CHIRISTIANITY
AND
MODERN THOUGHT.  
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CHRIISTIANITY
AD
MODERN THOUGHT.
BOSTON:
AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION.
1873.
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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
THE AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
CAMBRIDGE:
PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
INTRODUCTION.
T HE following discourses were delivered in Boston,
at iHollis-Street Church, on successive Sunday
evenings, and repeated at King's Chapel on Monday
afternoons, during the winter of 1871-72, in response
to an invitation of the Executive Committee of the
AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION, whose purpose was
thus declared in the letter of invitation: -
"It is not proposed that the course shall be a merely
popular one, to awaken the indifferent and interest them
in familiar religious truths; but rather to meet the need
of thoughtful people perplexed amid materialistic and
sceptical tendencies of the time. Nor is it desired simply
to retrace in controversial method the beaten paths of
sectarian or theological debate; but rather, in the interest of a free and enlightened Christianity, to present
freshly the positive affirmations of faith."
The several discourses were prepared independently,
without conference or concerted plan; and for their
statements and opinions the responsibility rests solely
with their respective authors.
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CONTENTS.
PAGE
V
INTRODUCTION........................
BREAK BETWEEN MODERN THOUGHT AND ANCIENT FAITH
AND WORSHIP................
By Henry W. Bellows.
A TRUE THEOLOGY THE BASIS OF HUMAN PROGRESS...
By James Freeman Clarke.
THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE ROMISH CHURCH....
By Athanase Coquerel, Fils.
SELFHOOD AND SACRIFICE.............
By Orville Dewey.
THE RELATION OF JESUS TO THE PRESENT AGE.....
By Charles Carroll Everett.
THE MYTHICAL ELEMENT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT...
By Frederic Henry Hedge.
THE PLACE OF MIND IN NATURE AND INTUITION IN MAN*.
By James Martineau.
THE RELATIONS OF ETHIICS AND THEOLOGY......
By Andrew P. Peabody.
CHRISTIANITY: WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS.. 
By G. Vance Smith.
THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS...........
By Oliver Stearns.
8
85
61
101
129
157
179
209
231
273  
THE BREAK BETWEEN MODERN THOUGHT
AND
ANCIENT FAITH AND WORSHIP.
By HENRY W. BELLOWS.  
THE BREAK BETWEEN MODERN THOUGHT
AND
ANCIENT FAITH AND WORSHIP.
TIIHERE is evidently a growing disrelish, in an im      portant portion of the people of our time, for professional religion, technical piety, and theological faith.
These were always unpopular with youth, and people in
the flush of life and spirits; but this was because they
called attention to grave and serious things; and youth,
as a rule, does not like even the shadow of truth and duty
to fall too early or too steadily upon it. Restraint, care,
thoughtfulness, it resists as long as it can; and none who
recall their own eager love of pleasure and gayety, in the
spring-time of life, can find much difficulty in understanding or excusing it. Of course, too, careless, self-indulgent,
sensual, and frivolous people have always disliked the
gravity, and the faith and customs, of people professing
religion, and exhibiting special seriousness. They were a
reproach and a painful reminder to them, and must be
partially stripped of their reproving sanctity, by ridicule,
charges of hypocrisy, and hints of contempt. But, all the
while this was going on, the youth and frivolity of previous
generations expected the time to come when they must
surrender their carelessness, and be converted; and even 
4   BREAK BETWEEN MODERN THOUGHT
the worldly and scoffing shook in their secret hearts at the
very doctrines and the very piety they caricatured. The
old relations of master and pupil describe almost exactly
the feeling which youth and levity held toward instituted
faith and piety, a generation or two since. The schoolboy, indeed, still thinks himself at liberty to call his master
nick-names, to play tricks upon him, and to treat with
great levity, among his fellow-pupils, all the teaching and
all the rules of the school. But he nevertheless sincerely
respects his teacher; believes in him and in his teachings,
and expects to derive an indispensable benefit from them,
in preparing himself for his coming career. So it was with
the religion and piety of our fathers. The people profoundly respected the creed, the elders in piety, and the
eminent saints in profession and practice, although the
young had their jibes and jests, their resistance to churchgoing, their laugh at sanctimony; and the majority of
people then, as now, were not fond of the restraints of
piety, or the exercises of devotion.
But the alienation to which I wish to draw your attention now is something quite different from the natural
opposition of the young to serious thoughts; or the gay,
to grave matters; or those absorbed in the present, to
what belongs to the future; or of those charmed with the
use of their lower or more superficial faculties and feelings, to the suggestions and demands of their deeper and
nobler nature. That the body should not readily and
without a struggle submit to the mind; that thoughtlessness should not easily be turned into thoughtfulness; that
youth should not readily consent to wear the moral costume of maturity, or the feelings and habits of riper years;
that the active, fresh, curious creature, who has just go 
AND ANCIENT FAITH AND WORSHIP.
this world with its gay colors in his eye, should not be
much attracted by spiritual visions, and should find his
earthly loves and companions more fascinating than the
communion of saints or the sacred intercourse of prayer,all this, to say the least of it, is very explicable, and
belongs to all generations, and hardly discourages the
experienced mind, more than the faults and follies of the
nursery the wise mother who has successfully carried many
older children through them all.
It is quite another kind of antipathy and disrelish which
marks our time. It is not confined to youth, nor traceable
to levity and thoughtlessness. The Church and its creed
on one side, the world and its practical faith on the other,
seem now no longer to stand in the relation of revered
teachers and dull or reluctant pupils; of seriousness,
avoided by levity; of authoritative truth, questioned by
bold error; of established and instituted faith, provoking
the criticisms of impatience, caprice, ignorance, or folly.
An antagonism has arisen between them as of oil and
water, -a separation which is neither due to period of
life, nor stage of intelligence, nor even to worth of character; which does not separate youth from maturity, the
thoughtless fi-om the thinking, the bad from the good,
but divides the creeds, observances, and professions of
Christians, from a large body of people who insist that
after a certain fashion they are Christians too, and yet
will have little or nothing to do with professions of faith,
or pious pretensions, or religious ways of feeling, talking,
or acting.
Clearly, it would not do any longer to say that the
worth and virtue and influence of society, in this country,
could be estimated by the number of communicants in the
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6   BREAK BETWEEN MODERN THO UGHT
churches, by the degree of credit still given to any of the
long-believed theological dogmas, deemed in the last generation the sheet-anchors of the State. We all know
hundreds of people, who could sign no creed, and give no
theological account of their faith, whom we do not count
as necessarily less worthy in the sight of God or man than
many who have no difficulty in saying the whole Athanasian Creed. Nay, there are some millions of people in
this country, not the least intelligent or useful citizens in
all cases, who never enter a church-door. A generation or
two back, you would safely have pronounced all these
absentees to be worldly, careless people, infidels, atheists,
scoffers.  Do you expect to find them so now?  Some, of
course, but not the majority. Indeed, you would find a
great many of these people supporting churches, to which
their families go, and not themselves; or to which others
go, for whom they are glad to provide the opportunity.
They would tell you, if they could discriminate their own
thoughts, something like this: "Public worship and church
organizations, and creeds and catechisms, and sermons and
ceremonies, and public prayers and praises, are doubtless
very good things, and very useful up to a certain stage of
intelligence, and for a certain kind of character. But we
have discovered that the real truth and the real virtue
of what people have been misnaming religion is a much
larger, freer, and more interesting thing than churches,
creeds, ministers, and saints seem to think it. Here is
this present life, full of occupations and earnest struggles
and great instructions. Here is this planet, not a thousandth part known, and yet intensely provoking to intelligent curiosity; and science is now every day taking a fresh
and an ever bolder look into it; and we want our Sun 
AND ANCIENT FAITH AND WORSHIP.
days to follow these things up. That is our idea of worship. Then, again, the greatest philosophers are now
writing out their freest, finest thoughts about our nature;
and, if we go to church, we are likely to find some fanatical and narrow-minded minister warning us against reading or heeding what these great men say; and it is a
thousand times fresher and grander and more credible
than what he says himself! Why, the very newspapers,
the earnest and well-edited ones, contain more instruction,
more warning, more to interest the thoughtful mind, than
the best sermons; and why should a thinking man, who
needs to keep up with the times, and means to have his
own thoughts firee, go where duty or custom makes it
common to frown upon inquiry, doubt, and speculation,to shut out knowledge and testimony, and stamp a man
with a special type of thinking or professing?"
For there are, you observe, - in justice to these thoughts,
-these two instructors to choose between in our generation. Here is the Church, with its ecclesiastical usages
and its pious exhortations; its Sunday school for the
children; its devotional meeting in the week, and its Sunday teaching and worship, - all acknowledged as good for
those that like them, and are willing to accept what people
thought or believed was true a hundred or five hundred
years ago; and here is the modern press, with the wonderful profusion of earnest and able books, cheap and attractive, and treating boldly all subjects of immediate and of
permanent Interest; and here are the reviews, quarterly
and monthly, that now compress into themselves and
popularize all that these books contain, and furnish critical
notices of them; and then, again, here are the newspapers,
wonderful in variety and ability, that hint at, suggest, and
7 
8    BREAK BETWEEN MODERN THOUGHT
bring home all the new and fresh thoughts of the time.
And the marvel is, that most of these books, reviews,
papers, are in the interest of, and seem inspired by, something larger, freer, firesher, truer, than what the churches
and the creeds are urging. Thus church religion and general culture do not play any longer into each other's hands.
If you believe what the men of science, the philosophers,
the poets and critics, believe, you cannot believe, except
in a very general way, in what the creeds and churches
commonly profess. Accordingly, the professors in college,
the physicians, the teachers, the scientists, the reformers,
the politicians, the newspaper men, the reviewers, the
authors, are seldom professing Christians, or even churchgoers; and if they do go to church from motives of interest or example, they are free enough to confess in private
that they do not much believe what they hear.
Assuming that this is a tolerably correct accountalthough doubtless exaggerated for pictorial effect - of
the existing state of things among the reading and thinking class of this country, what is the real significance of
it?  Is it as new as it seems?  Is it as threatening to the
cause of religious faith as it seems? Reduced to its most
general terms, is it any thing more or other than this?
The faith and worship of this generation, and the experience and culture of a portion of this generation, have temporarily fallen out; and, as in all similar quarrels, there
is, for the time, helpless misunderstanding, mutual jealousy
and misrepresentation. The faith and piety of the time
pronounce the culture, the science, the progressive philanthropy, the politics, the higher education and advanced
literature, to be godless and Christless; and the culture
of the age retaliates, perhaps, with still greater sincerity, 
AND ANCIENT FAITH AND WORSHIP.
in pronouncing the faith and worship of the time to be
superstitious, antiquated, sentimental, and specially fitted
only to people willing to be led by priests and hireling
ministers.
Now, if this were a quarrel between experience and inexperience, between good and bad, between truth and
falsehood, it would be easy to take sides. But faith and
knowledge have both equal rights in humanity. People
who are sincerely in love with knowledge and science and
philosophy are not thereby made enemies of God or man;
certainly are not to be discouraged and abused for their
devotion to practical and scientific truth, their search
for facts, their interest in the works of the Creator, even
if they are not possessed of what the church properly
calls faith and piety. And, on the other hand, however
shocked established faith and piety may naturally be by
the handling which religion and its creeds and worship
receive from modern inquisitors, ought the deeper believers to be seriously alarmed for the safety of its root or
its healing leaves, on account of the shaking which the
tree of life is now receiving? However slow science and
culture may often show themselves to be in recognizing
the fact, can any reasonable and impartial mind, acquainted
with history or human nature, believe that faith itself is
an inconstant or perishable factor in our nature? prayer
a childish impulse, which clear-seeing manhood must put
away? the conscience, not the representative of a holiness
eathroned over the moral universe, but an artificial organ,
which social convenience has developed, much like the
overgrown liver in the Strasburg goose? In short, who
that considers the part that faith and worship have played
in the history of the race, can doubt their essential and
1*
9 
10  BREAK BETWEEN MODERN THOUGHT
permanent place in human fortunes? The question of
some religion, of some worship, for the people, does not
seem debatable. The only alternative among nations has
been a religion in which mystery, awe, and fear prevailed,
clothing themselves in dread and bloody sacrifices, or else
a religion in which more knowledge, more reason, more
love, embodied themselves in a simpler and gentler ritual.
The nations have had only a choice- not always a
wholly voluntary one- between terrific superstitions and
more or less reasonable religions. Christianity has prevailed in civilized nations, since Constantine, by accommodating its theological dogmas and external ritual to
the needs of successive eras; beginning with coarser and
more heathenish symbols, and running itself clearer and
more clear, as the mind and taste and experience of the
race have developed "sweetness and light."  But does
this make Christianity only a human growth, and so predict a coming decay, which many seem to think has
already begun? On the contrary, the decisive fact about
Christianity is, that, while its intellectual history is changing, its early records are in form fixed and permanent,
and that its real progress has been uniformly a return
towards its original simplicity. Other faiths develop. It is
we who develop under Christianity, and are slowly changed
unto the original likeness of Christ. Christ's statements,
Christ's character, Christ's words, do not become antiquated. We are not called upon to explain away, as superstitions of the time, any of the certain words he said,
or thoughts he had, or commandments he left. True, there
are critical embarrassments about the. record, and room
enough to question how it was made up; and we cannot
always trust the reporters of that age, or our own. But 
AND ANCIENT FAITH AND WORSHIP.
when we get, as we certainly do get in hundreds of cases,
at Christ's own words; or when we really see- as by a
hundred vistas, through all the debris and rubbish of the
age, we may see -the true person and bearing and spirit
of Jesus, we beholdl, we recognize, we know, a Being, who,
transferred to this age, and placed in the centre of the
choicest circle of saints  and  sages whom  culture and
science and wisdom could collect, would bear just the
same exalted relation of superiority to them that he did
to the fishermen and publicans and kings and high-priests
and noble women and learned rabbis of his own day.  We
should not hesitate, any more than they did, to call him
Master and Lord; to say, "To whom else shall we go?
Thou hast the words of eternal life."
Those, then, who fear that true culture, that science
or philosophy boldly pushed, that learning and logic
impartially applied,- whether in studying God's method
in creation, or his method in revelation, - can injure permanently faith and piety, or endanger Christianity, as a
whole, must either think the religious wants of man very
shallow or very artificial, or the providence of God very
easily baffled, and the harmony of his word and works
very badly matched.  If there be in nature or in man, in
earth or in our dust, in chemistry, astronomy, anthropology; in geology, the language of dead eras; or in
language, the geology of buried races, any thing that
disproves the existence and providence of a living God,
the holiness and goodness and trustworthiness of his
character; the moral and religious nature of mnan, his
accountableness, his immortality  the divine beauty and
sinless superiority of Jesus Christ, and the essential truth
of his religion, — by all means let us know it! Why
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12  BREAK BETWEEN MODERN THOUGHT
should we allow ourselves to be beguiled by fables and
false hopes and make-believes?  But the faith of religious
experience, the confidence of those who know and love
and have become spiritually intimate with the gospel of
Jesus Christ, is usually such that they would sooner mistrust their senses than their souls. They have found a
moral and spiritual guidance, a food and medicine in their
Christian faith, which enables themn calmly to say to
criticism, to science, to culture, "We  do not hold our
faith, or practise our worship, by your leave, or at your
mercy." Faith leans first on the spiritual nature of man,
and not on demonstrable science. It would not be faith,
if it were only a sharper sight. It is insight, not sight.
