the development of the re- ligious consciousness, and the induction from the " Religion is the recognition of all our duties as if they were divine commandments.' ' (Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der hlossen Vernunft, iv. 1.) This identifies religion with ethics. But the actual condition of religion is often void of every principle of ethics, and an advance in an ethical life is in conflict with it. The Christian development has to contend with it, as in the religion of the Aztecs and the Hindus. " Morality and religion are absolutely one; both are a grasping of the supersensuous. What claims to be morality without religion may indeed lead to an outwai'dly decorous mode of life." (Fichte, WerJcey vol. v. p. 210.) " lleligion is the living power of morality, a power which has be- come conscious o£ its origin, and which manifests itself ceaselessly in moral achievement." " Keligion is conscious morality, a morality which, in virtue of that consciousness, is mindful of its origin from God." (J. H. Fichte, Eihik, vol. i. p. 23.) "The first meaning of religion is consciousness, the highest unity between what we know and what we do, which makes it impossible that what we do should contradict what we know; as the tendency of the spirit to be one with its centre — God, is morality." (Schel- ling, WerJce, vol. i. p. 55.) These definitions are admirable ; they represent a lofty concep- tion, but they are not an inference from the facts in the history of religion, nor can they consist with those facts, nor are they ad- mitted for one instant by the most recent expositors of religion. But these representations, assuming that the Christ is the founder of a religion, and that it is the highest or exclusive type of religion, are compelled to adopt a definition that identifies it with an ethical life, — the ethic of the spirit. " Religion is an active and passive relation of the finite conscious- ness to the creator, preserver, and ruler of the world." (Nitzch, quoted by Hagenbach, History of Dogma ^ vol. ii. p. 462). This defi- nition has a higher justification in history. If a definition is to be devised in indifference to the facts in the religious development of the race, simply as an abstract proposition to consist with certain abstract theories or notions, then the theories 42 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. facts in the history of the religious life and con- dition of the race, have a higher value than any formal definition. The systems which have for their postulates definitions, and proceed with in- difference to the facts, only minding the defini- tions, are of little service except as an intellectual exercise. They are merely the building of ab- stractions. Eeligion is conterminous with the historical life of man. It has a history. This may be traced in monuments, customs, ceremonies, laws, arts^ literatures, — the records of the race. It is modified by the soil, the climate, and the incident of physical condition. These influences may sometimes be traced as its characteristic. They not only shape its expression, for this al- ways partakes of the external, and in all historical forms of life must be modified by external condi- tions, but its very character is often moulded by physical circumstances, as conditions of soil and climate, so that it seems a product of them. In the religious life of a race there have been often the widest contrasts. Eeligion has some- may have some intellectual attraction, but it matters little what the definition is. The defect in the last definition is that it excludes pantheistic religions, — and a large part of the religions of the world are of this character, — religions which overpass the finite, only to attain to the indefinite, not the infinite. It is also a defect in this definition that it gives an imperfect particular, and it should add, for instance, the maker, preserver, and destroyer, — since perhaps no religion prevails more widely. THE DEFECT OF RELIGION. 43 times appeared as a thing of good, and again of evil. It reflects the highest, and again the lowest impulses in the nature of man, and obtains from them its object. It has given the motive to some of the noblest, and again to some of the darkest pages of history. It is more often the expression of emotion than of the mere understanding, with which in the conduct of life, though sometimes in nobler and better ways, it is frequently at vari- ance. It is sometimes allied with the most de- grading superstitions, as in the worship of some fetish, and its services are confused with the lust and violence of men. It is sometimes the worship of animal forms or physical forces, as a river, the sun, the moon. This has frequent illustration, for instance, in the rites of the tribes of Africa, or of the Indians of the Pacific coasts, or in not a low period of civilization, in the Bacchic rites of the Greeks. Religion has been the ally of rapine, the defense of crime, the cry of war. It has brought to its aid the fiercest persecutions. It has swept many ages and lands with its desolation, until it has come to verify the line of the Roman poet, — "Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum." It is often the weakness of man, who is over- come with dread before the forces of nature. It is often the investure of some external object with arbitrary qualities of will and cruel and relent- 44 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHT. less qualities of character, an object of which men are afraid, and they seek to purchase its favor or avert its wrath. Thus, the religion of a people may become not simply an index of its condition, of its cruelty and violence, but the services of re- ligion itself may become cruel with unrestrained emotion and dai^k with the gloom of a disturbed imagination. It is, again, allied with larger and nobler forms of life. It has ideals which find but an imperfect expression in nature, and it embodies its thought in the loftier types of art. It sometimes becomes in so high a degree ethical in its portrayal of hu- man life, that it is wrought in literature in its most perfect forms, so that it furnishes the illus- tration of the ethical conflict of man. This is the characteristic of the great dramas and epics — the " Prometheus " an(J " Agamemnon " of ^schylus, the ^^ Odyssey" of Homer, the "^neid" of Vergil. It is often the expression of a larger ethical con- ception in the historical development of a people. This has its illustration in the religion of the Romans in the early periods of their history. When in the foundation of their institutions there was the recognition of the unity and order of the family and the state, and the assertion of the au- thority and majesty of law, — to these religion brought its consecration, and it invested them with that solemnity which always gave dignity to the spirit of Rome. THE EFFECT OF RELIGION. 45 In different countries and ages, religion is so involved in the conditions of human life, that no one taking from philosophy the canon of truth can draw the lines, and describe this as a true re- ligion and that as a false religion. In each there are certain elements of truth, however imperfectly apprehended or rudely represented, and in each there are certain principles which indicate neces- sities of human nature, however imperfectly sup- plied.^ And when religion is judged by an aesthetic canon, it cannot be apprehended as altogether beautiful. It may often embody its conceptions in some monstrous or fantastic forms, some gro- tesque image with cruel faces and many hands, to strike terror in the minds of men. It finds the symbols of its worship in that which is lowest. It identifies man most closely with animal forms of life. It draws its attributes from the physical process, the types of its productive or destructive energies, attributes of cruelty or caprice, of irony or indifference for the condition of man. These images are often invested with some mythical or 1 Scbleiermacher, who in this is widely followed by recent writers, says: "Religion is constituted in feeling — the absolute feelino- of dependence on God." (Werke, vol. iii. p. 70.) But it is not simply- constituted in feeling, and while a feeling of dependence is in a certain way a right feeling and condition, it is very far from the whole or the highest condition, though it is taken up as an element in the highest. It is at most the attitude of a servant, and a deeper feeling, as well as a larger human relation, is evoked in the words, / call you not servants hut sons, I call you not disciples hut friends. 46 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. traditional significance which is a subject of in- terior knowledge. They may thus furnish to those who hold them in their intellectual reserve, suggestions of a certain beauty and truth. They come to be celebrated in temples of great splen- dor of architecture. This has often appeared with the advance of a people in its art and culture of life.^ But, again, religion takes on forms at variance with that which is true and beautiful. It appears in the abject degradation of one who worships the stone on which his foot has tripped, or the snake whose fang he dreads. It is seen in the tread ^ The derivation of the word religion, whether that given by Cicero, or by Lactantius, or, still better, with the I'emote suggestion of S. Augustine, is of slight significance. And the distinction which Lactantius draws between religio and sapieniia, or that of S. Au- gustine between religio and pietas has not, although of interest, the deepest significance. " Religion is a disease, though a noble disease." This re- markable saying of Heraclitus, in the sixth century b. c, has been placed among the spuria^ but, as Muller says, it has the full, mas- sive, noble ring of Ileraclitas. It is too great to be of a doubtful origin, while so remote in its source. *' Heraclitus blames those who follow singers and whose teacher is the crowd; who pray to idols as if they were to gossip with the walls of houses, not know- ing what gods and heroes really are. But Heraclitus nowhere de- nies the existence of God, or of the one Divine. Only when he saw people believing in what the singers told them about Zeus and Hera, about Hermes and Aphrodite, he seems to have mar- veled; and the only explanation tvhich he could find of so strange a phenomenon was that it arose from an affection of the mind, which he physician might try to heal whenever it showed itself, but 7hich he could never hope to stamp out altogether.*' (Muller, Or^ gin of Religions^ p. 5.) THE EFFECT OF RELIGION. 47 with measured motion of the dervish, and in the squalor, the lacerated form and rigid feature of the ascetic of the Hindus. It is in its methods often wild and turbulent ; it is subversive of hu- man energy ; it is destructive of institutions of order and law ; it is regardless of truth and sobri- ety ; it is alien to human freedom ; it guards its domain as its own possession against the advance of thought ; it is in alliance with ignorance against the beneficent influences of science; it is in con- flict with elements of progress, and confronts them with its own inquisition ; it thwarts natural affec- tion, and leads the mother to abandon her offspring before some image of its devotion. Still, in nearly every town it leaves the record, it may be, of some poor child whose imagination has been tor- tured, or of some poor woman who has been taxed by its devices, and is left deranged and confused in mind and life by the modern revivalist.-^ ^ " E-eligion builds by turns, and fires the world, — in its pureness the ornament and strength of society, in its perversion the scandal and scourge of nations. It supplied the first rudiments of society; it forecasts the social destination of man; — leader in all progress; van- guard of all stability; source of revolutions the most prevailing; champion of the boldest adventures; pioneer more eager than com- merce; explorer more patient than science. Keligion is acknowl- edged the mistress of arts. She reared the temples that make Egypt venerable, and the marbles that made Greece renowned. While gratefully acknowledging the multifold service of the great benefac- tress, we cannot forget the mischief and the woes that have often accompanied these gifts and goods. AVe cannot forget that religion has been a worker of evil. No agent that has wrought in earthly scenes has been more prolific of ruin and wrong. The wildest aber- 48 RELIGION ANT) PHILOSOPHY. In its more prevalent and in its recent forms, it recognizes in the object of its fear and devotion alike the preserver and the destroyer, whether it be the Vishnu and Siva of the Hindu, or the Apollo of a later culture, who is '' healer and slayer of men." It is, in some ways, averse to a high ideal ; the picture which is rude in outline and dim in color is preferred to that which has greater excellence. The Apollo, with its beauti- ful disdain and its lines of light and strength, is remanded to a museum ; while the dark image of a Jupiter, formed in some later and lower school of art better serves its uses, and is made to stand as the image of a High Pontiff, and its foot is worn with the kisses of the faithful. In the comparative history of religions, the de- velopment of the religious spirit may be traced more perfectly, perhaps, in India. From India have come religions which have been sustained by a larger number, and have survived greater crises, and have prevailed through more extensive territo- ries. No other people has been so deeply religious. When the vast multitude, the long centuries, the extended territories are considered, no other his- tory is so impressive and so pathetic. In no other people have there been forms, traditions, days, rations o£ human nature, crimes the most portentous, the most dev- astating wars, persecutions, hatred, wrath, and bloodshed, more than have flowed from all sources beside, have been its fruits.'* (Hedge, Ways of the Spirit p. 36.) COMPARATIVE REXIGIOI^S. 49 discipline of life, so carefully observed or so com- pletely interpenetrated with their religion. No- where else have there been built so many shrines, so spacious temples ; nowhere else have there been penances so long, pilgrimages so frequent, fasts and trials so severe and unrelenting. Its service is so costly, its gifts so many, its devotions so constant, its asceticism so patient.^ Religion, in its higher forms, everywhere may express the sorrow and pain of the human spirit — in the limitations of the finite ; in the darkness of its ignorance, so shadowed by the uncertainty of its brief years; in the struggle of its own mor- tality 5 in the depth of its degradation, of which there may come an increasing conviction ; in the ^ " Comparative religion shows that Christianity is one among many forms." " It can only be understood -when taken as one step in the religious history of mankind." " Idolatry is one form of re- ligion." (Parker. See Weiss, Life of Parker^ vol. ii. p. bQ.') In a work indicative of common thought, the writer says: " Notwith- sta,nding their many differences of opinion, all Christians agreed in believing that, of all historical forms of religion, Christianity was most worthy of God, and best adapted to the religious wants, etc." (Hagenbaoh, History, vol. ii. p. 463.) In consistence with this, that, which describes the Christian revelation as a, religion, would make all Christian men agree that it was relative, and might be at some date displaced by some form of religion yet more worthy and of better adaptation. The confusion arises from assuming that it is a form of religion among the rehgions of the world. On the relation of the religions of the world see Maurice, The Re- ligions of the World; Hegel, Philosophie der Religion. The latter is mainly a study in the comparative history of rehgions. The writ- ings of Mr. Conway and Mr. Frothingham are also of interest on this subject. 4 50 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. conflict with evil forces which it yet knows are alien to itself: and through all these it may express its unselfish aims^ its lofty aspirations, its uncon- querable hopes. It may be stirred with that which is better, and with the images of that which is en- during, and is not subject to decay, nor transient in the transience of the world. In its higher forms the religious mind becomes the evidence of the greatness of man, which has no finite measures. It becomes pervaded with the awe and humihty, the reverence and adora- tion, which are the expression still of the exalta- tion of man. It becomes filled with images drawn from the deep life of the world. Religion is then the ally of poetry and art in their nobler forms. It brings before the mind images of holy beauty, with no stain of decay. It transfigures the sorrow of earth. It is indifferent to the finite, and is itself the morning and evening of the spirit. It breathes the air of the happy isles ; it sails into the sunset beyond the far Cathay. It is led by a mystic devotion ; it is lost in the rapt- ure of its joy. It bows at the shrines which it has built with the heart's adoration. It rears temples which are the rest of the sor- row and the loneliness of earth ; where weakness may pray and penitence may weep ; where an- guish may seek to quench its tears ; where grief may strive to forget its pain, and hope to reil- lumine its gloom. In its weariness of the restless THE POWER OF RELIGION 5i play of human passion, it seeks the obhteration of the finite, and turns to some abode of cahn and passionless repose. It recognizes the pathos of the closing day, the changing seasons, the autumn with its falling leaves, the swift advance of age, the loneliness of the grave. Tlie forces wliich may modify and restrain the course of the religious mind are traced through the whole circumstance of life. They are, for in- stance, the obligations of domestic and civil rela- tions, the subjection to necessity in the requisi- tion of the labor of the day, and the economy of life that encourages a sober realism. Man has to look to other forces, to the life of nature in its more healthful influences, to society, to literature, to poetry, to art, for restraints which may control the ignorance, the emotional excess, and the im- aginative gloom of the religious mind.^ Philosophy, also, has only a scant representation in formal definitions. To assume the statement of the boundaries of a country as the actual descrip- tion of it is better than the limitations of a formal definition. Philosophy, in its larger outline, has been de- fined as the course of thought which has its spring 1 Hegel says, with consummate beauty and depth of expression, " In morality, the harmony of religion with actuality, with the world as it is, is brought to existence and perfection.'* (Hegel, PJiiloso* phische Abhandlungerij p. 400.) 52 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHT. in man with the love of knowledge ; or the reflec- tion of thought on the process of being ; or the attainment toward truth by the way of reason. The larger apprehension of philosophy than any definitioUj may be derived from its history ; but it is not to be forgotten that^ while there is a his- tory of philosophy, there maybe in a deeper sense a philosophy of history. Philosophy apprehends an empiric process in history, but passes beyond it to that which is metempirical. Religion and philosophy, although there has been a difference in their comparative process, and although they have often been in conflict, have an immediate relation. They have for their object the same goal. In each the end is the absolute, the attainment and realization of the truth ; in each the end is God, the goal of the aspiration and endeavor of the spirit. Each in its advance conforms with an ethical principle, — in humility. The process of the one is in thought, of the other in worship ; the one moves through reflection, the other through emotion ; but each, in its development, involves the other, as it has for its aim the truth. Hegel, in one of his letters, says, " Philosophy iseeks to apprehend by means of thought the same truth which the religious mind has by faith." He repeats this: "The object in philosophy is upon the whole, the same as in religion. In both PHILOSOPHY. 53 the object is truth in that supreme sense in which God, and God only, is truth." ^ Eehgion and phi- losophy in their end are one. But while religion and philosophy thus often move in parallel lines and toward the same end, in certain respects, it is necessary to place philoso- phy above religion. This is involved in its very method. There is an element of thouc^ht which formulates religion, and opens a critical inquiry as to its contents. It proceeds through a dialectic of reason. There is thus a philosophy of religion.^ Philosophy has often given a profounder ex- pression to the ethical conflict of man than it has found in religion, while, in their higher forms, they are so closely blended. Philosophy has advanced through the most profound experience of the re- lation of man to the truth, that is, the reality of things. It has not been a formal process, a barren speculation, as the blank of light, and void of all * Hegel, Vermischte Schri/ten, vol. ii. p. 520. It may be said that man is by nature a religious animal, in the same way that it may be said that he is philosophical ; or that he has a philosophical or religious nature. The nature of the relifrious, the philosophic, the scientific mind is an interesting subject. These are all in their relative service determined by a strictly ethical meas- ure. 2 "It has been said that religion is at the cradle of every nation, and philosophy at its grave." (Morley's Rousseau, vol. ii. p. 259.) This has a certain truth, and religion appears more often as a con- structive force in society, while philosophy is of later culture and reflective. 54 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. content, but it has wrought as truly as rehgion with things of hfe. There has been through it the expression of that which is deepest in the life of man. The progress of philosophy also has often been indicative of a higher historical development in a people. It has given a firmer maintenance to the authority of law, to the unity and order of states. It has furnished no less impressive sanctions to the domestic and civil and political relations of men, in the family and the commonwealth and the nation. Its Avork toward the same end with religion, has been pursued with a no less enduring patience and a constant devotion. It has been animated by an enthusiasm that could be sus- tained only by the noblest ends. It has been fol- lowed with a disregard of merely selfish interests and an indifference to worldly aims. Its course has been characterized by a humility and rever- ence as real as that which has prevailed in re- ligion. There has sometimes been a collision be- tween them, and this has assumed a tragic form. Socrates was condemned to die as an enemy to the religion of the state. The accusation against him was that he was an enemy to the common re- ligion of the times in which he lived. The world will continue to read the story of the untimely death of the martyr of philosophy, wrought by Plato into the very argument of immortality, and will hold it among its imperishable possessions. PHILOSOPHY. 55 Philosophy has often been connected with a higher ethic, and furnished the aid toward a higher ethical life, than religion. If its influence in this respect has not in any one period prevailed so widely, it has been more enduring and survived greater crises. The Ethics and the Political Ethics of Aristotle and Plato have had a continuous in- fluence upon the actual life of the race. They have been translated into languages then un- spoken, and have shaped the thoughts of a thou- sand tribes with their advance toward a historic life in lands which were then uninhabited. The cultus and system of the religions that were con- temporary with them have utterly perished ; there comes to them no revival. But these works still have power in the lives of men. They have, it is true, this advantage in the close relation of philosophy with literature, that the greatest mas- ters in philosophy have also been the greatest masters in literature.^ ^ If it was ever given to any one man to express the propliefcic hopes and longings of the human soul, to give voice to — "the prophetic soul of the wide world, Dreaming on things to come," it was given to Plato. There has been in no religion so full an expression of the hopes and desires of men which prefigure the rev- elation of God. The common thought is given by Van Oosterzee : **It is certain that Plato has more distinctly than any one else ex- pressed the want which has been supplied by the revelation ot the light of the world." (^Dogmatih, voh i. p. 113.) The work of Aris- totle also has brought the most profound justification to the Chris- tian theology. This was recognized in the greater ages of the the- ology of the church. 56 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. Religion and philosophy both have their fulfill- ment in the revelation of God in the Christ. The long conflict and the travail through suffering and sacrifice of religion, and the toil through doubt and denial, the sincerity of conviction, the wrestle of thought for the truth, of philosophy ; — the effort of religion and philosophy, have their ful- fillment in the revelation of God. They have been formed in the slow and arduous ascent of man. They appear through the dissolu- tion and resolution in the reflective movement of thought and emotion, of the relations of man with the finite and the infinite. They bear the im- press of many tribes and many lands, through the ages of the world. It may be given to faith, it may be the ascertainment of reflection, that no step through this evolution of society has been in- consequent, and no effort vain. Religion and philosophy have both exerted a determinate influence on the development of the Christian faith and doctrine. The hope and as- piration of religion, the desire of the nations, has found its end in the Christian revelation. But this influence has been more potent through phi- losophy. Thus, in the speculation of Plato and of Aristotle, the Christian doctrine has found its jus- tification, and their influence has determined the course and development of great schools of Chris^ tian thought. THE EFFECT OF PHILOSOPHT. 57 The Revelation of and in the Christ is not a religion, and it is not a philosophy. It cannot be brought within the scope or prov- ince of any definition of religion that has a jus- tification in history. It is not the product of any distinctive religious progress ; and, further, it has not its origin in any system of speculation, nor in the reflective order of thought. It is not a phi- losophy, but its relation to philosophy is as clear and distinct as to religion. It is not within the process of the history of religions. It is not to be brought as one stage into the development, or as one subject in the comparative study of religions. It is not re- lated to them as one individual form to another, nor as the universal to the individual 5 for when they are embraced as a whole, it is other and more than they. It can no more take the place to which it is invited among the various religions of the world than the figure of the Christ can take its place in the Pantheon of a Julian. If it be assumed that it is strictly a religion, it is not clear in its relation to philosophy. For phi- losophy will still maintain its claim to hold it in subjection to its canons, to determine its position in relation to the continuous progress of specula- tive thought, and will still seek for a real and sub- stantial truth. The Christ does not come into the world as the 58 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. founder of a religion, and this revelation is not set forth as an institute or a system or a cultus of religion. The Old Testament is not primarily the record of a religion^ or of a system or science of religion. It is not the revelation of a religion,^ but it is the revelation of God to the world • his revelation to the family which he has formed^ and to the nation which he has founded, and thence to the world. The ritual which it contains is subordinate in this historical, this domestic and political devel- opment. There may be traces, in the forms and services, which the scholar may discern, of the in- fluence of the religions of Egypt and Babylon, and the countries of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, but it is primarily a revelation which is other than these. It is throughout in conflict with these re- ligions, through its revelation of God, as One and invisible, who will put away all the idolatries of men, and will establish his righteousness on the earth. It is a record of the unity and order of the family and the nation, as these endure, in the or- ganic life of humanity. ^ "In other books you Lave the records of a religion. You are told how a people introduced this worship and that ceremony; how their soothsayers told them of services that they had neglected ; how their priests enforced new propitiations. Here you have nothing of the kind. All the religion which the priests or the people introduced — the worship on hills and in groves, the calves, the altars to Baal — is noticed to be denounced; a righteous king proves his righteous- ness by sweeping it away." (Maurice, Sermons^ vol. iii. p. 507.) THEIR RELATION TO REYELATIOK 59 It averts the attention from a further world, without affirmation and without denial in regard to it, and is intent upon the eternal and infinite presence dwelling in the here and now. Thus it is an even question with a scholar whether it recognizes a world on and beyond and the immor- tality of the soulj in the common use of this term. Thus it differs from the subjects which form the staple of the religious books of the world. The Commandments, which are given at an early age, and are continuous and formative with the people, have no distinctive religious quality; they are formed in and become themselves the maintenance of institutions of domestic and civil and political order. It is throughout the revelation of one God, who is invisible, of whom there can be no graven image made by the hands of men, Avhose name is the Almighty, the I Am^ the Eternal, who is with the family and with the nation in the attainment of their life in the life of humanity. It was in this and in the acknowledgment of the Commandments as the ground of freedom, and in the consequent transition from slavery to freedom, and in the act- ualization of righteousness, that there were the sources of conflict with the religions which the people sought constantly to introduce. This eth- ical course is brought out with the strongest con- trasts. It is the burden of the prophets borne through all the ages of their history. When the 60 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. king says he has reserved the best of the sheep and oxen to sacrifice unto the Lord, the prophet answers, to obey is hetter than sacrifice^ and to hearhen than the fat of rams. The words which the prophets repeat as one long refrain through historic periods are, the neio moons and sabbaths ; your new moons and yonr appointed feasts my sold hateth : they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them ; wash you, make you clean ; cease to do evil^ learn to do well. The charge which is brought against the people is their taking the forms and formulas of a service instead of God. They said no longer, tuhere is Jehovah ? but the tem- ple of the Lordy the temple of the Lord. To repeat the expression which Kant uses, their fault was in the substitution of the services of religion for the service of God.^ In the course of the development of the his- tory of the world, in the fullness of time, the Christ does not come to man as the Founder of a religion. The institution of a religion is not the subject of the records of the New Testament. In recent times an eminent man, and of eminent in- fluence upon his age, has announced himself as the Founder of the religion of humanity. ^ '* The charge which God by his prophets brings against his people in the last days is the taking his ordinances instead of him- self. See Isaiah and all through Jeremiah. They said not, where is Jehovah? but the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord." (Erskine, Memoirs, p. 157.) THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 61 The writings of tlie New Testament^ as we pass again to their content, have not a religion, nor the institution nor the revelation of a religion, for their subject. It is the revelation of the Christ in man, and the infinite and eternal life of man. In these writings the very word religion does not appear. There is no word which could identify their subject distinctively with a religion or a philosophy. Thus there is in the writings of S. John no reference to the subject. The Gospel and the Epistles of S. John are concerned with a rev- elation, and the manifestation of an eternal life.-^ 1 " Tims we learn what work it is our missionaries have to do when they go into heathen lands. It may be, before they leave their own country, they think that their business is to rouse the natives of those lands to what they would call a sense of religion, an interest about their souls, a conviction of the shortness of life, the anticipa- tion of an approaching judgment and eternity. They can scarcely stir a step in any of these countries without discovering traces of a sense of religion, of an interest about the soul, of an anticipation of death, of a dread of what is to follow death, to which they were quite unused on their own soil. If they have no other vocation than this, if they have not leai-nt that this is not even a part of the mes- sage which they are to carry with them, they may soon regret that they ever crossed the seas. They will find that the task which they came to perform has been done and is doing more effectually by the Yogis and Fakirs, whose influence they wish to destroy. Unless they come with a gospel concerning God; unless that gospel enables them to meet the anxieties about religion, about the soul, about death, about the future, which lie like a. dead weight upon the fac- ulties and energies of tribes which have proved themselves capable, and are still capable, of noble thoughts and great deeds; unless they can turn the thoughts of immortality and judgment into moral and quickening thoughts, they are not going out upon the errand on which S. Paul and the missionaries of his day went; they are not 62 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY In the writings of S. Paul the rare use of a cor- responding word is very significant. It finds no place except in infrequent and indirect reference. S. Paul lived among sects and societies, into which the nation was divided, that were of an exclusive and intensive religious character. He describes his early life, — his life before his conversion^ and before the revelation of the Christ and its light was given to him : after the most straitest sect of our religion J I lived a Pharisee. The Greek word which he uses is not of very noble lineage nor character, nor of the larger significance of the Enghsh word — religion. S. Paul, in a phrase of critical significance, says to the Athenians, as he stands in sight of their altars and temples, where their services and processions are so frequent and imposing, / perceive that in all things ye are too religious. The characteristic words which S. Paul uses are of a revelation in the Christ and the righteousness of the Spirit. S. James has a phrase in which the word is assumed in the common translation, which may be noticed for its ethical significance, " pure and undefiled religion is to visit the widow and the fatherless." This would obviously be deficient by its limitation of religion to the ministry of charity. The word should be translated ritual. It is not of grave importance carrying the news of a redemption, they are not testifying of that glory which was manifested in the Person of Jesus Christ to the world." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. i. p. 126.) THE GOSPEL OE ST. PAUL. 63 to the subject, but it hag thus an illustrative and beautiful sis-nificance. The true ritual is not of form and processional, but in actual charity. In the writings of S. Paul there is only an in- direct reference to the development of religion or the speculation of philosophy. It must be ad- mitted that nothing could be more alien to his thought than a discourse on the advantages or the excellences of religion. He is concerned neither with the experiences of religion nor the courses of philosophy. But not only the very word religion has in these writings no correspondent, but their content is other than that. It is a revelation ; it is of righteousness ; it is of righteousness by faith ; it is of the ethic formed in the knowledge of God; it is of a judgment in the presence of the infinite and eternal, in which alone is the right judgment, by individuals and by nations, of this finite world ; it is a judgment of the world, but by One who has lived on this earth, and is risen from the dead. This in one form is verified in the deepest human experience, as it has its anticipation in one of the loftiest works of philosophy, the dialogue of Plato on the immortality of the soul. The thought which is always deeper than his formal argument is that in the presence of the death of one we love we know the infinite in the life of humanity. This verifies itself to man that love is stronger than death. The outline alone remains of the large dia^ 64 KELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. course of S. Paul at Athens ; but that discourse was of the revelation of God, of righteousness, of the judgment of the world by one risen from the dead. It was not the announcement nor the com- mendation of a religion to the Athenians. In the writings of the New Testament, the Christ uses phrases that were common in his day, — words derived both from philosophy and re- ligion. This appears in terms pertaining to phi- losophy, — as the word, truth, the eternal^ free- dom ; and in terms pertaining to religion, — as prayer, faith, heaven. But these words are used very sparingly, while they are penetrated with a new meaning, and another and higher import is given to them. His words are mainly drawn from the daily life of man, as the Father, the Son, the Son of man, and again, from the contemporary forms of political life, as the King, the Kingdom of God. The law of all forms, which subjects them to the uses of humanity, and pervades them with a principle which is wrought into the actuali- zation of the freedom of humanity, is in the words, the sahbaih was made for man, and not man for the sabbath. This is universal in its ap- phcation, and from one of the earliest and most sacred of all forms the princ'ple is derived by which all are regarded. In words of yet more significant import, whose offense to the religious societies of his age could RELIGION AND REYELATION. 65 not be exceeded, and which have the same im- port for the religious societies of every age, the Christ as he walks across the fields on the sab- bath day says, in this place is one greater than the temple. These words were used by S. Paul afterwards in the deeper imagery in which human life is por- trayed in the life of the Spirit, as he writes, know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost ? There cannot be a further re- move of the religious order than in the represen- tation of man as the temple of the Spirit. The Christ was a divine witness for the ser- vice of humanity. It is a divine precedent that is not superseded by any form ; therefore did the Jews pj^'^secide Jesus^ and sought to slay him^ because he had done these tilings on the sabbath day. But Jesus answered them, My Father work- eth hitherto, and I work. It has been said that every religion consists primarily of a cultus and a doctrine. This has an entire historical justification. But this cultus and doctrine, in the words of the Christ, are transmuted into an ethical and a universal prin- ciple. Thus the law of a cultus, or worship, is given in the pubric : not here nor at Jerusalem; they that worship the Father must worship him in spirit and in truth. The same principle was to be repeated again, in the diversion of thought from the earthly Jerusalem, the city girt by the Syrian 66 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. mountains, and in the realization of that which is universal ; the Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. As it is with a cultus, so it is with a do(3trine of rehgion ; it is at once transmuted into an ethical process and realization ; he that doeth the will shall know the doctrine. This is given conversely in words of the most profound ethical import ; ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. The Christ had at no time an identity, even the most remote, with any of the great sects or so- cieties which represented and embraced the dis- tinctive religious life of his age. He had no con- nection with the Scribe or the Sadducee or the Pharisee.-^ The strongest contrast was seen in the character of the Pharisee. The Pharisee was not a man of mere pretense ; he was the type of a strictly rehgious man, but one who cared more for religion than for humanity. The Christ, in the beginning of his work, as he went forth into the world, went to a marriage fes- tival. He did not withdraw himself from the actual life of men. The reproach brought agaiftst him by the religious sects and societies of his age 1 *' The Pharisaical aspirant assumed evil as the ground from which he started. Evil was the condition of his race. Every step that raised him above evil raised him above mankind. The nearer he approached to the Being he worshiped, the further he was from those among whom that Being had placed him." (Maurice, Ser mons, vol. ii. p. 333.) THE CHRIST AND THE PUBLICANS. 67 was, he eats with piiblicans and sinners ; behold the friend of piihllcans and sinners} The apostles "vvhom he called and sent forth into the world were among common men, as one who sat at the customs and one who was a fisherman. There is in the words of the Christ the direc- tory for no penance, nor shrine, nor pilgrimage. Th'ere is the pattern for no altar nor temple. The rites which appear in various ways in every his- torical religion are not recognized. The Christ institutes no cultus of worship and prescribes no system of dogma. There is no sug- gestion of form of worship or formula of doctrine. The blessing which he gives is of those who act and suffer in the life of humanity. It is of the gentle, of those who mourn, of those who suffer persecution for righteousness, of those who hun- ger after righteousness. The conflict and transition from the relio;ions of men to the life of the Spirit, the realization of truth and freedom in humanity, was to be borne on through the coming ages. The Christ fore- tells to his discijDles this conflict, not as a casualty 1 *' Jesus was emphatically a man of the world. The daily walks of men were familiar to his feet ; their daily joys and sorrows and all their wants familiar to his heart. When he went to the mar- riage feast he went as a wedding guest. When he went among pub- licans and sinners, he sat at their tables without reserve, and shrank from no contact with the daughters of vice. Religion might fiaimt her sanctimonies, lie wore no phylactery he suffered no sabbath to check his humanity, and no tradition to bind his freedom." (Hedo^e, Ways of the Spirit, p. 108.) 68 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. of their lives, but as the sequence of a principle that was to be realized : they shall put you out of the synagogues ; yea^ the time cometh that whoso- ever hillethyou will think that he doeth God service. These things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father nor me. The characteristic event which marked the cri- sisj the close of one age and the opening of another age, an oeonian day, was the destruction of the temple. And it was not simply the end of one age and the beginning of another age; it was not simply the close of the dispensation of the law and the beginning of the dispensation of grace ; it was the destruction of the temple. The Christ had gone into the temple, but it was to affirm that which w^ould lead, in its realization, to the over- throw of the temple. The worship henceforth was to be that in which none had need to journey far, nor to go on pilgrimages to distant shrines or cities to enter the doors of the temple. As he went out of the temple, some spake of the temple^ how it was adorned with goodly stones. Jesus saidy Seest thou these great buildings, there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. The destruction of the temple was the sign of the coming of the Son of man ; his own person was that temple, in which God might meet man, and man might meet God. This principle was to be borne on to the close. It finds a constant illustration. In the closing REVELATION AND RELIGION. 69 events of this age, the accusation of the Jews against the Christ was on the ground that he was an enemy of their religion. He was charged with blasphemy. But in that hour in which he was confronted with this charge, there was the expres- sion of no vision which brought into light the symbols of the worship of this earth, no refrain borne on through recollections of anthems and litanies. There was the utterance of those words which spoke of the eternal, the glorified life of humanity in that fulfilled vision : Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God} The difference between the revelation of the Christ and all religions is ultimate. But it con- sists with the fact that this revelation is mani- fested to and in humanity. It is one with the life of righteousness, the life of the spirit. Through the revelation in the Christ the religions of the world become transmuted, as in Him has been manifested that foundation of human life which they but vainly sought, and on this earth could not find. They looked through the decay of all things for that which was beyond decay and was indestructible, but it was not in thought, or emo- ^ " In religious books we find the death of Jesus chiefly, almost ex- clusively pressed, whereas in the Scriptures we find that the Apos- tles were called to be witnesses of his resurrection. See Acts ch. L V. 22j ii. 32." (Erskine, Memoirs^ p. 116.) 70 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. tion, or desire, and in Him was revealed that life which does not suffer decay nor yield to the cor- ruption of the grave. It was through death to the resurrection, the life that is here and now in the life of the spirit, but the life that is infinite, the life that is eternal. This contrast is borne on to the close ; — in the last vision, the types of that historical process, of which S. John the Divine has written, are not drawn from those of which the imagination, when filled with religious conceptions of an individual character, can have any intimation. Its types are drawn from the most varied activities in the com- mon life of humanity. They are of a city, but the glory of God doth lighten it, that there be no need of the sun or of the moon ; and of that city it is written, / saw no temple there. These words consist with no order of strictly religious thought, and have no parallel in the religions of the world. There are certain consequences involved in the exposition of this revelation as a distinctive re- ligion that may be noticed. Religion and certain religious sentiments and notions are made the substitute for this revelation. The phases of the religious imagination, the vague aspirations, and the variable moods of the mind, often its unrestrained desires when carried away by impulse and disturbed emotion, are made the Bum and fulfillment of this revelation. That which THE ECLECTIC AND THE AGNOSTIC. 71 man in his religious effort has devised about God is made the substitute for that which God has made known of himself.-^ There is another consequence parallel with this, which follows from the apprehension and repre- sentation of this revelation strictly as a religion. It is brought with other religions within the pur- suits of an eclectic school of religions. This may be joined with an agnostic school. It writes in- scriptionS; but to an unknown God. It is very religious ; it regards all religions as equal and the same in their origin. This, then, is apprehended strictly as one religion among these various re- ligions. Thus it defines their relative value ; it composes their anthologies ; it forms a miscellany of their various precepts ; it has represented the Christ as one among the founders of religions, and it finds in the course of the Christian life in history only the institution of a system of religion. This ^ It has been made a criticism of the services of the Cliurch and its offices of prayer that wide ranges of religious aspiration and emotion are left out. They have no expression. The characteristic phrases are those which speak of the manifestation and advent, the resurrection and ascension, the redemption of the world, an eternal life, and a service which is perfect freedom. There is the widest contrast between the service of the Church and that whose charac- teristic is the expression of religious emotion and aspiration. There are religious sects or societies that trace their correspond- ence in their origin and order back to the synagogue of the Jews as it was in the time of Christ. But the correspondence which the Christ uses is of the family and of political societies and institutions as the kingdom of heaven. 72 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. Bcliool may have a value in its aid toward the study of the comparative religions of the world. But it illustrates the fact that this revelation, when it is apprehended simply as one religion among others, may become the most inconse- quent and incomplete of all. It is devoid of life; it is reduced to broken fragments, mere words of counsel and exhortation to religious conduct. The school is one of clever criticism, of intellectual subtlety, of large but vague aspirations, of pale negations, of weak but irregular pietism. It may be, as S. Paul describes the agnostics at Athens, too religious. The defect in this mode of thought appears in another form, in the assumption of a controversy between religion and righteousness, — between re- ligion and morality. This distinction has no ground in the writings of the Old and New Testament, unless it be in the contrast of the revelation of God and his righteousness with the religions which prevailed in the world. It is not that religion and morality are there represented as in a formal identity; these phrases are set aside. If morality be regarded only as a course of external deco- rum, or as the economy of the individual result- ant from a prudential estimate of the promiscuous advantages of life, or as a hereditament in the evolution of man through a life determined by physical necessity, then it has no consistence with this revelation, which presumes a will that acts in RIGHTEOUSNESS. 73 freedom, and the manifestation of a living God who will establish righteousness on the earth. This ethical life, the life of the righteousness of the spirit, cannot be apart from God, as there can be no true conception of conscience which does not affirm the being of God. The terms of this distinction, however, of re- ligion and morality, not only are alien to these writings, but, among different peoples and ages, religion is of worth mainly in the degree in which, to use Hegel's profound expression, it has been brought into identity with morality. Thus even the sacrifice it calls forth in life, in its highest act, has a value in the measure in which it is deter- mined by a moral emotion and for a moral end. There have been far larger numbers who, from generation to generation, in the devotion and ab- negation of their sacrifice, have thrown them- selves before the car of Juggernaut ; but the world counts beyond these the three hundred who laid down their lives in the pass at Thermopylae, in obedience to the laws, and this gives to that field an immortal interest. The defect in the apprehension of this revela- tion as a religion is apparent in the religious and philosophical systems of the preceding century. It was carried through the assumption of a dis- tinction between a natural and revealed religion. That was a time when the message to men was the commendation of religion to an enlightened 74 -RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. patronage. It was an age when men could build monuments alike to faith and hope and religion. It was to be followed by a school of culture, which could talk of " the state and art and religion ; " but the revelation of God cannot be brought into this catalogue. There is a further defect in this apprehension, which is to be noticed, in the fact that religion and certain religious sentiments and notions are main- tained as the substitute for this revelation. The forms of the religious imagination, the phases of religious emotion, the conceptions of the religious mind, control and determine this revelation, but they are not controlled and determined by it. These conceptions still hold their place, and are made to mould the Christian revelation instead of being moulded by it. The old heavens still are over us. Those words of deepest and divinest import were long since spoken ; The kingdom of heaven is within yotc ; but not yet may we receive them in their imiversal and human significance ; if we accept the words it must be as a type or shadow, and allowing no reality. Thus the forms and conceptions of ancient religions determine our thought; they still prevail. They rule us from their buried urns. The gods of those imag- inative forms, whether dark and cruel, or light and beautiful with the changing forms of life, have vanished, and the temples and shrines are sought no longer by men, but the religious con ANCIENT RELIGIONS. 75 ceptions and images still control us ; they do but slowly fade. They shape themselves in the sys- tems of men, and still determine this revelation, and are but slowly transmuted by its spirit. This may be traced in every form and phase of relig- ious thought. The divine and eternal sacrifice, in the com- ing and life and death of the Christ on the earth, is interpreted in the preconceptions of the relig- ions of men. The light in which it is portrayed is darkened with the awful rite, and lurid with the glare of the fires which burn on the altars of pagan sacrifice. The inspiration of the Spirit, which is given to men in the life of the spirit, and which, therefore^ has not and cannot have its postulate in the mere limitations of the finite, is held within the style of these religions. It is regarded as the inspiration of the letters and pages of the sacred books. It is no longer the utterance of the living word, but is restricted within the conception of the pagan ora- cle. Thus, again, the representation of the divine judgment is that which found expression, although often in a serious and profound form, in the greater of the pagan religions and philosophies, as in the Gorgias of Plato. It is represented not as an object to be sought, and a manifestation of truth, and the realization of righteousness on tho earth, but as a doom to be averted and a power 76 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. to be dispelled. The judgment, most often as por- trayed in the Greek philosophies and in the Teu- tonic religions, is made the substitute for that which the Christ has given, which is the realiza- tion strictly of an ethical principle and an ethical spirit in the life of humanity. Thus, the representations of heaven and hell take on the imagery devised in the religions of the world, and divested of an ethical character, they are employed with a more potent effect. These had an intenser expression in the Teu- tonic religions, with the tribes and peoples that came from the German forests, than that which had prevailed in the Koman or Greek reHgions. Rome was practical, and had a profound sense of law and order and their obligations. Her religion was built on the validity of law and social obliga- tions, and penetrated with convictions of the au- thority and sacredness of the family and the state, and of the judgments Avhich come upon a people with the violation of their bonds. But it was, almost as little as Judea, occupied with a nether or an other world. It was not attracted by the images in which its joys were portrayed, nor repelled by its penalties ; it was not allured nor alarmed by these, while in the Greek and the Teutonic re- ligions these took a darker form. In the Greek there was some lightness in the pictures of the elysian fields, while in the Teuton there was the portrayal of a sombre, though sometimes grotesque ANCIENT RELIGIONS. 77 imagination. These are only surpassed in the aw- ful conceptions which fill the rehgions of India. These still hold their place with the peoples who have inherited the Teutonic and Indian traditions. They have their reaffirmation ; they give form and color to the revelation of the Christ and the life of the spirit, and it is but gradually that they are moulded and transmuted by it in the realiza- tion of the life of righteousness, the life of truth and freedom. The representations of these sub- jects in the higher periods of these rehgions and philosophies may even be nobler than some of those which still in some ages prevail. The repre- sentation of the judgment in the Greek philoso- phy, as in the Gorgias of Plato, and of heaven and hell in the Teutonic religion, serve as illustrations of this. This fact has also, in the external phases of re- ligion and religious history, a significant illustra- tion, which may be noticed simply as an illustra- tion of the subject. The forms and festivals of ancient religions reluctantly yield their ground. The student of history may trace the adoption from certain ages, ages of ignorance and deca- dence of faith, of forms and usages from different religions. These forms and festivals still impress their character upon events, and remain by trans- position, as some saturnalia passes into a carnival at Rome. There are still sacred and secular days, and holy and profane things. There are shrines 78 EELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. and pilgrimages, and the strange beauty with which the religious imagination invests the char- acter of the shrine and the pilgrim moulds the thought, as some unfulfilled symbol in the life of man. There may be traced in certain Christian centu- ries the adoption, from the east, apparently through some remote association, of patterns, forms, cere- monies, modes of dress and service ; these are correspondent with those of Buddhism. There was, it may be in the fourth and again in the sixth centuries, an introduction from oriental re- ligions, from India or Persia, of systems of pen- ance and monasticism, and even the designs for shrines, and the colors and embroideries for robes and dresses. This, in an intellectual form, has also reappeared in some schools with the study of the literature of Buddhism and the philosophic culture of pessimism. The graver issue of the substitution of concep- tions derived from pagan religions, — as those of sacrifice and inspiration and judgment and the fur- ther worlds, for the revelation which God has made of himself in the Christ, — is that at last concep- tions derived from these religions come to be at- tached to the conception of very God. He be- comes himself a Baal, a Moloch, or a Siva ; he is pacified by the suffering and death of his chil- dren ; his presence is in a temple ; his appearing is through the doors of a shrine ; his revelation ia ANCIENT RELIGIONS. 79 the sacred books ; his coming again is an event of historical circumstance in the formal process of history. "When these conceptions of pagan re- ligions are attached to him, his character and rela- tion to humanity are brought into correspondence with them ; or, again, he is identified with nature, — with the nature of things, as in the religions of nature. Thus, as his investure is with the traits ascribed to a Moloch, or with those drawn from the physical process of the world, this conception is substituted for the revelation of the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. But again, the substitute for this revelation is simply the expression of religious sentiments. In- stead of the revelation of God to man we have the sentiments and feelings of man about God. This is a school of poetry and music in its shorter and weaker forms ; it furnishes the productions of a religious sentimentalism ; it sets aside the divine commandments which are the ground of social order ; it identifies the character of God with the physical process of the world. This becomes in another form the worship of nature ; it regards the prodigality of nature, and makes this its prin- ciple, as another school has made the severity of nature its principle, and prodigality and severity, profusion and destruction, are alike found of each in nature. It does not hold a principle of right- eousness ; it annuls the divine commandments ; it regards the divine judgment as a remote event j 80 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. it is not;, in its own phrase, congenial with a sub- stantial morality. There come many ages and intervening excises in the slow and long advance of humanity before the words are realized and received : Not here nor at Jerusalem; they that loorship the Father shall loorship him in spirit and in truth. There is in the revelation of the Christ the goal of religion and philosophy. They become one in their reahzation in the life of the spirit, — one in the realization in the life of humanity of truth and freedom. The Christ becomes to man righteousness and wisdom. CHAPTER IV. THE REVELATION OF GOD. This revelation is the revelation of God ; it is from God, but primarily it is of God. It is tlie divine self-revelation. In it God re- veals himself. It is the revelation of his own be- ing and will. It is not a being which is abstract, and a will which is void of self-determination; it is a being which is real, and a will which is real and is real- izing itself in the world. All that God is he imparts, he reveals. He is no more a distant being, that man cannot approach him; he is not an inaccessible being, that man cannot find him 5 he is not an unknown being, but what he is he has made known. This is not the revelation of an abstract uni- versum, which then is apprehended only as the collocation of the transient forms of the finite world ; it is not an indeterminate something in us not ourselves ; it is not an unknown, to which the continuous and ultimate relation of man, or of a being like man, must be one of nescience ; but what God is he has made known to man. The revelation of God in his personality, in 6 82 THE REVELATION OF GOD. his spiritual being and spiritual relations, is not of and in the physical process of the world; The physical process is the other than the spiritual, and in its relation with God is only known through the mediation of the spirit, and its char- acteristic is that it is constantly passing and is to pass away. It is the transient, the finite, that seems always, in its unrest and advance, to be striving to reach the infinite. There is in this revelation the recognition of the finite limitations of nature, and of the conflict in nature, as it bears in itself the reconciliation of the spirit. There are, in the process of the physical Avorld, the signs and the corresjDondences with the reve- lation of God, but they have the characteristic of the finite in its transience. There are signs as of beauty in the flower and of light in the sun, but it is with unceasingly passing forms, as with the flower that fades and the sun that sets. There are signs of deeper significance, as in the relations of a father and son and brother, and these are existent in the physical process of the world, but are taken up and transmuted through the mediation of the spirit, and have an ethical actualization in the moral order of the world. Thence, in the development which brings to time increasingly its fullness, there is the revelation of God and his righteousness in the moral order of the world. But this order in the family and the nation is other and higher tli^n the physical pro- cess of the world. THE LAW OF FREEDOM. 83 This is the revelation of one who was before all worlds; who says^ before the foundations of the world were laid, — / am ; but it is not the rev- elation of one who is in identity with the phys- ical process of the world.-^ It is the revelation of God in his separateness from the world, before the reconciliation of the world unto himself ; it is the revelation of God in his distinctness from hu- manity before the manifestation of his oneness with humanity. In the physical process there is sequence, but there is not progress ; there is ne- cessity, but there is not freedom. In the histor- ical process there is progress and there is free- dom, however slow may be the development, — but that is in the life of the spirit. Thus ne- cessity is transmuted into freedom, and sequence becomes progress. The process of the physical ^ " We have a revelation in our own nature. On this revelation the church of the future must establish its claims to acceptance.'' (Gould, Origin and Development of Religious Beliefs vol. ii. p. 10.) This is not strictly true. It is not strictly in our nature; it is of God, in the Christ, the Son of God who has become the Son of man, and in the relation of the Christ with humanity, and through the mediation of the Spirit ; and on this the Church is built. This is not the revelation of one who is in identity with nature, but this is the revelation of God, who is one in the final realization of the ideal with nature, • — not one with the process where all forms are transient through their subjection to conditions of time, but one with nature in the realization of the perfect reconciliation. For this conflict is not the evidence of a dualism, though of itself it would be, and in nature through the physical process there is no evidence of reconciliation. But this reconciliation is revealed, and working in and through all things; it is th.© revelation of God recon- ciling the world unto himself. 84 THE REVELATION OE GOD. world is that of necessity ; this does not preclude the will 5 the antithesis is not between necessity and freedom. While the act of sheer necessity is in itself unfree, there is an element of necessity in the freedom of the will. This element is taken up and transmntedj to use again the illustration drawn from society, as the will of man in the be- ginnings of its freedom and in every advance to- ward freedom recognizes its oneness with law : the state has its advancement in the oneness of law with liberty, and in the institution and recog- nition of law liberty may be attained. This phys- ical and historical process does not, therefore, in the least preclude the will of God, in whom is perfect freedom, by whom all things subsist, and from whom all things proceed, and to whom all things come, — whose will in its self-determina- tion has its perfect realization, from manifesting itself in the coming of the kingdom of the spirit, in which the normal course is disclosed in its end, in the coming of life out of death, and in the real- ization of the perfect freedom of man. The struggle which goes on in nature is car- ried up into the spiritual. Thus the ascent of man and his advance is through conflict, in the realization of an ideal end in freedom ; and that which is animal in its impulse and is reckless of any relation beyond its own advancement is over- come, and this struggle through its transmutation into the conflict and endeavor of man toward the EBVELATION IS LIGHT. 85 perfect self-realization is ennobled. Thus in lit- erature, as the representation of human experi- ence, in the adventure of the Odyssey of Homer and in the progress of the Pilgrim of Bunyan, there is something more and other than the mere struggle for existence. This revelation is its own witness.^ It bears in itseH its evidence, and the elements from which it is to be apprehended. It is not dependent upon that which is other than itself for its authenti- cation. It is light itself, and not a refraction of something apart, that from thence it should be- come known. It has no need of certain criteria for its verification, which are to be adduced to en- able its recognition. Revelation, as Rothe says, " springs immediately from itself." Revelation is light. It does not need that which is apart from itself to throw an illumina- tion upon it. It has the self-evidencing nature of light. In the physical condition vision implies only light and an organ adapted to the light. This revelation is for another. In it is in- volved the relation of being for another. It has its inception in love, and is the expression of 1 " In the Christian revelation it is revealed what God is; he is no more on the other side, — an unknown, — -for he has made known to man what he is, and not merely in an external history, but In the consciousness.'' (Hegel, Philosophie der Religion , vol. ii. p. 191.) 86 THE REVELATION OF GOD. the love of God and the fulfillment of the will of God toward man. It is the revelation of God to man.^ This revelation of God to man may be modi- fied and limited by that in and through which it is given. The revelation which could be con- ceived in the physical process would be dim and transient, it would be ephemeral in comparison with the revelation in and through the life of the ^ This is the truth which in one form is imphed in and underhes the profound distinction of philosophy, — the distinction of being ■with self, and being for another, and being for self. But these ad- verbial terms are merely the technical phrases of philosophy. By being with self is meant being shutting itself up with itself, pursuino- only its own self-aggrandizement, recognizing only a law of selfish- ness; being for another is not simply to subserve the uses and ends of another, — it goes forth toward another, its life is in and with an- other; and this is involved in being for self, which is the perfect self-realization. In this and in the subjection of the lower self, the being with self, and in the manifestation of being for another, is the perfect self-realization. It is the being with self which is the source of evil, of isolation and pride, and at last comes to know its own nakedness and poverty. It is this which is the mere assertion of a law of selfishness. This distinction is summed up in the words, He that seeJceih his life shall lose if, and he that loseth his life shall find it. It has its justification in the ethical development of the family and the nation, where in being for another there is being for self, the realization of self. This underlies all the contradictions which have been advanced in the recent notions of egoism and altruism, and the crude assertions of enlightened self-interest as a law of human activity. Thus, also, in the higher development of the family and the nation man is brought nearer to God, and into a fuller knowledge of the iieing and love of God. It is thus, also, that, apart from the family and the nation, the hope is very faint, for the individual, of moral improvement and moral reformation. THE ABSTRACT SYSTEM, 87 spirit The manifestation within the conditions and relations of the finite must be limited by these conditions and relations. The manifesta- tion in external history must be also subject to the precedent forms of history. The revelation to man in the conscionsness^ the revelation in the life of the spirit^ is above the limitations of the finite, and has elements that are not determined in its conditions. This revelation is of and to a person. It is con- tinuous ; it is of and through the fullness of time. The name in the common forms of thought is the sign of the reality : this name is the name of the one of might, the Almighty, the I am, the Eter- nal ; it is the strong one, the holy one ; it is, as it is borne through history, the name of the Lord of Hosts. It is the name of God as one in common with men. This revelation is not an appeal simply and im- mediately to an intuition, and it does not act through that alone as its organ. It is a revela- tion through reflection; through the pure forms of thought ; through faith ; through experience ; through the life of the spirit. This revelation is not of an abstract system, nor of certain propositions which convey certain ab- stract truths. It is not the presentation of certain 88 THE REVELATION OF GOD. abstract notions about God. It is not the revela- tion of a scheme of divinity that man is to re- ceive in the place of God. It is the revelation of God himself ; it is the revelation of God himself to man. It is not the commimication of a state- ment. It is not the exposition of that which is only provisional and is relative to man.^ This revelation is not spectacular. It is not a pageant unfolded as in the shifting changes of some scenic movement ; it is not a series of pict- ures. It is not the unveiling before man of that which is always external to him^ although it is a revelation from God, in his distinctness from man, to man, and in the manifestation of his oneness with man. It is not a series of events, as an ad- 1 Hegel uses constantly the term religion, but he is involved in confusion in defining its relation to philosophy; he could not, -while assuming the identity of religion with the revelation of the Christ, avoid subjecting himself to the charge of placing philosophy above religion. But his whole conception of Christianity is merged in that of revelation. The outline which he presents has a very high value, and as always in this threefold distinction one clause is not to be de- tached from another, but each is interpenetrated by the other. This revelation, which is positive and given to man, becomes in its reali- zation in the life of the spirit, the life of truth and freedom. Hegel says : — *' The absolute religion is — ■ " (a.) The revealed religion. *' (6.) The positive religion, as revealed to man, or a reve- lation to man from without. ** (c.) The religion of truth and freedom." (Hegel, Philosopliie der Religion^ vol. ii. p. 60.) THROUGH SONSHIP. 89 vent and judgment, which pass before manj as if man had no concern with them. It is not sim- ply the bringing relatively nearer to him of that which was relatively remoter from him. It enters into and becomes the centre and the foundation of the real life of man ; or, more strictly, it is the discovery of the only centre and foundation of the real life of man. This revelation is of the divine relations of the life with man. It is given, not as the selective attainment of intellectual pur- suits, nor the fruit of an exclusive culture. / thank thee, Father^ Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. It is not the reserved inheritance of the wise and prudent, to be held as their private interest and for their private ends. It is the revelation of the divine fullness ; it has no limitations ; it is from God, and, — as of the father in the parable, — Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. This revelation is through relations. It is of the Father and the Son ; it is the revelation of that knowledge which the Son has of the Father; its centre is in the relation of the Father to the Son ; all things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man Jcnoweth the Son but the Father ^ neither hioweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. 90 THE REVELATION OF GOD. This revelation is of a spirit and to a spirit. There must be that in man which is to receive this revelation. There can be no revelation to stones and trees and stars^ nor of the spiritual to the physical. God is a person, and the revelation of God is of a person to and with a person. It thus presumes a ground of communion. It is a reve- lation to the reason and the conscience and the faith of men ; but it is to and through them in their unity and correlation in man as a spiritual beingj invested with power to know the things of the Spirit It is not simply the complement of reason ; it does not come to take up the hues of thought where the attainment of reason has left them ; it is the correspondent, in their en- ergy, of reason and conscience and faith. It is not simply brought to the critical tests of the reason and the conscience and the faith of men, as if it were something external to them, al- though it is and is to be verified of them, but it is their very element so that conscience has its right in it, and reason its ideal, and faith its rest, that they abide in it as their home. In its verification to the reason it becomes the strength of the will : ye shall know the truths and the truth shall make you free. It is not a revelation to faith alone, and the representation of it in this way rests on the appre- hension of the mind itself after a molecular and mechanical formula as a component of certain dis THE KNOWLEDGE OF MYSTERIES. 91 tinct and detached faculties and powers. It does not obliterate, it does not lull to sleep, the cogni- tive faculties, the reason or the conscience, but it elevates them in the realization of truth and free- dom.^ It is not the revelation of certain mysteries which are always to remain and be preserved as mysteries. The Christ says of the kingdom of God, it is a mystery which is given to Ms discijDles to hiow ; S. Paul speaks of the gospel as a mys- tery which is now rtiade manifest. The presump- tion is of a growth in knowledge and in life, with the individual and the race, and in this which is now made manifest no limits to knowledge are 1 a W'hen I ask what reason or rio-ht I have to believe that a man who hved in Palestine eighteen hundred years ago was the Son of God, I must discern in the history itself a truth and light which meet the demands of my reason and conscience. *' It would be desolate if man was separated from God by an im- passable barrier; if he belonged to an order of beings that was sim- ply other than God, The only deliverance for man lies in the living union of God with humanity, and not as an historical matter, but an eternal spiritual order. " Christianity, if true, must explain the true spiritual and moral consciousness. Conscience is this fact. It is not merely part and parcel of myself. It is the presence of the light, life, love of God, met by a spiritual capacity in us of apprehending it. Tt is here, not as a taskmaster or a spy, but as a guide, comforter, helper. This presence dwells in each of us, connecting us with each other and all with God. " The Christ has passed through human life and human death, bearing all our burdens, connected with every individual of the race, not only by a bond of love, but a bond of relation, of brotherhood, — a bond which can never be broken." (Erskine, Memoirs^ p. 327.) 92 THE REVELATION OF GOD. imposed. It places no barriers nor confines before thought. It invites the approach to no Eleusinia. It is concealed in no shrine, it is hid in no re- cesses ; it is veiled in no obscurities ; it is in- vested in no gloom, whose twilight the imagina- tion strives vainly to penetrate, only to be left to grope among shadows. It is clothed with no darkness to call forth some undefined dread, where awe sinks into fear. The Christ says. Fear iliem not ; there is notJdng hidden which shall not he known. This revelation is not a deposit, placed at the disposal and within the disposition of a certain corporation of men. It is not thus to be subjected to the mutations of history. It is not liable to be borne away, as in the fortunes of ancient war, to some alien camps, and lodged in their cities. It is not to be transferred, from one to another, as the sacred fire that was guarded in pagan tem- ples. It is not an esoteric faith, to be regarded as the private stock or held as the exclusive pos- session of any man or body of men. Its revela- tion is through the light ivhich Ughteth every man that cometh into the world. It is a revelation of the truth, and the truth is set forth as one with the life of God, and as ele- mental in the life of man. Its requisition is of truth in the inward parts. This revelation, in its THE VIRTUE OE KNOWLEDGE. 93 oneness with truth, invokes ahke conscience and thought, and faith and love, and calls them forth to their field in the world,^ It consists Avith the furthest reach of thought in its unimpeded ad- vance, as it bears in itself the reconciliation of all things. It does not fall short; it passes on before the speculation of philosophy and the aspiration of religion. This revelation gives to j)hilosophy its enduring strength and its immortal interest. There are no impassable barriers for thought, and no forces to bring to thought the intimation of their presence, only to baflle and elude the thought of man. And the emotion of religion is pervaded with an awe which is not obscured with dread, and has its exaltation with knowledge. It is the unfolding of that germ where from faith grows virtice, and from mrtite knowledge. It penetrates with a life and power that has more than finite values, " all knowledge That the sons of men Shall gather in the cycled times." This revelation, through all its gradual discoveries, must consist with the inquiry for truth in every ^ " The dispensation of principles and of statutes is the same dis- tinction that appears in the dispensation of Christ and of the an- gels. (Hebrews, i. 2.) The dispensation o£ Christ embraces in it it oneness with the mind of God; not merely a readiness to do his will when we know it, but a participation in his mind, so that by a participation in the divine nature we enter into the reason of his will, and do not merely obey the authority of his will. '■'■ A phrase which corresponds to this distinction is that this is a 94 THE REVELATION OF GOD. factj that is brought to the knowledge of man, of the course and condition of the world. It brino-s o to the finite its true measures of value, in the pres- ence of the infinite. It comes with light for all the depths and heights of human nature. The traces and tendencies of evil, of the forces work- ing toward corruption and death, the struggle and the conflict of nature, and the contradictions of the world, in the limitations of the finite, — these consist with the redemption and the reconcilia- tion, and have alone their solution in the mani- festation of the infinite.-^ It must agree, in like doctrine of centres, and not o£ circumferences. If I were residing with an oracular person, I should be in the condition of the Jews with regard to Moses. I should be living under a messenger certified by God. I should have my circumference determined for me. IJ the Son shall make you free ye shall he free indeed.''^ (Erskiue, Me- moirs, p. 145.) ^ " W^ben tbei'e comes to the conscience the revelation of a recon- ciled and reconciling God, of one who has manifested his only begot- ten Son, bearing the burden which we could not bear, taking away the sin of the world, all is changed. That which was sought in noth- ingness is found in a Father. The death of self is the beginning of a new life, of affections, energies, memories, hopes. These have their fruition in God. These realize their glory when he is revealed. Therefore it is true, as of old, that the desire of nations is for a Christ, a, Son of man; but for a Christ, a Son of man, in whom we may see the Father. Therefore it is true, as of old, that the preach- ers of a gospel to the Gentiles must go forth telling them that the Word who is their light took flesh and dwelt on earth, and suffered the death of the cross, and that they may be signed with the sign of his cross; but it is because the wisdom and power of God were revealed at Calvary ; it is because the assurance was given there that sinful and dying men shall hereafter behold the" face of God, and that his name shall be on their foreheads." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. iii p. 128.) THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 95 manner^ with that which is brought to the knowl- edge of man of the course and condition of the historical world. If there were no strife within and without of forces called good and evil^ no dominations and no slaveries ; if there were no assurance of a victory over the world, no sug- gestion of a glory that might invest humanity, there might be no consistence with a redemption, nor justification of a restoration and an eternal life." This does not imply a mere analogy of the con- stitution and course of nature. Analogy is only an illustrative form of argument, and is formed in material moulds and subject to material con- ditions. But the facts of this constitution and course of nature, as they are brought within the knowledge of the conscience and the conscious- ness of men, have in this revelation their recog- nition and reconciliation. Revelation to man could not avail, unless man could recognize its adaptation to his nature, to complete it. It is to become the fulfillment of his nature. Thus the relation of nature with Grod may be manifested, not in the deflection of its types, but in the persistence and attainment to- ward perfection of its types, as man through nature is brought with the more perfect realization of the ideal, nearer to God, in whom the ideal and the real are one. This revelation, in its gradual discoveries of facts 96 THE REVELATION OF GOD. which are deeper than those that are the result of observation, brings its aid to science, which is the knowledge resultant from the observation of the phenomena of the physical world .^ There is, then, no controvei'sy between this revelation and sci- ence. This revelation brings to man, in the high- est ranges of thought^ the very postulates on which science rests, and the conditions of its advance- ment. This revelation bears in itself the one cat- egory of the truth. It recognizes the conditions of progress in the knowledge of the truth. It contends with ignorance and with superstition, in their extremest forms, because it recognizes not ^ It is said that whea theology says revelatioa science says law, and thence a conflict is assumed. This is a mere preliminary, it is superficial, as if when revelation says freedom science says law; for science, as the resultant of the observation of the physical world, does not allow freedom, and cannot get on with it, for the condition of the physical is that of necessity, and, in its limitation, it does not consist with freedom. In this revelation is the realization of the life and freedom of the spirit. The necessary physical process is not annulled ; this reve- lation brings a divine light to the course and conflict of the physical world, but it can be only to him that receives it. And there is no demonstration of the being of the physical world. If one denies its being, no proof can meet the denial. It is true that man by the senses — by the physical organs — has a direct per- ception of the physical world, the eye sees, and it is a waste of thought to carry the subject through metaphysical speculation. But this does not demonstrate the certainty of the physical world to one who denies it. Then it is alone the spirit in man that discerns the things of the spirit. It may be said that one lives and acts on the assumption of the existence of the physical; but in a higher degree it is true that man lives and acts on the assumption of the reality o •Jie spiritual. REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 97 only their intellectual degradation^ but their moral debasement and defilement. It acknowledges the unity and universality that are elements of the truth ; but these, while they form the conditions of science, are not the result of the observation of phenomenaj nor the fruit of research. It also asserts this unity and universal- ity beyond the apprehension of the understand- ing in its cognition of physical phenomena, not as embraced in the propositions of an abstract knowl- edge, but as attaining their realization through the reconciliation of all things in the spirit. This revelation recognizes the facts in the spir- itual life of man. It does not here and now assume in any moment the final determination of them, but it does not evade nor ignore them. In the course of the historical life of the world, the sin and the righteousness and the judgment of the world are facts. The world will not lose the conviction of them. It may make the study of its universities exclusively the physical process, until at last its study of the political life of man, of which once Aristotle and Hegel were masters, becomes the study of the physics of politics. Then the names in its memorial halls become only the record of molecular combinations, which in a disturbance of forces indicated, in the necessary and resultant process, certain ethical phenomena, but which are to disappear, leaving no wrack behind, when the earth is cold at its centre, and motion ceases with 7 98 THE REVELATION OF GOD. the equalization of temperature.^ This revelation avoids and rejects no facts in the spiritual con- dition of the world. It recognizes the slavery and the emergence from slavery through the re- demption of man. It bears the burden of a sor- row which is illumined by no light of earth, but is sustained by a joy in the midst of sorrow which no gloom of earth can quench. In science as the knowledge of the process of the physical worlds there is a discovery, — in that form a revelation of that which is actual, and science in its furthest advance becomes the stronger ally of this revelation of God. The contest of each is with vice and crime, with the manias and fevers that shatter men, with the slavery of the world, and the forces which tend to the division and degradation of humanity. 1 It is tlie recent school of physical science that undermines the postulates of science, when, consistently with its position, it draws men within the immediate observation and induction which it alone allows. Mr. Clifford, who brought to the physical school a clear intelligence and a sincerity that did not evade its conclu- sions, says, "If we were to travel forward as we have traveled backward in time, and consider things as falling together, we should come to a central mass, all in one piece, which would send out waves of heat through a perfectly empty ether, and gradually cool down. As this mass got cool, it would be deprived of all life and motion. But that conclusion, like the one that we discussed about the beginning of the world, is one which we have no rii^ht whatever to rest upon. It depends upon the same assumption: that the laws of geometry and mechanics are exactly and absolutely true, and that thoy will continue exactly and absolutely true for ever and ever. Such an assumption we have no right whatever to make." (Clifford, Lectures and Essays, vol. i. p. 224.) REVELATION AND SCIENCE 99 This revelation comes to man with the assump- tion that he can know the truth, and that his destination is freedom. It apprehends him not simply as an individual, but in the attainme|it of the knowledge and realization of the universal. It passes beyond that conception which in the postulates of the physical Avorld restricts his whole being to physical conditions, determining in its optimism and pessimism the theoretical equivalent of this whole. In the progress of humanity there is the ampler revelation, the clearer recognition, of the eternal, and the realization of it in truth and freedom. As there may be an increase in the knowledge of the elements and conditions of a physical process, so there may be an advancing knowledge of spirit- ual life and relations. There has been no nation, but in the beginnings of its history there was the consciousness of a relation to a world which it did not conquer with its swords, and whose fruits it did not o-ather in its barns nor exchano:e in its markets. There has been none which, in the greater periods of its history, did not recognize ends whose worth had no estimate in material values, and in the crises of its history did not call for an effort for which its economists could find no rate of compensation in the wages of labor. In this revelation there is the manifestation and realization of the divine reconciliation. In 100 THE REVELATION OF GOD. this revelation God passes judgment upon things j&nitej and in their relation with things infinite. The ultimate criteria of judgment are brought to the knowledge of man. This revelation does not thus come to man in the assertion of a dominion over him. It is light that brings life, and the germination of freedom and its energies. S. Paul writes : It is not that we have dominion over your faith^ hut are helpers of your joy, for hy faith ye stand. It has been said that submission to authority is a counterfeit of faith^ and the witness to this revelation is not external to it, but is borne within it. This revelation alone can satisfy humanity. It is vain to say, when one reads the pages of the lit- erature of the world through the courses of its history, and in its higher forms, the pages of Aristotle and Kant or of ^schylus and Shake- speare, that man does not care for God, nor that he will loose himself from all thought of him or of a relation to him, or that he will hold his life wholly within the limitations of the finite. The life of man has not its perfect satisfaction in the finite. It will not rest in a detachment from relations to the infinite, nor in the assumption that God is an unknown. This revelation gives its character to the work REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 101 of those who come with a message to men. They are to bring that which has been given them to bring. They are not to impose on it the limits of their own notions, but to take heed lest their own notions may mingle with it. It is not sim- ply their own private stock in which they deal. It is not to be held in their own dole, but as they receive freely, they are to give freely. They are not the constabulary of the truths but the heralds of it. They are not the ministers of religion^ but the messengers of God. In the revelation of God, his manifestation is limited, though it be a self -limitation, by the forms through which the revelation is made ; as it may be said of light that shines in the dark that the darkness comprehends it not. In the physical process, as there can be no manifestation of the will in its freedom, there can be no reve- lation of beauty which is not in transient forms ; there can be no revelation of that which is eth- ical, except in types that derive their significance from the interpretation that man may give to them, or the uses that he may derive from them. Thus art can only take these types and forms of nature, and employ them in the expression of its own ideal. It works in them with the creative imagination, and this gives its dignity to art, though man, in the work of the creative imagi- nation, while recognizing the profusion of these 102 THE REVELATION OF GOD. types in nature, is conscions of the limitation of the material through which he himself works. The revelation of the spirit and to the spirit is not within the limitation of finite forms. It is not limited to the things that are visible. This revelation is not, then, simply relative, as if determined in external conditions. The truth consists with the consciousness of truth in man, the reason with the reason, the righteousness with the righteousness, in man. All that God is he imparts, he reveals : he does not disguise himself that man may not know the absolute beauty ; he does not withdraw him- self that man may not know the absolute good- ness ; he does not conceal himself that man may not know the absolute truth. This revelation is not simply an incident in the life of man, as a moment in the limitations of time ; it is of the knowledge of the eternal ; it is continuous ; it is a revelation through ex- perience and through history ; it is in us ; it is from God, it is of the Christ, it is the life of the Spirit. CHAPTER V. THE EEYELATION OF GOD IN" THE CHRIST. The revelation of God is in the person of the Christ. It is as a person that God is revealed to the world. There is the manifestation of God in the Christ. This revelation is not in any intellectual or his- torical form ; nor in any form or order external to man. It is not in a system or a series of propositions, in which an abstract truth is presented to man for the assent of his judgment, and on which his faith is to rest ; nor is it in a process of thought through which man is to advance, as in the se- quence of logic i nor in an isolated event in some detached epoch of history, which is thus made other than the common process of history; nor in an abstract law, as a code, that with a body of statutes is promulgated for the government of man ; nor in the formulas of a system of ethics which is to shape the conduct of man. This revelation is not in a life that is external to God, or external to man : it is in a life that is in relation with God and in relation with man ; 104 THE REATELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST. it is in a life that is one with God and one with man. It is a revelation of a life that is continuously one with God and one with man^ in the heavenlieSy to use the terms which are simplest and deepest^ and are brought by an apostle into the common life of men. It is not one with God and one with man, as an incident in the circumstance of a finite condition. It is not thus determined by the limit- ations and subject to the measures of time and space. There is in the revelation in the Christ the manifestation of the consciousness of perfect unity with God. This consciousness is the witness to the reality. This unity with God is not simply the product of consciousnesSj but is the reality, and has its evidence in the consciousness. The Christ manifests the consciousness of that unity with God, in which he was one with God before the world was, and that unity was maintained without being broken in and through the world. There is the consciousness also of perfect unity with man. This had its process and realization in the human consciousness : this is the product of the human consciousness. It is a unity that is re- vealed as in the will of God before the world was; it is a unity that was manifested and maintained without being broken in and through the world. But this human consciousness of perfect unity ABRAHAM AND THE CHRIST. 105 with humanity was realized through a historical and in an ethical process in the world, while the very ground of that ethical process was the con- sciousness of perfect unity with God. There is the perfect revelation of God in the Christ. It is in this Jesus of Nazareth, one who could say, before Abraham was, I am; it is in one who could say, in the manifestation of an eter- nal life to men, and now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was ; and again. Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me he with me where I am ; that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. Thenceforth in his own life in the world, a^d through the human consciousness, there was the perfect realization of unity with humanity. The Son of God became the Son of man. This denotes the perfect relation to God, — the perfect oneness with the Father and perfect oneness with humanity. It is the perfect and perfected rela- tion of humanity with God which is the ground and condition of the fulfillment of the life of hu- manity. This name — the Son of man — does not indicate the mere incident of a life in cer- tain human relations, in a certain place and time, as in the circumstance of the life of the indi- 106 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST. vidual. It is not thus measured, nor is it thus detached and circumscribed. It indicates a life in relations that are realized and fulfilled through the perfected human life of the Christ on earth in his oneness with humanity. It indicates a life that is continuous and organic. It is a life that is not simply finite^ and does not end in death, which in itself is the finite in continuing, although changed, finite relations. There is through death the recognition of the infinite. The power given to the Christ has its continuous working toward its realization in the life of humanity. Thenceforth one has passed into the heavens who has a con- tinuing relation with man, who is the brother of man, who sits at the right hand of the Father. This term — the Son of man — is not thus the merely repeated phrase of an oriental form of thought, to appear with monotonous and unmean- ing recurrence as the mere transcript of an earlier writer ) it has here other and larger uses. It denotes his own personal life, his life on the earth ; and it denotes also his life in his one- ness with humanity. It denotes a relation with humanity which is personal and universal. It is the real and continuous union and relation — the spiritual relation of the Christ with humanity. Thus, for instance, this expression in the af- firmation of a vmiversal principle, and again of a divine life, is given in the words, the Son of man is Lord of the sahbath. HUMAN LIFE. 107 The term is used of him in his own life, in words that reflect the strange contrast of the life of man on this earth with every other form of life in the world of nature; the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests ; hut the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. It is used again of his own suffering with men, and with the suffering of men, and in the vision of things to come, and in contrast with an indi- vidual advancement that looks for a separate ex- altation; the Son of man must suffer many things^ and he rejected of the priests and the elders and the scribes, and he slain ; and again, let these sayings sink deep into your ears : for the Son of man shall he delivered into the hands of men. But they understood not this saying: then there arose a reasoning among them, which of them shoidd he greatest, and Jesus, per ceiving the thought of their heart, took a child, and set him by him, and said unto them, Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me, and whosoever shcdl receive me receiveth him that sent me} 1 *' With more confidence and earnestness I -would hold fast those creeds and that catechism which the men of progress tell us that we must sacrifice to the interests of a general humanity. For the sake of that general humanity, — because I believe it is in danger of beincr utterly trampled upon, or of becoming a trumpery name which has no reality answering to it, — 1 would keep those treasures which have been intrusted to us. I can believe in a general, in a univer- sal humanity, while I believe in Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was cruci- fied, dead, and buried, descended into hell, rose again the third day, 108 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST. The Christ entered into the common hfe of men, and again made this the assertion of a uni- versal principle ; the Son of man is come eating and drinking ; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bihher, a friend of publicans and sinners! hut wisdom is justified of all her chil- dren. The term — the coming of the Son of man — is used of his relations with humanity, that did not terminate with his existence on earth, but had a more perfect fulfillment. It describes the advent of the days of humanity ; the night is far spent, and the dominations that crush the spirits of men are being overcome and overthrown, and judgment is manifested. It is a day of judgment, and the might is manifest of truth and righteousness and freedom. This is the divine life that is given to men, — the coming of the Son of man. The Christ charged the disciples, as they went from the mount of Transfiguration, tell the vision to no man., until the Son of man he risen again from the dead ; and again, when they persecute sitteth at tlie right hand of God, and shall come again to judge the quick and the dead. I can assert that humanity in the very terms of the creed, against those who would separate believers from the rest of human beings, — who would exalt the sect of Christians against the race which the Church of Christ, which Christ himself, represents. But if I am deprived of this faith, the word humanity expresses either an ideal which has never been realized, or else a sentiment confined to a few fine people, or else the aggregate of all the sin and suffering which is scattered over the world." (Maurice, Sermons vol. ii. p. 48.) THE ADVENT. 109 you in this city, flee into another ; for verily I say unto you, ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come. It was an event that was to take place in their day. The Christ says again, if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is CMist, or there ; believe it not; if they shall say unto you, behold he is in the desert, go not forth ; behold he is in the secret chambers, believe it not : for as the lightning Cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. The days and years shall come and go, but this coming is not the mere sequence of time. It is not the evolution of forces determined in a merely finite process. It shall be as the tide of life sweeps on with its mingled change. It shall blend with the varying circumstance of life. The illustration of it may be drawn from the mythical or the actual incident of history, and it may in- dicate only that traditional knowledge of histor- ical events of a formal character which belonged to the contemporary conditions of human life ; but it becomes the illustration of a universal principle that is to have its perfect realization. The words are verified in the most recent ages, in the ex- perience of men and nations, that they become no more the figure of a remote imagery in history : KS the days of JSToe, so shall also the coming of the Son of man he; for as in the days that loere 110 THE EEVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST. hefore the flood, they were eating and drinking^ marrying and giving in marriage, and hiew not until the flood came and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. It does Hot need the verification of a remote age 5 it is verified. It is to come as the world fares on with its toil and trafficj through its secular days : likewise also as it was in the days of Lot ; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded ; hut the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone : even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is re- vealed. The same term is used of the future, as it shall come to his disciples ; a^id he said unto his dis- ciples, the time shall come when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and shall not see it. The Christ, as the close of his existence on earth approaches, and his suffering and death are near, in answer to his accusers, asserts that exal- tation of humanity that was to the elders and the chief priests and the scribes the deepest offense ; the elders and the chief priests and the scribes came together, and led him into their council, say- iiig, Art thou the Christ f Tell us. And he said, Lf L tell you, ye will not believe, LLereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God. This is the exaltation which the Christ, THE ADVENT. Ill through the suffering and death of man on this earth, has wrought for humanity. This is the power that is given to humanity. The Son of God became the Son of man, that man might be raised to the life of the Son of God. The advent of the Christ, the coming of the Son of man, is not thus a short and isolated event in history, to be followed by ages and crises in hu- man experience in which he is detached from it, and then to bring history to its close with the re- currence of the same event at a more remote time. The Christ is revealed.^ The Christ the Son of man has come ; he may be always coming ; he is to come. The coming may be in the passing away of that which is old ; in the doom of some inhuman system, as that of slavery, which has bound up with destruction the life of the family and the nation, and through some holy war, and in the ordination of society in the family and the nation upon enduring foundations ; but — it will come to men as they follow their fortunes, as they buy and sell, and build and plant, though it m.ay ^ *' We may admit that "when our Lord says, In such an hour as ye iJiuik not the Si7i of man comeih, lie gives us all and more than all the warning respecting the hour of death which preachers have ever drawn out of his words. We may conceive ourselves to be under a law of selfishness, and may act as though we had no ties and rela- tionships to those around us: to each death, as any event, may be a coming of the Son of man, to pass into a region where we cannot escape that divine law of love which binds man and man, which binds earth and heaven together.'' (Maurice, Sermons^ vol. i. p. 12.) 112 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST. come with the confoundmg of theh^ schemes^ and with the disturbance of their theories, and with disaster to the plans they have framed. Know thisy that if the good man of the house had Jaiown in what watch the thief would come, he woidd have watched, and would not have suffered his house to he hrohen up ; therefore, he ye also ready, for in such an hou^r as ye thinh not, the Son of man cometh. But the courses and crises in the experience of men and nations, as they pass, bring but an imperfect apprehension of the coming of the Son of man. It may with time become deeper, as there comes breaking through the years the rev- elation of the life of humanity with the Christ, — the glorified life of humanity, the appearing of the Son of man, who sits at the right hand of God. The coming of the Son of man is thus always at hand ; it is a constant motive to duty. It diverts the thought of men from the apathy and dread of a fatalism in which the world fares on, and from following here and there after the signs and sig- nals of the crises that may be. It does not ad- journ the thoughts of men to some remote date, some distant season, in which one shall come in the guise of a king, in certain external relations, to judge and rule the earth. It is represented to those in that age, and in every age, as an event for which they are to be ready, which may come THE ADYENT. 113 suddenly. It does not allow delay. The world may be concerned with that which is visible ; and systems which divide and degrade men may j)re- vail ; and the force of fashion or of money^ the idols of the avenue and the market^ may be the object of worship in the streets of the city, so that men seek to win their prizes and to be counted in their companies; and tyrannies may chain down the spirits of men, and sects ride over them, and parties may count them as their own, to buy and sell ; and lies seem stronger than the truth ; and darkness may cover the land, so as to lead many of the very elect to fall away and not vainly may the words be spoken, when the Son of man com- ethy shall he find faith on the earth ? and yet — that darkness is not to quench hope, nor shut the thoughts of men within the clouds that sweep the closing horizon of earth ; in such an hour as ye thinJc noty the Son ofTuan cometh. The coming of the Son of man is in judgment on the powers which enslave and degrade man, and in the manifestation of righteousness, in the crises in the life of humanity, from which there comes forth a renewed life, in the revelation of the divine and eternal foundations of life.-^ It is ^ " One of these great acts of retribution stood out before the apostles as the coining of the Son of man in their day. It gathered up into itself all the history of the previous world; ifc inaugurated the history of the new world. *' The destruction of the temple was to be the sign of the Sod of man.'* (Maurice, Sermons j vol. i. p. 10.) S 114 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST. the triumph of righteousness in the manifestation of truth and freedom, which is not the product of the soil and climate of this earth, and is not re- solved in its analysis into chemical combinations, and has not its glory in the grass that withereth and flower that fadeth, nor in the colors that em- purple the skies, nor in the winds that sweep the fields of ocean. It has a divine strength through the Son of God, who brings to it that glory which he had with the Father, before the world was^ — the glory of the Son of man, who sitteth at the right hand of God} Through the death of the Christ the limit of the finite is passed in the realization of an infinite life, and the isolation and separation of death, for humanity, is overcome. In the vision that passed before him when the hour of the powers of dark- ness was approaching, and he was accused and re- jected of the elders and scribes and chief priests, and was to be slain as a malefactor on this earth, he said ; hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power^ and coming In the clouds of heaven. In this way, S. John the Divine says of that life in that timeless £eon, no ^ '' The Christ says, Verily ^ 1 say unto you, there be some stand- ing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Timn coming in his kingdom. The downfall of the exclusive nation was therefore an authentic testimony that a kingdom was established, which, however little the rulers of the earth might confess it, could have no meaner title than this, the kingdom of the Sonofman,^^ (Maurice, Sermons, vol, iv. p. 141.) THE ADVENT. 115 man hath ascended up to heave7i, but he that came down from heaven^ the Son of man, which is in heaven. The Christ thenceforth in the real and spiritual life of men is always present * it is the voice of one who saith, / am he that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore. The Son of God becomes the Son of man, that man may be brought into the Sonship of God. The revelation of God in the Christ, his mani- festation in the world, is as a person. In the Christ there was the perfect realization of person- ality, the self-determined One, in the Will that was one with the Infinite, with the righteous Father. There is in personality an element that is indi- vidual, but this subsists with finite conditions and relations ; it goes on with the inception and cir- cumstance of a physical process on the earth. There is in personality an element of unity and of universality ] the realization of personality in men in its advance is thus towards the universal. There is in personality an element that is rela- tive. This relation for a person with a person is not and cannot be simply formal. It is a relation that is not thus between persons, but in persons. It is not, therefore, the immediate relation which exists between simple externals, nor can its media- tion be simply external. 116 THE REVELATION OP GOD IN CHRIST. There was in the Christ the highest and fullest assertion of personality. It comes out, not alone in the words with others^ call no man master ; and again^ / call you not servants^ hut friends ; it is in the words, there standeth one among you who is greater than the temple. But beyond these come the words, I am the light of the world ; and again, / know whence I come and whither I go ; and again, / am the way^ the truths and the life; and again, I, if I he Ufted up from the earthy will draw all men unto me} But this expression of personality is never apart from its relations. If he treads these heights of personality with perfect repose, he is not alone on them, nor lifted beyond the world. His words are, / am in the Father^ and the Father in me ; and again, / and the Father are one. And this realization of personality is not a relation for himself alone, but for humanity ; it is being for ^ " Through this strait gate of absolute trust in the Eternal God as a Father, when the evidence of events, the denials of men, the anguish of his spirit, contradicted the faith that he was a Son at all, — through this strait gate of absolute denial of his right to have anything and be anything apart from his Father he passed. "Through this strait gate he was moving on to that life which he had with the Father before the worlds were. But in another sense he was moving to a new life, the life of manhood, wbich he had redeemed and reconciled. If the love of God could have been con- tent with anything less than this redemption and reconciliation, with anything less than the imparting to men the full rights and condition of Sons of God, the Word would not have been made flesh; the life on earth which the evangelists set forth to us would not have been lived." (Maurice, SermonSj vol. ii. p. 292.) THE ADYENT. 117 another, in the fulfillment of being for self. That which he affirms of himself he affirms of those with him : as thoii^ Father^ art in me, and I in Thee, that they may he one in us} The perfect revelation of God must be in personality^ for in self-determination, in truth to self, there is being for another, and in this relation, being for self, the perfect self-realization, which is the realization of the ethical life. The relation of the Christ to God, of the Son to the Father, is perfect. This relation to God becomes then, in humanity, the foundation and condition of the realization of the human person- ality, which has its strength in its relation to God. It is not subject to accident, nor determined by the limitations of the finite, but recognizes its ex- istence in the economy of an infinite wisdom and love. It is in man the life of the spirit, the life of freedom, which subsists in relations with God. Thus, from the communion in human relations with the higher personality, there is strength ^ '* He is one who, because he claims to be Uie Son of God, abjures all separate authority. He is one with the Father; therefore he can do nothing of himself. He will not make the stones bread ; that would be a denial of his Sonship. His countenance becomes changed, for the Father's brightness shines through it. The agony of the cross is the sense of separation from the Father. Into the Father's hands he commends his spirit. The Magdalene is to tell his disciples that he is about to ascend to his Father and their Father, to his Grod and their God." (Maurice, Sermons, vol, ii. p. 290.) 118 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST. and freedom. Thus, for a family and for a na- tion, the very names of those who are greatest, as Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, as Washington and Jackson and Lincoln, even in their human associations, become a source of strength and free- dom. Their character becomes a power in the life of a people. But we are conscious how im- perfect the attainment was and is here and now; and how often, in relation with men of the hiarhest attainment, this freedom is imperfectly realized; and how with the highest it may be impaired ; but it is not so with the relation of men with the Christ and in Grod. This must be the very type of personality, as the one and the universal, that is perfect in the consciousness of its own self-determination and freedom, and perfect in the consciousness of its relation to God. The beginnings of life are in these relations ; S. Paul says, yoitr life is hid with Christ in God. The life of Jesus in its individual characteris- tics, and in its situation on this earth, was a life subject to finite conditions and relations. In these limitations, it was a life in the secular process of the history of the world. It is the subject of biography. Tliis name, this domestic and tribal lineage, the scene and sphere of circumstance, the time and place, are of a transient character, and have the THE ADVENT. 119 interest only of that which is transient. The occupation and the age are the accident of life. The date of his birth, the site of the town in which he was born, of the tavern in which he was a guest, of the chamber in which he partook of the supper with his disciples, of the sepulchre in which he was laid, may be no more known. It is still only some human association that turns to them, and is not to be satisfied. The fact which is apparent through them is that he became man, that he was born into the life of men. S. John says, the Word was made fleshy and dwelt among us. That he was born in destitute circumstance, that he died in the form of death provided by an imperial power for the offense of a slave, that his birth Avas in a house which he or his fathers did not own, that he was laid in a sepulchre which he or his fathers did not own, are the incidents which have been recorded in his life. This life was the com- mon life of all men. His relations were with a common humanity. There was the realization of the historic life of man on this earth. S. Paul says. He took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the UTceness of men: and heing found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and be- came obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. There is no incident to isolate him from the common life of men, and no circumstance which 120 THE KEVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST. has the character of an external distinction. There is no event to which there can attach any tradition of external power or pomp. It is in no formal relation and circumstance that he appears in the human ofl&ces of a Prophet and Priest and King. There is for him no graduation, no ordi- nation, no coronation, of this earth. It is the manifestation of the power of a King, but not one who would estabUsh a dominion over men 5 of a Prophet, but not one who would impose upon human thought the systems of a school ; of a Priest, but the sacrifice he offers is no fruit of time, and he stands before no altar that is built by men. He calls no man to a temple that shall be de- stroyed. The Christ says, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it tip ; hut he spake of the temple of his body. His own person was the temple in which God would meet man, and man might meet God. There is thus no trace in the character of Jesus that is special and exclusive in its individual and tribal qualities. The distinction based on a line of physical descent, as a child of the family of Abra- ham, or of the tribe of Judah, is always set aside. There was not in his life, or in the fulfillment of his work on the earth, that which brought him into identity in its separate character with a cer- tain race or country. The life which he lived was the universal life. PROPHET, PRIEST, AKD KING. 121 This Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of history. This Jesus is the Christ of the Church, the Christ of man, who, being before the world was, and coming into the world, came unto his own. There has often been a contrast drawn between Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of history. The one, for instance, has been regarded as an actual person, and the other as an abstract and unreal- ized ideal. The one has been represented as a life of definite circumstance, and the other as in- definite and the construction of the imagination. But the Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of his- tory. There is not only a perfect identity, but the character, the life of Jesus, has, in the Christ, its perfect realization. The one is involved in the other. This actual life, this human life under hu- man conditions, is presumed in the Christ of his- tory ; and so also this fulfilled life, which is yet always in its fulfillment, this eternal life which is given unto men, is predicated in the actual life of Jesus of Nazareth. This Jesus the Christ does not continue in the external relation with men, which denotes an indi- vidual life, subject to the conditions of time and space and their limitations. The close of that earthly life, through death, was the coming of the Spirit ; and he who is one with the Spirit and one with humanity, enters through the Spirit into the life of humanity. The Christ of history is the coming and mani- 122 THE REVELATION OE GOD IN CHRIST. festation of the Son of raan. There is the reali- zation of his oneness with humanity and in his power, the power of the Son of man ^ who is seated at the right hand of God. The Christ of history in the historic life, the real life of humanity, is therefore invested with power, and is glorified. This Jesus the Christ is one with the Father in that relation which he had with the Father before the world Avas, and one with the Spirit, who pro- ceeds from the Father and the Son. This Jesus the Christ is one in whom the heav- ens are opened and the vision is fulfilled ; hereafter shall ye see heaven open^ and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. In him is the eternal life. It is a continuous life, and in it death is overcome. The earthly life cannot be separated from the heavenly, nor the humiliation from the glorification ; the conflict is one with us and the victory, the passion and the peace of God. There are some recent phases of thought which ask an apologetic notice. It is said that this Jesus of Nazareth came, through the influence of the tendencies of his times, and through reflection, to apprehend the idea of the Christ which was prevalent as some abstraction in the age, and then assumed the char- acter to himself, and then, by the force of circum- stances, was compelled to sustain the position THE INCARNATION. 