It springs from its own root, not primarily from the
intellect. As we love our wives and children with something besides the judgment, or the logical faculty, so we
love God with the heart, and not with the understanding.
We stand erect, with open eyes, when we are seeking
truth; we fall on our knees with closed eyelids, when we
are seeking God! Religion is not the rule of three, but
the golden rule; it is not the major and minor premises
and copula of logic, but the sacred instinct of the soul,
which Jesus Christ has satisfied, and guided, and owned,
and directed, in an inestimable way.
But when faith and worship have taken this true and
independent tone, let them not join the foolish bigots,
who think that because faith rests on other foundations
than science, therefore it owes nothing to science and
culture, and can wholly separate its fortunes and future
firom them. True, fktith and culture, religion and science,
in spite of their general and permanent agreement and
connection, when they cannot get on honestly together, 
AND ANCIENT FAITH AND WORSHIP.
had better for the time separate; for they embarrass each
other, and it is in their insulation that they sometimes
ripen and prepare in separate crucible elements that are
ultimately to blend in a finer compound than either ever
knew before.  Thus faith, driving science and culture out
of her cell, and closing the doors on fact and observation,
wrapt in devotion, has sometimes caught visions of God
through her purely spiritual atmosphere, which sages in
their laboratories have never seen. The great religious
inspirations have not come from scholars, but from seers;
from men of soul, not men of sense. "How knoweth
this man letters, having never learned?" said his contemporaries of Christ. Well, he knew no letters, but he had
what letters never teach,- divine wisdom!  He  knew
God, that end of knowledge; he knew man, that last of
philosophy. Faith therefore often recruits itself in a temporary divorce from science, just as Romanism profitably
drives her priests into periodical retreats for prayer and
exclusive meditations on God and Christ. It is beautiful to
study even those humble and uninstructed Christian sects,
whose simple and implicit faith is protected, yes, and
exalted, by their providential indifference to science or
unacquaintance with speculative difficulties. It is not
their ignorance that kindles their devotion, but it is faith's
vitality, which in certain exceptional natures and times
beams and glows most purely, fed only on its own sacred
substance. When you have reached the inner kernel
of a true MIoravian, or even a true Catholic heart, and
found a solid core of faith, unsupported by any other
evidence than that which the Scripture described in the
words, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen," you have gone far towards
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14  BREAK BETWEEN MODERN THOUGHT
fathoming the holiest secret in our nature, the well of
living water.  And, on the other hand, how much better,
both for faith and science, that science should, at a time
like this, go without religious ends into physical or metaphysical pursuits, investigate, inquire, test, question, in
absolute independence of theological or spiritual results.
It is only when thus free and bold and uncommitted that
her testimony is worth any thing. Think of Newton,
meditating and exploring the solar system, in the simple
love of truth, without let or hindrance from ecclesiastical
intermeddlers, and compare him with Galileo, lifting his
telescope under the malediction of the priesthood of
Rome.
No: let science be as free as light, as brave as sunbeams, as honest as photography!  Encourage  her to
chronicle her conclusions with fearless and unreproached
fidelity. She will doubtless make many things which
have been long associated with religion look foolish and
incredible. But it is only so religion can shed some husks,
and get rid of some embarrassments. It is, in short, only
just such assaults and criticisms from science and experience that ever induces religion to strain out the flies from
her honey; to dissociate what is accidental in faith fromn
what is essential and permanent. And, when science and
culture have gathered in the full harvest of this wonderful season of discovery and speculation, we may expect to
find faith stripped of many garments, now worshipped,
which ignorance and fear put upon her for protection and
defence; but really strengthened in substance, by the free
movements allowed her lungs, and the dropping of the
useless load upon her back. Then, too, science and philosophy will again resume their places at the feet of the 
AND ANCIENT FAITH AND WORSHIP.
master-principle in our nature, until again driven away,
by new disagreements, to return again by the discovery
of a finer harmony.
Self-culture will never supersede worship, more than
golden lamps burning fragrant oils will ever supersede
the sun; more than digging and hoeing and planting will
supersede sunshine and rain from heaven. Self-culture?
Yes: by all means, and in any amount, but not as an end.
When people look to ornamental gardening for the crops
that are to feed the famine-smitten world, and not to the
pastures and prairies, as they lie in the light of the common sun, they will look to self-culture for the characters,
the hearts, the souls that glorify God and lift and bless
the world.  "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." That is the irrepealable law of growth. " Seek first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness, and all other things shall be added
unto you." Worship, faith, duty, devotion to God, Christ,
humanity, to justice, freedom, truth,- these, and not
self-culture, have lifted the race and the world. Learn,
acquire, cultivate, improve, develop yourselves, by art,
music, reading, languages, study, science, experience, but
do it all in seeking to know and love and serve God and
man. Seek to know Christ, and you will learn more, indirectly, than though you sought all knowledge without
this thirst. Seek to know God, and you shall find all
science and culture healthful, sacred, harmonious, satisfy
ing, and devout.
The break between modern thought and ancient creeds
and worship, thus considered, though serious, and worth
the utmost pains to heal, by all arts that do not conceal
or salve over, without curing the wound, is not perma
15 
16  BREAK BETWEEN MODERN THOUGHT
nently discouraging to earnest and well-considered Christian faith. Nor are all the signs of the times one way.
For- after all that has been said about the restless and
dissatisfied condition of the critical and conscious thought
of the time, and the scepticism of the learned, or the
speculative class, or of the new thinkers born of the physical progress of the age, and the decay of worship in the
literary and artistic, the editorial and poetical circles- it
remains to be said, that, leaving this important and valuable body of people aside, - not badly employed, and not
without personal warrant for their doubts and withdrawal
from positive institutions, - there remains a mighty majority, on whom the Christian religion and historical faith
and the external church have a vigorous and unyielding
hold; whose practical instincts and grand common-sense
and hereditary experience anchor them safely in positive
faith, while the scepticism raves without and blows itself
clear, and passes over. Christianity first addressed itself
to common people, not to avoid criticism, but to secure
the attention of the moral affections and the spiritual
powers, instead of the meaner understanding.  It has
lived on the heart and conscience and needs and yearnings of the masses, from and to whom practical wisdom
and fixed institutions and simple faith always come and
always return. Common sense is not the sense that is
common, but the sense that is in common. And popular
faith is not the faith of private ignorance massed, but
of that wisdom which alone enables ignorant people to
find a basis for feelings and actions that all feel to be
beyond and above their private ignorance or self-will.
The common people were the first to hear Christ gladly:
they will be the last to hear any who deny him. 
AND ANCIENT FAITH AND WORSHIP.
It is easy to exaggerate the decline of modern faith, and
to misread the tendencies of the time on which we have
been dwelling. Thus, paradox though it seem, it were just
as true to say that more people are deliberately interested
in Christian faith and worship to-day than at any previous
era in the history of our religion, as to asseverate that
more people doubt and regret it than ever before. Both
statements are true; and they are reconciled only by the
fact that it is only in this century that the claims of faith
and worship have been popularly debated, or that the
people were expected or allowed to have any independent
opinion about them. The general soil of our humanity is
for the first time surveyed and sown; and it is found that,
with more wheat than ever, there are also more tares.
With more intelligent and convinced worshippers, there
are more wilful or logical neglecters of worship; with
more genuine believers, more sceptics; with more religious activity, more worldliness. Without an army in the
field, there will be no deserters; without a common currency of genuine coin, no counterfeits; without a formidable body of affirmers, few deniers.
The positive institutions of Christianity decline in one
form, to spring into new life in other and better forms.
Doubtless, fourfold more money is expended to-day upon
temples of worship than in what have been falsely called
the ages of faith, - rather the ages of acquiescence. Re,
lig,ion does not decline as a costly interest of humanity
with the progress of doubt, fieedom, intelligence, science,
and economic development. It is a permanent and eternal
want of man, and is always present, either as a vast, overshadowing superstition, or as a more or less intelligent
faith. Nowhere has it a stronger hold on society than in
17 
18   BREAK BETWEEN.~ODERN THOUGHT
fi-ee America, which false prophets, with their faces to the
past, muttered was about to become its grave. This busy,
delving, utilitarian country, without a past, denied the
influence of ruins and the memory of mythic founders, a
land without mystery or poetry,-  how could so tender
and venerable a sentiment as reverence live in its garish
day? how so sweet a nymph as Piety kneel in its muddy
marts of trade, or chant her prayers in its monotonous
wilderness, ringing with the woodman's axe or the screech ing saw? But now delegates of all the great religious
bodies in the Old World are visiting America, for religious
instruction and inspiration. Nowhere, it is confessed, is
there to be found a people so generally interested in relig ion, ready to make so great sacrifices for it, or so deeply
convinced that its principles and inspirations are at the
root of all national prosperity. Nowhere do churches
and chapels spring up with such rapidity, and in such
numbers; nowhere is the ministry as well supported, or
its ministers as influential members of society; nowhere
do plain men of business and intelligence, I do not say of
science and philosophy, participate so freely in religious
worship. And since all political compulsion has been
taken off from the support of religion, and it has been made
purely voluntary, its interests have received even more
care. There is little doubt that the decline of religious
establishments, the decay of priestly authority, the complete withdrawal of governmental patronage, the discrediting of the principle of irrational fear, the dispersion of
false dogmas, the clearing up of superstition, the growth
of toleration and charity, instead of weakening true faith
or lessening public worship, will greatly increase and
strengthen both. For it is not man's ignorance, weakness, 
AND ANCIENT FAITH AND WORSHIP.
and fears, that lead him most certainly to Christian wor ship and faith. There is a worship and a faith of blind ness and dread; but they have no tendency to develop a
moral and spiritual sense of the character of God, or the
character becoming man, or to survive the spread of gen eral intelligence and mental courage. If thought, if cour age of mind, if inquiry and investigation, if experience
and learning and comprehensive grasp, if light and sound
reason, and acquaintance with human nature, tended to
abolish a living God from the heart and fiith of man, to
disprove the essential truths of Christianity, or to make
life and the human soul less sacred, aspiring, and religious,
the world would be on its rapid way to atheism. But I
maintain that science itself, philosophy and free inquiry,
however divorced from religious institutions and dogmas,
were never so humble, reverential, and Christian as since
they partly emancipated themselves from theological or
ecclesiastical censure and suspicion.   For  ages science
knelt to religion as she went to her crucible or laboratory,
like the sexton passing the altar in a Catholic cathedral,
and with as little thought or feeling as he, simply to avert
censure, while she pursued inquiries she knew would banish the superstition she pretended to honor. Faith and
knowledge  were at opposite poles; religious truth and
scientific truth, finally and permanently amenable to different standards. How dishonoring to religion was this distrust of light and knowledge! how faithless in God, this
faith in him which could not bear investigation! how compromising to Christianity, the sort of trust which refuses
as blasphemous the application of all the tests and proofs
which are required in the certification of every other important conviction! Religious faith rests on the spiritual
19 
20  BREAK BETWEEN MODERN THOUGHT
nature; but its basis is not less real for being undemonstrable, like the axioms of mathematics. That is not real
faith which dares not investigate the grounds of its own
being. It is irreverent to God, to affirm that he does not
allow us to try his ways; to demand proofs of his existence and righteous government; to ask for the credentials
of his alleged messengers; to doubt until we are rationally
convinced. If the artificial feeling that faith is opposed
to reason; religious truth to universal truth; that belief in
unseen things is less rational or less capable of verification
than the radical beliefs of the senses, - if these prejudices
were sound, or not the reverse of true, the world would be
on its inevitable way to universal infidelity and godless
materialism. But is that the tendency of things? Is it
that religion is growing less mystic? or only science more
so? Have not real and affecting mysteries been very
much transferred for the time from theology to philoso
phy, from the priest to the professor? I doubt very much
whether men of science are not more truly on their knees
than men of superstition, in our days. Never did such
candor, such confessions of baffled insight, such a sense of
inscrutable wisdom and power, such a feeling of awe and
dependence, seem to prevail in science as now, when so
many theologians are raising the eyebrow, and seeking to
alarm the world at what they call the atheism of the most
truth-loving, earnest, and noble men. I would sooner
have the scepticism -reverent and honest and fearlessof these solemn and awed inquisitors in the inner shrines
of nature, than the faith of self-bandaged priests, who are
thinking to light the way to heaven with candles on the
mid-day altar, or to keep faith in God alive only by processions in vestments of purple and gold 
AND ANCIENT FAITH AND WORSHIP.
Nor has Christianity any thing permanently to fear from
the disposition which now so largely prevails, to separate
it fiom its accidents, its accretions, and its misrepresentations. The days have not long gone by when men were
counted as entitled to little respect, if they did not wear
side-swords and bag-wigs. You recollect how our Benjamin Franklin surprised, shocked, and then delighted all
Europe, by appearing at the court of France in plain
citizen's clothes? Religion, too, has had her court-dress,
and her sounding court-titles, and official robes, and circuitous ceremonies. The world has felt horror-stricken
whenever any brave and more believing spirit has ventured to ask the meaning of one of these theological tags
and titles. But how much less wholesome is living water,
if drunk out of a leaf, or the palm of one's hand, than if
presented on a salver, in a curiously jewelled flagon, by a
priest in livery? How much has theological ingenuity of
statement and systematic divinity, which it takes the study
of a life to understand, added to the power of the simplicity of Christ as he unfolds himself in the Sermon on
the Mount? Yet, if any one has dared to be as simple as
Christ himself was in his own faith, he has been said to
deny the Lord that bought him. It has been called infidelity, to think Christ meant only just what he said, and
was understood to say, in his simple parables. You must
believe something not less incredible and abstruse than the
church Trinity; something not less contrary to natural
justice and common sense than the church vicarious atonement; something not less cruel and vindictive than the
eternal misery of all who through ignorance, birth, or accident, or even perversity and pride, do not hear of, or do
not accept, the blood of Christ as their only hope of God's
21 
22  BREAK BETWEEN MODERN THOUGHT
mercy and forgiveness, or you are no Christian. Now I
hold these dogmas themselves to be unchristian in origin
and influence, although held by many excellent Christian
men. I believe that they are the main obstacles with
many honest, brave, and enlightened men in our day, to
their interest in public worship; and that millions repudiate
the Church, and Christianity, which is a different thing,
simply because they suppose her to be responsible for these
barnacles upon the sacred ship. It would be just as reasonable to hold the Hudson River responsible for the filth
the sewers of the city empty into it; or to hold the sun
answerable for the changes in its beams, caused by the
colored glass in church-windows.
Christianity, the Christianity of Christ, is simple, rational,
intelligible, independent of, yet in perfect harmony,- if it
be often an unknown harmony, - with philosophy, ethics,
science; true, because from God, the God of nature as well
as grace; true, because the transcript of self-evident and
self-proving principles; true, because guaranteed by our
nature; true, because of universal application, unimpeached
by time or experience. It affirms the being and authority
of a righteous, holy, and all-loving God, whom man can
serve and love and worship because he is made in his
image; can know, by studying himself; and to whom man
is directly related by reason, conscience, and affections. It
affirms divine science and worship to consist in obedience
to God's laws, written on man's heart, and for ever urged
by God's Spirit. It affirms the present and persistent penalty, the inevitable consequences, of all moral and spiritual
wrong-doing and disobedience; the present and future
blessedness of well-doing and holiness. It sets forth Jesus
Christ as the Son of God and Son of Man,- appellations 
AND ANCIENT FAITH AND WORSHIP.
that, deeply considered, really mean the same thing,the direct messenger, representative, and plenipotentiary
of God,- his perfect moral image. It insists upon men's
putting themselves to school to Christ, honoring, loving,
and following him; forming themselves into classes,another name for churches, - and by prayer, meditation,
and study of his life, informing their minds and hearts,
and shaping their wills in his likeness, which is the ideal
of humanity.  Its clear object is to dignify and ennoble
man, by presenting God as his father; to show him what
his nature is capable of, by exhibiting Christ in the loveliness, sanctity, and power of his awful yet winning beauty;
to make him ashamed of his own sins, and afraid of sin,
by arousing moral sensibility in his heart; safely to fence
in his path by beautiful and sacred customs,- the tender,
simple rites of baptism and communion; the duty of daily
prayer, the use of the Scriptures, and respect for the Lord's
Day.