123 which he had assumed. It is said that to this was added the impulse of rehgion and the devotion of a rehgious nature. But there was not thus the apprehension of some abstract idea, and the effort to conform to it 5 ^nor was personahty so empty and freedom so im- paired as such subjection to external circumstance would involve ; nor is the relation which he man- ifested to the will of God, and his fulfillment of it, to be construed as a subjection to the transient circumstance of an earthly condition. There was prevalent the hope and faith often confused, but never wholly lost, which was expressed by the woman of Samaria and in the confession of S. Peter, that the Christ was to come ; but that di- vine apprehension and realization which was in his life Avas rejected utterly in his own generation, and has been but slowly and imperfectly appre- hended through the succeeding centuries. It was not only rejected in his generation, but alone, and yet not alone, he passed through death. It is not, again, that he in an imperfect way as- sumed the character, and that his friends tosrether worked it out in an imaginative reconstruction. The mythical element, if it be allowed in the liter- ature of the subject, consists only with the traces of certain circumstances, and does not in the main concern the actual, and still less the ethical, devel- opment. And there is no note of imaginative t)ower, and no representation of an abstract ideal 124 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST. such as occupies the representative imagination. It is not, again, that in that age, or in the succeed- ing ages, the historical character is clothed with certain quaUties by the representative imagina- tion, and thus, apart from the real, is idealized and lifted to its exaltation through the abstract imagi- nation.-^ It is not the expression of an individual ideal, but it is the manifestation of a life and in relations, and it has not its end as an individual ideal in be- ing by self. The Christ says, / came to do the will of him that sent me ; and again, / can do nothing alone ; and again, / have finished the laork thai thou gavest me to do. It does not borrow its ex- altation from an abstract ideal, but its exaltation is in its own perfect realization. It is beyond the power of the representative imagination, and that does not contribute an element to it. It is not the incorporation of an individual ideal, and that would avoid the element which is constant in it in its relation to God and to humanity. And this abstraction of the imagination which this theoiy projects is not the life of the Spirit. It is said that this is a life which did not 1 " If the Christ of the church is an ideal being, it was Jesus who made the ideal. The ideal iu liini is simply the result of that disen- gagement from the earthly vestiture which death and distance work in all who live in history. A perfect portrait presents the charac- teristic mode, not the temporary accidents, the falUngs-off, the van- ishings, of the person portrayed." -(Hedge, Ways of the Spirit p. 338.) THE INCARNATION. 125 recognize a system of economy, and this is as- Bumed to be the formal system of a recent school ; and again that it did not contribute to the critical culture of art. But, slightly to notice this, this was not its aim or end. It was to set forth that which is at the foundation of every human life. And in the life of the spirit there is no element of grace or truth that art can mould or thought inform, and no substantial attainment of human- ity in individual or social economy, in -which the power of this life may not be manifest. There has been a recent controversy as to the ethical motive of the Christ ; for instance, was it faithfulness to an ideal ; or conformity to a princi- ple of righteousness; or enthusiasm for humanity? There was the realization of the truth ; and the recognition of righteousness ; and love for man ; but there was not a separate motive thus alone or primarily, and an ethical motive was not thus ex- ternal to him. There was the manifestation of a relation to humanity that was deeper than any external motive, as an enthusiasm for humanity. The motive was in the wuU and love that was be- fore the world was. He came to manifest himself to the world. He came to fulfill himself in the world. The coming of the Son of God, the incarnation, was not simply physical, a manifestation of exter- 126 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST. nal power, as that which lias been so often assumed in history.^ S. John says, the Word was made fleshy and dwelt among iis,fidl of grace and truth. It was ethical and organic , and it was not ethical in a formal way, but in the realization of person- ality ; and it was not simply in an individual way, but in the life that was given for man, and became the life of humanity.^ There is a tendency to recognize the coming of the Christ simply in its external manifestation, in history, and to look to his coming again in a for- mal external manifestation. This is unspiritual. It occupies the mind with an incident of history, and in a detached way. It tends to dwell upon the incident and circumstance of the life of Jesus. 1 *' The Christ says, run not hither and thither ; the kingdom of God is within you. Many others were honored as divine messen- gers or as divinities. For instance, statues were erected among the Greeks to Demetrius Polioreites as to a god, and the Roman emperors were honored as gods. So there have been incarnations conceived, as Buddha, Hercules. But the history of Christ is his- tory for the community, and has the witness of the spirit in the life of faith. Thus it is maintained in a spiritual way, and not by external power.' ' (Hegel, Philosopliie der Religion^ vol. ii. p, 321.) 2 " This notion that the divine is only the apotheosis of the hu- man, not its ground, — -that a, man is to become a god by thinking himself one,- — this philosophical reproduction of all that has been most corrupt, most superstitious, in the world's history, is at once the natural reaction against a theology which takes account only of man's depravity, and the natural deduction from a theology which begins from man instead of from God." (Maurice, Sermons ^ vol. i. p. 345.) THE iNCARNATION. 127 It is regressive, and does not apprehend his real presence, nor his life and coming in the world, S. Paul says, though I have hioion Christ after the jieshy henceforth know I him no more. The Christ in his humanity and in his relation to humanity is manifested as the head of the human race^ in its real and eternal life.-^ We are members one of another, but we are related in him ; and this is the ground, and thence is the man- ifestation of the ethical life and relations of hu- manity. The relation of humanity is not simply a physical relation, and through lines of physical descent.^ There is a physical relation, and there 1 Tliis is Uie truth that underHes one of the most profound and affecting doctrines of philosophy, the doctrine of reminiscence in Phito. It is the consciousnessj however dimly apprehended, that the soul has of its origin and relations. This has been made the subject of one of the most impressive works of this age, the Ode on the Intimations of Immortality of AVordsworth. " Christ was the new head of the human nature. Christ is the second Adam, the real unfigurate head of the human body. He suffered death as a partaker of that life which was under the law of death, and rose again with a new life. In the person of Christ risen, then, we see God in fellowship with our nature, — even with us." (Erskine, il/emoirs, p. 115.) 2 "Men found continually that the further they went down into themselves the more there was of corruption and darkness and evil, till at last they supposed the very root of their being was nothing else. S. Paul had gone down into these depths; he had found this rottenness; in himself he says he found only that. But he discovered that there was a root below himself, a true divine root, for himself and every man. He found that each man, when he tries to contemplate himself apart from Christ, is that evil crea^ ture in which no good dwells. But no man, so he teaches, has a 128 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST. is also a spiritual relation. Through the physical condition there is the evidence that there is no ground for the monistic representation of man. The ethical relation of man is that which gives to social law and the development of history an element that is universal. The Christ is revealed as the true and eternal head of the human race. It is the life of the Spirit ; for that which is made is physical and determined through forms and with component elements, but that which is spiritual is given to men ; it is, in the profound words, begot- ten, not made. S. Paul says, the first man is of the earthy earthy : the second man is the Lord from heaven : and as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heav- enly. The Christ is not the prefigurate, but the real, head of humanity. Thus, in history, the law which he has given becomes increasingly the law of the life of humanity, and the expression of its re- lations. S. Paul says, I woidd have you hiow that the head of every man is Christ. This is the life which is brought to light; in him was life ; and the life was the light of m.en. The Trinity denotes, as a term, the revelation of God in himself, and in his relation to humanity. There is thus in the Trinity the assertion of the right to contemplate himself apart from Christ; God does not so contemplate him. He was formed at first in the Divine Word in him he lives and has his being still ' (Maurice, Sermons vol. i. p. 108.) THE TEINITT 129 unity of God ; but it is not an abstract unity^ a unity in which there is no foundation for rela- tions. It is not an isolation. The term has necessarily the suggestion of formulas and systems, and with the profoundest significance it is apart from and alien to the form of expression of the Scriptures and the worship of the Church, and has no intimation of the fullness that is in the words, the Father^ the Son, and the Holy Spirit} It contains no suggestion of the words of the Christ; of those of whom he said, as thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that ^ This term, the Trinity, must submit to the defect -which attaches to nearly all terms which from common uses are brought to the uses of a strict metempiricism. Its defect is that it brings out the mere quandary of the practical understanding, the numeration as in an arithmetical note of three and one. But this is not to be regarded when the term comes to be considered strictly as a symbol. These terms, in their derivative uses, are of more value in the Greek than in the Latin schools. The reason for this is both literal and histori- cal. Mr. Maine has some important notes on the use of these terms in the Latin schools. {Ancient Laiv, p. 80.) " The term Trinity is a hieroglyph." (Fisher, Faith and nationalism, p. 55.) Dr. Fisher has references to Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Newman, in illustration of this subject. See S. Augustine, De Triniiate, ii. 12. *' The Council of Nictea, which declared the union of God with man, is one of the most important assemblies that was ever convened on this earth; it dates a new era in the history of human thought. God in actual contact with man — God in man and man in God — is the underlying idea of the Athanasian dogma, which asserts that the Son is consubstantial with the Father/' (Hedge- Ways of the Spirit, p. 352.) 9 130 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST. they may he one as we are. I in them and thou in me, that they m.ay he made perfect in one^ and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me. In the Christ, the Son of God who becomes the Son of man, there is the revelation of him who is one with the Father, who, being one with the Father, became one with man, and through him humanity is brought into relation with God ; and there is the manifestation of the Father with the Son, and there is the coming of the Spirit, that the life of humanity becomes henceforth the life of the Spirit. The Christ Jesus of Nazareth says, with words that could have no justification in a merely physical process of history; it is better for yon that I go away, and the Spirit of truth shall come; he will guide you, into all truth, and he shall not s-jyeak of himself hut whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak ; he shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine and show it unto you. That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, be- comes the fact of history. It is his departure that is the coming of the Spirit and the life of the Spirit : the life which has not its precedent nor its tradition in a physical development \ the life which is not merely an object of the acquisition of the intellect ; the life which is not variable nor tran- sient, with subjection to the limitations of time THE TRINITT. 131 and space, which does not return to mingle with the dustj nor yield to corruption ; the life which is eternal. The relation of the Christ with humanity has an organic character, which does not exist alone in the relations of an external history, and passes beyond the limitations of the finite, in the life of the spirit. There was a repose and a knowledge of things to come that was not of this earth in the words ; it is tetter for you that I go away. The voice that again broke the silence was not of this earth ; io, / am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. This going away was his coming again in the realization of infinite and eternal relations, in the life of the spirit. If the Christ had remained con- tinuously on the earth, it would have been neces- sarily in an external relation, a relation limited by time and space. It is the fact of his going away, and thenceforth the coming of the Spirit^ in the real life, the immortal life, of men, that becomes the evidence of the divine presence and the divine character, and thence transfers the evidence to history. It is here that the skepticism of men is to meet it. It will not be found by running to and fro, and vainly they may listen to voices that say lo here and lo there. It will not verify itself by external pageants. It will verify itself through the life of the Spirit in the history of the world ; and as the skepticism of men must meet it there^ 132 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST. SO tlie faith of men shall there have its strength, and thence shall come the sources of an undying life. He says, if any man confess me hefore men^ him will I also confess hefore the face of my Father in heaven} That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God^ has henceforth the evidence of the Spirit. There is henceforth the life of the spirit. This is the life that now is and is to come. This is the life of truth and freedom ; in this man overcomes the world ; the fruition of it is righteousness and peace and joy. There is henceforth the conviction of the world. There is henceforth the realization of the king- dom of heaven on the earth. There is henceforth the redemptive hfe of hu- manity. There is the life in which death is overcome^ — the life of the spirit. ^ Tlie question wliicli the contemporaries of the Christ asked has been repeated in other ages, and by many in this age, " What sign sboTvest thou unto us ? " The most significant fact in that age for those who asked this question, then, was the destruction of the temple, and the coming with the new testament of that spirit which dwelt in men. S. John says, the Jews said unto liim^ What sign shoioest thou unto us ? Jesus said unto them, Destroy this temple^ and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou raise it up in three daysf But he spake of the temple of his body. CHAPTER VI. THE CONYICTIOIN' OF THE WORLD. There is throucrh the world the conviction of o sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. The course of the sin of the world is in its alienation and separation from God, and consequent variance and strife. This condition, which appears in the man- ifold forms of rebellion, of envy, of division, of violence, is a constant fact in the history of the world. In this separation from God is the want of unity and reconciliation and peace. In this, is the source of those false theories of dualism which always involve fatalism, and against which the spirit of man, in its aim toward unity, contends with unconquerable energies. In this, man's life becomes one with nature in its continuous course, but does not rise above it. It is simply an animal existence. It is one with nature as the other of God. In this, there is no freedom. There is no recognition of the ground of unity and reconcilia- tion, as it is found through the mediation of the spirit. Sin is the alienation of man from God and from humanity, through the assertion of the law of self- ishness as the final law of human action. S. Paul 134 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD. says, sm is the transgression of the law. It is a transgression by man of the law which is the law of his own being, — the law of God and of hu- manity. It involves a variance from the relations of men in their true and normal development, and from the moral constitution of the world, and con- sequent injury and consciousness of guilt. Sin consists in following ways that are wrong, as in a wrong world, and in rejecting or refusing the recognition of a law or life of righteousness. Through it the will is unfree,-^ and is brought into subjection to that which is external, and injury may be done to others in their relations in life. In sin there is the defect and the defeat of per- sonality. It is a malady by which hurt is done ^ " From the internal point of view there are rudiments and sur- vivals in the mind which ,are to )je excluded from thai me, whose free action tends to progress; that baneful strife which hirkelh inborn in us is the foe of freedom : this let not a man slir up, but avoid and fiee.^^ (Clifford, Lectures and Essays, vol. ii. p. 250.) This is pre- sented not only as the result of experience, hut as the resultant of the knowledge of human nature derived from observation. There can be in one way no more clear and incisive description of human sin- The phrase, which will hold its place on historical i::;rounds, as descriptive of those forces which hinder from action that me, is the bondage of sin. Whatever may be our theories, the science of the- ology asks no more than to be supplied with these postulates; and it may hold that something deeper, yes, diviner in that me, may be traced beneath rudiments and survivals; and still sin is alien to man, as it is an alienation from God, and that baneful strife which is a foe to freedom, which man is to avoid and flee, is another conflict than the striigc,^le for existence on this earth, and out of it is that freedom wrouo-ht, which is fulfilled in a life that does not have its eonsumma- tion in death. OF SIN. 135 to man, and is the disruption of the normal re- lations of society. The true development of man is thwarted. Sin is involved with ignorance in a world of finite conditions. Sin is incident to this imperfect condition and development^ in which man may rise above the mere courses of an animal exist- ence, through the mediation of the spirit, and evil may be overcome through conflict ; and this pres- ent evil world is brought into reconciliation with God through the spirit ; and this divided world is stayed in the centre of its unity in God ; and peace is attained in the recognition and the fulfill- ment of the will of God. In sin there is the isolation of the individual ; self is an object of action, not in truth for self, — for in truth for self, there is the realization and recognition of a relation to God and to humanity, — but in being with self, the mere living of a man unto himself, the assertion of a law of sel- fishness. Thus the words are verified, — *' This above all, to thine own self be true; And it must follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." There is in the sequence of the physical process the isolation that is death. In death there is iso- lation, and an extinction of being in the relations of life, and an effacement of structural forms in which these relations had their continuance in the process of the physical world. S. Paul says, the sting of death is sin. 136 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD. It is this separation in death against which the spirit in man protests^ and this isolation of death from which the heart of man shrinks, with forebod- ings of dread and gloom. There is in death also the apparent limitation of man to the physical process of the world, and entire subjection to that process.-^ It is through disease and death in the physical process that there is the prostration of man. The science of man recognizes these facts, which appear in forms of disease and death, and as involving not merely deflection from the type, but in the individual the extinction of the type ; it is not simply a replacement in the evolution of forms, but it is displacement. The inference from the physical process in its limitations is that disease, with its pain and angxiish, is to be appre- hended as normal. Man can ascertain, in the widest range of observation, no period in which disease, with pain and anguish, has not existed through identical forms of life, and, inferentially, none in which it will not exist. He can indicate no period in which disease, with pain and anguish and death, will disappear, and no type of physical organization with which it will disappear. And 1 It is true, in the profound words of Spinoza, that the free man thinks of nothing less than of deatli, — homo liber de nulla re minus quam de morte cogitat ; but this is true because freedom has an in- finite quality, and is not measured in the limitations of the finite; and in freedom man is raised abpve the mere limitations of the finite. But the school of physical science does not know this, and cannot admit this, without the rejection of its own assumptions. The facts concerning death are within the range of its observation. OF SIN. 137 this evolution may have shortly or remotely a devolution, — this gradation may become a degra- dation. There is in sin the subjection of man^ as there is subjection in the physical process to death. The spirit of man recognizes the fact that sin is priva- tive and positive, but it is not positive in the sense of affirmation of being ; it is external and spiritual, but it is not spiritual in the sense of the recognition or realization of life. Sin is the bond- age, the slavery of men. The freedom of man fails of its realization, and man becomes the slave of sin. Sin is common, and is not restricted to a certain individual or a tribe ; it attaches to the race ; it refers to each individual, to each family and na- tion, and through it their strength and freedom are impaired. Through sin the life of each is de- flected from its real end, and pei'verted from that consistence which is in truth to self ] and its action, when its self-determination, that is, its freedom, is gone, becomes wayward and weak, as of one that is lost. The fact of human sin is recognized by the con- science and the consciousness of men and nations. It has its evidence in their history. There has been no greatness in men or in nations, in Greece or in Eome, that achieved a complete exemption from this consciousness. It is attested in the lit- erature of the world, and most clearly in its high- 138 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD. est forms, as in the Odyssey of Homers the ^Eneid of Vergil, in .^schylus and Shakespeare.^ And when once the conscience and the con- sciousness of men has awakened to the sense of sin, with discord and death, there comes for it no obhteration. There is found in the changes of place and time no river of oblivion. "When once it has been aroused, — ** Nor poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou owedst yesterday." And as there is here no power that can bring to the conscience the effacement of sin, so there is in the physical process no power to overcome and destroy death. Nature says, It is not in me * she brings forth, in the same indifference, life and death; she weaves of the same texture the wed- ding garment and the shroud. And natural soci- ety says. It is not in me ; she has obtained the occupancy of no land where, through avarice and 1 " Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, FooI'd by those rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costlj"- gay ? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end? Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more : So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men. And death once dead, there 's no more dying then." (Shakespeare, Sonnets^ cxlvi.) OF SIN. 139 violence, she has not consumed the hves of her children; she has the records of no age that is ex- empt from the folhes and crimes and wars of men. The fact of sin is recognized, by the struggle for survival in the conditions of life ; by the variance from the ideal in the secular succession of things in men and nations ; by the civil procedure and institutions of society ; by the language of men, which may be held as representative, not of its lower, but of its common condition. That in lan- guage there is retrospectively a discovery of man to himself, and that this civil procedure is in the institution of a moral order is simply the evidence of tendencies and forces that are brought to act in conflict with evil. Sin is the transgression of the law, the law of being, in which one wrongeth his own life. It is followed by evil. This is indicated in the civil order of society, which has not alone a positive, but a substantial ethical ground. Crime is j^un- ished. This punishment is the manifestation of the crime. This illustrates the conviction which increasingly follows sin. Sin is the contradiction of life. In sin man is, himself, in contradiction with all that really is. It is not only the subversion of energy, but it be- comes the identification with the unreal. It is the movement of an empty masquerade. The actor says in that awful tragedy, — ** I 'gin to be aweary o' the sun." 140 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD. This, in human experience, is the unreality of sin, that, in the gathering night yet discerns through the baleful shadows, its own discord. This be- comes its intolerable burden and its ceaseless tor- ment ; in the fable, it was the whip of scorpions. Sin is unreal ; — it is the contradiction of life ; but in the consciousness of its contradiction there is the evidence of a deeper unity, in which it may be overcome, and of the ground of its obliteration. There may be a root of righteousness of life that is deeper than the root of evil. Though it be not our discovery, it may be discovered to us. The conviction of sin may come with the conviction of righteousness and with the discrimination of evil, in the judgment, that is, the coming of the light. The Christ says of the coming of the Sj^irit, A7id when he is come he will conmnee the world of sin^ of righteousness y and of jicdgment : of sin, be- cause they believe not on me ; of righteousness, be- cause I go to my Father, and ye see me no more ; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. There is the manifestation of God in the ethical order of the world. There is the manifestation of the will in the assertion of law, in the fulfillment of righteousness, and in the realization of free- dom. The ethical process of the world is in the de- velopment of the family and the nation. In this OE RIGHTEOUSNESS. 141 there is the mamtenance of relations, and the in- stitution of rights and the acknowledgment of du- ties in which freedom is reahzed. Through the conscious Hfe of men and of nations there is the recognition and the reahzation of righteousness and freedom. The ethical process of the world is the fulfill- ment of the life of humanity. The degradation of man is overcome, and men are lifted above a brutal condition, with its ignorance and servility. It raises man above the existence which is merely animal, the situation wdiich has its satisfaction through the acquisition of enough for its animal desires. This revelation is of a God of righteousness, who will establish righteousness on the earth. The law of righteousness is to have its vindication in the relations of men. This has in history its constant assertion. It is borne on in one contin- uous strain, with voices of joy that proclaim the assurance of deliverance, as in the exultant an- them of a mighty nation, and voices that are tremulous with the burden of woe : Sighteoitsness exalteth a nation ; and again, ^?^ the way of right- eousness is life; as the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more, but the righteous is an everlast- ing foundation. The same ethical expression is in the opening services of the Church : when the loicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed^ and doeth that which is lawful 142 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORID. and rights he shall save his soul alive. The very word righteousness is a constant term of the Old Testament, ye thai love the eternal, see that ye hate the thing that is evil! to him that orclereth his conduct right shall be shown the salvation of God} It is repeated with no Umit in its universal signifi- cance, all flesh shall know that I am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer. It is blended with the vision of its transcendent hopes ; this is the name zvhere- hy he shall he called, the Lord our righteousness. The highest reward is for him that loveth right- eousness and hateth iniquity. The assertion and recognition of righteousness is in and through the conscience. The conscience is not alone the expression of an external and for- mal law, although the affirmation of the con- science may be in an external and formal law ; it is in a law which is involved in the being and freedom of personality — I, I ought.^ 1 " The word righteousness is the master word of the Old Testa- ment. Keep judgment and do righteousness ! Cease to do evil, learn to do loell. A sentence which sums up the New Testament, and as- signs the ground on which the Christian church stands, is this : Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquiiy.^^ (Ar- nold, Literature and Dogma, ch. i. 2.) 2 " He who, wearied or stricken in the fight with the powers of darkness, asks himself in a solitary place, * Is it all for nothing? Shall we, indeed, be overthrown** ' he does find something which may jus- tify that thought. In such a moment of utter sincerity, when a man has bared his own soul before the immensities and eternities, a pres- ence in which his own poor personality is shriveled into nothing- ness, arises within him, and says as plainly as words can say, ' I am with thee, and I am greater than thou." (CUfford, Lectures an& OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 143 The revelation of God is in the fulfillment of righteousness and the realization of freedom. In righteousness and freedom is the assertion and realization of personality. The conscience of man presumes the being of God ; it presumes a righteous being. There can be no adequate apprehension of conscience^ nor explanation of the facts of conscience, — to con- sist with the facts given in the human conscious- ness, — that does not imply the being of God, and his relation to man. The conclusions of conscience are not simply the result of certain physical processes and condi- tions, and determined by the application through them of some law or standard of convenience or use. The principle of right or of righteousness has not its origin in a physical process, which in trans- mitted hues of descent allows no real freedom, and is determined only by immediate considera- tions of advantage or disadvantage. It has not its origin in customs, as a usage which might be wholly different in different conditions, nor requires from men only a conformity to prev- Essays, vol. ii. p. 242.) It may not concern one what name, of many- names, is given to this presence, if it be not a mere word for which there 's no reality, and if it be not merely identified with the ephem- eral life of humanity; if it be a presence in and with personality; and if the personality of man be not brought to nothingness, but lifted up, from among the things which pass into nothingness, into strength and freedom. 144 THE CONVICTION OF THE WOKLD. alent customs as those, for instance, of a tribal or racial character. It has not its origin in a simple intuition, for it presumes that which is the object of intuition; and while there may be a certain intuitive appre- hension of righteousness, yet it is more often brought to the knowledge of men through reflect- ive lines of thought- It has not its origin in considerations of utility, as the relative advantage or disadvantage of cer- tain courses of action as tending to promote an inr dividual or tribal welfare. And yet there is a truth involved in each of these notions, for a principle of righteousness is recognized in that custom, which men with the advance of a civil polity respect, as a ground of customary right and of common law ; and it may be aj^prehended by the intuition of thought ; and it may be ascertained through experience and trial with the sequent issues of good and evil in the process of society.-^ 1 " Marriage was an institution far older than the law. It was not the creation of the law. " The morality of the Pharisees proceeded upon the forgetf ulness of this principle. They looked upon penal laws not as presuming obligations, but as the foundation of them.'' (Maurice, Sermons^ vol. ii. p. 350.) Ml Clifford has a theory of morality: " This theory is the theory of the tribal self, or the partly inherited partly acquired sense of what the good of your clan requires, which must often he at war with what your own individual pleasure seems to require, — the conflict representing the emergence of conscience." See Lectures and Es- says^ vol. ii. p. 113. This is a fact in human nature, which any theory OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 145 The principle of righteousness is absolute ; it is immutable ; it is universal. This principle is involved in the realization of the life of the family and the nation. It is not within their option to determine whether it shall or shall not be. It had not its origin in the asser- tion of any individual or collection of individual men, and it cannot be annulled by them. It is the source of stability, — "The most ancient heavens Through thee, are fresh and strong." That there is a course and constitution of human nature, that there is an ethical process involved in the relations of men, that righteousness has for its consequence life and freedom, that unright- eousness has its consequence in the detriment of life and subversion of freedom, — this is the evi- dence of the presence of a righteous being in the ethical process of the world. of the evolution or education of the world does not affect. But is this conflict of the whole and the individual, or of the tribal self and the separate self, always to go on; and if in the sacrifice of the in- dividual self there be an element of virtue, may there not be, in the old words, a divine or eternal law or ground of sacrifice, deeper than the mere contingent conflict of one man and a group of men ; and in this process of virtue, with the "emergence of conscience," does a man become a mere underling or is there a higher realization of the individual self, — the me, — as through this process it rises to the universal, and is there thus the way to a perfect reconciliation ? This fact, of the deepest import, has its perfect vindication and justifica- tion in the Christian ethics, and involves elements other than a mere impulse, toward " an end in which we are all to be swept away in the final ruin of the earth." 10 146 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD. There is a revelation in righteousness of the being of God to the world. This revelation is to and through the conscience and the consciousness of men. This is not an abstract righteousness, nor a for- mal freedom. There is in personality the highest energy ; the assertion of that energy is in freedom. The energy which works in freedom is, through conflict, in the realization of personality. But this is not, as in the struggle for existence in the phys- ical process, the struggle of one against another, with the resultant survival of one by another, but the struggle where each, in their relations, is for another, and each in the realization of righteous- ness and freedom is for all. This righteousness in its assertion and realiza- tion is more and other than a retributive or dis- tributive justice, which is the postulate of the schemes of a formal theology : its revelation be- comes in the unity of the ethical process and life the consistence of truth and goodness and beauty, and the ground of faith and hope and love in hu- manity. It does not allow that ethical incongruity which has for its postulate a conflict of justice and love, that requires a formal and external recon- ciliation. The perfect manifestation of righteousness is in the person of the Christ. The law of righteous- ness is not abstract; — it is manifested in the real- ization of personality, and in the life and relations OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 147 of men in tlie world. It is in a life in which there is the consciousness of perfect unity with God and perfect unity with man^ and which becomes in itself the perfect realization of the truth. The life of Jesus the Christ was not simply a sinless life, with the negative quality, that it was without sin. It was that, but it was of a positive ethical quality. It was not alone the representa- tion^ the mere bodying forth of a perfect ethical character, a phenomena of excellence, a simular of virtue, but it was the manifestation of a life in the realization of a perfect righteousness in per- fect unity with man. It was a life that was wrought through the trial of earth, in the real- ization of righteousness. It was a real conflict and a real victory. In the life of the Christ there was the fulfill- ment of the law. The Christ says, / came not to destroy, hut to fulfill the law. The apostle says, it became him to fulfill all righteousness} ^ " The gospel perfects, fulfills, completes the law. The lawgiver who deals with acts says; Thou shall not kill. The king who speaks to the heart says, Thou shall nol be angry with thy brother wiihoul cause. The lawgiver who deals with acts says : Thou shall not commit adul- tery. The king over the spirit who speaks to the heart says, Thou shall not look upon a looman to lust after her. " The gospel is therefore, from the foundation, necessary as the law itself to Ihe perfect development of humanity. "Jesus could raise the standard of human morality in opposition to the inhuman standard which the Pharisee set up, because he was himself the Son of man; because he came to declare, and in his owe Derson to manifest, the truth that God and man are not divided, but 148 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD. It does not take away one jot from the law. It does not abrogate the commandment ; it is to exceed the righteousness of the scribe and Phar- isee. It does not annul the principle of an eye for an eye, — it retains it, but it transmutes it; it retains the law, — it does not render it void, it transmutes it. It is raised to the conception of a spiritual ethic. It becomes not simply the observance, but the fulfillment, of the law. It is no longer external and formal as the discipline of a school master, as of those of old time. It is not simply the precedent of the scribe nor the maxim of the Pharisee.-^ It is spiritual, and is to become the law of the life and freedom of the spirit. It is no longer simply a command, tliou shall and tliou shalt not, although this persists, but it adds and further, thou shalt love ; and it comes to the individual as existing in divine relations, and in an ethical life in which the goodness of *man is one in its quality with the goodness of God, be ye per- fect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect; as the divine forgiveness is a rescript of our forgiveness, forgive ics our trespasses as we eternally united; because, therefore, that which is truly huQian must answer to that which is truly divine." (Maurice, Sermons^ vol. ii, p. 350.) ^ *' We do not know oar duties apart from our relations, and the knowledge of our relations helps us to the performance as well as the knowledr^e of our duties." (Erskine, Memoirs, p. 344.) " I know no ground for the relationships among men but their common rela- tion to God." (Maurice, Sermons, voh i. p. 15.) OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 149 forgive those that trespass against us. It is not a local nor an exclusive morality, but it is a univer- sal morality; — that ye may he the children of your Father which is in heaven ; for he maTceth his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust} The ethical principle has in every form a con- stant affirmation. It is the law of judgment and of life. The Christ says, if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments ; and again, if ye love me ye will keep my commandments, S. Paul says, he not deceived ; God is not mocked ; for whatso- ever a man soweth that shall he also reap ; for he 1 "The morality of the gospel, because it proposes to man only the highest standard, lays less burden upon him than any other. The Christ teaches us that the burden is not in the straitness of the law, but in ourselves ; that a, law, every law, human or divine, must be weak through the flesh; that so loag as we are merely trying to obey a rule we shall find that rule a burden; that when we claim our rights as new men, as created in Him to good works, as children of a Father in heaven, we become united with Him from whom laws proceed. Obedience to them is recognized as part of our constitu- tion; disobedience is the unnatural, miserable state. " If this morality of the Christ is not casuistical morality, still less is it rhetorical moraUty. The rhetorician exalts virtues, as if they were characteristic of certain favored persons whom it is his callincr to praise; denounces vices, as if none could have fallen into them but those whom it is his calling to vituperate. Our Lord speaks of the highest virtues which any man has ever practiced as being re- semblances to the Father in heaven, who has made all men in his image; who has redeemed all in Christ, that they may be renewed in hi& image. Our Lord treats all vices which the law condemns as lying close to every man, as being the consequences of inclina- tions to which no man is a stranger," (Maurice, Sermons^ vol. ii. p. 343.) 150 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD. that soweih to his flesh shall of the flesh reap cor- ruption; hut he that soweih to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. The law is univer- sal ; whatever be the schemes or theories of men, it is continuous and invariable. It is not annulled through faithj but through faith there may come a deeper knowledge of its reality, — of that cor- ruption which shall say unto the grave, Thou art my mother ! and of that life which is unto the spirit, and of the spirit shall reap life everlasting. But the law is invariable, as a man soweth so shall his reaping be. The revelation of God and of his righteousness is in the judgment of the world. It is the judg- ment of men and of nations. This judgment is the revelation of light. It is a day of judgment ; it is the day of the Lord as the prophet saw it; it is the day of the coming of the Son of man. It is a judgment of righteousness. It is not an event; it is a crisis. It is not retired to a remote past; it is not adjourned to a more remote future. It is a judgment whose hour is not thus known to those to whom it comes, in the crises of human existence. It is not merely an event in the se- quence of affairs, — it is a judgment with the discrimination of good and evil and the issue of righteousness. It is not of one day or one age alone ; it is here and now. The Christ says, now OF JUDGMENT. 151 is the judgment of this world ; and in that tran- scendent vision, / beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. This judgment is an object of desire. Tlie pa- tience with Avhich the forces of wrong and fraud, the evil of the world, is endured is with the con- viction that a day of doom shall come. The prayer thus has always been, Arise^ O Lord^ and judge the earth. Through the ages it has been repeated. Let the earth rejoice^ for he cometh in righteousness to judge the ivorldy and the jyeojple with his truth} The man of affairs, the statesman whose ethical conception does not consist with the material sys- tems and commercial theories of recent schools, has said that what he dreaded for his land was not the day of judgment, but the day of no judg- ment. This judgment is itself grounded on the princi- ple which it makes known ; that human life has not its origin nor its completeness in the limita- tions of a physical process ; that we live in infinite relations. This day, — this day of the coming of the Son of man, has another dawn than that which ^ " We may be wont to divide the advent for mercy from the ad- vent for judgment, by an intervening tract of ages. In the prophets they are brought togethur. The apostle refers to Jesus the words of the prophet whom the Church has called the Prophet of the Ad- vent, a bruised reed shall he not break, till he send forth judgment unto victory, and in his name shall the QentHes trusts (Maurice, Sermons^ vol. iii. p. 2.) 152 THE CONVICTION 01^ THE WORLD. breaks in the eastern sky, and another close than that Avhich belongs to the hours marked by the swing of the pendulum. For men and nations there are courses Avhich have no measure in the finite : they have an infinite import and reality. There are paths of spiritual death and life, the rigJiteous enter into eternal life, and the wicked into eternal punishment. This judgment is not formed simply in the dis- tribution and transmission of things that are seen. It does not find the issues of the actions of men only within the limits of a physical process, and as affecting a life concluded in that process, but it is a judgment which regards human action as hav- ing a spiritual character, and therefore an eternal significance. This judgment is not, therefore, subject to finite limitations. It is not the exclusive incident of a certain time and a certain locality. The Christ says they that are in their graves shall come forth, — they that have done good to the resurrection of life^ and they that have done evil to the resurrection of judgment ; — and this is the evidence of the character and continuation of ethical conditions. This judgment is in the hour that cometh and now is, but it is not limited to the present, and it does not detach the future from the present. There is in evil always a foreboding of judgment to come ; there is a doom which sin bears within itself j there is a looking for of judgment This OF JUDGMENT. 153 judgment; in tlie distinction and manifestation of righteousness and wickedness, is real and ethical and eternal. This judgment has its precedent in and is involved with the revelation of God to the world. The Christ says, tlds is the judgment^ that light is come into the worlds and men loved darhiess rather than lights because their deeds loere eoll. This judgment of the world is constant ; it is continuous. It may come as in other days, as the world fares on, as men are eating and drinking and 23lanting and building, claiming dominion over this earth. It may come with the close of one age and the beginning of another age. It maybe with the end of an old world and the beginning of a new world. The disciples ask the Christ when the end shall be, when shall come the end of that age, and the appearing of the Son of man. The Christ, in the description of this judgment, with words that are awful in their imagery and in the burden that they bear, says to them, this genera- tion shall not j^ctss away, till all these things be fidfilled. The words are not indeterminate, but, — as if they were difficult to apprehend, and their sense was to be perverted in some duplicity of thought, and the notions of men which prevailed were to be maintained as the substitute for them, ^— they are preceded by the most simple illustra- tion drawn from nature, and they are followed by the most awful affirmation : learn now n parable 154 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD. of the jig tree : when his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye hiow that summer is nigh ; so, likewise, when ye shall see all these things, hiow that it is near, even at the doors. Verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things he ftdfilled. Heaven and earth shall 2)ass away, hut my words shall not pass away. It was to come in a day and an hour that no man knew. It was not merely an mcident of time^ but its issues were eternal. It was to concern, not only the exclusive nation, but all nations. It was to come to that age and that generation, but it might come in every age and to every generation. It was a judgment by a person; it was not a judgment subject to a formal law, with the adjudi- cation of a tribunal of formal process. It was the judgment of One who on this earth, and in the changes of its history, had lived in the conflict and the overcoming of evil and in the manifesta- tion of the truth. This judgment has a strict ethical import ; it has no other import. It is not on formal lines which are the prescriptions of men, and from which the condition of men and nations is deter- mined. It allows no phrases current with religious conventions ; it is not a distinction of the religious and the irreligious, with the various conceptions at- tached to these terms. It is a judgment in right- eousness; the righteous shall inherit eternal life, the wicked shall go into eternal punishment. OF JUDGMENT. 155 The law of the judgment of the world is that which is manifest in the coming of the Son of man. The law is in the coming of the Son of man, as it is for every generation in the trial and conflict of humanity. The Christ says^ I was an hungered^ and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty^ and ye gave me drink ; I was a stranger^ and ye took me in ; I was sick^ and ye visited me ; I was in prison^ and ye came unto me. If the words call out surprise, and it may be suffer rejection as the law of the divine judgment, with the inquiry, when saw we thee an hungered^ and when saio we thee in prison ? the answer is, inas- 'iutich as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren^ ye have done it unto me. This judgment is universal. It is for every generation ; there is no exemption. It is not the application of a law for which some substitute may be allowed. For those who have done good and faithful service, who have striven for right- eousness, for the life of humanity, there is an en- trance into the joy which was His in the sorrow and contradiction of earth, — the joy that trans- figured the suffering and death of this earth. Well done, good andfaithfid servant: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. This judgment is universal, for it is in the coming of the Son of man. Its symbolism indi- cates the glory with which humanity is invested in the coming of the Son of man. 156 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD. This judgment^ in its ethical import, in its law of the oneness of the Christ with humanity, and in its realization in the life of humanity, is beyond the conceptions of the religious imagination^ That has portrayed a judgment which is a remote and isolated scene. It is to be a high court where all are convened at its tribunal. There are scenic descriptions of this judgment, as in the writings of Josephus and through the wide ranges of oriental religious literature. It is remanded to a remote future. It is transposed beyond the confines of earth and the vulgar scenes which mark this bank and shoal of time. It is the precedent to an abode of happiness and an abode of misery, which are adjusted in contiguity to it. Then this life is defined as the emptiness, and the life be- yond as the fullness of desire. Its law is only that of reversals and re23risals. It becomes, then, through the imagination, apjDrehended only as an event of strangeness, and is resolved into pictures and images. It is in its distant outline an object of vague and undefined dread. It is. an event for which time may bring evasions. The removal of this judgment to a remote future, beyond them and their generation, heightens its appeal to the imagination, while it brings indifference to the conscience. It becomes a ground of apathy in the ethical life of men. But when this judgment is apprehended in its real and spiritual import, as near and at the very door, as the judgment of OF JUDGMENT, 157 truth, then the conscience cannot be set at rest by any theories or dreams, nor by the undefined an- ticipations of evasion or delay. The issues of this judgment have an eternal sig- nificance. The word Ionian may denote an indef- inite term of finite duration. But it does not as- sume that the judgment of this world is simply in finite terms, or that man is thus regarded simply as existing in finite relations. It has another quality ; it has an infinite significance 3 it is not measured in material ^proportions. The conse- quence of righteousness and of every righteous action is in eternal life ; and the consequence of wickedness and of every wicked action is in eter- nal death. Thus there is never in the conflict of an ethical life exemption from the consequences of evil. That these issues are not detached from the actual condition of man, and that they are not transferred to some remote date, has its evidence in the conscience and the consciousness of men. In the ancient symbol it is written of the se- quences of sin, In the day that thou eatest thereof^ thou shalt surely die. S. Paul says, the law of death has passed upon all men; and again, the wages of sin is death. The Christ says, he that helieveih in me, though he were dead^ yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. There is thus a deeper significance than is meas- ured in the abstract definitions of a formal logic, 158 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD. in the words : the things which are seen are tem- poral; hut the things which are not seen are eter- nal. S. Paul nowliere says the things which are present are temporal, and the things which are future are eternal. This notion does not consist with his wordsj nor with the necessary conclusions of thought. Its postulate is in the assumption of the antithesis of the human and the divine ; that the human is lower and the divine upper; that the temporal is present and the eternal is future 5 that the finite is here and the infinite is there. It does cprrespond with the prevalent notions of re- ligious schemes. It becomes the ground of their detraction of the life of humanity. It accords also with that exclusive temper to which the religious mind tenaciously clings in its apprehension of the future, and which, as a religious sect, it holds strongly in the measure of its sectarianism. It consists further with indifference to the ethical life, the life of righteousness, and it brings a rid- dance to the conscience of men and nations of the sequences of their unrighteousness, and of their breaking of the commandments of God, whose ful- fillment is the life of humanity, by the transposi- tion of these consequences to a remote future. It brings an illusive security, when the punishment of wickedness and the recompense of righteousness should have a stronger assertion. That the words themselves at last become emptied of all meaning by the religious schools and by the physical schools OF JUDGMENT. 159 furnishes only another illustration of that law of the spiritual and divine ethic : from Mm that hath Qioty shall be tahen away even that which he hath. The Christ answers his disciples : The disciples came and said unto hhn^ Why sj)ea7cest thou unto them in parables ? He answered and said unto them^ Because it is given unto you to know the mys- teries of the kingdom of heaven^ but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath to him shall be gioeUy and he shall have more abundantly ; but whosoever hath not^ from him shcdl be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables ; because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias which saifh, By hem^ng ye shall hear and shall not under- stand ; and seeing ye shcdl see and shcdl not per- ceive : for this peojole's heart is toaxed gross, cmd their ears are chdl of hearing, and their eyes they have closed ; lest at any time they shoidd see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and shoidd understand with their hearts, and should be con- verted, and I should heed them; but blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous onen have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them, and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them. The eternal is the name of God ; its meaning is 160 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD. more than with no begmnmg and no ending. The name of God is not thus smnmed up in negations ; these do not constitnte his eternity. S. John say^, this is eternal life^ to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Glirist, whom thon hast sent It is a spiritual life^ a Hfe not dependent on nor determined by things visible, but in relation with the Father and the Son, in fellowship with the Holy Spirit. The separation from the light and the knowl- edge of God, the rejection of all relation to him and to humanity in him, involves eternal death. But in this separation man is not left in abandon- ment ; the wrath of God follows and abides on any man who continues in sin, not on man as in a con- dition of necessity, where a dualistic development is realized and no unity can be attained, and where his doom is irrevocable, that no redemptive power or grace can abate it, but the wrath of God continues and abides on man because he is re- lated to God. It were woe for man, if, left with sin, no judgment followed him. The consequence of wickedness is eternal pun- ishment, and this is the assertion of an immutable principle. The punishment is eternal. But to identify this with an irrevocable doom is to set a finite limit to the divine redemption and to its per- fect realization. It brings a section of the himian race into an ultimate condition of fate, and not of freedom. The spiritual law is eternal, but not the OF JtJDGMENT. 161 necessary continuance in sin of one child of earth and time. The words in which the Christ says to his dis- ciples that this judgment shall be pronounced, in the coming of the Son of man, — Gome^ ye blessed of my Father^ inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, — are divested of their meaning when they are separated from the words Avhich complete them, which assert the law of this judgment in the oneness of the Clirist with humanity. And the words, Depart from me, ye cursed^ into eternal fire ^ prepared for the devil and his angels^ when they are severed from this law, and are pronounced as the realization of a final dualism and an utter fatalism, with their trans- position into the far hereafter, are dismissed, as there is no response in the life of humanity. The words, then, which should express the awful con- demnation of sin and of every sin became weak and broken, and the whole subject is set aside as inconsistent with the relations of humanity, in- stead of bringing out the very ground of these re- lations. It is said that if this eternal death, which is the sequence of sin, has a terminus, then eternal life may have. But while this holds these terms in finite measures, and thus empties them of their real meaning, it may be said that eternal death, the death of sin, the law which has passed upon all, has a terminus in the kingdom of the Re- 11 162 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD. deemer. And eternal life would have an end if it did not rest, if life and peace did not rest, in the will of God and the communion of the Spirit. This eternal punishment is the manifestation of sin, for sin has in it the severance of all those rela- tions to God and to man which are eternal in their foundation. If man did not live in infinite rela- tions there would be no condition of sin. The sin is here, and the death of sin ; the eternal punishment is here, and continues with the con- tinuing of sin, and is the actual manifestation of the nature of sin. There is in and from God infinite love for man, and infinite hatred for sin, and this infinite hatred for sin is the reflex of perfect love. Sin is in itself destructive of love ; as love is involved in the relations of men, and love has in itself an ethi- cal quality that involves the hatred of sin. Sin is in itself destructive of life ; there is in it no ele- ment of unity ; it is subversive of personality. S. John says. He that believeth hath eternal life ; this is eternal life, to believe in God. The apostle says, the life that I live is by faith in the Son of God, It is not a life determined and concluded by physi- cal limitations and conditions; it is above the limi- tations of the finite. In its nature, sin, and every act of sin, has its sequence in eternal death ; and every act unto righteousness, in the relation of humanity to the Christ and through him unto God, has its fulfill OF JUDGMENT. 163 ment in eternal life. This is invariable ; it is a principle not restricted to other ages and aeons, to be made manifest only in other worlds. It is fulfilled now in the Christ, in his kingdom, in the coming of the kingdom of heaven on earth. S. John says, now are we passed from death unto life. This is now. It is not away from the here and into the hereafter ; it is not de- fined by the passage of boundaries, as in spa- tial relations, and by intervals of transition, as in temporal relations. But in a figurative way it becomes true, to use the phrase of Erskine, that man may be in one place in eternal life, and a rod beyond in eternal death ; or in one hour in eternal life, and in another hour in etei-nal death. This eternal life and eternal death, these infi- nite relations, have become the conditions of the existence of man. This eternal life is a life which death does not touch; for even death itself, which mai^ks most clearly the sorrows of this finite world, is taken up and changed. It is a life which is eternal with God. The Christ says, he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. The assertion of the issue of righteousness in eternal life, and wickedness in eteimal punishment, is the assertion of a principle involved in the eth- ical relations of life, and it is consistent with the sequence of the redemptive life of the Christ in 164 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD. the world, because the ethical life of man has not its limitations within the Jinite, The end of right- eousness is in eternal life, in the redemptive kingdom, in the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. CHAPTER VII. THE REVELATION OF HEAVEN TO THE WORLD. The life which is manifested in the coming of the Son of God^ and has its realization in the eternal life of man, has also its verification in the coming of the kingdom of heaven. The representation of heaven was an unreality, while still it was invested with the attractions of that which the eye had seen and the ear had heai-d^ and it had entered into the heart of man to con- ceive. The words which the Christ repeats are the kingdom of heaveuy or the hingdom of Ood. The gospel is called the gospel of the ki7igdom^ or the gospel of the kingdom of heaven. This expression is drawn from the common political life of men, and refers to historical forces in the growth of society. It does not imply that a special sacredness attaches to this form, and this form has not the relative value which belongs in the traditions of the Hebrew and Greek and Ro- man life to the republic, but it is simply the com- mon and contemporary form. It is represented as a kingdom, and has its im- plication in the historical life of the world, but 166 REVELATION OF HEAVEN TO THE WORLD. it is not measured by any temporal and spatial conditions in an external order ; it cometh not with observation. It is not the product of historical forceSj as these forces are hmited and defined by strictly physical conditions. It is not derived from them. The Christ saysj My kingdom is not of this world. It has a reality which does not attach to that which has its derivation and ter- mination in the transient forms of the physical process of the world. It is real ; it is not to suc- ceed an actual, with an empty and abstract ideal, but in it is the realization of the ideal. It is not the vague field of visionary thought. It is not remote, that it should become inaccessible ; it is open, and it is separated from earth by no ex- ternal limitations, that it should be approached over measures of distance or tracts of time.-^ It is not always before us, as if located in the hereafter, and ever on and away, and never to be gained. These are strong words, that stir the heart with their assurance, the h'mgdom of heaven suffer- eth violence^ and the violent take it hy force. This coming of the kingdom of heaven is repre- sented in the same words that describe the coming ^ " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him; hut God hath revealed them unto us hy his Spirit. The world of which the apostle speaks is not a future, but a present revelation. This verse is often quoted, as if the apostle, by the things prepared^ meant the glories of a world to be visible hereafter." (Robertson Sermons, vol. i. p. 25.) THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 167 of the Son of man on the earth. The Christ said. Verily J I say unto you^ that there he some of them that stand here which shall not taste of deaths till they have seen the kingdom of God come loith power. This kingdom, of which the annunciation was the gospel of the kingdom of heaven, had its reahzation in the coming of the Christ in the life of the Spirit. It came with the power of the Spirit, that no forces of this earth could overcome. The Christ says to his disciples, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, hut the world shall rejoice : and ye shall he sorrowful, hut your sorrow shall he turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow hecause her hour is come ; hut as soon as she is delivered of the child, she rememhereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is horn into the world. And ye now therefore have sor- row, hut I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man takethfrom you. The perfected man of God was to come, as one who opens the perfect kingdom of God. This end, however imperfectly construed in human society, was the aim of the endeavor of religion and the speculation of philosophy. In the latter form, in the construction of philosophy, it was, however imperfectly conceived, the object of the republic of Plato and of the city of Aristotle. The illustrations of this kingdom are not those 168 REVELATION OP HEAVEN TO THE WORLD. of an abstract character, nor an appeal to the abstract imagination. It is ethical ; it has no other description ; it is the kingdom of righteous- ness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. This kingdom has come, and it may be always coming ; it is in the realization of righteousness in the life of humanity. It has come, and it is there- fore no vacant dream ] it is always coming, and it is therefore to be striven for with the energy and the endeavor of men. The signs of the coming of this kingdom are not those that are to be written upon some distant skies that sweep around the earth they never meet. They are not the suggestions of the relig- ious imagination. They are in the restored life of humanity ; the blind see, and the lame walk, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. These are the signs of the coming of the kingdom of heaven that the evangelists record. It is a kingdom that asserts and recognizes the presence of spiritual forces ; it is of and over the spirits of men. It is in its ethical character to invest the work and duties of men, in the courses of time, with its own substantive strength. This is the ground of the words of S. Paul, for your citizenship is in heaven. The relation of this kingdom to the common life of humanity is set forth in words which have no parallel : Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 169 heaven. These are words in which science, with the limitations of physical conditions, can find no significance. They consist with the assumptions of no religion, but they are justified to the world, and they are words which humanity shall keep in its heart, until the travail of time is over. It has been noted that the pagan rehgious con- ceptions of heaven still prevail, and the thought and emotion of men are moulded by them. They determine the conception of this revelation, instead of being determined by it. The heavens are still far above us, above this spot which men call earth, and are carried on and away before us ; they are still an elysian view ; the happy fields are located in the future, and the religious imagination invests them with images of delight ; they are held as some enchantment, to body forth some ecstatic dream. The pagan religious conception sets off this world by a separate boundary from the further confines of heaven and hell. The infinite spiritual depths and heights are not real for humanity. It is not with great, nor even with true, prelusive strains, but on vacant keys and with unanswering tones, as the philosophy of agnosticism would taunt us, that it utters its De Profundis and its In Excelsis. This pagan conception avoids the words of the Christ, Behold the kingdom of God is within you. It says that it is not within you. It says that here all still is nothingness, and all within is emptiness, though the Christ has come and the Spirit has 170 REVELATION OE HEAATEN TO THE WORLD. been given unto men ; and it describes this king- dom as inaccessible^ and as always away and be- yond. It brings repose to the conscience and con- fines for the consciousness of men, while it leads the imagination on with the representation of its pictorial splendors. The Christ uses the word heaven, but it is not the repetition nor the fulfillment of the dream of the pagan religions. It is not a transportation nor an emigration from all the relations of human- ity. It is in the most critical passage, which is the answer to the hope of the world, the expres- sion of the perfect ethic, that the Christ says, The kingdom of God is within you. The words of the Christ are the gospel of the kingdom. The kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of the Christ. The old is passing away, but it is not as if lost in some abysm of time, there shall he neio heavens and a new earthy where- in dwelleth righteousness. But the tribes of men succeed each other, and the generations go, and the world seems to grow very old, old beyond all the records upon its scarped cliffs and worn shores. We trace oftQn some glory in the past that does not seem to return. It is no satisfaction to know that it has, in the attrition of chemical forces, been resolved into the elements. There comes to us the sense of a glory that has waned and gone. And again, the signs of prog THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 171 ress seem often obscured, and tlie very texture of history woven and imbued with the follies and crimes of men. There seems often the evidence only of an aimless struggle and strife, with no other significance than the struggle and the strife, and that all at last is remerged into the physical ele- ments. We see not yet the glory that shall be. The indications of the fulfillment of that which kings and prophets sought seem very far off. We are subject to death, and we see not yet, in the life of humanity, the perfect conquest of death: the last enemy that shall he destroyed is death. But not alone, in solitary visions, as to the pro- tomartyr, when in the hour of death surrounded by fierce and cruel faces, the heavens are opened, to behold the Son of man sitting at the right hand of the power of God. The Christ, in his own perfect and perfected life, overcame death, and has opened the perfected kingdom of God. In his oneness with humanity is the ground of the hope of humanity. We see not now the glory of hu- manity through the conquest of death, but Jesus has that glory : One in a certain place testified^ saying, What is man that thou ai^t mindfid of him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honor, and didst set him over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things in subjection tender his feet : but now we see not yet all things put un~ 172 REVELATION OF HEAVEN TO THE WORLD. der him ; but we see Jesics, who was made a little lower than the angels^ for the suffering of deaths crowned with glory and honor^ that he^ by the grace of God^ shoidd taste death for every man. The kingdom of heaven has come, it is coming, it is to come. It moves beyond the past and through the present, and the future rises beyond the present. The Christ said, among them that are born of woman, there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist ; but he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater tha^i he. There is a glory that is revealed, and a greater glory that is yet to be revealed. It leads its forth and forward, and while the life of man is in no continuing city, and is among things which do not abide, it may be with faith and hope and love. Thus faith and hope and love abide, and they bear him on, and even when they seem strange in this physical order, they are justified. CHAPTER Vm. THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE WORLD. The condition in which a child is born, in the relation of the, family and the nation, however rude and imperfect these relations may be in their developmentj in the ethical process of the world, calls out some elements of faith. The faith which is the gift and the evocation of this revelation is involved with the conscience and the consciousness of men. It has in its source and process and end an ethical quality. This faith has not its ground and end in an ab- straction, as a law or a system. It is not a faith in a proposition or in a series of propositions, and it has not the necessarily external character that belongs to them. It is faith in a person, a right- eous person, in whom there is the foundation, and through whom there is the realization of the life of humanity. It is faith in one who was before the world was, and has come into the world in the fulfillment of righteousness, for the redemption of the world. This faith is not an effort of man which is to be received at a relative value, as a substitute for another effort of man. It is not to be apprehended as in itself without an ethical 174 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE WORLD. quality^ nor yet to be placed at a higher value than the ethical process of life. It is not isolated, but is related to hope and love^ and each can but imperfectly exist without the other. These have each no merely finite ground and endj as they rest in one who, being one with God, became one with man, and whose life was the ful- fillment of righteousness in the life of the world. This faith is in a righteous person, in whom is revealed the ground of the life of humanityj and through him and with him there is righteousness of life. This is an actual righteousness, and through faith righteousness is wrought and has its realization in life. This is the significance of the justification of men by faith. It is not a formal act.-^ It is not simply an act of reputation. We are not re- puted to be just through a formal relation, but we are made just through an actual relation. It is not forensic. In its forensic use this word de- notes an acquittal of a charge, and not a remission of a penalty. It is not the authentication of a ^ " The passion of Christ was not to be the substitute for our per- sonal obedience, but the source of it. To justify is to make, not simply to account, men just." (Oxenham, The Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement, p. 86.) " This is not a fictitious righteousness, for then it would be a fictitious blessedness, but it is a real conformity to the will of God. In thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth he blessed. God, having raised up his son Jesus, sent him unto you first to hless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities,''^ (Ers- kine, Memoirs, p. 187.) RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH. 175 justification in an external way ; it is not a cer- tification of character in an abstract way, with ethical indifferences. It is not the apprehension of this proposition by faith. It is, — righteousness through faith.^ It is of free grace, and of grace unto grace, as it is given to all, and through faith man is brought into an immediate relation with the Christ. It ^ " The root of Luther's contention against the ancient theology lay rather in his substitution of faith in the sense of Jiducia^ or the laying hold of the merits of Christ by an act of trust, for the Jides formata^ or faith working by love, to which alone the catholic doc- trine ascribes a justifying power." (Oxenham, On the Atonement, p. 31.) But the strength of the thought of Luther was in his recog- nition of faith, as immediate, in the relation of man with God, in the relation in Christ; so that it was not, as in external relations, that any power on earth, or priest or book, should stand between man and God. There was a profounder conception in the doctrine of Luther and Calvin, which gave it its strength in working toward the freedom of men and of nations. Its defect was, when it did not pass beyond a mere particularism or individualism, nor apprehend its re- lation to sacrifice, and came at last to be regarded as an intellectual apprehension, the conscious act of a mature intelligence, — the ap- prehension of a system, and the acceptance of this system became the standard of the faith. " To merge justification in sacrifice, is the error of the Roman- ist ; to merge sacrifice in justification, is the error of the Protestant." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. iv, p. 19.) This may indicate, and yet only in one way, their respective defects. The former failed to appre- hend the immediate relation of man to God, of which it was the wit- ness; and the latter came to apprehend faith as only the conscious act of the deliberate mind, which had not its ground in a sacrifice that was for the sin of the world. Thus it came to be a practical faith in a proposition or system, the act of a fiduciary, the engao-e- ment of a constabulary, and the work of its minister was that of one who holds the gospel, as if it had passed under his clientage, and its truths were to be distributed at his discretion. 176 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE WORLD. has not its ground in the imputation of an ex- ternal righteousness, and it has not; therefore, as its condition, faith in a system or service. It is the actual implanting of righteousness through re- lation with him, who has taken our nature, and in whom was the fulfillment of righteousness. Through faith in a righteous person who, being one with God, became one with man, in the man- ifestation of peiiect righteousness, man is brought into the righteousness of Christ. It is the way toward communion with the Christ. Faith in its influence is retrospective, but more stiictly, in its relation to Him who was and is and is to come, the words retrospective and prospective do not apply. It is faith in another ; it loses its life in Him, to find its perfect realization of life. It is being in another, in a righteous person, and it has reference to the poverty of self alone with self, and to the destitution and disgrace and guilt of sin, that when one flees to Him, as to a refuge, guilt cannot hold him, shame cannot appall him, the universe cannot stay him ; he is clothed with the rio-hteousness and the freedom of God. There are no words strong enough to portray this life. The stains of guilt are all effaced. They are cleansed in the fountain of an undying love. The robes of earth are washed in the blood of the Lamb that was slain for the world. The cos- tumes of selfishness and vanity are thrown away. The reproach of the world becomes lost in the EIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH. 177 distance^ to be heard no more. There are no finite limitations for the spirit. It repeats the rude heroic strain, — *' Freely justified, I Shall mount to the sky, With the sun and moon under my feet,*' Faith in a righteous person, in the Christ, who is the source of the life of the family and the na- tion, leads the individual away from himself, and in being for another he finds his real life, and enters into and partakes of a righteousness that is not a mere self-righteousness ; — a righteousness that he may resist, and the end is death, or that he may enter into, and may find his own life. It is this that has been wrought into the unity and strength and freedom of nations. And this faith does not stay by itself. It goes out toward another, as it is faith in one who has given himself for another. It can exclude none. It becomes the ground of sacrifice. It blends with love. A man does not, then, rest on the quality or the relative excellence of his own faith, and that, as the act of the finite mind, can soon be detei*mined in finite measures ; but faith itself rests on a righteous person, — one who, being one with God, has become one with man, in the realization of the perfect righteousness. Faith works with hope and love ; it is faith that worketh 'by love. The controversy of faith and works has its ground in empty and abstract theo- 12 178 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE WORLD. ries. True faith is one with works, and good works are one with faith, because both alike have righteousness for their end. Therefore faith in the Christ brings us into that righteousness, in the fulfillment of which he came into the world. There is no legal fiction. There is no fictitious transference of righteousness, but there is an actual participation in the righteousness of life which had in the Christ its perfect fulfillment.^ Through faith there is communion with the Christ in his eternal life. S. Paul says, he was raised again for our justification. This right- eousness that was vindicated over death, and de- clared in his resurrection from the dead, is ours, — the proper righteousness of man, and in him given to men. The perfect manifestation of God is in the Christ. Through faith in the Christ there is for man the knowledge of the love of God. It is a faith in a force of life and love and light that is 1 ^^ Looking .unto Jesus, who is the author and the finisher of our faith. The Epistle bids us look from our faith to a Living Person ■who is the only root of it, the only end of it. Our faith is not in itself, but in him; if we think of it, instead of him, it perishes.'^ (Maurice, Sermons, vol. i. p. 79.) Faith is not the condition of the love of God, but through faith there is the apprehension of the love of God, and doubt is removed and fear, in the knowledge and love of God. Mr. Erskine says, *' The proclamation of forgiveness through the Christ alone will bring peace to those under condemnation. If it be assumed that forgiveness is not actual for any until he believes it, the attention is turned to the quality of his faith.