Here is a Christianity without dogmatic entanglement;
plain, direct, earnest, simple, defensible, intelligible to a
child, yet deep enough to exhaust a life's study. For it is
the simplicities of religion that are the permanent and
glorious mysteries that never tire. They draw our childhood's wonder, our manly reverence, and age's unquenched
curiosity and awe.  Do we ever tire of the stars, or the
horizon, or the blue sky, or the dawn, or the sunset, or
running water, or natural gems?  Do we ever tire of the
thought of a holy, all-wise, all-good Spirit of spirits, our
God and our Father, or of hearing of the reverence and
trust, the obedience and the love, due to him? Do we
ever tire of Jesus Christ, considered as the sinless image,
within human limitations, of God's love and truth and
23 
24   BREAK BET VEEVN MJIODERN TIIOUGHT
mercy and purity? Do we ever tire of hearing the wondrous story of his obedient, disinterested, and exalted lite
and sacrifice? or of the call to follow his graces and copy
his perfections into our own hearts and lives? Are we
ever weary of hearing of the blessed hope of immortality,
with the comfortable expectation of throwing off the burden of our flesh, and winging our way in spiritual fireedom
nearer to God and the light of our Master's face?  Who
can exhaust, who can add to, the real force and attraction
and fulness of those truths and promises? Truly received,
they grow with every day's contemplation and use; they
fill the soul with an increasing awe and joy; they prove
only less common-place as they are more nearly approached, more copious as they are more drawn upon,
and more sacred as they are more familiar.
It is the common, simple, universal truths that are
the great, inexhaustible, powerful, and never-wearying
truths.  But doubtless it requires courage, personal conviction, and self-watchfulness, to maintain personal piety
or religious institutions under free and enlightened conditions, when they are just beginning. When sacramental
mysteries are exploded, when the official sanctity of the
ministry is disowned, when the technical and dogmatic
conditions of acceptance with God are abandoned, when
every man's right of private judgment is confessed, when
common sense is invited into the inner court of faith,
when every man is confessed to be a king and a priest in
that temple of God which he finds in his own body and
soul, when real, genuine goodness is owned as the equivalent of religion, then it is evident that the support of
religious institutions, of public worship, of the church and
the ordinances, must appeal to something besides the 
AND ANCIENT FAITH AND WORSHIP.
ignorance, the fears, the superstitions, the traditions of
the Christian world. They must fall back on the practical convictions men entertain of their intrinsic importance. They must commend themselves to the sober,
plain, and rational judgment of men of courage, reflection,
and observation. They fall into the same category with
a government based not on the divine right of kings, or
the usages of past generations, the artificial distinctions
of ranks and classes, owing fealty each to that which is
socially above itself, but resting on the consent of the
governed, and deriving its authority and its support from
the sense of its usefulness and necessity. We have not
yet achieved fully, in this country, the passage of the
people over firom the Old World status of subjects to the
New World status of citizens. We are in the midst of
the glorious struggle for a State, a national government,
which rests securely on the love and service of hearts that
have created it, and maintain and defend it on purely
rational and intelligible grounds. It is so new, so advanced, so sublime an undertaking, that we often falter
and faint, as if man were not good enough, nor reasonable
enough, to be entitled to such a government. We often
doubt if we can bear the dilution which the public virtue
and good sense in our native community suffers from the
flood of ignorance and political superstition coming with
emigrants firom other and coarser states of society and
civil organizations. WTe are not half alive to the glory
and grandeur of the experiment of free political institutions, and do not press with the zeal we ought the general
education, the political training, the moral discipline, which
can alone save the State, when it has no foundation but
the good-will, the respect, and the practical valuation of
2
25 
26   BREAK BETWEEN MODERN THOUGHT
the people. But is the State or the nation ever so truly
divine as when it is owned as the voice of God, calling
all the people to maintain equal justice, to recognize universal interests, to embody Christian ethics in public law?
And despite our local mortifications and occasional misgivings, what nation is now so strong and firm, what
government so confident and so promising, as our own.?
What but freedom, fidelity to rational principles and ideal
justice, give it this strength? What is it, on the other
hand, but traditions that represent the ignorance and
accidents and injustice of former ages, - what is it but
authority usurped and then consecrated, social superstitions hardened into political creeds, - that is now proving the weakness and peril of European nationalities,
and imperial or monarchical governments? Knowledge,
science, literature, progress, truth, liberty, become sooner
or later the enemies of all governments, and all social
institutions, not- founded in abstract justice and equal
rights. Yet how fearful the transition! Who can contemplate the downfall of the French empire, and then
look at the architects of the new republic, working in
the crude material of a priest-ridden or unschooled populace, without dismay? Yet the process is inevitable.
Democratic ideas are abroad: they are in the air. They
corrode all the base metal they touch; and thrones and
titles, and legalized classes, and exceptional prerogatives,
are predestined to a rapid disintegration. How blessed
the nation that has transferred its political homage from
traditions to principles; from men or families, to rights
and duties; firom a compromise with ancient inequality
and wrong, to an affirmation of universal justice and right!
Yet never had a people so grave and so constant and so 
ANVD ANCIENT FAITH AND WORSHIP.
serious duties as we have. And there is nothing in oiar
principles or government that must save our coi l  y-, in
spite of the failure of political virtue, intelligence, and
devotion, in our private citizens. God has buried many
republics, because the people were unworthy of them.
Their failure was no disproof of the principle involved,
but only an evidence that the people fell wholly below
their privileges and ideas. America may add another to
this list of failures, but can do nothing to discredit the
truth and glory and final triumph of the democratic idea.
I do not believe we shall fail; on the contrary, I have an
increasing faith ill the sense and virtue and ability of the
people of this country. But the success of American political institutions depends very much on the success of the
Christian and religious institutions that match them, and
are alone adapted to them. We cannot long guarantee
religious institutions, in a country of free schools, public
lyceums, unlicensed newspapers, unimpeded inquiry, and
absolute religious equality, if they do not rest on grounds
of reason and experience and sober truth. Mere authority, mere ecclesiasticism, mere sacred usages, mere mystery, or mere dogmatism, will not long protect the creeds
and formularies of the church. They are undergoing a
species of dry-rot, like to that which the rafters of my
own church lately suffered from the confinement and
unventilated bondage in iron boxes in which their ends
had been placed for greater security. They wanted air
arid light, and more confidence in their inherent soundness; and, if they had been permitted it, they would have
lasted a hundred years. It is precisely so with the Christian religion, boxed up in creeds. It grows musty, wormeaten, and finally loses its life and hold. A certain timid
27 
28  BREAK BETWEEN MODERN THOUGHT
and constitutionally religious portion of the community
will cherish any creed or usage which is time-honored;
and the less robust and decisive minds of the time will
rally about what is established and venerable, however
out of date, incredible, or irrational. But it is what is
going on in the independent and free mind of the common
people, that should have our most serious regard.  What
is the faith of the fairly educated young men and women
who are now springing up in America?  Certainly, it is
not, in the more gifted or the most thoughtful part of it,
in sympathy with any form of sacramental or dogmatic
Christianity. It is not Trinitarian; it is not biblical; it
is not technical. It is hardly Christian! It is bold, independent, inquisitive, questioning every thing, and resolute
in its rights of opinion. It is alienated from church and
worship to a great degree. It suspects the importance of
religious institutions, and reads and thinks and worships
in books of poetry and philosophy.  A timid heart might
easily grow alarmed at the symptoms, and think that
irreligion, and decay of worship and fellowship in the
Christian Church, were upon us. But sad and discouraging
as the present symptoms are to many, I see more to hope
than fear in these tendencies. They are a rebuke to formal and technical theology,- to mere ecclesiasticism, to
outworn ways. They are bringing a violent assault upon
the hard crust of a stifling belief, of which the world must
get rid before the gospel of Christ can emerge, and be
received in its primitive simplicity.  It is the only way in
which faith is ever purified, -by doubt and denial. The
gospel requires a new statement.  It must come out of its
ecclesiastical bulwarks. It must abandon its claim to any
other kind of judgment than all other truth claims and 
AND ANCIENT I'AITH AND WORSHIP.
allows. It must place itself by the side of science, experience, and philosophy, and defy their tests. It must
invite the most rigid investigation. It must claim its
foundations in eternal truth. It must prove its efficiency,
not with the weak, but the strong; not with the ignorant,
but the learned; not with the bound, but the free. And
then it will recover its lost ground, and take a stronger
and diviner position than it ever had before.
This is the work that Liberal Christianity has in hand;
a difficult, slow, and often discouraging work, but one
that is intensely patriotic, intensely practical, intensely
necessary. That which was the mere fortress into which
the enlightened and free-minded people of Massachusetts
fled for refuge fiom ecclesiastical tyranny, a half-century
ago, - Unitarianism,- is now become a recognized crusade for religious liberty for the American people. The
liberty is coming fast enough, and surely enough; but will
the worship, will the Christian seriousness, will the fellowship of faith, will the piety that gives aromatic beauty as
well as health to the soul, come with it? If it were not
to come, liberty would be only license and secularity and
worldliness. Every firm, well-ordered, earnest and religious congregation of the liberal faith; exhibiting stableness, order, solemnity; doing religious work among the
poor, and cultivating piety in its own youth; making
sacrifices to its own ideas, and upholding its own worship, - is an argument of the most solid kind, an example
of contagious power, an encouragement of priceless
cheer, for those who think that Christian liberty necessarily leads to license and decay of worship; or that
Christ is less revered and loved and trusted when he
is accepted in the derived and dependent character he
29 
30  BREAK BETWEEN MODERN THOUGHT
claimed, -the only tenable, rational, possible character
in which a century hence he cal be received by any
unsuperstitious persons. We have a sacred privilege, a
glorious opportunity. We only need to show ourselves
warm, earnest, united, attached to worship, fruitful in
piety, devoted to good works, zealous for God's glory
and man's redemption, sincere, humble, yet rational and
free followers of Christ, to win an immense victory for the
gospel in this inquiring and doubting age. I have no
great immediate hopes, but hopes beyond expression in
the gracious development of another generation. I bato
not a jot of heart or hope that absolute liberty in religion
will favor the growth of piety, as much as political freedom has favored the growth of order and peace and prosperity. Oh! not a thousandth part the power of Christian
truth and righteousness has yet been shown in the world.
The love of God, the love of man, have only begun their
glorious mission. Christ yet waits for his true throne.
Humanity is just come of age, and, with some wild festivity, is claiming its heritage. But God is with and over
it; and Jesus Christ is its inspirer and guide. He will
not lose his headship. He will be more followed when
less worshipped; more truly loved when less idolized;
more triumphant when more clearly understood! Darkness, wrath, threats, enchantments, sacraments, prostrations, humiliations of reason, emotional transports, affectations of belief, belief for its own sake,- none of these
things are truly favorable to Christ's kingdom or the glory
of his gospel. God is light, and in him is no darkness at
all. Christ is the Sun of righteousness. When reason,
conscience, affection, rule the world; when love and justice, and mild and tender views of life and humanity, of 
AND ANCIENT FAITH AND WORSHIP.
God and Christ, displace the cruel terrors and superstitions
that have survived the social and political meliorations
of the age, we shall begin to see that love is the fulfilling
of the law, and liberty of thought the greatest friend of
worship, the finest result of Christ's coming, and the
throne from which he commands the whole human heart
and history.
31 
k 
A  TRUE  TIHEOLOGY  THE  BASIS
OF
HUMAN PROGRESS.
BY JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.
2t,  
A TRUE THEOLOGY THE BASIS
OF
HUMAN PROGRESS.
HE  subject of the present lecture is "A True The       ology the Basis of Human Progress." And, in
order to strike the key-note, and to indicate the object at
which I aim, I will read four or five passages from the New
Testament, which describe such a Theology in its spirit
and root.
The Apostle Paul says:1   I count not myself to have
apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those
things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those
things which are before, I press toward the mark." So he
declares himself a Progressive Christian.
Again he says: 2 C; We know in part, and we prophesy
[or teach] in part. But when that which is perfect is come,
then that which is in part shall be done away." So he
declares that all intellectual statements, his own included,
are relative and provisional. IHe is here speaking, doubtless, not of rational insights, but of the insight when
elaborated by the intellect into a statement; not of intuitional knowledge, but that which comes from reflection.
In regard to all such propositions, he would accept the
1 Phil. iii. 13.      2 1  Cor. xiii. 9, 10. 
36      A TRUE THEOLOGY THIE BASIS
modern doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge; thus
cutting up by the roots the poisonous weed of Bigotry.
Again: "Brethren, be not children in understanding:
howbeit, in malice be ye children, but in understanding be
men." 1 He thus requires and authorizes a manly, intelligent Theology.
Again: "NWho also hath made us able ministers of the
New Testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for
the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."2 Ile here
rejects the Theology of the letter, including the doctrine
of Literal Inspiration.
Again: "God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but
of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." 8
My Thesis to-night is not a truism; my argument is
not unnecessary or uncalled for. Nothing is more common than to undervalue the importance of Theology; to
regard it as having no bearing on life, no influence on
human progress, no causative power in regard to civilization.  Mr. Buckle, one of the most recent English philosophical historians, contends that Theology is the result
rather than the cause of national character; that it is
merely symptomatic of the condition of a people. If they
are in a good condition, they have a good Theology; if in
a bad condition, a bad one. He even thinks it owing to a
mistaken zeal that Christians try to propagate their religion, because he believes that savages cannot become Christians. Civilization, Mr. Buckle supposes, depends greatly
upon soil, upon climate, upon food, upon the trade-winds;
but not much upon religious ideas. He says that, in
England, "theological interests have long ceased to be
supreme."   "The time for these things has passed by,"
1 1 Cor. xiv. 20.  2 2 Cor. iii. 6.  8 2 Tim. i. 7. 
OF  HUIMAN  PI)O GRESS.
And this is also a very common opinion among ourselves.
Many reformers have a notion that we have done with
Theology, that we can do without it. Some men of
science tell us that Theology has nothing to do with the
advance of civilization, but that this comes from discovery
in the sphere of physical science. But I believe that
the one thing which retards the progress of reform is a
false philosophy concerning God and man, a false view of
God's ideas concerning this world; and that the one thing
needful for Human Progress is a deeper, higher, broader
view of God and his ways. And I hope to be able to show
some grounds for this opinion.
The religious instinct in man is universal. Some individuals and some races possess more of it, and others less;
but the history of mankind shows that religion in some
form is one of the most indestructible elements of human
nature. But whether this religious instinct shall appear
as faith or as fanaticism; whether it shall be a blind enthusiasm or an intelligent conviction; whether it shall be
a tormenting superstition or a consoling peace; whether it
shall lead to cruel persecutions or to heavenly benevolence;
all this, and more, depends on Theology. Religion is a
blind instinct: the ideas of God, man, duty, destiny, which
determine its development, constitute Theology.
The same law holds concerning Conscience and Ethics.
Conscience in the form of a moral instinct is universal in
man. In every human breast there is a conviction that
something is right and something wrong; but what that
right and wrong is depends on Ethics. In every language
of man, there are words which imply ougrht and ought
not, duty, responsibility, merit, and guilt. But what men
believe they ought to do, or ought not to do, - that de
37 
38      A TRUE THEOLOGY THE BASIS
pends on the education of their conscience; that is, on
their Ethics.
Conscience, like religion, is man's strength, and his
weakness. Conscience makes cowards of us all; but it is
the strong-siding champion which makes heroes of us all.
Savages are cruel, pirates are cruel; but they cannot be
as cruel as a good man, with a misguided conscience.
The most savage heart has some touch of human kindness
left in it, which nothing can quite conquer,- nothing but
conscience. That can make man as hard as Alpine rock, as
cold as Greenland ice. The torture-rooms and autos dafe
of the Inquisition surpass the cruelties of the North American Indian. The cruelties of instinct are faint compared
with the cruelties of conscience. Now what guides conscience to good or to evil? Theology, in the form of
Ethics, is the guide of conscience. For, as soon as man
believes in a God, he believes in the authority of his God
to direct and control his actions. Whatever his God tells
him to do must be right for him to do. Therefore religion
in its inward form is either a debasing and tormenting
superstition or a glad faith, according to the Theology
with which it is associated. And religion, in its outward
form, is either an impure and cruel despotism or an elevating morality, according to the idea of God and Duty
which guide it; that is, according to its associated Theology.
Some persons, like Lucretius, seeing the evils of Superstition, Bigotry, and Fanaticism, and perceiving that these
have their root in religion, have endeavored to uproot
religion itself. But could this be effected, which is impossible, it would be like wishing to get rid of the atmosphere,
because it is sometimes subject to tempests, and sometimes 
OF HUMAN PROGRESS.
infected with malaria. Religion is the atmosphere of the
soul, necessary to the healthful action of its life, to be
purified, but not renounced.
Every one has a Theology, who has even a vague idea
of a G)d; and every one has this who has an idea of something higher and better than himself, higher and better
than any of his fellow-men. The Atheist therefore may
have a God, though he does not call him so. For God is
not a word, not a sound: he is the Infinite Reality which
we see, more or less dimly, more or less truly, rising above
us, and above all our race. The nature of this ideal determines for each of us what we believe to be right or
wrong; and so it is that our Theology rules our conscience, and that our conscience determines with more or
less supremacy the tendency and stress of our life.
No one can look at the History of the Human Race
without seeing what an immense influence religion has
had in human affairs. Every race or nation which has
left its mark on Human Progress has itself been under the
commanding control of some great religion. The ancient
civilization of India was penetrated to the core by the
institutions of Brahmanism; the grand development of
Egyptian knowledge was guided by its priesthood; the
culture of China has been the meek disciple of Confucius
for two thousand years. Whenever any nation emerges
out of darkness into light,- Assyria, Persia, Greece, or
Rome, -it comes guided and inspired by some mighty
religion. The testimony of History is that religion is the
most potent of all the powers which move and govern
human action.
Such is the story of the past. How is it at the present
time? Has mankind outgrown the influence of religion
39 
40     A TRUE THEOLOGY THE BASIS
to-day? HIas the spread of knowledge, the advance of
science, the development of literature, art, culture, weakened its power in Christendom? Never was there so
much of time, thought, effort, wealth, consecrated to the
Christian Church as there is now. Both branches of that
Church, the Catholic and Protestant, are probably stronger
to-day than they ever were before. Some few persons can
live apart from religious institutions; but mankind cannot
dispense with religion, and they need it organized into a
Church or Churches.
Religion is a great power, and will remain so. But
what is to determine the character of this power? It may
impede progress or advance it; it may encourage thought
or repress it; it may diffuse knowledge or limit it; it may
make men free or hold them as slaves; it may be a generous, manly, free, and moral religion or a narrow, bigoted,
intolerant, fanatical, sectarian, persecuting superstition.
It has been both: it is both to-day. What is to decide
which it shall be? I answer, its Theology; the views it
holds concerning God, man, duty, immortality, the way and
the means of salvation. Religion is an immense power:
how that power is to be directed depends on Theology.
Proceeding then with my theme, I shall endeavor to
show how false ideas in Theology tend to check the progress of humanity, and afterward how true ideas always
carry mankind onward along an ascending path of improvement.
But first let me say that my criticism is of ideas, not of
sects, churches, nor individuals. By a true Theology, I
mean neither a Unitarian nor a Trinitarian Theology,
neither a Catholic nor a Protestant Theology. I do not
mean Calvinism nor Arminianism. I have nothing to say 
OF HUMAN PROGRESS.
concerning these distinctions, however important they
may be; and I, for one, consider them important. But I
refer to a distinction more important still, lying back of
these distinctions, lying beneath them;  a difference iot
of opinions so muchl as of ideas and spirit.
By a true Theoloogy, I mean a manily Theology, as
opposed to a childish one; a free, as opposed to a servile
one; a generous, as opposed to a selfish one; a reasonable
and intelligent Theology, as opposed to a superstitious
one.
By a true Theology, I mean one which regards God as a
father, and man as a brother; which looks upon this life
as a preparation for a higher; which believes that God
gi- es us fieedom, inspires our reason, and is the author of
whlatever is generous, self-forgetting, and noble. I find
somcetlhing of this Theology in all sects and churches;
firom the Roman Catholic at one extreme, to the Universalists and Unitarians, the Spiritualists and Come-outers,
at the other. And the opposite, the false Theology, dishonorable to God, degrading to man, I find in all sects,
and accomipanying all creeds. And if I shall show, as
truth compels me to show, that certain parties and persons are specially exposed to danger in one or another
direction, I wish distinctly to state my belief that sincere
and earnest men continually rise above the contagion of
their position, and live untainted in an atmosphere which
may have in it some special tendency to disease.
One false idea in Theology, which opposes human
progress, is that Pantheistic view of the Deity, which
loses sight of his personality, and conceives of him as a
blind, infinite force, pervading all Nature, and carrying on
the universe, but without intelligence and without love.
41 
42     A TRUE THEOLOGY THE BASIS
I know indeed that many views have been accused of
being Pantheism which are not. I do not believe in a God
outside of the universe. I believe that he is one "in whom
we live, and move, and have our being," one "from whom,
and through whom, and to whom are all things," - a perpetual Creator, immanent in his world.  But this view is
quite consistent with a belief in his personal being, in his
intelligent, conscious, loving purpose. Without such a
belief, hope dies out of the heart; and without hope
manlkind loses the energy which creates progress. Unless
we have an intelligent Friend who governs the universe, it
will seem to be moving blindly on toward no divine end;
and this thought eats out the courage of the soul.
In some poetical natures, as in the case of Shelley, this
Pantheism takes the form of faith in a spirit of beauty, or
love, or intellectual power, pervading all things. In more
prosaic minds it becomes a belief in law, divorced from
love. It turns the universe into a machine, worked by
forces whose mutual action unfolds and carries on the magnificent Cosmos. Often this view comes, by way of a reaction, against an excessive Personality of Will. When the
Christian Church speaks of the Deity as an Infinite Power
outside of the world, who creates it and carries it on
according to some contrivance, of which his own glory
is the end, it is perhaps natural that men should go to
the other extreme and omit person, will, and design from
their conception of Deity. But thus they encounter other
and opposite dangers.
A  gospel of mere law is no sufficient gospel.  It
teaches prudence, but omits Providence. This utilitarian doctrine, which reduces every thing to law, -which
makes the Deity only a Great Order, not a Father or 
Friend, -would soon put a stop to the deepest spring of
human progress. It takes faith and hope out of our life,
and substitutes observation, calculation, and prudence.
But the case of Ecclesiastes and of Faust teaches us
what comes from knowledge emptied of faith. He who
increases such knowledge increases sorrow. The unknown, wonderful Father; the divine, mysterious Infinite;
the great supernatural power and beauty above Nature,
and above all,- these alone make life tolerable. Without
this brooding sense of a Divine love, of a Heaven beyond
this world, of a Providence guiding human affairs, men
would not long have the heart to study, because all
things would seem to be going nowhere. Without such
a Heavenly Friend to trust, such an immortal progress to
hope, all things would seem to revolve in a circle. Not
to believe in something more than a God of Law is to be
without God in the world, is to be without hope. And
hope is the spring of all progress, intellectual progress as
well as all other. Intellect, divorced from faith, at last kills
intellect itself, by destroying its inner motive. It ends in
a doctrine of despair, which cries continually, "What is
the use?" and finds no answer. And so the soul dies
the only death the soul can die,- the death of torpor and
inaction.
Another false idea in Theology, which interferes with
human progress, is that of ecclesiastical authority in matters of faith and practice. When the Church comes
between the soul and God, and seeks to be its master
rather than its servant, it takes from it that direct responsibility to God, which is one of the strongest motives for
human effort. I know that this has always been done
from a sincere desire, at any rate in the beginning, to save
OF HUMAN PROGRESS.
43 
44     A TRUE THEOLOGY THE BASIS
men fi-om apparent dangers. The Church has assumed
authority, in order to do good with it. It has commanded
men not to think for themselves, lest they should err. But
God has meant that we should be liable to error, in order
that we should learn to avoid it by increased strength.
Therefore Christ said, "Be not called Rabbi; be not called
Miasters, and call no man father on earth."  His church,
and his apostles, and he himself are here, not to be masters of the soul, but to be its servants.
The Roman Catholic Church is a great organization,
which has gradually grown up, during a thousand years,
the object of which has been to educate men in Christian
faith and Christian conduct. It has sincerely endeavored
to do this. But, unfortunately, it took a narrow view of
Christian education; supposing that it meant instruction
and guidance, restraint and tuition, but not development.
It has magnified its own autlhority, in order to produce
docility in its pupils. It has not allowed them freedom
of inquiry nor liberty of conscience. It has not said, like
Paul, "Be not children in understanding;" on the contrary, it has preferred to keep them children, so as to
guide them more easily. It has not said, with Paul,
"Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made
you free;" for it has come to hate the very name of
liberty. What is the result? You may read it to-day
in France, where, as MIr. Coquerel tells us, that Church has
prevented the steady development of free institutions.  It
has always supported the principle of authority in the
State, as the natural ally of authority in the Church.
There are so few republicans in France to-day, because
the people have been educated by the Church to blind
submission.  The priests are not to blame, the people are 
OF HUMAN PROGRESS.
not: it is the Roman Catholic Theology which is to
blame. That Theology teaches that the soul is saved by
tihe reception of external sacraments, and not by vital,
independent convictions of truth.'
Or, if you wish another illustration of the same thing,
look at New York. Why have republican institutions in
New York almost proved a failure?  Why were a few
robbers able to take possession of the city, and plunder
the citizens? Because they could control the votes of
the Irish Catholics in a mass; because this vast body of
voters were unable to vote independently, or to understand the first duties of a free citizen.  And why was
this? Not because the Irish are naturally less intelligent
than the New-Englanders, the  En,glish, the Germans.
No; but the Roman Catholic Church, which has had the
supreme control over the Irish conscience and intellect
for a thousand years, has chosen to leave them uneducated.
Of course, the Roman Church, if it had pleased to do so,
might long ago have made the Irish nation as enlightened
as any in Europe. But its Theology taught that education might lead them into heresy, and so take them out
of the true Church, and that ignorance in the Church was
infinitely better than any amount of intellectual and moral
1 The proof of this may be amply found in the famous Encyclical and
Syllabus of Pins IX., Dec. 8th, 1864.  In the Syllabus he denounces as
errors such propositions as the ifollowing, -
That " every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which
guided by the light of reason, he holds to be true."   ~ 15
That "one may well hope, at least, for the eternal salvation of those who
are in no wise in the true  Church of Christ."  ~ 17.
That "the Church has no power to employ force."  ~ 24.
That "men emigr;iting to Catholic countries should be permitted the
public exercise of their owni several forms of worship."  ~ 78.
That "the Roman Pontiff can aiid ought to reconcile and harmonize
himself with progress, with liberalismi, and with modern civilization." ~ 80
45 
46     A TRUE THEOLOGY THE BASIS
culture out of it. The fatal principle of Roman Catholic
Theology -" Out of the true Church there is no salvation " - has been the ruin of the Irish nation for hundreds
of years, and has very nearly entailed ruin on our own.
Do you wonder that the priests oppose our school sys tem? If I were a Roman Catholic priest, I should oppose
it too. Should I run the risk of poisoning my child's body
by accepting as a gift a little better food than that I am
able to buy? And shall I risk the vastly greater evil of
poisoning its soul, by allowing it to be tainted with heretical books and teachers in free schools? The Roman
Catholic priest is consistent: it is the Theology which
teaches salvation by sacraments that is to blame. It is a
theology which naturally, logically, necessarily, stands
opposed to human progress.  It says, "In order to be
children in malice, you must also be children in understanding."
When the Protestant Reformation came, it brought
with it a manly Theology.  It put the Bible into all men's
hands, and asserted for each the right of private judgment
and liberty of conscience. Therefore the Reformation
was the cause of a great forward movement in human
affairs. It awakened the intellect of mankind. Science,
literature, invention,- all were stimulated by it. It ran
well, but something hindered. Its reverence for the
Bible was its life; but, unfortunately, it soon fell into a
worship of the letter.  It taught a doctrine of verbal
inspiration.  It forgot the great saying of Paul, "not of
the letter, but the spirit; for the letter killeth." Very
soon that saying was fulfilled. Reverence for the letter
of the Bible killed the spirit of the Bible. That spirit
is as free as air. It teaches no creed, it demands no 
)
OF HUMAN PROGRESS.
blind acceptance of any dogma. It declares that where
the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But the letter theology has opposed nearly all the discoveries of science
and all moral reforms with the words of the Bible. It
has set Genesis against geology, and the book of Psalms
against the Copernican system. Becausc the Book of
Genesis says the heavens and earth were made in six
(lays, the letter-theology declared that the fossil shells
w-ere made in the rocks just as they are, or were dropped
by pilgrims returning from the Holy Land. Because the
book of Psalms said that "God hatl established the earth
so that it shall not be moved for ever," the letter-theology
denied its daily and yearly revolution. Because Noah
said, "Cursed be Canaan," the letter-theology defended
the slavery of the negro. Because Noah also said, " He
who sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be
shed," the letter-theology has defended capital punishment as a religious duty. Because the Jews were commanded to rest on the seventh day, the letter-theology
forbids the Boston Public Library to be open on the first.
Becoming ever more timid and more narrow, it clings to
the letter of the common English translation, and the
received text. It even shrinks from alterations which
would give us the true letter of the Bible, instead of the
false one.