*' (Erskine, Memoirs, p. 86.) RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH. 179 deeper than the forces of evil. S. John says, Jesus cried and said^ He that believeth on me believeth not on me, hut on him that sent me. The love and the forgiveness of God, the will of God toward man, is made known to man in the Christ. This love is the ground, and not the sequence, of faith. The Christ is the author and the finisher of our faith. Through faith there is the knowledge of the love and the forgiveness of God^ and through faith there is righteousness of life. There is, then, no condemnation to him that believeth, who walks not after the flesh, but after the sjyirit. Through faith man comes into the life of God, the life of love and righteousness. This is the true life of man. It apprehends in the ground of life the love of God, and in the fulfillment of righteousness the will of God. This is the foun- dation of the life of the family and the nation and, though it may not seem justified in the physical process, without it — ** The pillared firmament is rottenness, And earth's base built on stubble." CHAPTER IX. THE REDEMPTIOI^ OF THE WORLD. The world is redeemed. This redemption is realj and it has in the life of humanity its realiza- tion. The world is redeemed in the Christ, and the process of history is in the realization of the redemption of the Christ. The Christ redeemed the world by becoming himself the perfect redeemer. In his own life there was the attainment and the fulfillment of the perfect righteousness. It was a life in the world of the manifestation of perfect truth to self in the life of the Spirit. The Christ redeemed the world by becoming one with humanity, in the life of the world. The Christ became man. The life of humanity is in its realization, in righteousness and freedom, one with the life of the Christ. The redemption that he has wrought is the redemption of humanity. It is for us men. The Christ redeemed the world by the man- ifestation in it of a life consistent with the knowl- edge of the source and the destination of life. There is, therefore, no power to come forth out from the beginning or the end, from the first to THE ATONEMENT. 181 the last, with intimations of force or fear, that can claim subjection from man, or assert dominion over him, or can effect the subversion of the love that is at the source and centre of all things, or the disruption of the unity that is in the will of God, that is manifesting itself in the reconciliation of all things. The Christ says, / know whence I ccmie, and whither I go ; and again, / am the first and the last, the beginning and the end ; I am he that was and is and is to co7ne. The Christ redeemed the world by the manifes- tation and realization in the life of humanity of the coming and life of the Spirit. It is redeemed by the power of the Spirit. The life of man is lifted above physical limitations, and is not deter- mined and concluded in the process of physical forces and forms. It is not merely a projection of an animal existence, subjected to fleshly impulses and the satisfaction of fleshly appetites. It is not a life determined by external relations or external circumstances. It is the life which is not mortal. It has the strength and freedom of the Spirit. The Christ redeemed the world by the realiza- tion of a perfect life, in the fulfillment of perfect righteousness, in oneness with humanity, and in the conflict with and the conquest of all the forces, by which humanity is alienated from God, and men are alienated from each other. It was the conquest of all the forces by which humanity is enslaved and tortured and divided and de- 182 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD. stroyed. He met the forces of the world and their temptations. The display of their rewards for subordination to the pursuit of selfish ends was brought before him, but he did not yield to them. The trial of the world was open to him, but he was not changed nor swerved by it, that his life should be shaped by the world. The Christ passed through death, but he overcame death. It was the conquest of life over death. The words of the Christ are, / have overcome the worlds and again he says, to Mm that overeometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also over- came, and am set down with my Father in his throne} ^ There are two representations of the work and sacrifice of the Christ in controversy with the position in this chapter. The one re- gards the atonement as a legend, although one of the most beautiful of the legends of the world. The Father sends the Son; the Son offers the sacrifice required, and returns to the Father. It has the unity and action of a drama. The myths gather around some legendary hero. It is beautiful as a drama, but far away from the world, to form only a mythology for the poet and superstitions for the people. The other regards it as a scheme of divinity. Justice demands satisfaction. Its penalties must be executed with indifference as to the innocent or the guilty, if only the law be maintained. Mercy contends with justice, and wrath is averted when justice is ap- peased by this actual substitution, and this legal fiction. On this system faith rests, and the only security from these penalties is through its adoption. These views arc not far apart; they are abstractions; the one, in a formal way, is mythological, the other logical, but beginning and endino- in mere formulas. They are throughout in controversy with the position here given. There is in the redemption the manifes- tation of God, the revelation of that which is eternal in the being of God, and throuo;h it man is raised to an eternal life with God. THE ATONEMENT. 183 The redemption of the world in and through the Christ was the manifestation of the will of God. The suffering and death of the Christ did not change the will of God. It was in the fulfill- ment of the will of God. The Christ says^ Lo, I come to do thy will ; and again, / have declared thy name unto them and will declare it} The ex- pression of the completeness of his redemptive work is in the words, / have glorified thee on the ^ The catechism of Trent, explaining the reasons why the Son of God suffered, says one cause consisted, ''in the crimes and vices which men have perpetrated from the beginning of the world till now, and shall perpetrate henceforth to the end of time; for in his death the Son of God contemplated the atonement and obliteration of the sins of all ages." {Cat ad Paroch., Pars L c. v.) " The death of the Christ was the perfect manifestation and the consummation of his faith in the Father." (Campbell, On the Atonement, p. 258.) " Prophets and just men, under the old law, did and suffered much to bear testimony to the truth; but their obedience, like their testimony, was imperfect. He alone could make a perfect oblation of the human will; he alone as man could make an act of perfect contrition, who knew as God the fullness of the eternal love, and saw as God sees it the reality of the contradiction to that love." (Oxenham, On the Atonement, p. 77.) '* The perfect obedience of the Son discovers the perfect loving will of the Father. Infinite forgiveness and charity are shown to be at the root of all things; forgiveness and charity that are only seen, only satisfied, only made effectual by submission and sacrifice ; for- giveness and charity that are not intended only to flow forth upon men, but to flow into them, to become a part of their character and being." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 380.) S. Leo says of the relation of the Father and the Son, "One is the kindness of their mercy, as the sentence of their justice, nor is there any division of action where there is no diversity of will." (S. Leo, Serm. xxii. 4.) 184 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD. earth : I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. The redemption of the Christ was the manifes- tation of the love of God for the world. It is thus that in the incarnation, the atonement has its beginning, and the one is involved in the other. It manifests the love of God. It was not the ground of that love, and it was not the condition which only in a provisional form justified that love, but the love of God for the world was the motive which went toward the redemption of the world : God so loved the world, that he gave his only begot- ten Son : S. John says, herein is love, not that we loved God, hut that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the 2^'^opitiation for our sins. We love him because he first loved us. There can be here no measure of the infinite love, — *' Mine was the life that was won, And thine was the life that was given." The redemption of the Christ was the manifes- tation of that which is eternal in the being of God, It was not simply a provisional work, which had its ground in a preceding circumstance. It had not its origin in a transient condition, and it was not simply an adjustment to an antecedent condi- tion. It was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The redemption of the Christ has then no finite limitations. It has no measures of time. It is not limited by our computations of the years on THE ATONEMENT. 185 thia earth : the Christy a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tahernade which the Lord pitched^ and not 7na7i, entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. The redemption of the Christ is wrought in his oneness with humanity, in and through the hfe of humanity.-^ Through the relation of the Christ with humanity the redemption of the world has its continuous realization in the life of hu- manity. The law which was fuljQlled in the Christ is the law of the life of humanity. The Christ saySj whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and tahe up his cross daily, and follow me. Thus S. Paul writes of the fellowship of his sufferings. He speaks again of filling up that which is hehind of the afflictions of Christ. He says, / bear in my hody the marks of the Lord Jesus, This expression takes on the intensest form ; he says, I am crucified with Christ, He writes of his glory in the cross, wherein the loorld is crucified unto me, and L unto the world. He writes of always hearing about in the body the ^ '^ One only who was God and man could bring man again into communion with God. But it is rather his assumption of our na- ture in all its fullness, than his death alone, that the Fathers dwelt upon. He is the representative man, the second Adam, the head of the body, who recapitulates in himself, as they are fond of expressing it, the whole human race, and imparts to them, through the union of their nature with his, a new principle of life, in whose death all die, in whose resurrection all are made alive. This is the great argument of Athanasius." (Oxenham, On the Atonement, p. 144.) 186 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD. dying of the Lord Jesiis, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body. There is the same expression in the words of S. Peter^ ye are called, because Christ also suffered for uSy leaving us an examjyle^ that we shoidd follow his steps. The suf- fering of humanity is transfigured. The suffering and sacrifice of the world is not henceforth merely in the projection of a physical process, nor with other alternatives of suffering and sacrifice in the development of a historical process ; and thus the sacrifice of the soldier who dies in battle for the nation is not the mere conformance to a law of historical necessity, but in such suffering and sac- rifice there is the redemptive life of the world. We are called, since the Christ has given him- self a sacrifice for us. In a correspondence with other types and forms of sacrifice, it is written, wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctfy the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. This is made the ground of a principle of duty, and we are bidden, let us go forth, therefore, unto him without the camp>, bearing his reproach. This is not the suffering of the Christ as an equiv- alent for the suffering of humanity, nor as a sub- stitute for humanity ; it is the sacrifice of the Christ fulfilled in humanity. It is the adoption of the sacrifice by participation by humanity ; let us go forth, therefore, unto him without the camp, hearing his reproach. The Christ had said, if any man will come after me, let him take up his THE ATONEMENT. 187 cross and follow me ; and he said of his disciples, in their continuing relation with him. Ye shall drink indeed of my atp, and he baj)tized with the baptism that I am baptized with. There is thenceforth in the life of humanity the manifestation of redemptive forces. There are re- demptive forces continuing in the coming of the Christ and in the life of the Spirit, in his re- demptive kingdom on the earth. They come forth in the life of righteousness in the family and the nation. These are the forces which work through the life of humanity, in conflict with the evil of the world. The law of sacrifice becomes, then, the law of life.^ The contradiction in the revelation of the Christ is verified and solved in the course of history, and the words are justi- fied : he that loseth his life shall find it. The work of sacrifice goes on in the process of history. 1 The theories of life, in the physical school, cannot wholly ef- face the consciousness of this law of self-renunciation, thouo-h their assertion of it may be inconsequent. " There need be no disap- pointed ambition J if a man were to set before himself a true aim in life, and to work definitely for it; no envy, if he considered that it mattered not whether he did a certain great thing, or some one else, if only it were done; no grief from loss of fortune, if he estimated at its true value that which fortune can bring him, and that which fortune can never bring him; no wounded self-love, if he had learned well the eternal lesson of life, — self-renunciation." (Maudsley, On Resjiondh'dity in Mental Disease, p. 210.) This recognizes an ele- ment of self-renunciation, but it has no ground in a life determined in physical limitations; it has no justification in a life in finite con- ditions. It is only because it has another and higher ground that it becomes the eternal lesson of life. 188 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD. The Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world prefigures its course. The condition of the life of the last nation becomes the same as the first, the sacrifice of the worthier of her chil- dren. Their sacrifice is the perpetuation of the life of the nation ; their sacrifice is the way to her deliverance from slavery 3 their sacrifice is the ground of her unity and peace. This was not the sacrifice of a certain number of men for a certain other number of men ; it was not the sacrifice of a certain smaller number of men that a certain larger number might be exempt from sacrifice, and might live in self-indulgence. It was sacri- fice for the life of the nation. It was life through death. It was that in all there might be the spirit and recognition of the law of sacrifice, the self- renunciation of the individual, which is the only way to the perfect self-realization, and the begin- ning of the life that is eternal. This law has a moral ground, which cannot be comprehended in the atomy of human society, nor in the severance through society of the superior from the inferior, nor in the apprehension of it as an accumulation of private interests, nor in any detachment of it from God.^ ^ *' The atonement is tlie manifestation of the hope of God for man. The nature of that hope which was in God for man, and which the atonement has brought within the reach of our spirits, has indeed been necessarily determined by our pi-imary and ultimate relation to God as the Father of our spirits." (Campbell, On th€ Atonement, p. 187.) THE THE ONE OF SACRIFICE. 189 Henceforth the law of sacrifice becomes the law of power. In this world of forms the sym- bols of sacrifice become the symbols of power. The Lamb that was slam from the foundation of the world becomes, in the mystic vision of S. John the Divine, the Lamb that sits in the midst of the thi^one. This type is not lost in history. The manifestation of power is not in a separation from men, nor in the assertion of a dominion over men, but in the service of men. It is not the Csesar that becomes the enduring power with men. The nation, which in this last age, is the exponent of the highest historical forces, has its foundations, its unity and order and freedom, laid in sacrifice. But it is through sacrifice, as through the nega- tion of this finite world, that there is the coming of the life that is eternal, the realization of the life that is infinite. The sacrifice of the Christ was the perfect and finished sacrifice, — the sacrifice of one who bore the burden of this finite world, in the fulfillment of the perfect righteousness, the manifestation of the perfect love, the revelation of the perfect life. It was the will of God before the foundation of the world ; it was the sufficient sacrifice for the sin of the whole world, the foundation of eternal life and unity and peace. The redemption through the Christ was wrought 190 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD. in the satisfaction of love and justice, in the ful- fillment of the will of God in the creation of the world, — the foundation that was before and be- neath the foundations of this finite world. It was the satisfaction of God, the satisfaction of Christ and of the conscience of men. And love is inex- orable as justice, and involves duty as the sum of the commandments of the law. It was not the satisfaction of justice apart from love, nor as the precedent condition of the revelation of love. For in relation to the law there was not merely the satisfaction, but the fulfillment of the law. It was not a satisfaction of justice by the imposition upon the innocent of the punishments of the guilty, nor, by the substitution of an equivalent of the same measure through a series of legal fic- tions, and in that there would be no measure of gain. In a higher sense justice is satisfied when righteousness is actualized on the earth. Justice is vindicated when it is asserted and established. It is not a compensation to balance injustice that is required, nor an equivalent for sin or for the sequences of sin, but the power to overcome evil, and to bring men out of sin. The suffering and the death of Christ did not take away the wrath of God against sin, for if any man continue in sin the wrath of God abideth on him. There was in the Christ the strongest assertion of the wrath of God against sin. It was the announcement of the woe that is to follow sin THE DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL. 19 1 in men and nations. But it were woe if the wrath of God was averted from sin. It were woe to men and nations if there were no judgment, in which the consequences of evil courses were man- ifested. The Christ redeems the world from sin and from the sequences of sin. The Christ, coming into the world where sin was, endured in it the effects of sin. He endured death; he was wounded for our transgressions J and bruised for our in- iqidties. The redemption of the world is from sin and unto righteousness. It is from the bondage of sin into the freedom of God. It is of the world unto God.i This redemption of the spirit of man is from the forces by which, as external to itself, it is determined, and through this redemption from these forces its life becomes a self-determined life, in truth to self, the life of freedom. This freedom is not the detachment of self, but it is in the life of the spirit ; it is not the isolation of self and its vacancy, but the energy and communion of the life of the spirit. It is the rescue from evil, ^ ** S. Paul says every sacrifice implies communion with the being to whom it is offered. So the end of Christ's incarnation and death was to establish a complete communion between men on earth and their Father in heaven, which may be most real now, but the full fruition of which can only be when all the evil which resists the divine righteousness and love is entirely vanquished.'* (Maurice^ Sermonsy vol. i. d. 43.") 192 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD. as evil is alien to the spirit of man. It is the de- liverance from the dominion of sin, from the prin- cipalities and powers which would claim to them- selves the subjection of the spirit, and assume a domination over it, /or sin shall not have dominion over yoit. This is the deepest expression of the experience of life : if we he dead with Christ we believe that we shall also live with him : knowing that Christy being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him; for in that he died he died unto sin once^ but in that he liveth he liveth unto God, This redemption of the world is through the suffering and death and resurrection of the Christ. This sacrifice of the Christ was in his coming into the world ; it was the earthly life of service ; it was the last sacrifice in death. It was not simply the sacrifice of one for another ; it was the sacrifice of him who had become one with humanity for the life of humanity. It was the sacrifice that was the fulfillment of love. This is not the negation of self with the implication of the cessation of self, an utter nihilism, but there is the perfect self- realization, the realization of life. It is not the dethronement, but it is the enthronement of life. It is not for life to be conquered by death 3 it is the conquest of death. It is a sacrifice of self, and this is its ethical significance, but in it is the at- tainment of life. The law of self-renunciation is the THE DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL. 193 law of self-realization, and the way through death is unto life. And as death in the physical proc- ess involves always isolation and the severance of the relations of life, so in the life of the spirit it is a communion and an eternal life, since the Christ has partaken of death for every man? It is not, therefore, the death of the Christ in itself that is to be regarded primarily ; it is the conquest of death in the Christ.^ There was a significance in the judgment and condemnation of the Christ, by the world, by rit- ual and imperial tribunals. He came to the death of a slave on this earth. For the ignorance of the multitude that made itself the instrument of the world's derision and the world's torture he offered the prayer of forgiveness to the Father ; Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. To them, to whom it seemed the profanation of the universe, that the Christ the Son of God was to become the Son of man he uttered the transcendent words : The high j)i^iest asked him again, and said unto hhn. Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed f And Jesns said, I am, and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven, ^ " The atonement is tru]y apprehended only when the work of Christ, through which we have the remission of sins that are past, IS contemplated in direct relation to the gift of eternal life. " (Camp- bell, On the Atonement^ p. 133.) 2 " The death of the Christ is never to be considered apart from the resurrection.'' (Rothe, Dogmatik, vol. ii. p. 220.) IS 194 THE KEDEMPTION OF THE WORLD. The Christ met death in the last conflict. The Christ did not evade deaths nor open a way to a continuous existence on the earth, in this domain of time and space, that was preempted from death. It was in order that by death he might deliver them who through fear of death were all their life- time subject to bondage, S. Paul says, in that he died he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth he liveth unto God. The Christ overcame death. It was the reali- zation of a life that was for humanity above death. There was in the death of the Christ the real- ization of the divine transfiguration, of which the witness had been given in the historical life of humanity, — which had its evidence in the law and the prophets. Then the sorrow of the world was turned into joy. Then the isolation and death of the world was transmuted into life, in the com- munion of God. The redemption of the world is from sin. The Christ comes, — the Saviour of the world. In him is the revelation of the living truth; in him is the perfect righteousness. He is the only Sav- iour, as there is one truth alone and absolute, in which man may rest. There is one God, one hu- manity, one divine and perfect redeemer, though there be many through whom this redemption is wrought, that God may be all in all. It is said of him, he shall save his peo2ole from their sins. S. Paul says, Christ gave himself for us that he might THE DAY OF SALVATION. 195 redeem us from all inicpiity : lie is the Lamh of God which taJceth away the sin of the world. This salvation is not an incident of the jDast, nor deferred to the future 5 the apostle says, now is the day of salvation. This is the ground of the energy and freedom of the spirit, and its peace.^ There is the assurance that the redemption of the world shall have its perfect realization, in Christ shall all he made alive. This is not the assertion of a law of physical necessity, as the iteration of a fate, that forces of compulsion shall constrain the will. This redemption is to bring man out from the subjection to forces which are external to the will and are alien to the spirit of man, and into freedom. It is from the bondage and the doom of sin. It is with the salvation of man, that there comes alone a higher energy and ampler freedom. Through sin the slavery of man exists, and every sin brings a deeper bondage, and a consequent degradation, by a law of moral con- ditions ; but the forces of evil are met by redemp- tive forces, and in the fulfillment of the true and eternal being of man. These redemptive forces ^ " Cast thy burdens upon the Lord. For he to whom past and present and future are all one, He who is and was and is to come invites you to claim fellowship with Him in his Son your Lord. Seeking him you do cast away those burdens which are pressincr down your spirit, the burden which he bore, who bore the sins of the world. You can come with all your darkness into his light." (Mau- rice, Sermons, vol. i. p. 74.) 196 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD. shall prevail, with the fulfillment of the life of humanity in God. To the inquiry. Are there few that he saved ? the answer is, strive to enter in at the strait gate. This energy that strives is the first element of freedom. It is the call to no apathy and vacancy of will ; it overcomes the enervation of the spirit- ual powers of man Avhich sin has wrought. It is the quickening of life. It affirms that he that loveth is born of God, and the end of the redemp- tion is the manifestation of the sons of God. It asserts that he that believeth shall be saved^ and he that believeth not shall be condemned ; and it sets forth this condemnation, that light has come into the woidd, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil; and, therefore, there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the ■flesh, but after the sjnrit It does not assert in any moment, for any man, in the here or the hereafter, an irrevocable doom. Its end is to save man from sin and from the doom involved in sin. It does not place any with- out hope ; it makes hope a virtue, difficult as all virtue is in this world, but still one with faith and love, and if illusive, then also faith and love, for which the same ground and end is revealed, are illusive. It assorts that men and nations may choose darkness, and refuse to recognize the re- demption and revelation of the love of God, and THE END OF THE PHYSICAL PROCESS. 197 to believe in it, and to work for the realization of righteousness and freedom in the life of humanity. It asserts the judgment that shall come, and bring the forces of evil that have their strength in dark- ness to the light. In the oneness of the Christ with humanity, it asserts the blessing which shall be upon those who minister in the simplest offices, and to the lowliest, and the judgment on those whose action shall tend to the degradation of men and of nations. There is in the Christ the redemption of the world, — it is the redemption of the world. The evidence of love and freedom has its imperfect ex- pression, in this physical world. There i^^, indeed, in the forms of nature, that which may recall to man his origin and destiny, which she bears not in herself ; and the lilies as they grow, and the sun that has shone, and the rain that has fallen upon the just and the unjust, may verify the thought of him who hath not left himself without a wit- ness, — though it be only to him that receives it ; and the clouds that gather in the evening sky may awaken the hope of another dawn ; and nature, even from her embers, may bring the intimations of immortality with the remembrance of what seems so fugitive. But it is in this revelation that there is manifest, through the negation, the fulfillment of the finite world. In this revelation the knowledge of the fii?al cause and end of the world is open to man. In the reflected light that 198 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD. comes to the darkness and trial of earth, and reaches the depths of the variance and the sin and the suffering of the world, the end of the physical process is manifested, in the fulfillment of unity, and in the realization of perfect love and perfect freedom. It is the end of the struggle of human existence, it is the transfiguration of the sorrow of earth. It does not veil the pain of this physical world ] it unveils its end, in the realization of the freedom and relationship of humanity with God. In words which preclude limitation, and embrace the entire physical process, S. Paul says, the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain^ waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God, The Christ in the redemption of the Avorld ac- complished the reconciliation of the world unto God ; God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. It is the reconciliation of an exist- ence, in which man is born into a condition in which sin and the effects of sin are transmitted, in its hereditaments, an estate of sin and misery, in which there is suffering and death. It is not the reconciliation of diametric forces which are oppo- sites, and this would be the postulate and require the conclusions of a dualism ; it is not the recon- ciliation of the holy and the profane, the wicked and the righteous, the forces which are of the world and the forces which are of God, — it is the reconciliation of the world unto God. The THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY. 199 finite is transmuted into the infinite, the earthly is lifted unto the heavenly.^ The redemption of the world has its end in the realization of the freedom of humanity in God. The end of the world is the fulfillment of the life of humanity in God ; God is free, and will have all men to be free, with the freedom of the sons of God. The apostle says, the Christ came to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. He says, Christ suffered for us, that he might bring us to Ood.^ This freedom is real in the life of the spirit. This freedom is not a mere indifference, as is implied in the power of choice, although this power is incident to the de- velopment of freedom in this finite world. It is not a negative freedom, that is void of all moral ^ Tbe reconciliation of the world is perfect, and it is therefore \hat "we are bidden to live as sorrowful^ yet always rejoicing. It is beyond the thought merely of the restoration, and the Church re- peats in its high service the words of S. Augustine, felix culpa^ quae talem et lantura meruit habere Redemptorem. *' It destroys evil with good : the central principle of the atonement must be the same as the central principle of the whole revelation ; Christ satisfies iustice by establishing righteousness, not as in a drama, nor in any pictorial or representative way, but as a fact. What can condemn sin, but that which destroys sin; what vindicates justice but that which makes it a universal reality." (Hunger, A Statement of Theology, p. 20.) " God the Son came upon earth to satisfy his own justice as much as to satisfy his Father's, and for the aooomplishment of his Father's love to man as much as for his own." (Benson, quoted in Oxenham, Vn the Atonem.ent, p. 89.) 200 THE REDEMPTION OE THE WORLD. determination and energy. It is not a formal freedom, which is realized in the maintenance of external conditions. It is one with righteousness ; it is not, then, a mere conformity to an external law. The redemption could not be, through the application of an external law. S. Paul says, hy the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified. It could only be in the life of the spii-it, in the righteousness and freedom of the spirit. This is not a conformance to an abstract law, and it is not a formal freedom. It is spiritual and real.^ It is from the condition of a servant, into the relation of a son. It is from the bondage of sin into the freedom of God. It is only from the being of God, and the realization of freedom that we come to the knowledge of the infinite. And man only has a perfect freedom, as he rises into the life of ^ This freedom does not belong to man, as his being is deter- mined in the necessary relations of the physical process. It has not its measure in the physical process, — *' Surelier it labors, if slowlier, Than the meters of star or of san." This freedom is gained in the overcoming of evil ; it is the overcom- incr of evil with good. " Many may rise up in judgment against those who live in other circumstances, to whom the name of Freedom has become so much a name of course, that they jest at it as a school-boy phrase, or ask how much they are richer for it, or wish they could barter it for some of the conveniences of despotism. This purposeless, heartless temper, as it increases, tends to the fulfillment of its own desires. Liberty cannot last when the aspiration for it has perished. Des- potism is sure to come when it is beckoned for." (Maurice, Ser* mons, vol. iv. p. 91.) THE ETERNAL LIFE. 201 God. There is alone no limitation there, and the personality of man, as it has its source in God, has its real life with God. There the self-rennnciation and the obedience of the human will is fulfilled in the absolute will ; and the bare resistant forces of the will are transmuted into consistent forces of life and its energy. It is in these relations that the human will attains its real freedom, but apart from them, and apart by itself, within the limita- tion of self, it is not free. In the physical process and in its conditions, man has no freedom, and it is attained only in the relation of man with God. It has the energy of the Spirit^ as spontaneity and oi'iginality are presumed in freedom and are impUed and realized in personality. It is not summed up in negations : In the last day^ that great clay of the feast^ Jesus stood and cried, say- ing, If any man thirst, let hhn come unto me and drink. He that helieveth in me, out of his helly shall flow rivers of living water. But this he spake of the Spirit, which they that believe on him shoidd receive ; for the Spirit was not as yet, he- caitse that Jesns was not yet glorified. The realization of the redemption of the Christ is in the eternal life. It is unto life ; it is beyond the power of the transient; it is not apprehended in the ephemeral and the phenomenal ; it is not fulfilled in relations that are simply spatial and temporal. It is necessary that he, through whom 202 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD. the redemption of man is accomplished^ should be the perfect man, for that is the ideal of every man and of the spirit ; and that he should be one who was, and who shall be when the heavens and earth are gone. The death of the Christ has given to the common life of humanity an infinite consequence. It is death that is common to all men^ and the Christ has partaken of death for every man. It is the perfect communion of God with man, through the suffering and death of this earth. The redemption of the Christ was not formal. It was not a formal consistence with certain con- ditions of an abstract scheme, as in the fulfill- ment of a contract. It was not thus the conform- ance with a plan. It was not the work of one who came as the substitute for another, and whose righteousness was then made the subject of transfer to another, on conditions of faith, as in a certain stipulation.-^ It was not an act for the illustration of certain ethical requirements, and thus designed to secure certain impressions as an exhibition, an incident with certain spectacular ^ " The doctrine of Scripture, so far from being the doctrine of mere substitution, is a protest against that doctrine ; it makes accu- rate provision for moral claims; it enforces conditions on the sub- ject of sacrifice; it attributes a rational ground of influence and mode of operation to the sacrifice." (Mozley, University Sermons p. 174.) THE LAW or SACEIFICE. 203 effects. It was a spectacle to men and angels, but of another and infinite reality. The abstract scliemes and systems of the atone- ment have their postulate in the notion that, while God apportions and must apportion to every instance and degree of transgression its proper punishment, it is not a subject of con- cern, whether the one who pays this be one who transgresses or another who is innocent, provided that the payment be an equivalent, and that he is under the necessity of cancelling the guilt, whenever the equivalent is tendered by any hand.^ This assumes an analogy of a crime and a debt. It is not righteous. The atonement was not provisional, as a sub- sequent arrangement to effect certain ends, in a situation in which certain defects had become apparent. It was not simply the adoption of a remedial system, in a condition in which sin and its sequences had appeared. It was that, for it was the coming of one who taketh away all our infirmities, and healeth all our sicknesses, but it was infinitely more 5 it was the manifestation of that which was in the being of God, and its end was eternal life. It was the will of God, hefore the foundation of the world. 1 " Judicial punishment can never be inflicted simply and solely as a means to promote a good other than itself, whether that good be the benefit of the criminal or of civil society; but it must at all times be inflicted on him, for no other reason than bocansehehaf acted criminally." (Kant, Werke^ vol. ix. p. 180.) 204 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD. It is not a transaction in the exchange of equivalents^ in which certain advances are made, and certain results are secured ; and there is not, as in a rate of exchange, the substitution of one value for another value. It is communion and not substitution, that is realized through death. -^ It is not the taking away of the wrath of God against sin. It is not the pacification of God, for it is the gift to man of the peace of God. It is the satisfaction of God in the creation of the world, for, through the divine redemj)tion, the apostle writes of committing ourselves unto God as unto a faithful Creator. ^ '* Who died for all, that they who lioe should not live itnio them- selves, hut unto him. We must believe that this love will mould society according to its law, nor suffer men to make another law for themselveSj which is one of selfishness and hatred. In the faith that Christ's constraining love is the mightiest power in the universe, we must be, think, act. The same love must be acting more perfectly on those who have passed out of our Avorld. Our relation to them does not rest on the strength of our affection or our memory. It is Christ's love, not ours, which binds them to us. In him they are dead, and in him only they have life." (Mau- rice, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 236.) "Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; thou shalt wash me and I shall be whiter than snow, was the assurance of a man upon whose conscience lay the burden of aduhery a.id mur- der. For these crimes, the sword was never to depart from his house. No petty penances, such as confessors lay upon kings, but such as God lays upon them and their subjects equally, the loss and rebellion of children, exile, sorrow without and within, were appointed for him. But hu himself had a free spirit; he had dared to seek God's righteousness, to fly to him from his own evil, and therefore it had not power to hold him a prisoner.'* (Maurice, 5er- mons, voh i. p. 93.) THE FAITHFUL CREATOR. 205 It has not its ground in the faith of any man, and not thus by the faith of man is salvation, but its ground is in that love which faith can but imperfectly apprehend, and hope can but faintly forecast. It is still greater than faith can discern, and hope cannot discover its limit. S. Paul says, God comonendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, S. John saySj herein is love, not that we loved God, hut that he loved us. In the course of the historical world, in the lives of men and of nations, there is suffering and saciifice. It may be inferentially assumed that there is some law of suffering and sacrifice. It is not solely the impulse of nature, but as it pre- vails through the course of the physical world, it may be taken up and transmuted in the life of the spirit, and penetrated with an ethical aim. It has an ethical character, and there can be no ethical law in human life of greater significance. It is the evidence of the greater love in the rela- tions of men, greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend. The phase of thought upon life, which describes it as the struggle for existence, recognizes this fact of suf- fering and in some form of sacrifice. But it is only in this divine sacrifice that these facts are justified. It is only in the suffering and sacrifice of the Christ that the suffering and sacrifice of 206 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD. the world has its true interpretation. Ii is only in this, that they are invested with a divine signifi- cance.