Some years ago the American Bible Society appointed
a committee of the most learned scholars, from all Orthodox denominations, to correct the text and the translation
of our common English Bible, so as to make it conform to
the true Hebrew and Greek text. They were not to make
a new translation, but merely to correct palpable, undoubted errors in the old one. They did their work;
47 
48      A TRPUE'EOLO (GY TIIE BASIS
printed their corrected Bible; laid it before the Bible
Society,- a-  d that Society refused to adopt it. They had
not the slightest doubt of its superior correctness; but
they feared to make  any change, lest others  might be
called for, and lest the faith of the community might be
disturbed in the integrity of the Scriptures.  Jesus had
promised them the Holy Spirit to lead them into all
truth, to take of his truth and show it to them; but they
did not believe him. They preferred to anchor themselves to the words chosen by King James's translators
than to be led by the Spirit into any new truth. So it is
that "the letter killeth."  It stands in the way of progress. It keeps us from trusting in that ever-present Spirit
which is ready to inspire us all to-day, as it inspired
prophets and apostles of old. It is an evidence not of
faith, but of unbelief.
Thus, this false idea in Theology, that inspiration rests
in the letter of a book or a creed rather than in its spirit,
is seen to be opposed to human progress.
And then there is another Theology which is opposed to
human progress. It is the Theology of Fear. It speaks
of hell rather than of heaven; it seeks to terrify rather
than to encourage; it drives men by dread of danger
rather than leads them by hope. Its ruling idea is of
stern, implacable justice; its God is a God of vengeance,
who cannot pardon unless the full penalty of sin has been
borne by some victim; whose mercy ceases at death; who
can only forgive sin during our short human life, not after
we have passed into the other world.  To assuage his
anger, or appease his justice, there must be devised some
scheme of salvation, or plan of redemption.  He cannot
forgive of pure, free grace, and out of his boundless love. 
OF HUMllAN PROGRESS.
Now those who lholl such a Theology as this will apply
its spirit in humnan afitirs.  It will go into penal legislationi, into the treatment of criminals. It will make punislnment the chief idea, not reformation.  Jesus taught a
boundless compassion, an infinite tenderness toward the
sinfil, the weak, the forlorn people of the world.  He
taughlt that the strong are to bear the burdens of the
weak, the righteotus to help the wicked, and that we are to
overcome evil with good.  WThen this principle is applied
in human affairs, the great plague spots of society will
disappear: intemperance, licentiousness, pauperism, crime,
will be cured radically.   Society, purified  firom  these
poisons, will go forward to nobler achievements than have
ever yet been dreamed of.  But this principle will not be
applied wlhile the fear-theology prevails, and is thought
more of than that of love.  The progress of human society
depends on the radical cure of these social evils, not their
mere restraint.  And they can only be cured by such a
view of the divine holiness and the divine compassion as
is taU(g'lt l)v Jesus in the Sermon onil the Mount and the
Parable of thle Pro(igal Son; shlowing the root of crime in
sin, and insl)iring a pIrofotund faith in God's saving love.
It may seem to some persons that I go too far in asserting that a true Theology is at the basis of human progress.
They may ascribe human progress to other causes, -to
t    h     e atdvance          of knowle( dge, to scientific discovery, to such
inventions          as          printing, the steam-engine, the railroad, and
the like. But I believe that spiritual ideas are at the root
of all            others. T hat  vhich  one thinks of God, duty, and
immnortality,         -  i n   short, his Theology,- quickens or deadens his interest in every thing else. Whatever arouses
conscienc e, fait h, an       d love, also awakens intellect, inven
3
49 
50      A TRUE THEOLOGY THE BASIS
tion, science, and art. If there is nothing above this world
or beyond this life; if we came from nothing and are going
nowhere, what interest is there in the world?  "LIet us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."  But if the world
is full of God,- if we come firom him and are going(r to him,
then it becomes everywhere intensely interesting, and
we wish to know all about it. Science has followed always
in the steps of religion, and not the reverse.  The Vedas
went before Hindoo civilization; the Zend-Avesta led the
way to that of Persia; the oldest monuments of Eogypt
attest the presence of religious ideas; the Laws of Moses
preceded the reign of Solomon; and that civilization which
joined Greeks, Romans, Goths, Vandals, Franks, and
Saxons in a common civilization, derived its cohesive
power from the life of Him whose idea was that love to
man was another form of love to Godl.  "The very word
h?umanaity," says Max Miiller, "dates firom Christianity."
No  such idea, and therefore no such term, was found
among men before Christ came.
But it may be said that these instances are from such
obscure epochs that it is uncertain how far it was religion
which acted on civilization. Let us, then, take one or
two instances, concerning which there is less uncertainty.
In the deserts, and among the vast plains of the Arabian
Peninsula, a race had slumbered inactive for twenty centuries. Those nomad-Semitic tribes had wandered to and
fro, engaged in perpetual internecine warfare, fulfilling the
prediction concerning Ishmael, "He will be a wild man;
his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand
against him." No history, no civilization, no progress,
no nationality, no unity, could be said to exist during that
long period among these tribes. At length a man comes 
OF HUUMANV PROGRESS.
with a religious idea, a living, powerful conviction. He
utters it, whether man will bear or forbear. He proclaims
the unity and spirituality of God in spite of all opposition
and persecution. At last his idea takes hold of the soul
of this people. WVhat is the result?- They flame up into
a mighty power; they are united into an irresistible force;
they sweep over the world in a few decades of years; tlhey
develop a civilization superior to any other then extant.
Suddenly there springs up in their midst a new art, litera ture, and science.  Christendom, emasculated by an eccle siLstical and monastic Theology, went to Islam for freedom
of thought, and found its best culture in the Moham medan universities of Spain. Bagdad, Cairo, Damascus,
Seville, Cordova, became centres of light to the world.
The German conquerors darkened the regions they over ran: the M3ohammedans enlightened them.  The caliphs
and viziers patronized learning and endowed colleges, and
some of their donations amounted to millions of dollars.
Libraries were collected. That of a single doctor was a
load for four hundred camels.  That of Cairo contained a
hundred thousand manuscripts, which were lent as freely
as those in the Boston Public Library. The College
Library of Cordova had four hundred thousand.  In these
places grammar, logic, jurisprudence, the natural sciences,
the philosophy of Aristotle, were taught to students who
flocked to them fi'om all parts of Christendom. Many of
the professors taught from memory: one man is reported
to have been able to repeat three thousand poems. The
Saracens wrote treatises on geography, numismatics, medicine, chemistry, astronomy,  mathematics.   Some, like
Avicenna, went through the whole circle of the sciences.
The  Saracens  invented pharmacy,  surgery, chemistry.
51 
62     A TRUE THEOLOGY THE BASIS
Geber, in the eighth century, could prepare alcohol, sulphuric acid, nitric acid, corrosive sublimate, potash, and
soda.  Their astronomers measured a degree of the earth's
meridian near Bagdclad, and determined its circumference
as twenty-four thousand miles. They found the length
of the year, and calculated the obliquity of the ecliptic.
Roger Bacon quotes their treatises on optics.   Trigonomnetry retains the form given it by the Arabs, and they
greatly improved Algebra.  We  received from them our
numerical characters.  We all know the beauty and permanence of their architecture, and much of our musical
knowledge is derived from them. They also made great
progress in scientific agriculture and horticulture, in mining
and the working of metals, in tanning and dying leather.
Damascus blades, morocco, enamelled steel, the manufacture and use of paper, the use of the pendulum, the
manufacture of cotton, public libraries, a national police,
rhyme in verse, and our arithmetic, all came to us from
the Arabs.
All this fruitful intellectual life must be traced directly
back to the theological impulse given by Mohammed to
the Arab mind; for it can be derived from no other
source.
It is not quite so easy to define the precise influence on
human progress given by the doctrines of the Reformation;
for, before Luther, these were in the air. But no one can
reasonably doubt that the demand for freedom of conscience and the right of private judgment in religion has
led to liberty of thought, speech, action, in all other directions. To the war against papal and ecclesiastical authority in concerns of the soul we owe, how much no one can
say, of civil freedom, popular sovereignty, the emancipa 
OF HUMIAN PIROGRESS.
tion of man, the progress of the human mind. The theses
of Luther were the source of the Declaration of Independence. And modern science, with the great names of
Bacon and Newton, Descartes and Leibnitz, Goethe and
Humboldt, is the legitimate child of Protestant Theology.
It is true that printing and maritime discoveries preceded Luther. But these inventions came from the same
ideas which took form in the Lutheran Reformation. The
discovery of printing was a result, no less than a cause.
It came because it was wanted; because men were wishing to communicate their thoughts more freely and widely
than could be done by writing. If it had been discovered
five hundred years before, it would have fallen dead, a
sterile invention, leading to nothing. And so the steamengine and the railroad did not come before, because they
were not wanted: as soon as they were wanted they
came. That which lies at the root of all these inventions
is the wish of man to communicate easily and rapidly
and widely with his brother-man; in other words, the
sense of human brotherhood. Material civilization, in all
its parts and in all times, grows out of a spiritual root;
aid only faith leads to sight, only the things unseen and
eternal create those which are seen and temporal.
The two Theologies at the present time which stand
opposed to each other here are not Calvinism and Armenianism, not Trinitarianism and Unitarianism, not Naturalism and Supernaturalism. But they are the Theology of
discouragement and fear on one side, that of courage and
hope on the other. The one thinks men must be driven
to God by terror: the other seeks to attract them by love.
The one has no faith in man, believes him wholly evil,
believes sin to be the essential part of him. The other
53 
4  A TRUE THEOLOGY THE BASIS
believes reason a divine light in the soul, and encourages
it to act freely; trusts in his conscience enlightened by
truth, and appeals to it confidently; relies on his heart,
and seeks to inspire it with generous affections and disin terested love.  That this Thleology of faith is to tritiiaph
over that of fear who can doubt?  All the best thought,
the deepest religion, the noblest aspiration of the age,
flows in this direction. Whether our handftil of Uni tarian Churches is ever to become a great multitude or
not, I do not know; but I am sure that the spirit which
inspired the soul of Channing is to lead the future age,
and make the churches which are to be. It is not now a
question of Unity or Trinity, but something far deeper
and much more important. While endeavoring to settle
the logical terms of Christ's divinity and humanity, we
have been led up higher to the sight of the Divine Father
and the Human Brotherhood. Like Saul, the son of Kish,
we went out to seek our father's asses, and have found a
kingdom.
We have recently been told about a Boston Theology.
If there is any thing which deserves to be called a Boston
Theology it is this doctrine of courage and hope. For it
is shared by all the leading minds of all Protestant denominations in this city. Whatever eminent man comes
here, no matter what he was when he came, finds himself, ere long, moving in this direction. The shackles of
tradition and formality fall from his limbs, his eyes open
to a new light; and he also becomes the happy herald of
a new and better day.
But a better word still, if one is wanted by which to
localize these ideas, would be "The New England Theology." For in every part of New England, from the 
OF HUIIAN PROGIIESS.
beginning; in every one of the multiform sects, whose
little sl)ire; and baby-house  churches lhav-e spottccld our
barren and rocky hills, there have never f.ailedl men of this
true Apostolic succession;  miiei  believing in truth, and
brave to utter it; believing- that God loves truth better
than fIlsehoo(l; that lie desires no one to tell a lie for his
glory, or to speak words of wind in his belhalf.  With,ll
our narrowVniess, our bigotry, our controversial bitterne'css,
our persecuting zeal, - of wlhich, God knows, we have hatd
eno,ugh in Newv Enlalnd, -  the heart of Newv England has
been al-way-s firee, manly, and rational.  Yes: all the way
firom ioses Stuart to AVillinil Ellery Ch.nning,, all along
the road fiomn the lecture-rooms on the hills of Andover
to the tribune of Theodore Parker st.ading, silent in the
3ltusic Ilall, we have had this sanme brave element of a
manly Thleolog-y.  This has been the hlandful of salt which
has saved New England.  Ience it is that firom the days
of the early Puritans, men and vwomien, of Harry Vane,
]3Irs. Ititclhiison, and Rloger AWilliams, who stood up for
tlhe irigllts of the human soul aga,inst priestly tyranny, down
throughii  the ministers of the RPevoluttion whlo went with
their pecople to thle camp of W,asllington at Cimbri(ldge;
down to the d.ay-s of the Bechliers, - there has never failed
a man in the New England pulpit to stand up for justice,
fireedom, and humanity.  From  our hare bill-tol)s Newv
E.l(l,ii(l nmen anld women have loo)ke(d up to the skly and
seell it llot   lways nor lwholly blcl(k with  supe'rstitious
Clouils, ])tut its ilnfinitCe Iel)tlls of blue interI)enetrite(d ev-ermoire withl tlhe wila   living ligllt of a Go(l of Love.  And(
tliheif()re has l New Englin(l been the f)ountaint of Progiress,
the fiiiitttihl l)elit of I)efor-is, "the lovely mother of yet
more lovely children."
55
i 
56  A TRIUE THIEOLO(GY THE BAtSIS
I have quoted several striking passages fi'om the Apostle
Paul.  One expresses his longingi for greater excellence,
and declares that hlie forgets every thing alrea(dy attained,
and is reachling( out for better tliins, f()r more truth and
more love.  Another passag,e calls on his disciples to think
for themselves, acnd be rational Christians, not children in
understandinrg.  A  third asserts that hlie is the minister
of the spirit of the gospel, not its letter; a fourth that
his religion is not one of fear, but of power andl love and
a sound mind;  a fifth says, Stand lfast in fieedom, and
be liberal Christians; and in other places lie exhorts his
brethren not to be narrow, nor bigoted; but to look at
every thing beautiflil, lovely, true, and good, no matter
where they find it.  But a little while before he said these
things Paul himself was one of the most narrow, and
intolerant of men, opposed to progress wholly.   What
made this great change in his soul?  It was that he had
found a true Theology.  Hle learned fi'om Christ to trust
simply in the divine love for pardon and salvation.  He
learned that God was the God of Heathen and Pagans as
well as of Jews.  He learned that no ritual, ceremony,
sacraments nor forms, but only the sight of God as a
Father and Friend, can really save the soul from its diseases, and fill it with immortal life. A true Thleology was
the secret of Paul's immense prog,ress, and of his wonderftl power to awaken and convert others.  There are many
wh1o suppose his Thleology obscure and severe.  But when
we ieenetrate the veil of Jewish la,nguage, we fin(d it one
of Freedlom, of PReason, of Love, manly ani( tender, generouIs and intelligent.  And  this same Thieolozy 1)assillg in
its essence firom Paul to Aulgustine, to LIlither, to Wesley,
has always been the motive power of human civilization 
'OF  IU.VAN PROGRESS.
and human development. It has been the friend of free
thoug-ht, liberty of conscience, and universal progress.
I mean then by a true Theology what Paul meant when
he said that God "has not given to us a spirit of fear,
but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."   I
mean what he said when he declared that God had made
him a minister of the New Testament, not of the letter
but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit
giveth life.
I mean the Theology which places the substance above
the form; the thing before the name; which looks at the
fact, not at the label.
Let us then, brethren, who call ourselves Unitarians, be
glad and grateful for the gospel of faith and hope which
we enjoy.  And let us give to others what we have ourselves received.  If it be true, as we have tried to show,
that human progress depends largely on a true Theology
we cannot help mankind more than by diffusing widely
that which God has given us of his truth.  Freely you
have received, freely give. You who have always lived
in this community, surrounded by this mellow warm light
of peace and freedom, do not know, cannot tell, what
those sutffer who have been taught from early childhood to
fear God, and to distrust his light in their soul. Do your
part in spreading abroad the beams of a better day. Give
to the world that religion which is not a spirit of fear,
but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
8*
57 
I 
THE RISE AND DECLINE
OF TII E
ROMISfI CHURCH.
By ATIIANASE COQUEREL, FILS.
I  
THE RISE AND DECLINE
OF THE
ROMISH  CHURCH.