-^ There was in the atonement for the world the manifestation of God. It was the will of God in its fulfillment of righteousness. To him man may come, in the service that is perfect freedom, and in his election is peace in the knowledge and love of God, that the world cannot give, and cannot take away. 1 " The moral teaching of Christ is the expression of the con- science of a people who had fought long and heroically for their national existence. In that terrible conflict they had learned the supreme and overwhelming importance of conduct, the weakness and uselessness of solitary and selfish efforts, the necessity for a man who would be a man, to lose his poor single personality in the being of a greater and nobler combatant — the nation." (Clifford, Lectures and Essays, vol. ii. p. 230.) These words are the expres- sion of an imperishable truth, which the last age in the education of the world may learn as well as the first age in it& historical courses. But because the nation has a divine and eternal foundation, it may learn, through sacrifice, the ground of its unity and peace. And the personality of man is not lost in it, but is lifted up and ennobled in it; for it has an immortal life; it has given to it the strength of an eternal victory. In the words of S. John the Divine, — and it is no mystic story for this generation, — its power is typified in the throne of the Lamb. But if the personality of man were to be lost and ob- literated in its life, — in the coming of this greater and nobler com- batant; if it were not here and in these relations, and through its own sacrifice to have its fulfillment ; — if it were not in losing its life to find it, then there could be no words of hope borne back to those in- volved in this evolution, and the memory of those who had offered themselves should be their mockery, as their names were repeated over the hollow earth they rounded with their graves. THE FAITH OF THE REDEEMER. 207 It is the righteousness of God. The Son of God became the Son of man, and in his life is the fulfillment of righteousness. It is in the right- eousness of the Christj that humanity has its vic- tory and its peace. Our love is weak and fal- tering, but in him is the eternal love. Our faith is dim and confused^ but his faith is perfect. Our repentance is broken, and only imperfectly discerns the depths of variance and sin ; but his repentance is adequate, and his faith and his re- pentance are ours. We can only say as we come to him, in the communion with him which is his gift, Thou only art holy ; thou only art the Lord ; thou only^ Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father, CHAPTER X. THE LIFE OF THE SPIKIT. The life, which the Chi*ist has manifested to the world, becomes henceforth the life of the spirit.^ The Christ says, it is expedient for you that I go away : for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I depart I will send him unto you. When he^ the Spirit of truth is come^ he will guide you into all truth : for he shall not speak of himself ; hut whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak. He shall glorify me : for he shall receive of m.ine and shall shew it unto you. All things that the Father hath are m.ine: therefore said I that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you. These words indicate a knowledge of a divine relationshijD, which is not a sequence of the expe- rience of the world. They are the assertion of that which was to have its fulfillment henceforth in the life of humanity, the last, the greatest proph- ecy of humanity. 1 The commemoration of the services of the Church on Christmas and Easter has come to have a common recognition, but the higher services are those of the Ascension Day and Whitsunday, the com- memoration of the coming of the Spirit, and the conception which may be held of the former services is very deficient when they are separated from these which follow them. THE COMING OP THE SPIRIT. 209 Hence the judgment and the redemption of the world, and the life with God, are realized in and thi*ough the life of the spirit. Hence the relation to the Christ is not an ex- ternal relation, which is sustained in a formal his- torical circumstance, but it is a relation of and in the life of the spirit. Hence the redemption of the world is not sim- ply a deliverance from evil and its sequence, — a course of negations, but it is in the coming of the new life, which is the life of the spirit. Hence the ethical life of man is in the life of the spirit, and this alone is the ground of a life which has elements that are substantial and eter- nal, in the truth and freedom which man has with God. The life of the spirit becomes the element of the life of righteousness and the life of free- dom.^ The righteousness is real which is a spirit- ual righteousness. It is not an external consistence with a formal command, as a prescript in the con- duct of affairs ; it is that, and further, it is a con- 1 The demands of the masters in morals who represent its latest phases of thought, are very great; as Kant, who says, obey the com- mand of reason within, — this you are bound to do; or Bentham, who says, do that which shall be for the greatest good of the great- est number. They lay heavy burdens upon the unequal shoulders of men. Mr. Clifford says, thou shalt not formulize. S. Paul says, the law was u schoolmaster. But it is only as man recognizes the Spirit given to each and to all men, the spirit of truth and love, it is only in the life of the spirit that these formulas become elements of strength; then they are not a weight to bear; they are highwayi for our advancement; they are the stones of the living temple. 210 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. formance that is in the life of the spirit. It is the fulfillment of the law^ in the life and freedom of the spirit. It is not freedom from Godj which has its assertion and realization in righteousness ; it is the freedom of God. The words have increas- ingly their verification^ where the Sjnrit of the Lord iSy there is libertjj. Hence the life of man is brought into imme- diate relation, in its ground and continuancCj with the life of God. It is not a relation through ex- ternal conditions, to find its source and determina- tion in them ; it is in the life of the spirit. Hence the relation to the Christ is realized in the life of the spirit. It is not a relation to Jesus of Nazareth, in the circumstantial condition which is comprised in certain contiguous relations. It may be a source of weakness, as the imagination occupies itself with this circumstance. The inci- dent of this individual life is transient, as every incident of timCj and subject to its conditions. The Christ says to those whom he sends forth to all nations : in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. The words of the Christ have not their ground in an external authority. The signature of their authority is not in the instrument in which they appear, but their verification is to the spirit. Their justification is to the conscience and the THE COMING OF THE SPIRIT. 211 consciousness of men. It is^ verily, verily I say wito yoit. The Christ says, my words^ they are spirit and they are life. Thus the message that was given to the churches was always with a universal expression, he that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. The real life of humanity becomes henceforth the life of the spirit. The Christ says, it is better for you that I go away ; the Spirit shall come^ thai will guide you into all truth. There are in these days many voices with counsel for men ; — let us be satisfied with the limitations of a physical process which rejects all reference to another than a physical origin and end for the whole being of man, and accept only its course of necessity, and allow only the knowledge which is the result of the observation and investigation of physical organization and relations \ or come together and construct a new religion that may deepen and widen the religious life ; or acknowledge with rev- erence the unknown^ with whatever predicates may be attached to it, to form from thence a religion; or contemplate the universum ; or reproduce a cer- tain selection from past ages, as that of the Homeric cycle, or the age of Pericles in Greece, or the Me- diaeval times ; — but these, while words of excel- lent counsel, and commending the selection of an excellent copy for imitation, have no elements of strength or freedom. They become the evidence 212 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. of our own poverty and vacancy^ and the absence of our own ideal. These pageants have an attrac- tion for the eye, and we might act our parts well enough in them, and accumulate their theatrical properties, and hold the world as our stage for these mimic shows. But there would be no power in them, and we inherit even from these ages, more than the attractions of the eye. The hfe of the spirit is alone the condition of strength and freedom. This alone sustains man in his self-deter- mination, toward the fulfillment of his own ideal. This alone lifts him above the external. This alone gives to man the real development, which apart from it may be traced only in the continu- ance of a type^ that in a succession of conditions is subject to variations consequent upon those con- ditions, and is resolved in its termination into the attrition of molecular forces. The Christ came, in the fullness of time. When S. John writes, in the beginning was the Wordy the thought of man is not carried back through a mere numeration, or a series in numeration, and it is not referred to a merely vacant conception of being. In the process of logic, through finite con- ditions, the notion of being is an empty phase of thought, and is resolved through a logical ne- cessity into mere nothingness ; but the notion of being derived from finite conditions, is not to be applied to the being of God. The expression of THE LAW or THE SPIKIT. 213 the apostle carries the thought back to One who was in the beginning, and whose manifestation was in the f uUness of time, and on whom the thought of man may rest. There were thence, through the historical life of the world, the courses in the proc- ess of time which moved in and toward the ad- vent of the Christ, and the procession of the Holy Spirit. The life of the spiiit is not, then, subject to the law of necessity ; it does not begin in the line of physical descent, nor terminate with the cessation of physical forms. The Christ says, that which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which is born of the Spirit is spiint. S. Paul says, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God ; neither doth corruption inherit incorriiption. There is a line of evolution through physical forms, and there is also the procession of the Spirit : S. Paul says, that was not first which is spirit- ual^ but that which is physical; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earthy earthy : the second man is the Lord from heaven. The words which henceforth become the new testament, and are to bear the witness of the life given for the world, are testamentary of an incor- ruptible inheritance : / will put my law in their inward parts^ and write it in their hearts ; and will be their Oodj and they shall be my people , 214 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. and they shall teach no more every man his brother, and every man his neighbor, saying, Knoio the Lord : for they shall all Tcnow me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord ; for I will forgive their inicjnity, and L will remember their sin no more. The words are verified, I will pour out my sijirit upon all flesh. It is in man that the spirit has its dwell- ing. Man is the tabernacle. The body becomes the temple of the Holy Ghost. The words which represent the presence of the S23irit with man do not refer to a remote life. They are not the suggestion of some pale illusion^ or some vague emotion. They speak of walking and of dwell- ing in the spirit. The Christ; in his own life, manifested the life of the spirit. In his own life there was the presence and the inspiration of the spirit ; the Sj^lrit de- scended upon him. It is the witness to the one- ness of his life, who came from the Father, with the life of humanity. It is the evidence of the presence of the Spirit with the Son of man. The Spirit which Avas with the Christ in the beginning of his work on the earth was with him until the close. The Christ, in the closing events of his life, was led by the spirit; he through the eternal Spirit offered himself. The life of the spirit is not simply the indefinite life; — it is the determinate life. It is not simply the life which before was absent; but its precedent THE WORD OF GOD. 215 is in the life of the Christ, in the realization of the truth, and the fulfillment of righteousness in the life of humanity. There is knowledge, but there is yet a wider knowledge open and opening unto men. There is no limit set for thought. The Christ says, when the Sioirit is come, he will guide yoic into all truth. There are many observances, customs, laws, in- stitutions, but there are none that are to impose upon the life of the spirit. They are to become the evidence of it ; they are to be formed in it. Their verification is to be unto the spirit. The value and measure of all forms is as they express and embody the life of the spirit. The law of all forms is in the words, the sabhath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath. The Christ, the Word of God, manifests, in the spirit, that which was from the beginning : in the beginning teas the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word of God in the life of the spirit may go forth in human life, and in the events which become form- ative in human history. The Word of God is the informing power of the revelation of God in the finite world. The Word of God is not^ by any figure, to be identified with a book, or a temple, or a minster, or a shrine ; nor with one through whom, in books or temples, a message is brought to men : S. John says, I fell down at his feet to 216 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. worship the angel ; and he said unto me. See thou do it not; I am thy fellow-servant and of thy brethren : worship God. The life of the spirit has its witness to the world in the Church. The Church has an organic unity and life. The Church is the company of all faithful people. The Church has a form and order, in the ful- fillment of the life of the spirit, and thence in the freedom of the spirit, in the historical courses of the world, and in consistence, in their divine institution, with the organic being and develop- ment of the family and the nation in the life of humanity.^ The Church is the witness to the life of the spirit in humanity. It is not the source of the life of the spirit, but the witness of it. The Spirit is not the gift of the church, but the church of the Spirit. The words of faith which cannot be transposed are, / believe in the Holy Ghost; in the holy catholic Church. The Church is the witness to the redemption of the world. It is not in it alone that the ne- cessity of the redemption is apparent, and it is not itself the object and end of the redemption, 1 " That was the beginning of a society which could be nothing but universal, because it stood in the name of the Son of God and Son of man." (Maurice, Sermons^ vol. i. p. 9.) THE CHTTECH. 217 but it is the witness to the redemption of the world. It shows forth the divine sacrifice, the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world. The Church is the witness to the inspiration of the spirit. The life of the Church is in the pres- ence of the spirit. It is the evidence and rec- ognition, — the response in the life of humanity to the eternal Spirit, the communion of the spirit, in which the life of man has its eternal foundation and its unity and its peace.-^ The Church is the witness to the being and continuance of the Christ in the world. It is built upon the person of the Christ, and is formed in relations with him. It is not founded upon abstractions. It does not rest upon a proposition or a system of propositions in the forms of thought. S. Paul writes of its communion as bidlt upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself heing the chief corner stone, in whom ye also are bidlded together for an habit- ation of God through the Spirit. The Church is the witness to the life and the realization of the truth in the world. It is not 1 " The Christ chooses the Church to be the witness of his love to mankind. The sect chooses Christ, "because it is convinced that his doctrine is better than that of the founders of other religions; and then goes on to choose Cephas, or Paul, or Apollos, as hav- ing the most refined or satisfactory form of that doctrine. So the person of Christ becomes lost in oertain opinions which the sects have taken up respecting him," (Maurice, Sermons^ vol. iv. p. 9.) 218 THE LIFE OE THE SPIRIT. alone the encouragement of a disposition toward the truth, nor the evidence of the recognition of the truth ; it is that, but it is the testament of the reahzation of the truth in the world. It is to make manifest its light to the world. An apostle writes of the Church as the i^iUar and ground of the truth \ and again, of its life in the Christ, S. Paul says, it is his hody^ the fullness of him that filleth all in all. The holy catholic Church is the communion of saints. The life of the spirit is the life of com- munion with God. It is not a commimion which is measured by finite limitations, and it is not dis- tant in place nor remote in time. But the world is slow to receive this, and is concerned with its own nothingness and emptiness. This commun- ion is transposed; or is held as the association of an adjourned company. It is foisted into the future, in that conception in which the things not seen are still apprehended as some future tempo- rality, and the present is occupied only with in- definite notions among its pure negations. This communion, by a sheer lift, is carried into another world, which is then only another world, in the suc- cession to this world. The vague aspiration which wearies of its own vacancy, and the imagination which lingers among the things which are seen, the things of earth and time, brings to this its own detachments. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, ye are come unto this com- THE SCRIPTURES. 219 mimion. It is not ye shall come to this commun- ion. That is the revision of the skepticism of the world. The argument of the writer of the epistle is to show that the Christ has rent asun- der the veil which separates the earth from the heavens, and those who are in the world from those who have left it. It is not a communion to which men are told that they shall come, nor can the imagination pass beyond these words ; ye are come unto the city of the living God^ and to an imiiimerable company of angels^ to the general assembly and church of the first-horn^ which are written in heaven^ and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect. These words embrace the whole realization of that historical life ; ye are come unto Mount Zion^ and unto the heavenly Jerusalem^ and unto Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant. The Church has preserved the writings called the Old and the New Testament. This word has itself a significant value as indicating their testa- mentary character. The Christ says of the writ- ings of the Old Testament, they are they which testify of me. The Church has not preserved the original doc- uments or instruments of these writings. It has not preserved any manuscript of them, of the first or second or third century. It has not preserved the external evidence, in connection with them, 220 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. in verification of their contemporary transcrip- tion. It has not preserved all of them in a per- fect form, and the only copies of some of them, now known to exist, are incomplete ; or appear as a fragment, as the closing pages of the Gospel of S. Mark. It has not preserved the verification of the individual authorship of some of them, and there may be no longer a verification of the name of the writer ; so that it is indifferent what name, if any, may be attached to them, — as the Epistle to the Hebrews. It has not preserved these writ- ings from interpolations, which in some instances may certainly, and in some conjecturally appear, with the critical study and inquiry of scholars, in comparison of their variations, as the narrative of the woman taken in adultery, or the description of the three witnesses in the Epistle of S. John ; wliile yet the manuscripts in some instances, as the Gos- pel of S. Luke, although not without various read- ings, are yet of very considerable scriptory excel- lence. The Church has read, indifferently with the original, an excellent translation : as, for instance, the translation into the Latin of S. Jerome, or the translation into the Gothic of Ulfilas, or the trans- lation into the English of Wicliffe, or of the com-, pany of scholars of the sixteenth century. The writings of the Old Testament, when they are re- ferred to by writers of the New Testament, are with citations froia the recent and more common THE SCRIPTURES. 221 version, in the translation of scholars in Alexan- dria, called the Septuagint. These citations are usually given in an illustrative way, and with in- difference to literary precision. The Church has held the verification of these scriptures in the life of the spirit. It is in their verification as words that are spirit and truth, — the canon which alone the Christ has given. It is their verification to the conscience and the con- sciousness of men. It is through their recogni- tion, in the life of the spirit in humanity, in the development through which the Word of God re- veals itself in righteousness and judgment unto men, that the Christ says, heaven and earth may pass away, hut my words shall not pass away. The Bible, which is the simplest phrase of lit- erature, the synonym of the Book, is the term which comprehensively describes these writings. The Bible is a book written in literal forms ; subject to the ordinary rules of construction, as defiiied in the science of grammar. The Bible is a book written in languages, as the Hebraic, the Chaldaic, the Greek, or Graeco- Hebraic; subject to the ordinary rules of deriva- tion and distinction, as defined in the science of comparative philology. The Bible is a book written in manuscripts; which require in their transcription and authenti- cation the critical study which belongs to the sci- ence, which, in comparing, for instance, the uncial 222 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. with other styles, is the science which deals with scriptory forms. The Bible is a book which has been subject to the mutations of literature. It is written in man- uscripts of unequal value, no one of which is en- tirely perfect in itself, so as to displace all others, and none are free from obscure or various read- ings. It has suffered simply the mutations of lit- erature, and has had no exemption from them. It embraces the most varied forms of litera- ture ; as genealogies, laws, histories, records of legislative and judicial procedure, methods of san- itary, civil, and military administration. There is legend and myth ; there are various forms of poetry ; the ode, as in the antiphone of Moses and Miriam ; the drama, as in the Book of Job ; the idyl, as in the Song of Solomon ; the lyric, as in the book of the Psalms, and the opening pages of the Gospel of S. Luke ; and in the writings of S. Paul, citations from the Greek comedy, as from Menander, These scriptures embraced, in substance, all the literature that the ancient Hebrew people pos- sessed. Their productions in art and music always remained rude and simple, and in architecture they w^ere the common adaptations of a primitive mode of life, or often the reproductions of forms copied from Egypt, or imported from Phoenicia. There are traces in these writings of the races, countries, and ages in which they appeared, and of THE SCRIPTURES. 223 climatic conditions^ with respect to languages and customs and laws. There is a popular element, as in the stories of Samson and Ruth ; and there is also a priestly and a kingly element, as in the books of the Chronicles and Kings. In some books there are the traces of reflective phases of thought, as in the book of Ecclesiastes ; and in some there are traces of Asiatic forms and Asiatic institutions. These scriptures were written by various writ- ers in various ages, and bear the note and accent of the individuality of these writers in their modes of expression. If it needs to be said, the literary forms of the older parts rise often to great dignity of expression, as the later chapters of Isaiah and the books of Hosea and Job; and they have, in this quality, a comparative excellence in the liter- ature of the world. There is in the New Testa- ment, not an indifference to literary form, but no distinction of literary form. These writings are simply narrative, in a biographical arrangement, or in the style of letters that are few and direct, and very unequal in their expression. There is a historical narrative of a discursive character, ap- parently embracing the work of various writers. The Epistle to the Hebrews has a singular finish, with an antithetic expression, and an elaborate detail of historical portraiture that indicates the culture of the writer in schools of rhetoric in his age. The evangel of S. Luke is commended for the diligence and thoroughness of its research 224 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. The writings of S. Paul, in the epistles, which may be distinctively called catholic, indicate more plainly the modifications to which the Greek lan- guage was subject when it became the instrument for the expression of Hebrew forms of thought 3 and they indicate also, in their illustrative expres- sion, the influence of a knowledge of Eoman law in an age of great Roman lawyers. But the writ- ings of S. Paul have no literary form to commend them, — to bring them into comparison, in Greek with the consummate beauty of phrase in j^Eschy- lus, or the repose in the style of Plato, or the sus- tained strength of the masterful style of Aiistotle. There is often, from language of great elevation, a lapse to some digressive phrase ; as, for an ex- treme instance, in the thirty-third verse of the fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Coi-in- thians, which drops and moves on with a quota- tion from the Greek comedy. They lack the form which belongs to the great hymns of the Vedas, and the constructive unity and consonance with a formal system, which belongs to the Koran. The Koran is also better preserved, and has suffered less in transcription, with proportionately fewer obscure or various readings. The style has no distinctive quality ; but they who, in common parl- ance with religious society, speak of their beauti- ful liturgy, suggest a comparison with the hymns of the Vedas ; and they who write of the poetry of the Bible must draw their parallel with JEschy* THE SCRIPTURES. 225 lus and Shakespeare, and the masters of the lit- erary art to which they invite attention. The Bible has a unity which is deeper than any structural form, however various and complete. This prevails with a continuous and continually increasing manifestation through the whole. It is not merely the unity which appears in the lit- erature of a people, as the Latin or the English lit- erature ; it is that, but it is more and other than that. It is not merely the unity which attaches to the continuous history, the institutions, laws, customs, wars of a people ; it is that, but it is more and other than that. The Bible is the record of the revelation of God. It is the record of a revelation of God in man and to the world.-^ It is testamentary to the rev- elation of God to and through the world. This revelation, and not a literature nor a body of tra- ditions, is the ground of the unity which it dis- covers. It is the record of the revelation of God ^ The Church has no theory, it will have none, of the inspiration of books. A theory may be in the way of recognizing the facts. The words of the Church are, *' / believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, loho spake by the prophets. It is an inspiration of men. The Bible speaks, as the proverb of the Talmud is, "in the tongue of the sons of men." " The maxim of the whole book is that God is the educator of that J.eople and of every people, that all circumstances are his in- struments; that all events are assertions of his presence; that whatever happens to men is a means of showing to them his rio-ht- eousness, and of moulding them to his image." (Maurice, Sermons^ vol. 1. p. 34.) 226 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. in his relation with humanity ; in the fulfillment of his eternal purpose, Avhich was before the found- ation of the world ; in the righteousness in which he manifests his own being, and in the life which he has given for the world. It is of the coming of his kingdom, in which the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of the Christ. It is of a revelation in an order in the world of the family and the nation. It is of a revelation of and in the Christ. The sacraments of the Church are the witness to the wall of God in its realization on this earth, and to the coming of the new life, the life of the spirit in the world. They are the witness to the real presence of the Christ with humanity, which he has redeemed. The baptism is the regeneration of humanity in the coming of the spirit. It is the declaration of the true and eternal life of man. The holy com- munion is the manifestation of the perfect and finished sacrifice, in which alone there is the inter- pretation of the sacrifice and death of this earth. The sacraments compass the birth and death of man, in their eternal significance. The sacraments become the evidence of the sa- credness of the common life of humanity. They take up the types of nature in its own life. This water is the symbol of purity ; this bread and wine are the symbols of the strength and joy of THE SACRAMENTS. 227 man. They are the common elements of hfe. They are the witness of the presence of Him in the life of humanity, in whom the worship of the visible is overcome and destroyed. They bring their consecration to the family and the na- tion. This baptism is given to children of every tribe and race ; as the sign of their common rela- tion with Him, who hath broken down the wall of "partition^ to make in himself of twain one new man. It is given to children in their uncon.scious existence, as the evidence that the least and low- liest in this existence, is not separated from the Christ, but becomes a partaker in his redemption. These elements^ — this bread and wine, — ai-e the evidence that the daily life, the common life of this earth, may be transmuted. It is transmuted in union with him who died for the world. The sacrament of the holy communion is not simply the memorial of a distant event, that is separated from us by tracts of time ; and yet it has the strength and consolation of a sacred mem- ory, as it testifies of a past that is glorified, and of the presence of Him in whom the past and the future are one. The sacrament is not the setting forth of a sacrifice that requires to be perfected. It is the manifestation of the full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, which Christ made upon the cross for the sin of the whole world ; but man may be made the partaker in this life, — the life that was given for the world. 228 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. The sacrament is the witness of that communion in which the limits of time and space, and the separations of death are overcome. It is with an unseen host ; it is with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. The sacrifice has been made once for all, but it is the ground of an eter- nal imion. It has been made that men may be united with Him who has passed through death, who has entered within the veil, and who is pre- senting his finished sacrifice continually before the Father. It becomes the testament of a perpetu- ally renewed life. This sacrifice the Church com- memorates, and whatever theories we may devise, whatever forms and prescriptions of ritual we may observe, we cannot invest it with a character be- yond that which it has in the words of S. Paul : as often as ye eat this hread^ and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come. It is this alone, which gives its eternal significance to the death of every man, until he come. It bears us on toward the time when all the revelations and the sacraments of God shall close in the com- ing world, the new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. The Church commemo- rates, therefore, with faith and hope, the one pre- vailing sacrifice, that its fulfillment may be in Him, beyond whose love there is no height, be- neath whose love there is no depth. The sacrament becomes the witness of an eter- aal life. It testifies of an eternal communion. THE SACRAMENTS. 229 There is no symbol of union, in the life of hu- manity on this earth, that does not lend to it its significance. In the mystic figure of S. John, it is the ring and vesture of the bride ; it is the marriage supper of the Lamb. It is the invitation of heaven ; Behold^ I stand at the door and hnocTc: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. This is the simplest language, and blends with human associations. It denotes the fullest intercourse with Him who was alone on this earth and suffered its necessities, with Him who is with the hosts of heaven. The sacraments become the witness of the char- acter and end of the worship of the Church. They set forth the object of worship, — the Will whose manifestation is in the perfect love, from whom sacrifice proceeds, and to whom it is given, and with whom there is eternal life and communion. It is the revelation through worship, of Grod the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, with whom we may become one in the life that is eter- nal. It is from the Father that the sacrifice pro- ceeds, in the manifestation of the will of the Father. The Christ said, he that hath seen me hath seen the Father. The Church, in one of the greater ages of its theological thought and life, distinctively called S. John, the Divine ; and if, in the theology of S. John, there is the justification of this distinc- tion; it is in the record of the words that por- 230 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. tray the conflict with formal notions of service, and formal notions of God ; and the words which set forth the unity of God^ the underground of the being and becoming of God m the world, the movement of the self-moved one, the mani- festation of the perfect love. S. John says, Jesics answered and said itnto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, hut what he seeth the Father do ; for what things so- ever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise ; for the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth hiin all things that himself doeth. Therefore in this wor- ship, there is the rejection of the principality or power, — the will in heaven or earth, whose end is in self alone, the self-seeking will, and the recog- nition of the Will that is manifest in sacrifice, for the redemption and the realization of the eternal life of humanity. This becomes the foundation of the worship of the family and the nation. This worship sets forth the ground of the unity of all nations in the life of humanity. We are enabled to offer the oblation of ourselves — the reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice, which brings us into communion with the will, which has offered the perfect oblation for the whole world. The sacraments become then the witness of the presence of Him in whom is the eternal founda- tion of the family and the nation. They give their interpretation to those events in which the unity and freedom of the nation is conserved. The THE COMING OF LIGHT. 231 crises of judgment and deliverance in its history come to have a sacramental character. S. Paul writes to the church in Corinth of the sacramental character of events in the history of his own na- tion: liow that all our fathers were baptized in the cloudy and in the sea, and did all eat of the same sjnritiial meat^ and did all drink of the same spiritual drink. This is connected with the recital of historic incidents from age to age^ of the most various circumstance. The sacraments are the evidence of the presence with the nation of the Lord of HostSj from whom alone its deliverance proceeds^ who is the leader of its armies, and alone the giver of victory. The coming of the Spirit is in the assertion of the presence and coming of a principle or power of light in the world. This is not a vague illus- tration or an illusion of the imagination. There is the coming of an active power and an energy in the policies and politics of this earth, which they who build their dominations over it may refuse to recognize, but which they cannot always ob- struct. This light discloses the false foundations, on which human society may aim to build, with its theories of property and art. This penetrates the utmost depths of sin, and the isolations of selfish- ness, and is in conflict with all the powers that dwell in its gloom, — the superstitions and the in- quisitions and tyrannies of men. It will at last 232 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. overthrow all repressive policies, which crash the spirits of men. The Christ says, every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should he reproved; but he that doeth truth cometh to the light. The exist- ence of this principle and this energy becomes the ground of strength and hope. Thus S. Paul says, have no fellowship with the unfruitfid works of darkness ; all things that are convicted as wrong are shown to he what they actually are hy light; for whatever shows things to he what they actually are is light. Wherefore he saith : Awake, thou that steepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. In the life of the spirit there is alone the ground of unity and reconciliation and peace. The finite is taken up and changed ; — it is trans- muted in the infinite. The struggle for existence becomes a conflict within man reaching to the depths of his nature, and then peace is not a mere quiescence, nor a balance of adverse forces, but it comes with unity and reconciliation. It has an ethical quality. It is the peace that the world cannot give. It is not derivative from the world ; for in the physical process, from deep to deep -, or in the organization of nature, from the germ to its decay ; there is motion without cessation, and apparently it has its subsidence with the extinc- tion of life, when the temperature has become uni- form, as action exists in unequal conditions of heat THE GIFT OF PEACE. 233 and cold J wliich tend, though gradually , to their equalization. And life cannot be conceived in the physical process with the cessation of motion. There is the struggle for existence, but with no other rest, — only the rest of death. The Christ says, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto you. It is the peace which pas- seth understanding, for in it death is overcome ; it is the peace of Him whose gift is eternal life ; it is the peace of God. There comes through the life of the spirit the knowledge and the realization of the truth. It is not simply the truth, apprehended as an inference from the observation of the physical process of the finite world, though it brings the elements of re- flection and resolution to this knowledge. It is not truth simply as the formulas of science, but it is the truth that has a relation with the emotions and the will, and is the ground of their education. It is the truth that brings strength to love and free- dom. It is the sanctification of the truth. It is formed in the relations and through the events of life, and not in separation from them. It is at- tained in and not apart from the family and the nation. It has its ground in the will of God : S. Paul says ; this is the will of Oody even your sanc- tification. In the life of the spirit, the life of righteous- ness is to have its recompense. It has not that 234 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. recompense for its end^ and it is formed not for gain, — not for the hope of gainhig heaven, and it has not thus an end external to itself. But it is the characteristic of a recent school of ethics that it should reject this, and leave it with mere nega- tions. It may be, in an unbelieving age, when weariness and doubt seem to ally themselves with the corruption of the grave ; when faith and hope become the mockery of the world ; when trust in the love of God, as the central principle of the world, is made the jest of the school and the sub- ject for the derision of the multitude in the popu- lar assembly ; it may be in that age that men are bidden to hve with faith, looking for a reco^n- pense. The endurance that meets persecution for righteousness, has the promise of the beatific life \ rejoice and he exceeding glad^ for great is your re- ward in heaven. It is not the return of work and its obligation, for it shall he given unto this last, even as unto thee ; it is not the wages of service, the gift of God is eternal Kfe. The life of |the spirit is the new life. It is the life of the regeneration. It is the life that is not determuied in finite conditions, as in the physical process, but it is the real, the eternal life. The Christ asserts the necessity of this regeneration, not because of antecedent conditions of sin ; but because, that which is horn of the flesh is flesh, ana that which is horn of the Sjnrit is spirit PERFECT MANHOOD. 