E live in a time of great and manifold changes.
There is one church that for centuries has had her
principal glory in asserting that she never has changed, -
that she has at all times been exactly the same; but now
she can hardly deny that either in accordance with her
own will, or by the force of circumstances, very great
changes have been wrought in her during the last few
years. This, if it is true, must change also the nature, the
system, the course of our controversy with her. The controversy between the two churches has not always, perhaps, been quite fair; and I should not like to be unfair to
any adversary, whoever he may be. I should not be at
ease in my conscience if I thought I had been unfair to
any thing, especially to any thing religious, of whatever
kind that religion may be; because in any religion, even
the most imperfect, there is some aspiration from this earth
to the sky; at least, from human souls to what they hope
or believe to be God. And especially I could not pardon
myself for being in any way unjust to that great church
which has for centuries comforted and sustained a multitude of souls, and made them better and happier by her
teachings. It is a Christian church; and though I think
i 
THE RISE AND DECLIVNE
that Romish Christianity has been in a very great degree
alloyed, and mixed with grave errors,- and that is exactly
what I wish to show,- yet, even under that veil of human
errors, I recognize, I acknowledge, religion, Christianity;
and therefore I bow before it.
I think, however, the changes that have taken place
have not altered the essential character of the Roman
Church.  I think the changes that have happened are in
conformity with the nature of that church; really were to
be expected, anid have nothing absolutely new in them.
We might, perhaps, for a long time have seen them coming;
and, if we had had foresight enough, we might have seen
them from the very first times of that church.  Let us try
to understand exactly what she is, what she means; let us
try to see what there is under that name, "Roman Catholic
Church." She calls herself catholic, which means universal,
and at the same time she has a local name.  She is for the
whole world; but at the same time she belongs to one
city, and she bears the name of that city. Why? This
is the question; and though it seems only a question of
name, I think we shall find by other ways that it is a question of facts. A second advance requires a change in our
polemics with Roman authority. A new science has been
created in our time, which gives us better means of judging
and studying other churches than our own; that science
is called the comparative history of religions. In England
Max MIuiller, in France Burnouf, and in this country James
Freeman Clarke, have compared the history of several
religions. According to that comparative history, there
are rules to be understood, to be acknowledged, in the
development of religion. One of the rules which I think
we can deduce fiom any comparative history of religion
62 
OF THE ROMIISH CHURCH.
may be a startling one; andcl I will use a very homely com  parison, to make myself perfectly understood.  IT.ave vou
ever seen over a shop door a sign-board, where the name
of the old shop-keeper was painted; and, whlen his suc  cessor came in, he had the same board coveredcl with a new
color, and his own name paintedcl over thle old one? But
in time the new paint wore off; so that the oldl name
reappeared under tlohe new, in such a way that it became
perhaps diflicult to distinlguish clearly which letters or
lines belonged to the old, and which to the newv.  If this
image appears somewhat too familiar, let me ask you if
you remember what scholars call a palimpsest.  Some times in the i\iddle Ages it was difficult to find well-pre pared parclhluent on whlich to write, a(nd there were a
great many imonks -who hlad nothingi else to do -.and it
was the best use thley could make of their time- but write
or copy the Bil)le or other religious books.  W lien they
found pariclments whllere were col)ied the comedies aIndi
tragedies or other works of the lhethlen, they thoiught
those were' of very little use, and they could( very easily
have the writing on those parclhments washed out, or
covered over with white paint, in such a way that what
had been written there was no more visible. Then on
those parelments they would write the Bible, or sermons,
or any document they thought usefutl. But the same thing
happened then that happened with the sign-board, - the
old writing reappeared after a time; the White covering
spread over tlhe page disappeared.  And thus it happens
that scholars are sometimes ponderinig for a long time
over a page from a sermon of Saint Augustine, or John
Chrysostom, in which they fiad a verse from some comedy
of Terence or Aristophanes; then they have perhaps some
63 
THE RISE AND DECLINE
trouble in making out which is comedy and which is scrmon, in dlistinguishing exactly what of the writing is old
and what is new; and they have not always perfectly sueceelded in that effort.
Now what we see in the sign-boardcl we see also in the
religion of the differecnt churchecs, when a whole multitude, at one time, pass from one worship to another. Then,
against their will, and perhaps without their knowing it,
they never come into the pale of their new church emptyhanded: they carry with them a number of ideas, and
habits, and turns of thought, which they had found in
their old worship.  And thus, after a time, when the fervor
of the early days is over, you find in the new religion, or
new worship, a real palimpsest: the old one is re.pl-)pearingi
under the new.   That miakes itself manifbst in a good
many ways; sometimes in ways the most stramnge and
unexplected.
If 3you ask me, now, remembering this rule, what means
the name, "Roman Catholic Church," I answer: Christianity absorbed into itself the Roman empire; the Roman
empire became Christian in a very few years, with a most
rapid, with a most admirable sway; souls became conquered in large numbers; they became Christian.  But
afterwards it appeared that they were not so perfectly
unheathenized as they were thought to be, or as they
thought themselves: many of their heathenish habits of
life, thoughts, and customs remained even in their very
w-orship. Th us, after Christianity had absorbed the Roman
world, it appeared that the Roman world had penetrated
and impregnated the whole of Christianity; and this is
the Roman Catholic Church.  She is Christian, but she
is full of the errors and superstitions that belonged to the
old Roman heathenish world.
64 
OF THE ROM-11St CHURCH.
To understand what this means  we must nlow try to
comprehend W-hat the old l -omani genius was.  IHere I
ask you not to confoundti   it with the Greek genius, wlichl
was ill many respects highlly superior, but whichli  hald, at
that time, ptsse(d away ill a lhrge measure, and been
replaced everywhere by the Roman genins.   lWhat were
the especial traits of character of the Roiinans? The first,
and a very striking, one to tlhose who have travelled and
studied in those countries, is a most vivacious love for
tradition.  In Rome, at the present day, you find things
that are dlone, that are said, that are believed, that a'le
liked, because they were two thousand years ago, without
the people themselves haviing a very clear notion of it.
Their custom -  and it is born in their flesh, and in their
blood -is to look backwards, andcl to see in the past the
motives and the precedents for their acts and for tleir
belief. Of this I could quote to you a number of instances.
I will choose but olne.  The first time I was in Rome I
stopp)ed, as every traveller <loes, on the Piczza (lei Po])olo.
In the midst of that square is an obelisk, and on one side
of the pedestal of that obelisk is written: "This monument was brought to Rome by the High Pontiff; Cesar
Augustus."  I went round the monument, and on  the
other face of the same pedestal I read: "This monument,
brought to Rome by the High Pontiff, Cmsar Augustus,
was placed in this square by the High Pontiff, Sextus
V."  And  then I remembered that one of those High
Pontiffs w's a Roman heathen, an Emperor; and that the
other was a Christian, was a priest, was a pope; and I was
astonished, at first sight, to find on two faces of the same
stone the same title given to those two representatives of
very different religions. Afterwards, I observed that this
65 
TIlE RISE AND DECLlVNE
was no extraordinary case, but that in many other places
in Rome instances of the same kind were to be found. I
inquired a little more deeply, perhaps, than sonime other
travellers, into the meaning of those words. I asked myself
w        hv                                            this pope, Sextuts V., and  this Emperor A ugustus,
sh       ould                                          each be called "pontiff."  Whaht  is the mea nin(g of
"pontiff"?                     " Pontiff" means bridge-maker, brid,e- builder.
Wh                  y         are they called in that way? Ile re is the exeplanation                          of that fict.    In the very first  years of th e  existence
of                           Rome, at  a time of which we have a  very fab ulous history,                         and but few existing monumenets, - th e  little town
of                          Rome, not built on seven hills as is generally supposed;
t    h     e     r     e      are eleven of them now; then there were  within the
town less than seven even, - that little town had a great
deal to fear from any enemy which should take one of the
hills that were out of town, the Janiculum, because the
Janiculum is higher than the others, and from that hill an
enemy could very easily throw stones, fire, or any means of
destru ction,  into the town. The Jnniculum was separated
fiom the town by the Tiber. Then the first necessity for
the defence of that little town of' Rome was to have a
bridge. They had built a                 wooden biridge over the Tiber,
and a great point of interest to the town was that this
bridge should be kept always in good order, so that at any
moment troops could pass over it. Then, with the special
genius of the Romans, of which we have other instances,
the                   y       ordained, curiously enough, that the me n  who were a
corporation to take care of that bridge should be sacred;
that                         their function, necessary to the defence of the   town,
should                          be consieedered holy; that they should be priests,
a        nd                  the highest of them was called "the high(  brid(gemaker."  So it happened that there was ill Rome a coi
66 
OF  THE  ROM,ISH  CIURCIH.
poration of brildge-makers, pontiflces, of whom the head
was the most sacred of all Romans, because in those days
his life, and the life of his companions, was deemed
necessary to the safety of the town.  Thlings chainged;
very soon Rome was large enough not to care about the
Janiculum; very soon Rome conquered a part of Italy,
then the whole of Italy, and finally almost the whole of
the world.  But when once something is done in Rome,
it remains done; when once a thing is said, it remains
said, and is repeated; and thus it happened that the priv ilege of the bridge-makers' corporation, as beings sacred
and holy, remained; and that privilege made everybody
respect them; gave them a sort of moral power. Then
kings wanted to be made High Bridge-makers; after
kings, consuls; later, dictators; and, later, emperors themselves made themselves High Bridge-makers, which meant
the most sacred persons in the town.
When Constantine, who is generally called the first
Christian emperor, - but who was very far from being
a real Christian, -when Constantine became nominally
a Christian, he did not leave off being the high bridgemaker of the heathen. He remained high priest of the
heathen at the same time he was a Christian emperor;
and he found means, as well as his son after him, to keep
the two functions. He acted on some occasions as high
pontiff of the heathen; on other occasions, he called
oeuncils, presided over them, and sent them away when
he had had enough of their presence; declared to the
bishops that he was in some sense one of them, and
acted to all intents and purposes as popes have acted
after him. Thus that title remained the type of whatever
was most sacred in Rome; and the bishop of Rome, when
6T 
THE RISE AND DECLINE
an opportunity came, - when the title had been lost in
Rome by emperors,- took it up again. And thus we see
on the same stone, at the present time in Rome, the name
of a high bridge-maker who is a heathen emperor, and the
name of a high bridge-maker who is a pope, who is the
head of the Christian Catholic Church. Thus you see an
old superstition, an old local superstition, established with
a political meaning, has survived itself, has survived centuries, has survived the downfall of heathenism, and is
at the present time flourishing. You all know that the
present pope is called Po2?tifex Maximus; it is his title;
and everywhere you see, even on the pieces of money,
that Pio Nono is Pontifex 2Vaxi?2us,- the great bridgemaker, which means the highest of all priests, of all sacred
beings. Thus has tradition, on that special spot, and in
connection with the history and with the antiquities of
that spot, established an authority unequalled anywhere
else.
Though the Roman Catholic Church is special to that
place, and inherits the local habits and traditions, it
pretends also to universality. This is, again, perfectly
Roman. The heathen Romans had thought for centuries that the world was made to be conquered by them;
that unity was represented by Rome; that Rome was all
in all; and at the present time the Pope, on Thursday of
every Easter week, gives his solemn blessing, as you know,
to the town first, and the world afterwards, - urbi et orbi.
All countries, both hemispheres, all nations, all languages,
are lost in that great unity. One town and one world, of
which that town is the capital, - that was the wish, the
hope of the heathenish Romans for centuries; and that
has been the aim, the assumption of papal Rome for cen
68 
OF THE ROllISH CHURUH.
turies also. When the present Pope said, on a celebrated
day, after enumerating the great acts of his pontificate,
that he had created more bishoprics than any other pope,
he        was right.  He  has created, on his own authority,
bishoprics in Holland, in England, and in other countries;
cut out bishoprics on the map of those countries. And he
did that because, as pope, he is the spiritual sovereign
of the world; because England and Holland belong to
him;   because Rome is the capital of the world; and he
cuts off a part of any country, in America as well as in
Europe, in order to make of it the see or dominion of a
bishop. The old Roman idea was that nobody knew
how to govern except Romans. They assumed- and
often, if an unscrupulous government was the best of
all, if a tyrannical government was the best of all, they
were right - to govern better, more wisely, and with
more acute politics, than any other nation. They said,
"Other sciences, other arts, may be the share of other nations; but our share in the great things of this world is
government."  I hardly dare to speak Latin in an English
country, because I cannot pronounce Latin as you do;
but though I pronounce it as a Frenchman, which is, perhaps, a shade less bad than to pronounce it as you do in
England and America, you may guess what I mean when
I          recall to the memory of some of you the famous lines
of Virgil, where he says what must be, in this world, the
function of the Romans:        "Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
Hoe tibi erunt artes."
That is to say, "You Romans! remember that you are
ma(le to govern the nations; that must be your office; all
the arts come after this; this is the special Roman art." I
69 
THE RISE AND DECLINE
declare to you that at this present moment the clergy, the
cardinals, the bishops, the prelates, the court of Rome, think,
and have never ceased to think, that they are the people
to govern better than any other political body; and that
the government of the world has been providentially
reserved to that town; first, in a temporal way, for the
heathen; and, secondly, in a spiritual way, for the Christians, for the Catholic countries of the world. And as they
believe spiritual things are a great deal more important
than temporal things, they think their government is a
great deal more important, and greatly superior to any
government of any kind.
Let us now turn back a little again, and try more fully
to understand what the old Roman genius was in its way
of government. They governed by laws. You all have
heard about Roman law, about Roman jurisprudence. It
has been said for centuries that they were men who, better
than any other, understood the art of making laws, -very
precise, full of foresight, forgetting nothing, or few things,
and giving in the most exact terms the decisions to be
enforced in all possible cases, at least in all the cases with
which they had occasion to deal. It is said also, it has
always been said, that their laws were hard; but they accepted them, though hard: " dura lex, sed lex." And certainly there was something noble and good in this respect
for law, whatever the law was: there was something just,
really in the interest of nations, in this love of law. But
at that time this love of law was accompanied by the fact
that the law was exceedingly hard in a great number
of cases. Yet that hardness was in conformity with the
general temperament of the nation at that time: the
Romans were hard.
70 
OF THE' ROMISH CHUICtl
I havec no time to stop to show you how dliflfrent they
were fiom the Greeks; but you remember that when the
Greeks assembled in one of their great annual festivals,
they heard musie, they listened to poetry, they listened to
the works of the historian; or they saw men run races,
or engagec in one of those contests that were not cruel,
that vwere only displa-s of strelnth, agility, or traiing.
That was the pleasure of the Greeks in their annual fes tival. What didl the Romans do?  You all know.   They
had immense amphitheatres where they assembled to see
men kill one another.  Their pleasure was to see people
die, to see people suffer, to see people maimed, and welter ing in their blood: that was their favorite amusement.
And ambitious imen in that day secured votes by bringing
lions, hyenas, and tigers, in large numbers, to Rome, and
by giving the people the diversion of seeing those animals
killing men, devoturing living men, women, and children,
living Christians, often.  That  was  the punishment  in
fashion at that time: Christianl menii, women, and children
were killed, were devoured, were  mangled before the eyes
of the people, and for their pleasure. In their hardness
they had a taste for the formal, precise execution of their
law, whatever it might be.  Christianity came and swept
away their abominable pleasures,   this cruelty, which
was contrary to every human feeling; but the habit of a
sort of hardness, in the infliction of the penalties of law,
remained in Rome  more than it did in any other place.