235 This regenerative power is manifest in the lives of men and nations. It goes forth to the bap- tism of all nations. The regeneration is a life that is not the sequence nor continuance of physical forces, nor determined by physical contingencies^ nor having its conclusion in' the dissolution of physical forms. It is not the life that is after the traditions of men or the rudiments of the world. It is the true life of humanity^ the life that it has in the Christ, the real head of the human race ; the first Adam is of the earth earthy : the second Adam is the Lord from heaven. The process and end of the life of the spirit is the development of a perfect humanity. The aim is the attainment and fulfillment of a perfect man- hood. The Christ says, 6e ye perfect ^ even as your Father in heaven is perfect. It is the law and ful- fillment of a perfect and perfected humanity. If a man aims to be more or other than a man, then he must become less than a man. But this is not simply the development of a life in identity with nature ; it is not simply the projection of this physical being, but while there is in it the extinc- tion of none of its powers or its energies, it is a life formed and determined through the mediation of the spirit. In this process nature is controlled and determined through the mediation of the spirit, and it is this and this alone that gives its significance to the ideal of art. 236 THE LIFE OF THE SPIKIT. It is the realization of a perfect manhood. For this end the Son of God became the Son of man. S. Paul says its end is that we all come in the unity of the faithy and of the knowledge of the Son of God^ unto a perfect man^ unto the measure of the stature of the fidlness of Christ It is a perfect humanity. This does not yield to age, with its increase of infirmities. Its process is not from life unto death. It does not grow old with the waning of the years. S. Paul says, though our outward man perish^ yet the inward man is re- newed day hy day. While the process and end of the life of the Spirit is the development of a perfect humanity this is not through a principle of exclusion, but there is the negation and transmutation of a principle of exclu- sion, and its end is in the realization of a perfect hu- man society.-^ In the manifestation of the Son of man, there is the ground of the redemptive life of humanity. It is the manifestation of the foundation of the life of humanity in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. It is of and in the ^ * ' The apostles did not dare — they did not find it possible — to think of human society, except as constituted in Christ. It was the confusion, the unbelief of men, to regard themselves as capable of fellowship and of existence without him. It was theirs to proclaim that there could have been no families, no nations, to resist the self- ish tendencies which each of us is conscious of in himself, and com- plains of in his neighbors, if there had not been one living centre of the whole body of humanity, one head of every man." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 10.) THE LAW OF HUMANITY, 237 Christ, who has brought to man m his own life the law of love and sacrifice. It affirms the principle that no man liveth and no man dieth to himself. It sets forth the organic relations of human society.-^ The law is coming to be recognized^ which not only regards society as a body^ but affirms that none can be isolated from its relations^ whether one member suffer^ all the memhers suffer with it It is alone in righteousness and freedom that there is laid the ground of the enduring order and de- velopment of human society. The law of the Christ becomes the law of humanity : hear ye one another's burdens, and so fidfill the law of Christ. The bond of society is in the truth, wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for toe are members one 1 " The name of the God of Abraham and of Isaac is not lost in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost ; the per- fect and universal revelation explains all the gradual discoveries that are leading to it. And that perfect revelation will be proved at last to be what an ecclesiastical system, what philosophical liberalism has tried to be and failed, — the assertion of a humanity in which all races are equally partakers. The Church which is to be, will not be another than that which has grown up under authority of this com- mission, and has stood ever since in different lands, in different degrees of strength and feebleness, of sincerity and corruption. She will only have learned through hard suffering the foundation which she has forgotten. She will be purged of whatever loveth and maketh a lie, that she may understand she is the witness of truth to all nations.'* (Maurice, Sermons^ vol. iv. p. 48,) '* A deliverance from lies would be the great deliverance for us all. Nor may we obtain it, nor society be brave and truthful, nor we, the members of society, be so until we take S. Paul's words in their full sense: Wherefore^ putting away lying ^ speah every man truth 238 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. of another. It is the law of Christ that becomes the ground of the development of domestic and national economies in human society. The election of humanity is in the Christ, in the fulfillment of the purpose that was the eternal purpose of God before the foundation of the world,^ It is not the separation of some from the human race by a process of inclusion^ and the rejection of others by the same process, from a life of righteousness. It is the manifestation of the will of God, revealed in the Christ, toward all men, in the manifestation of the perfect life. S. Paul writes of the faith of God's electa which God^ that cannot lie, in hope of eternal life, promised hefore the world hegan. This election is in the will of God, and is manifest in the continuous course of the world. It is the election of all men. It is not the selection of some for happiness and some for misery. S. Paul could write of the condi- tion of his own nation when he went to the na- xoith his neighbor^ for we are members one of another. There is the secret. We do not believe that we are members one of another. We do not believe that there is one living and true head of us all. We do not think that he knows our secrets, and wishes us to be true in our inward parts, and is himself the truth. This — the vice of the beggar and the opulent, of him who sells votes and him who buys them — can only be extirpated by faith in one who as- cended on high, and united us all to God, and to each other," (Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi. p. 85.) ^ "Jesus is the one elect; and those who, by taking part with him, become members of his body, become also members of the election; and those who continue to resist him shut themselves out from the election." (Erskiae, Memoirs, p. 228.) THE EDUCATION OE THE WORLD. 239 tions^ it7itil the fullness of the Gentiles he come in, and so all Israel shall be saved. And the nations which come into existence in the course of the Cliristian history, while they rest in the same will, and are led through the same redemption, go forth in the realization of a more perfect unity and toward a more perfect freedom. There is in the life of the spirit the revelation of the source and end of life in its eternal rela- tions. The words of faith are of the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life. The representation of human life, which has thence its ground, is of an eternal life, which was promised before the world was, and subsists in infinite relations, with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. This representation is imperfectly expressed in the words, — the education of the world. The repre- sentation, also, of life merely as a probation, — if in that notion it is assumed that men are subjected to a system of tests, as coins are weighed on well- adjusted scales; or that each, here or hereafter, has one or several fair chances in a method of indifference, in which the result is a subject of divine conjecture, so far as the chances go, — this representation does not consist with the facts of human life, nor with the revelation of the Christ. It does not consist with the relative duration of existence, nor with the relative ignorance and in- capacity of tribes and races. The phrase which 240 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. allows to each, at some period, a fair chance, has the same superficial ground and false conception of life. If the chances of Tyre and Sidon were fair, those of Sodom and Gomorrah were less than fair. But this phrase does not consist with the simplest representation of the revelation of the Christ, with the election and grace of God, with the love manifested in the Son of God who became the Son of man.^ It does not consist with a true conception of the freedom of the will, which cer- tainly involves the power of choice ; but fi^eedom is more and other than that. The phrase which represents life as a discipline, and an education into the knowledge and love and freedom of God, is consistent more nearly with the revelation of God. It is a life in the limitations of the finite, 1 ** There are few religious phrases that have had such a power of darkening men's minds as to their true relation to God, as the common phrase that we are liere in a state of probation, under trial, as it were. We are not in a state of probation, we are in a process of education, directed hy that eternal purpose of love which brought us into being. When we apprehend that we are in a pro- cess of education, that God will carry to its fulfillment, however long it may take, we feel that the loving purpose of the Father is over us, and that the events of life are not appointed as testing us, whether we will choose God's will or not, but real lessons into training us to make the right choice. " The gospel declares that not inevitable laws, however great, however righteous, but a being of righteousness and love, guides and rules the universe, and that his own purpose in creating and sustain- ing man is to make him a partaker in his own blessedness by making him a partaker in his own righteousness, and that all the events of life constitute the education by which he would train us and lead us to that end." (Erskine, Memoirs j p. 376.) THE LAW OF WOKSHIP. 241 that compasses them in the life that is infinite. It is the endurance of all that life brings, and through endurance there is victory ; it is the Jcing- dom and patience of Jesus Christ. It follows him who learned obedience by the things which he suffered ; and^ being perfected^ became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him. It is on this earth the discipline of virtue that in its neces- sary conditions^ becomes the incontrovertible argu- ment and evidence of a life that is not determined in the process of the physical world ; it verifies the words which were the strength of our fathers, and shall be the strength of manhood until the end of time : he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin. This life is a growth, and, through the redemption of the Christ, into the life of God. It is through the finite into a life which has its foundation in the eternal life, its freedom in the infinite life. It is a growth in a life which is self- determined, and is not determined by external limitations. It is not the subjection of being to another, for it is immoral that one should be used as a means for an end external to his own being, or to subserve the being of another to himself. It is the development of being in its own whole. The Christ says, No man taketh my life from me, 1 lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again. In the hf e of the spirit, through the courses of 16 242 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. history, the ritual of the Church is to be formed in the law and unity and freedom of the spirit. Its ritual is formed in the requirement, they thai worship the Father shall worship him in spirit and in truth. Its unity is in the Spirit. It does not assume the subjection of the spirit to the letter, nor to the precedent of those who sit in the seats of the elders. Its end is universal. It does not look for the perpetuation of Jerusa- lem, nor of Athens or Rome, with their separate sanctities.^ We have no continuing city here : we are coyne to the heavenly Jerusalem. We are bidden to journey toward no earthly town or city, how- ever great in the historical courses of the world, and however many the attractions be that are re- counted of it : the Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. The life of the spirit is the eternal life of man. It is not spatial nor temporal ; it is not bounded by these coasts of time ; it is here and now, but it is not at this place to be described by the loca- tion of this place, and it is not at this time to be measured by the termination of this time. It is not in the past, and it is not to be foisted away into the future; he that believeth hath eternal life, ^ The only law of ritual affirmed in the First General Council of the Church, Nicsea, A. D. 325, is Canon XX. This commends the posture of standing in prayer, which it seems good to the holy synod to prefer. But it does not follow that a law of ritual of this char- acter is necessarily to be held as permanent. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE HOLY GHOST. 243 There is in man the suspect tliat in the tran- sient course of things there is yet an intimation of that which is not transient. The grass that fades has yet in the folded and falhng leaves of its flower that perishes the intimation of a beauty that does not fade. The treasures that are frayed by the moth and worn by the rust are not as those in which love and faith and hope abide. There is a will that in its purpose does not yield to mortal wrong. There is a joy that is not of emulation. There is a freedom that is other than the mere struggle for existence in physical rela- tions, and is not determined in its source or end by these finite conditions. This is the life of the spirit. It is born of God ; it is of the uncreated Spirit ; it is begotten, not made ; it proceeds from the Father and the Son ; it is in the fellowshijJ of the Holy Ghost The inspiration of the Spirit, the Christ recog- nized ; the Spirit descended upon him and was sent from him. It is the evidence of a relation and a communion manifested in the Christ with the life of man. The prophetic and the priestly and the kingly line closed in the Christ ; — only as from him there was to come the prophetic and priestly and kingly powers of humanity. There is in men and in nations the consciousness of the existence of physical and of spiritual powers and relations. It is not that the life of man is 244 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. wholly physical until a certain epoch, and there- after wholly spiritual ; although in the racial de- velopment of maUj the physical precedes the spir- itual. There is thence the ethical conflict, in which the spiritual comes to be apprehended as before and above the physical, and striving toward its realiza- tion. This has its illustration in the widest ranges of literature and art. This is the ground of those words of counsel, walk in the Sjnrit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh, for the flesh lust- eth against the spirit^ and the spirit against the flesh. The life of the spirit has its fulfillment in the life of humanity in God. It is the fulfillment of the will that held its purpose in love before the world was. It is the love that is stronger than death, and in its perfect fulfillment man is brought into oneness with God. S. John says, God is love, and he that loveth is born of God, Thus the phrase, the last judgment, is not dis- tinctively characteristic of the revelation of the Christ. The judgment is continuous, and in the increasing realization of righteousness and truth and love. It is not, as an ultimate event, — the final goal of humanity, and the end of all things. S. Paul says, then cometh the end, when God shall be all in all. The judgment, in the separation and discrimi- nation in the divine light, of the eternal signifi / THE KINGDOM THAT HATH NO END. 245 cance of good and evil^ and their consequence in eternal life and eternal deaths becomes the ground of an infinite hope. It is faith and hope and love that abide. But the greater is love. This love that was before the world was^ does not perish with the perishing world. It will follow every child of time, and it does not yield to death. The assumption that the doom of each and all, in the moment of physical death, is irrevocably fixed, is the assumption of the extremest fatalism. Prom the finite conceptions of men, it derives its moulds and measures for the divine love, and in the courses of human thought it is formed on pessimism in alliance with dualism. It places a finite limit to the divine redemption. It is an ulti- mate subjection to sin and death. That the moral degradation of men and of nations tends toward it, is no evidence that no other and higher powers shall prevail toward their perfect fulfillment. The Christ has conquered death, and in death there is no limit to his power. The law and life which the Christ has manifested is the universal law and life, and there is no place that can be detached from it, in the universe. The relation of every man to humanity in the Christ is the ground of the faith and hope and love which justify the words, that bid men to count not the ninety and nine, but to seek with unceasing quest for one that is lost. We are to strive in a world where infinite good 246 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. and evil are, and we can only overcome evil with good. That humanity is joined in the bonds of that love which was before the foundation of the world, and that virtue is brought into an active conflict with evil, is the assurance of their ulti- mate triumph. It is not immediate, and vice and crime may still go on ; he that is unjust shall he unjust still. But the ultimate realization of the divine redemption shall be in the overthrow of every power that has held the spirit of man in subjection, and wrought its degradation. But the consequences of evil continue through an ethical development. We may be saved from sin and hell; we may be lost in their vacancy and misery and despair, and suffer their confinement. Ge- henna was not far from Jerusalem, and its fires were still burning, when it became the type of the consequences of sin for man. This gives in- tenser significance to the fire that is not quenched, in the judgment of the wicked. The fulfillment of the redemption is the realiza- tion of righteousness, the fulfillment in humanity of the righteousness of the Son of God, who be- came the Son of man. It is the victory of faith, but this is not for the individual alone and within Ins own spirit. It is not a victory that separates him from humanity, nor withdraws him from the world that has been redeemed, but it bnngs out the ground of his relation to humanity. It is faith THE ETERNAL LIFE. 247 in OnGj who being the Son of God has become the Son of man. But the thonghts of men in the revelation of God through the Christ, and in the hfe of the spirit, are not sent forth to wander in vacuity. The family and the nation are not to be regarded as insubstantial in their unity and foundation. The precedent of their life is not to be found only in the vestiges that are left, as the strata of geolog- ical deposits, to indicate the succeeding tribes and races that have passed over a continent, one van- ishing before another, as if worn out in the strug- gle. The records of the Old Testament have no as- sertion of the immortality of the soul, as it is ap- prehended in the religions and the philosophies of the world. But there is the assurance that the family and the nation are immortal. The sugges- tion of a life that is immortal is in the hope that rests in the continuous life of the family and the nation, which have their unity and foundation in God. This is the hope that came to the king of Israel, that each may live since they live. The records of the New Testament have not the assertion of the immortality of the soul, as subse- quent to the incident of physical death, primarily for their subject. It is the life of humanity in the Christ that is the evidence of the incorruptible, the immortal life. The Christ has brought to the spirit of man the realization of life and ira- 248 THE LIFE OE THE SPIRIT. mortality ; he has hrought life and immortality to light. This is the life of the spirit, the real life, in which alone there is the satisfaction of the spirit. This is the life that shall not see corruption. It does not decompose with the physical elements, nor suffer their decay. It is not measured by the ashes of the urn, nor by the confines of the grave. The strength that moves with its forces is that of an eternal life. The power that animates it is the power that is not of the sequences of earth and time ; it is the power of the resurrection. The resurrection from the dead is in and through the Christ. The Christ has overcome death ; death hath no more dominion over him} The resurrection is not the resurrection of the physical body. It is not the resultant of the law of physical necessity, nor subject to physical con- ditions. It is not the recovery and reconstruction ^ '■'•Death hath no more dominion over Mm; for in that he died^ he died unto sin once; in that he livethf he liveth unto God. The apostle presents the fact of the resurrection as a manifestation of the divine relation in which Christ stood to the Eternal Father ; of the divine life which dwelt in him because he was the Son of God ; of the divine energy which was every hour sustaining that life, and which in weakness, agony, on the cross, in the sepulchre, sustained it still." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 4.) *' This death, — this common death, — the death of him who died for all, is that in the likeness of which we are planted; here is the bond of perfect human fellowship ; here is the assurance that death cannot break the bonds which hold us to each other, because the Love which established them had in death proved itself to be stronger than death." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 220.) THE RESURRECTION. 249 of the physical body from the physical elements. It is the resurrection of the spiritual body. The apostle says^ it is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual bodi/ : there is a physical body and there is a spiritual body. The resurrection is not in the evolution of the physical process of the world. That which is first is physical^ and then that which is spiritual. But the spiritual has not its ground in nor its deriva- tion from the physical. The end of the physical process for individuals and races is death. In this physical process and conclusion, as it is open to observation and its resultant knowledge, men be- come, and invariably, mere carrion that may be reduced to ashes or concealed beneath the sod, at last only to make other growths more rank. It is weakness to evade the invariable result which is thus within the observation and the resultant knowledge of men. S. Paul recognizes it with a clearness that is not exceeded by the writers of the physical school in their most recent literature ; corruption does not inherit incorrupiion. This death is not averted by the strength of youth, nor the gift of wealth, nor the charm of beauty, nor the valor of armies. It is not overcome by the skill of those arts in which men are trained. But men recognize the weakness with which they yield to disease, and the advance of age, and the subjection to the law of death, and the dishonor of the grave, in this process of physical necessity. 250 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. The apostle says, it is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorritption : it is sown in dishonor ; it is raised in glory : it is sown in weakness ; it is raised in power. It was not necessary that the writers of the physical school should repeat the induction of the physical process in the observa- tion and apprehension of life within the limits of the physical process. The apostle ss^js, flesh and hlood cannot inherit the ki7igdom of God, But there is, again, the assertion of another than this physical sequence ; this corruptible must put on incorrup)tiony and this mortal put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incor- ritption^ and this mortal shall have put on immor- tality^ then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. The resurrection is not from a state which is subsequent to death, nor from a state which is separated by long intervals from death. It is not from a state that is intermediate between certain other states. It is the resurrection of the dead. It has that immediacy.^ ^ *' After this life comes the fruition of his glory. The longing for selfie^h prizes has ceased ; the earthly weakness of desiring to ex- change faith for sense has been taken away. What remains is the vision of that light which fills earth and heaven ; the revelation to the inward eye of God himself, as the eye of the spiritual body will, by degrees, become capable of taking in all the beauty and harmony of God's works. Yes! there is in all of us a sighing for home, a longing which nothing but the beholding of God can satisfy." (Mau- rice, Sermons, vol, iv. p. 126.) THE RESURRECTION. 251 This opens for men the communion of saints, which is involved in the life of the Church, They, who have gone, have not therefore f)assed into a condition of lethargy or vacancy. They may be nearer to us, as they are nearer to the per- fect love. They may guide us toward a holier and ampler freedom, since they suffer no more the limitations of time. The veil is rent. There is with us the presence of the unseen host. It is not alone their memory that remains, their spirit may be with us. This brings to us the chastity of hope, he that hath this hope in him purijieth him- self > It becomes the incentive to effort, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily heset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us} * This communion, this presence of an unseen company, is recog- nized in the critical days, and recalled in the high services of na- tions. "It is not unnatural to feel that they who, hy wisdom, by valor, by sacrifice, have contributed to maintain and perfect the institutions which we possess have also an interest in this day. To a spirit alive with memories of the time, and rejoicing in its presage of noble futures, recalling the great, the beloved, the heroic, who have labored and joyfully died for its coming, it will not seem too fond an enthusiasm to feel that the air is quick with shapes we can- not see, and glows with faces whose light serene we may not catch." (Storrs, Oration^ July 4, 1876.) There are memories in the life of a nation which find expression in very eloquent words, that move men with their truth, as no phrases of rhetoric could move them. At the meeting of the armies of the Nation at Chicago, June, 1880, it was said of a great soldier, '* From the front of the ranks, and with his face to the foe, booted and spurred, he went into the presence of the God of Battles." (Gov 252 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. It was the doctrine of the Pharisees that we shall rise at the last day. To them the Christ says, the Ood of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob is not a God of the dead, hut of the living^ for all live unto him. To those who said to him, in the expression of the pop- ular thought, of one that was dead^ " He shall rise again at the last day," he answered, / am the resurrection and the life. Through the resur- rection the conception of death is itself changed. Death is no more clothed with the signs of victory over man. CuUom, Oration.') But as the school of physical science concludes, did he go to the mingling of the physical elements, to the presence of a vaporous mist, only to add some more to that vaporous mist, or to the combination of molecular forces tending to the cessation of mo- tion with the equivalence of temperatures? This name, the God oj Battles^ is very old; we have received it from our fathers, and it had a certain significance in a book which we have received, in the asser- tion of the presence of God, who is the leader of the armies of earth, and the only giver of victory. We may believe that he went into the very presence of Him whom he had followed, and that Plost is with the nation always. It was said, again, ** They fought to keep our country on the map of the earth, and our flag in heaven." (Col. IngersoU, Oration.) But if we accept the counsel of S. Paul, Let your citizenship he in heaven, we may believe that this is no vacant phrase, that it is very real ; that the flag is stirred, as it is borne to battle and sacrifice by diviner airs than those of earth, and is the witness of that di- vine life that is with the nation always. Again it was said, *' With a nobler ambition than the gaining of empire, they bore their puissant arms for the kingdom of man, where liberty reigneth forever." (Col. Vilas, Oration^ But we may be- lieve that this kingdom of the Son of man is very real and has eternal foundations, and that the freedom of man is beyond the accident of earth in its perfect realization. THE RESUKRECTION. 253 The term, — the immortality of the soul, — consists more strictly with the speculations of the schools of philosophy. It is a dry and abstract phrase. It is not a term which corresponds with those terms which are indicative of the revelation of the Christ, while yet it affirms a truth which has its fullest realization in this revelation. It is the affirmation of the spiritual life, which is im- mortal. This does not suffer corruption, nor yield to death. It is the life which is eternal : the first man is of the earth earthy ; the second man is the Lord from heaven : as we have home the image of the earthy^ we shall also hear the image of the heavenly. The apostle says, the Christ was declared to he the Son of God by the resurrectioyi from the dead. He was, in the deepest significance of these words, the Son of man, the child of earth and time, and he suffered the incident of the life of earth, in these finite limitations, and became subject unto death ; but his life had not its consummation in this physical process, as the resurrection was not a power which had its derivation from the physical process. If death seemed the negation of the physical process, there was in the resurrection the negation of death. But it was not the con- tinuance of the finite ; it was the perfect restora- tion and fulfillment of the finite in the coming of the life that was infinite. It lifts the faith and hope of man to God ; the apostle says, Gad 254 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. raised Christ from the dead, and gave him glory that our faith and hope might be in God} The faith of the resurrection, therefore, must always come with associations of joy. It is the conquest of life. The final victory is not with death. For the love that is stronger than death leads faith to look through death. Whatever be the confusion and variance of the world, and how- ever widely misery prevail on the earth, the Church will strive to celebrate its service of the resurrection, with a joy imperfectly expressed in the opening flowers of spring, and by the exultant anthems that i4se beyond the fanfare of trumpets and are borne from choir to choir. The last enemy is destroyed and the conquest of humanity is complete. The apostle says, the last enemy shall he destroyed, which is death. There is no limit to these words, as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all he made alive, hut every man in his own order. The power of love and sacrifice is proven to be the mightiest power on earth. It is the power of him who was the first and is the last, who was in the beginning and is the end. It is the Lamb 1 '* S. Paul not only speaks of our Lord being made like unto us, but of our being made in bis liken^iss. He does not limit tbis mode of expression, telling us tbat we may be made holy like Cbrist here, or glorious like Cbrist hereafter. He speaks of our death being cast in the mould of his death ; of his being the only standard by which we can measure, the only type by which we can understand our own.'* (Maurice, Sermons^ vol. ii. p. 213.) THE ASCENSION. 255 that was slain from the foundation of the world, but it has become the sign of conquest as the cross has been borne in front of the armies of earthj borne on from the Church militant to the Church triumphant. In the vision of S. John the universality passes beyond our conception, and every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and tender the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them heard I saying, Messing and honor and glory and power unto him that sit- teth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever} The subjection of all things is perfect, that God may be all in all. There is no fear of the end ; perfect love has cast out fear. There is no fear of that which lies as the unknown, for the law which determines it is known. There is no fear of that which may be summoned forth from beyond the ^ *' When we speak of death, the resurrection, and the ascension, of the descent of the Holy Spirit, of the revelation of Christ as the judge of the quick and the dead, we are transported into a reo-ion to which oui measures are inapplicable. He has overcome death, he has taken away sin, he has led captivity captive.'' (Maurice, Ser- mons, vol. V. p. 43.) " We receive, then, the message of redemption by the cross, of Christ's victory over the grave, as he and his apostles delivered it. The cross becomes far more than ever the sign in which, and in which alone, we hope to conquer, when we have acknowledged the Lamb in the midst of the throne. The resurrection becomes far more than ever the strength to the dying man, when the voice rino-s through all creation, / am he that liveth and was dead ; and, behold, I live forevermore, and have th4 keys of death and of helV (Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi. p. 89.) 256 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. confines of this earth, nor drawn from the lowest deeps ; for the same organic law prevails through all worldSj — the law manifested in the Christ, in his redemptive kingdom. There is, then, no power that is not brought into subjection to man, — no power in life or in death, in things present or things to come. There is no finite limitation to the redemption of the Christ, whose kingdom shall have no ejid. S. Paul says, the Christ being raised from the dead is far above all principality and power, and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come. The message of the worlds to come, of their law and power, is that the Christ is there, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to- day, and forever. The fulfillment of the life of humanity in the world is in the Christ in God. The end is not another world. The end is the perfect and per- fected world. And the life of man is not to be for ever on and on, to overcome and still to over- come, to mark its advance by its journey from mile to mile, and by its transfer from field to field. That is the contingent of finite relations. The end is in the consummation of life, the full- ness of Him that filleth all in all. There is no more the suffering and travail of earth. The love that was manifested in sacrifice has its fulfillment in the joy of the Redeemer. The apostle says, Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more. THE ASCENSION. 257 The death and the resurrection of the Christ are always to be connected with the ascension. This is the witness that no hmits of time or space can separate the Christ from the world which he has redeemed. It is the witness of the presence of one who says / am with you dlway} It is the witness that the heavens are opened^ and that their life becomes henceforth one with the life of earth. It becomes the incentive to duty in a life of faith and hope ; the apostle says, if ye then he rise7i with Christ, seeJc those things which are ahove^ It is the evidence of a pure and redeemed and glorified humanity. It fulfills the transfigura- tion in the eternal glory of the Son of man. It ^ " The faith which rests upon the death and the resurrection of Christ, without taking any account of his ascension, may serve as long as our thoughts are occupied chiefly with the condition of our own souls, and with the question how they may be saved here or hereafter. But when we are brought to feel, by one discipline or another, that we are bound up for good or for evil with our race, that we are not and cannot be exempt from any of its transgressions, then comes a demand for something more, than the gift of pardon, than the promise of a better world, if we be worthy. When we are brought to this border land between despair and a hope that is beyond all that we can ask or think, the ascension day breaks in upon us, as with the light of seven suns. He has gone up on high. He is there, where our eyes cannot follow him, with the God who is and was and is to come, his Father and our Father. He is there, not separated by space from those whose nature he bears ; not sep- arated from them in any sympathy ; in all things what he was when he bore their infirmities, was made sin for tliem, died their death. And that which constitutes his perfect Humanity, his truth, his jus- tice, his purity, his sympathy, — this is our inheritance/' (Maurice, Sermons-, vol. vi. p. 84.) 17 258 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. verifies the words of prophecy, henceforth ye shall see the heavens opened, and the Son of man at the right hand of God. There is therefore for those who remain in the continuing life of earth no anticipation of things to come^ such as is drawn in the conceptions of religion, us they are projected into the future, in the imagination of the world. The revelation that is to come is one with that that now is. After this life there shall come the beatific vision. The semblances of earth and time have gone. There is the manifestation to the spiritual eye of the fullness of the eternal glory. But there is no thought of the life to come that is apart from Him who on this earth was parted from those who followed him., and carried up into heaven. The voice that comes to those who remain is in the words, thou canst not follow me now, hut thou shalt follow me hereafter. S. John says, now are we the sons of God ; and it doth not yet appear what we shall he ; hut we hiow that when he shall appear we shall he like him,; for we shall see him as he is. The assumption that this course of human life is strictly the probation of the individual in his ma- ture development, and that the terminus of this probation is in the incident of the death of the individual, and that the location of heaven and hell is beyond the earth, and that the obje(!t of THE EULLNESS OE LIFE. 259 Balvation is transportation to the one and escape from the other^ and that human life is evil, and that the few who have a conscious faith, Avhich has yet in itself no ethical ground, are alone saved in the ultimate assize, to which all are summoned ; — this is the staple of the various religions of the world. The Christ has broken down the barriers of the grave. He has overcome death. He has opened the kingdom of heaven, that the earth and the heavens may become thenceforth one in their life. The superstitions which have divided and enslaved humanity, and the systems which have held on to a root of evil that was deeper than the love of God, are broken and thrown away. It is the day of deliverance. The will of God is manifested in love. The power of God is the power of the resur- rection. In the victory of the Christ for humanity, there is the conquest of hell and of death ; he hath the keys of hell and of death. This is the deliverance of man from all the powers that have claimed dominion over him, and separated him from God. It is the freedom, in its perfect realization, of the redemptive power of the Christ of man. The grave has then no victory in its corruption. It is the perfect life, the life of those who have loved righteousness. It is the life of those who have cast off the garments of their own vanity and selfishness, and entered into the life of Him who is the Redeemer of the world. 260 THE LEFE OF THE SPIRIT. It is the new life, the life of the fulfillment of the spirit ; it is the life of humanity ; and no man can claim it in his severancCj but in the life of hu- manity in the Christ. It fulfills the hope of man ; it is beyond all that was prefigured in the prophetic soul of the wide world. It is the fulfillment of the Will, in the expression of the apostle, of the God of hope. It completes the vision of the days when the ser- vant shall be as the master, and the bond shall be free. It is the time when the earth shall no more conceal her blood, nor cover her slain. It is the time, when there shall he no more crying, neither shall there he any more pain, for former things are passed away. It is the new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. When the apostle to the nations would express the life that is given in the revelation of God to the world, he says, The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of Ood, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost he with us all evermore. / believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, And of all things visible and invisible : And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, Begotten, not made. Being of one sub- stance with the Father, By whom all things were made; Who, for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven. And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, And was made man, And was crucified also for us wider Pon- tius Pilate, He suffered, and was buried; And the third day he rose again, according to the Scrip- tures ; And ascefided into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of the Father ; And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, Whose kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost^ the Lord and Giver of Life ; Who proceedeth from, the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, Who spake by the Prophets; And L believe one Catholic and Apostolic Church; I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins ; And I look for the Resur- rection of the dead ; And the Life of the world to come. Amen. A. D. 381-1881.