And this was alliedl to another feeling of a different nature,
but which very well connected itself with it. I mean the
,omaaI love for the literal in every thing.  They d(lid not
like to understand any thing as metaphorical, as poetry:
hey liked to take every thing literally; and it was in
s
71
I 
THE RISE AND DECLILVE
consequence of this characteristic of the Roman mind that
they were able to enforce their law.  Even if the result
of what the law demanded was absurd, thley maintained,
for the honor of the law, that it must be literally understood, and literally executed; and they permitted none of
those different ways of alleviating the hardships of the
law that have been in other places not only allowed, but
ordered, by those in comiimand.  This is of extreme importance.  Perhaps at first sig'ht it does not stike you
so, but it is.  Remember fi'oom what country Christianity
came.  Christianity came from the East, c'me fiom Asia,
came fiom the Jews.  The Apostles, the first  )rol)ag.ators
of Christianity, were Oriental men, were Jews.  I have
seen part of the Levant, I have seen those very countries,
and I can speak of it as a filcet known for centuries, that
the people of the Orient never speak otherwise thin by
imag,es.  They  do not lile the shortest way fiom one
point to another; they make the way long.  They use
flowers, and rays of light, and moonshine, or aniiy thing
else that gives an image and color to their speech.  They
bring these things in continually, whatever may be the
subject they speakl of.
Perhaps I may give here an illustration that will make
you understand me.  I was in a house made of branches
of trees, where lived a sheik.  I-He told me that every thing
in that house, his own person, his own f-amily, were mine;
and hle said this with the greatest protestations.  This is
exactly the same as if you should say to a foreigner, coming into your house, "You are welcome."  Nothing nimore.
If,; on going away, I had taken any thing from thalt house,
the man would immediately have shot me; though he
had given nme every thing, even to his own person  and
7 —) 
OF' THE ROMISH CHURCH.
his own family; because he would have had this idea:
"T]his man is a thief; I have a thief in my house."  If I
had said, "But you gave me every thing in the house," he
would have answered me, "You come fiom a country
where people have no politeness. I gave you these
things that means welcome, and nothing more."  Thus a
man oi the Orient never says any thing in the simple short
way that Western nations do: they always want some
poetry, some rhetoric, some image about it. And you
must remember that many of the most admirable teachings of the Bible are in images, are in poetry, and are
extremely beautiful and eloquent by their poetry. We
are accustomed to this, so that we know that it is poetry;
and we understand it. But the Romans, accustomed to
their principle, that the law may be hard, but that law
is law, and must be understood literally, and executed
literally, understood every thing literally, and in that
way they spoiled many of the great Christian truths. I
will not here quote many instances, though it would be
exceedingly easy to bring them in large numbers before
you. I will take the most striking and best known of
all.  When  our Lord, a few hours before being separated firom his disciples, to die on the cross, gave them
of the bread that was on the table, and said, "Eat, this
is my body," it was absolutely impossible for Eastern
people to misunderstand him; it was impossible for them
not to understand that he meant, "This represents my
body." The idea that what hlie held in the hands of his
own body was his own body again; that he gave theIn
his own body to eat, and that he ate some of it himself
with them, -that idea could not for a moment  have
entered the head of one of those who were there. And
4
73 
THE RISE AND DECLINE
if a multitude had been there, instead of the twelve
Apostles, it would have been exactly the same. Nobody
would have understood, when the Lord said, "I am the
way," or when he said, "I am  the door," that he was
really, in fact, a path or a gate; everybody knew that he
meant, "I am the leader; you must  come with me; I
show you the way."  Everybody in the Orient understood
that. But here comnes the Roman genius, taking every
thing literally; and they repeat, "He said,'This is my
body,' and this is his body."  They repeat: "You Protestants do not accept the truth coming from the lips of
your laster. He says,' This is my body,' but you Protestants say,'No, it is not his body, it represents his
body."'  Thus it seems we are convicted of crime; it
seems we will not accept the teachings of our Lord; yet
we are perfectly true to his own meaning, to his real
meaning, that could not be nmisunderstood ill the East, but
that was misunderstood when it was carried to Rome, a
country where people gloried in taking, every thing in a
literal sense. So they did with many other most beautifuil and delicate things in the Bible. The Roman genius
-I cannot help saying it- had something clumsy in it.
They were like giants, having very strong arms, anl
enormous hands, to take every thing, and to dominate
over every thing. But any thing very delicate, very
potic, like flowers firom the East, they could not touch
without the flowers being broken and faded, losing their
charm and their color.  That was their way of treating
many of the most beautiful things of the Bible, which
they did not understand; which they made absurd or
repulsive, by taking in a literal sense what was said, and
ought to be taken, in a spiritual sense.  They acted exactly
74 
OF THE ROML1ISH  CIIURCH.
as we should, if we received an Oriental letter and understood as literal every thing contained in it.
I will give another instance to make this clear.   I
remember having seen two  letters, written one by  a
French General, and another by Abd-el-Kader, the chief
of the einemies of the French in Algeria.  These lette-s
were intended to convey identically the same thing; that
is to say, that some prisoners on one side were to be exchanged for the same number of prisoners on the other
side.  It had been decided that the French General and
the Arab chief should say the same thing.  I hake seen
both. The French General writes two lines; very clear,
distinct, and polite, with notling but the exact meaning
he wanted to convey. But Abd-el-Kader, meaning to write
the same thins, writes a whole page, about flowers, and
jewels, and roses, and moonshine, and every thing of the
kind. HIis intention was to say exactly the samne thing,
to conv ey identically the same meaning; but these things,
translated from one language to another, pass, as a celebrated German scholar says, "from the Shernitic to the
Japhetic; from the poetic language of the sons of Shem,
to the precise language of the sons of Japhet."  This has
been the fault of the Roman Catholic Church in many
dongmas, in many points of very high importance: the sons
of Japhlet could not understand what the sons of Shem
meant.  They thoughlt they understood it, when  they
were entirely in error, and gave to it a meaning altogether
different from what was intended.
I must add, that what helped them along in this belief
of things, taken in a literal sense, was Roman superstition.
In that town, and in Italy, have alwvays prevailed the
strangest superstitions.   The  most celebrated Romans,
75 
THIE RISE AND DECLINE
men whose wisdom and whose glory have filled the world,
if they met, when they went out of their house in the
morning, a hare in the way, re-entered their house on the
instant, and renounced any thing they had to do, because
meeting( a hare was ominous of misfortune, and any thing
they should undertake that day would result ill their confusion or nmisfortune.  When they put their foot in the
wrong way, the left before the right, or the right before
I.ie left, on the stone at the entrance of a house, they
stopped there and returned to their house, because every
thing they should do in that house would prove unfortunate, since they had made a mistake in putting the wrong
foot foremost when they entered the house.
So there were a multitude of superstitions.  You know
when they were to decide the greatest questions of peace
or war, they consulted their sacred chickens.  They gave
them grains'of wheat, and if the chickens ate it, or if they
refused to eat it, or if they ate it too fast, or if the chickens
let fall a grain of  vheat from their mouths, - these signs
meant that war would be successful, or that it would not
be, and they decided according to these whether there
should be a war or not. And those great magistrates,
who were sometimes men of the greatest eminence, like
Cicero, were augurs. - You know what Cicero says, "Two
of us cannot meet without laughing;" because they knew
that their auguries were utterly worthless, but the multitude thought they were true. So the Romans were superstitious to the highest degree, and they have never ceased
to be so. There is superstition in the marrow of their
bones. Many Romans are ready to believe any thing
to-day, at the present moment. I shall allude to a single
fact. They all believe devoutly in the evil eye; that there
76 
OF THiiE IOM.ISH CHURCII.
are people who, if they look at you, will bring upon you
some horrible misfortune, disease, or death. They believe
this so fully, that they have a gesture, representing with
their fingers a pair of horns; and, when they meet any
one who is supposed to have the evil eye, they endeavor,
in a secret way, to make that sign, to prevent misfortune
from coming upon them. It is believed, in Rome, that
the present pope, who is to them God on earth, who is
to them the successor and vicar of Jesus Christ, that
he, as a man, has the evil eye. And when he passes
through the streets of Rome, a great many women, devoutly kneeling before him, with their heads almost in
the dust, craving to receive his blessing, as he passes in his
carriage, will, under their aprons, make this sign, to preserve themselves from the effects of the evil eye. This
is no disparagement to his person; they think that the
poor man cannot help it; that there is no ill will in it;
that it is fate; he has the evil eye.
I could cite many other instances of this superstition;
perhaps it will be enough to refer to one more, and one
that disgusted me completely. It is the worship with
which they surround the Santo Bambino.  There is on
the Capitoline Hill a church that was formerly a heathen
temple, and which has kept an old name, "Ara  Celi,"
or "altar of Heaven."   In that church, the Franciscan
monks keep a very ugly doll. This doll is said to have
been sculptured out of one of the olive-trees on the Mount
of Olives, and then Saint Luke is supposed to have painted
it over. Saint Luke must have been the painter of the
poorest daubs that ever were in the world, and the angels
who took it to him must have been very far from being con noisseurs of painting. This doll is covered with diamonds,
77 
THE RISE AND DECLINE
emeralds, sapphires, and other precious stones, of greatest
price. It is kept in a box on the altar, and, when you
ask to see it, the monks pray before the door, they light
tapers, they produce the box, and then the box is opened,
and you see the hideous little wooden image. Now, this
Santo Bambino is supposed to have healing properties.
He heals people, when they are rich enough to pay a good
salary to him; he is not a physician who heals for nothing.
He has a magnificent carriage of his own, and servants
with his own livery; and, when any rich man wants to be
cured by him, the Santo Bambino goes in his own carriage to the man's house, carried on the knees of Franciscan monks, and cures the patient,- if he can. Such is
the belief of the country. But I could not see any very
great difference between that doll and the idols that the
old Romans had, and used in the same way. The idea is
this: they suppose that the Santo Banmbino represents
Christ as a little child.
Not only were the old Romans superstitious, but we
know, by historical testimony coming fiom the heathen
themselves, that at the time when Christianity appeared
there was an increase of superstition; there was a general
feeling of a want of something definite, something like a
sort of atonement; and at that time all sorts of ceremonies,
all sorts of bloody sacrifices, were introduced from Syria,
from Libya, from the most remote countries, and the Romans tried to find for their consciences some satisfaction
in those rites. For instance, you all know they had a
custom of having their sins expiated by means of what
they called taurobolium. A man had a grave dug in the
ground, and then over that grave was put a marble slab,
with a great many holes in it, like a sieve. In that grave
78 
OF THIE ROMISH CHURCH.
the man stretched himself at full length, and over the
marble slab a bull was killed, in such a way that the blood
fell through the holes into the grave. When the bull
was taken away, and the marble slab was lifted, the man
rose out of that grave perfectly covered with the blood of
the bull, entirely bathed in that blood. Then he was supposed to be a new man, supposed to be washed of all his
sins. He believed that from that moment the anger of the
gods had passed to the bull, and that the blood of the bull
had been shed instead of his own.  We find in Ovid, one of
the poets of the time, the prayer of a man for whom was
about to be offered up the sacrifice of the black hen. He
asks the gods to take the heart of the hen instead of his
own, the fibres of the hen's body instead of the fibres of his
own body. The poor black hen was sacrificed in the most
cruel way they could find; she must suffer as long as
possible, because then the anger of some god who was
supposed to pursue the man found full satisfaction. The
ferocity of the god had anmple satisfaction in the torture
of the poor black hen, and the sins of the man were
expiated. Then there was superstition upon superstition,
because, when the mangled remains of the unfortunate
hen were thrown into the street, if any person unconsciously put his foot on that body, then he became the inL_ritor of the crimnes of the first man, and of the anger of
the gods.  They had a special name for those bloody remnains of the sacrificed fowl: they called them purgamenturz, because they thought that such a sacrifice purged a
man of his sins. As nobody dared lift or touch the body
of the victim, they put a fence around it; and, as long
as there remained on the ground in the streets of Rome
a vestige of the poor bird, nobody would tread on
79 
TIIE PISE AND DECLINE
that place; and the fence was put there to prevent this.
These were the superstitions ot tliat tine; iid Plutarch
wrote a treatise to which lle gives tle title Jet'ctiltor[(t,
which is traiisl;l,t,ed very often by the word " siil)erstltionl;
but it imeans miore tbnan tllat, it imeans " terror of tile gods."
It means that feelilng whlicli was more and more prevailihng
in the Roman iworld, that the god(s were to be fearedl; that
there was anger in heaven; that the earth could not defend itself against the bad will of a superlnitural power.
We can very well tunderstand that when Cltristi.mity was
preached to those people they were happy to takle that
religion of hope, that religion of regencrlattioni and sanetification.  It was to them  a mnarvellous deliverance to be
out of that old doctrine and in the new one.  But they
carried with them many hlibits of thouglht, many things
which  were  inherent in the ancient religion.  Among
those things was the habit of multipl)ying, the divine
being.  They had been for a long series of centuries-polytheists, believing in many gods. With their superstitious
fears, they were always afriaid there were not god(ls enoiugh.
That was s'tying a good deal, for they had more than
30,000 of them at the time of Christ.  It was recognized
that nobody could even know them all by name.
Again you will excuse me if I use here a very fimniliar
illustration to make the leading thou,ght of polytlheism
understood.
You know that in fairy tales the fhiries are always called
in to the festival at the baptism of the infint child.  The
intention is to invite them all, but there is ilwlays one
forg(otten; and that one curses the child in some way or
other; and then all the gifts of all the good fidies cannot
prevent the child fiom suffering, at least for a timie, fiom
80 
OF THE ROMISH CHURCH.
the bad will of the one that has been forgotten. This
involves the essential idea of polytheists. They had
always the thought that all the good gods whom they
worshipped could not prevent any malevolent one who
had been neglected firom hurting them; and they were
always in search of that one. They were always making
altars "to the unknown god or gods," to be certain in that
way to include them all.  They were constantly asking
what gods were worshipped in such a country, in such a
place; and if it was a god that was not known among
them, straightway they pirepared a place for his worship.  They said, "He  has no existence, very likely;
but if he has, if he lives, then we must sacrifice to him,
to prevent his spoiling the happiness that the other
good gods wish to give us."  So there was  an incessant adding to the immense number of gods. At the
time of Christ, they had so many of them that, from
the time a grain of corn was put into the ground to the
time the harvest commenced, they had nine different
deities who in succession took charge of the corn that had
been put into the ground, and thus it passed from one god
to another. Nine of them were necessary while the grain
was in the ground. Thus, when the heathen became
Christians, they had been in the constant habit of adding
gods to their heaven, of adding good men to their gods,
and also men not good, but whom they feared,- for all
the emperors were made gods the moment they died, so
that one of them, who was rather a wit, when he was
dying said, "I feel that I am becoming a god."  The
heathen had become so habituated to this that, when they
became Christians, they continued very naturally to multiply the number of the objects of worship. They soon
4*
81 
THE RISE AND DECLINE
ceased to make the slightest difference between Christ and
the Father. In good time they unconsciously put Mary,
the mother of Christ, above Christ; now, without ever
having this intention, they put, in fact, Mary above the
Father.  And so on, adding always a new god to a new
worship, and always making the new worship as binding
and as efficacious as possible, to satisfy that polytheistic
craving. They did not understand their error in keeping
between the infinite God and themselves an immense
number of minor deities. This craving was unwholesome,
but very sincere. That unconscious wish to multiply gods
and make saints has continued to this day; and no pope
has canonized so many saints as the present one, who is
always trying to show that he does more in this way than
any of his predecessors.
This will suffice to give you an idea of what the old
spirit of Rome was, the whole tendency of the Roman
mind, and what was brought by them into the church. I
must now ask you to go in imagination with me to the
tomb of one of those old Romans, who were not burned,
according to the custom of that period, say the Scipl)ios.
Suppose one of the Scipios taken out of his tomb; and
bring him into a Roman Catholic Church: do you think
he will be very much astonished? He will be astonished
at one thing,- by the crucifix, the image of the crucified
Son of God. That was completely contrary to the
Roman ideal and their habit of thought. But all the
other things he will see will not astonish him at all.
IIe had seen them all his life in his own time. You
believe, perhaps, that the shape of a Roman Catholic
Church at Rome will astonish a pagan? Not at all.
Cato had given the Romans the pleasure of enjoying,
82 
Si
OF THE ROMISH CHURCH.
for the first time, a portico with three ranges of colunins, the middle aisle beiiing broader than the others;
and at the end wvas what we  call an apse, but the
ancients a conlch.  Tile end w'is rol-unded off,; and( th]rown
into the form of a semi-circle, and the tribuinal for the
prator or judge was placed in that half-circle at the end.
This portico was called a stoa basilica, and the first Romian
Christian churches wqere built on that plan.  Afterwards,
the idea came of making the church in the shape of a
cross; and then a smaller basiiica was placed across the
other, forming the transept of the church. But those long
ranges of columns remained, with the same wide space
in the middle, and narrower aisles on either side.  The
basilica was the form of public buildings most in fashion
in Rome at that time. There the gothic style was never
popular. Even now, of four or five hundred churches in
Rome, only one, the iMinerva, is gothic. When Christian
architecture was born, Christian architecture accepted the
heathen plan.
In the new church, in that basilica, what do we find?
We find holy water at the door. That was exactly what
you found in the pagan temple, only it was called lustral
water. In the temple, my Scipio, who goes with me,
recognizes all his old habits of thought, all the old emblems of his religious devotion. He sees a number of
statues, or images; but he has seen those all his life.
There is not only a central shrine, but there are small
chapels. The saints have a golden circle round their
heads: Christians call it the aur-a, the ancients called
it the nimbit8z; but it was exactly the same thing. They
had it around the heads of their deities in painting and
sculptur'e, and so on.  There are censers and there are
83 
THE RISE AND DECLINE
tapers burning there; and there are all the orniamenits a
pagan was accustomed to see in his temple.  All those
things had been kept, had been re-estiablislhed,,in(t tlhe
pagans had brought them  with them  into tle C:tliolic
churches.  NVhen I vwent for the first time to Nal)les, the
man who showed me thle museumn there showed me ifeet,
legs, and arms, hands, eyes, and ears, in stone.  lIe slid,
"These are ex voto."  People who were ill gave to some
of the gods, the ones they chose, these thlings as mlarks of
gratitude for having been cured. The cicerone told me,
"You see, sir, it is exactly the same thing we have in our
churches."  And so it is.  In all the churches in N.aples
and Rome, and in the Roman Catholic churches all over
Spain and France, you see, in wax, in goll, in silver, and
in stone, such legs and arms, eyes and ears.  It is exactly
the same thing.  The heathen man said to his god, " I
will pay you by this mark of honor and glratitude, by this
1nmark of your power and your glory, if you cure me."
The Roman Catholic says exactly the same thing to a
saint, to the Virgin, sometimes to Jesus, and very rarely
to God.
I cannot mention here all the other details, like fiuneral
setvices at the end of the ycar, likc fineral cha.pels, like
many other institutions that exist in the Roman Catholic
Church, that are practised every day in it, and that are
exactly the same, so far as religious ideas go, as were
practised in the pagan churchcs.  But I must add something of more consequence  than that, about the worship of human beings, and especially of the worship of
the Virgin  Ilary.  It was nothing new to the  Pagans
to worship a woman, and especially to worship a virgin.
That was one of the ideas the most familiar to their devo
84 
OF THE ROM.ISH CHURCH.L
tioIl. In Rome they had the temple of Hestia or Vesta,
who was supposed to be a virgin; and she had around
her nuns who were pledged( to live in celibacy, and punislied by death if they did not remain true to their vow.
In Greece it was the same thing with Pallas.  Pelalps
you all know that in Athens, the largest, most perfect,
and most beautifill of the Greek temples - immensely
supe.ior to any edifice I ever saw in any country -is
called the Parthenon, which means the Virgin Temple.
That temple is the temple of Pallas, -  Athene, or ]iinerva, r-who was the principal deity of Athenls. Thus that
idea was perfectly familiar to them, and they only kept it,
and brought it with them into Christianity.
I have spoken of monks. You must not believe that
the monks are by any means a Roman Catholic invention.
In the East there have been monks in all times and in all
religions. It seems to have been a special habit or taste of
the people of the East to give some men no other business, no other work to do, but to live in solitude, and pray
for them; and some men have always, in those very hot
countries, where it is exceedingly tiresome to work, liked
to live in perpetual prayer better than any other more
fatiguing labor.  We  find the monk  in all times and
countries in the East, then in the West; and he has
been imported from paganism into Christianity, like all
the rest. I do not believe there is a religion more completely contrary to the monastic feeling than the religion
of Christ.  I do not think there was ever a type more
radically contrary to the type of the monk, than the
fiagure of Christ as we find it in the Bible.  HIowever,
that old monkish spirit of the Orient wvas always known
to the Romans fiom the beginniing; for they had priests
85 
THE RISE AND DECLINE
and monks fronm the time their city began. That spirit
has, like other things, been smuggled into the Church,
though it was contrary to the spirit of Christianity.
I must recall one last rite of great importance. Both
the old Romans and the old Jews had, as a principal part
of their worship, the rite of sacrifice. The origin of it was
simply this: that men in the first place possessed nothing
but flocks, and they gave to God one head of their flock,
one sheep, or one bull, as being the only riches they had to
give. Before they had houses, before they had garments,
before they had any other thing, -money they were very
far from having - men had to eat, and they had flocks
because they wanted to have mieat to eat; and thus they
gave to God the only necessity of life to them, the only
thing they understood the importance of.  And they gave
him the whole animal, not reserving to themselves any part
of it, in some cases; in other cases, a part of it only, making a meal of the rest for themselves. To give a part to
God was one essential element of their worship, the rite of
sacrifice; and we find that the rite grew out of that, and
nothing else. It was a habit deeply rooted in the Roman
mind, and at the same time already familiar to the Jews;
and when those Christians who had been Jews spoke of
Christ to the Romans, they could not prevent that Roman
or Jewish habit from taking double force, and double space
in religion. What happened? It happened that the old
Romans and old Jews wanted a sacrifice; wanted to give
something to God; wanted a victim; and then came this
strange fact, very easy to understand however, of which
we find traces in the first days'of Christianity,- that there
was no better victim to offer to God than Christ. When
they had identified completely Christ with the Father,
86 
OF THE ROMIISH CHIURCH.
then there was no greater victim to offer to God than God
himself. Therefore, they had a sacrifice that is called "the
mass." You know the official name is "sacrifice of the
mass." It consists in this. The priest takes the host, which
is merely bread,- it is nothing but a little flour and water,
made into bread, - he pronounces the consecrating words;
then, after he pronounces them, there is no bread, there is
no flour; instead of the bread, instead of the flour, there
is Jesus Christ. According to the Council of Trent, that
is Jesus Christ, his body, his blood, his soul, and his di  vinity; it is Jesus Christ; is perfect God.  And this has
been, by an old Roman Catholic writer, very clearly ex  pressed in these three words: "The priest, what is he? what
does he do?  Creatus Creatorem creat."  He is a creat  ure who creates the Creator.  After that comes the second
great part of the sacrifice of the mass.  There is God, and
the priest sacrifices God to God.  And how?  Sacrificat
manducan(To.  That is to say, according to the formal ex  planation, he sacrifices God by eating God. This is the
sacrifice of the mass.  If the Roman mind had not been
accustomed, as I have shown you, to superstition, to all
literalisnm, to the love of the law and the letter, even when
the law or the letter was absurd, they would not easily have
accepted all this; but with their turn of mind, with their
way of taking things, that was exactly what they wished
for, and that was what they adopted. Not at once: it
was very long in elaborating itself. It was so completely,
I cannot say otherwise, so completely absurd, that it re   quired a great deal of time to make it so precise; but they
attained to that at last, and they could not but do so.
See, then, what a man  the priest is.  He has before him
bread, and he makes God; he afterwards sacrifices God;
87 
THE RISE AND DE CLIVNE
he is almost a God himself. At the moment when he
makes God, he seems to be superior to God; at the moment when he sacrifices God, by eating him, he seems
superior to God. Thence comes the immense power of
the priesthood, of priestcraft. And as if this were not
enough, in the mass, as you know, the priest has not only
the host, but he has the wine, the cup. The other members of the church have not the cup, because they must
not be equal to the priest even in the communion; even
in the act of uniting themselves with God. Laymen cannot arrive at the height of glory to which the priest
arrives; they muss eat the host when it is given to them,
but they cannot touch the cup; that is reserved to the
priest, a sort of heavenly, or divine, or godlike character.
Even as the Romans had respected their old bridge-makers,
their old pontiflces, their old priests, whom they considered
the bulwarks of their town, they respected afterwards the
priests of the Roman Catholic Church. So the mass was
established, with all its consequences.
This is not all. I must explain exactly how a part of
the heathenish religion answered, in the time of Jesus, the
wants of the heathen better than the more natural religion
of the Christians. At the time of Christ, many Romans
did not believe in thirty thousand gods and in all the
absurd and indecent history of those thirty thousand
deities, but they had a form of worship that had become
purer and purer.  They had what they called "Mysteries."
In Greece, and in Rome also, there were "Mysteries." These
were ceremonies in which great philosophic and religious
lessons were given. There exists a very touching letter
from Plutarch to his wifec, written at the time he lost his
only daughter, and when they were in the deepest affliction
88 
OF THE ROJ~IlSH CHURCH.
and desolation.  He writes to his wife, who was separated
fiom him at that time, a very kind and loving letter, tirying,
to give her comfort and hope.  He says to her, "TReimemnl)br
the beautifiul things wev have seen together in the 1tysterie(s
of Bacchus."  You must not believe, as many would at
first believe, that the MIysteries of Bacchus were nothing
but drunkenness and disorder: they were sonethingi else.
Thley were like the Mysteries of Ceres, the Goddess of Corn,
and like the representations, in other cases, of the immortality of the soul.  They were a sort of tragedy in which,
less by word th.in by singing, and by acting especially,
was shown to men that, when the body is interred in
the ground, the soul lives, and the soul shall rise to filness of life.  A grain of wheat hidden in the ground remained hidden there for weeks before comting to life.
That was the emblem of the new life of immort'lity. Now,
this teaching, good in itself, true in itself, but given in
dramatic images, was at that time the very best, soundest,
most human, and most natural part of heathenism.  And
then it happened that IMysteries were acted, not only in
the heathen churches, but in Christian churches; that the
history of Christ, that the death of Christ, that the resurrection of Christ, took the place of the resurrection of
Proserpine, the daughter of Ceres, who represented wheat
and corn; and then Christianity became a sort of subject
of sacred myths, sacred plays, that were very devoutly
acted, and that kept their title of "Mysteries."  As soon
as we see something of the dark ages, and what the practice of worslhip was, we see this same thing.  It is going
on in all countries in some measure. You may see it in
the Roman Catholic churches during Easter week.  You
may see then that, when Christ dies, all the lights are put
89 
THE RISE AND DECLINE
out, save one very small light, because that represents the
moment when the sky was covered with darkness at his
death.  And you hear in a choir some persons sing the
words of the people who screamed "Crucify him!" and
others repeating the words of Caiaphas and the words
of Christ.  This "Mystery," this serious, devout play,
is acted in all Roman Catholic churches.  Wh(}. Christ
is dead, the host is taken away firom the altar, and it is
carried into the tomb, carried into some lower chapel,
fiom which it comes back to the great altar on Easter
morning, on the day of the resurrection. That solemn
play is going on in all Roman Catholic countries at the
present time, and that is a "Mystery."  Such is also the
" Mystery" that was played in Germany, at Oberammergau
(Bavaria), during the last year, and is played there every
ten years.  It is a devout, religious, serious, dramatic representation of our Lord's suffering, death, and resurrection.
The mass in itself was in the beginning a Mystery; it is
often called so; it is often called in old Roman Catholic
books and often in modern ones the "Mystery of the Mass."
It was a representation of the death and sacrifice of Jesus;
but the Roman Catholic spirit coming in declared that this
MIystery was not, like others, a mere representation, a
sacred play, but a reality; and according to the doctrine
proclaimed by the Council of Trent, three hundred years
ago, the sacrifice of the mass is much more than a represenitation of Christ's death, of Christ's sacrifice, for he is
sacrificed anew, he suffers death really anew. And it has
been declared, because some Protestant opponents were
astonished at it, that every time any priest says mass,
and every priest must say mass at least once every day,
every time a priest says mass, Christ suffers again, and
90 
OF THE ROMIJSH CHURCH.
dies again, sacrificed by the priest for the redemption of
human kind. This is the doctrine of the mass, and this
gives it a very traoic, grand, and solemn effect in the eyes
of those who believe in it.  Yet this again is nothing but
Roman literalism, the Roman way of taking every thing
literally.
Is all this real Christianity? At all events I have said
enough, I hope, to give you an idea of the way in which
the religion of Jesus of Nazareth, as he was called,
preached by him on the hills of Galilee, - a religion that
was quite spirit, and quite truth; a religion that had at
that time no bleeding, no consecrated man, but that was
alive by the Spirit of God in the conscience and in the
hearts of men, - how that religion, purely spiritual as it
was, became all the pomp, all the exterior complications,
all the dramatic intricacies of the Church of Rome.
And here I stop to ask again, Can all this suit the
urgent necessities of our times? Is that the truth after
which our souls hunger and thirst?
Now I must, before I end, say a few words to you about
the late changes. Do those changes make matters better or
worse? Let us pass over ages and centuries, and come to
the present Jay, because I say we must make some change
in our way of resisting the Church of Rome. I must state,
and very rapidly, what these changes are. There are
three of them. The first is, that a new dogma has been
established. The new dogma amounts to this, without
going into details, that MIary, the mother of Christ, was
created, at the moment she began to exist, exempt from
original sin.  All human beings are guilty of Adam's sin,
with one exception, and that exception is Mary. That exception dates from the very first instant of her existence.
91
2 
THE RISE AND DECLIVNE
She never was, even in thought or in feeling, a sinner;
she is consequently out of the pale of humanity; she
is not a human being; she is more than a woman, she is
something godlike from before her birth. That is the
dogma. It is not new; it was invented in Spain; it is
a Spanish, an Andalusian dogma. It was invented at a
time when the Catholics in Spain were laboring very hard
to expel from their country the Moors, the African Moslems, who were masters of a great part of Spain, and who
had more science, more art, and more literary culture
than the Christians of Spain, but who had absurd doctrines
about the family and about religion, as well you know.
Nothing could displease them more, could astonish them
more, or could confound all their ideas more, than to tell
them that a woman was godlike. They thought, as all
Moslems have thought, that a woman had no soul; and
here was a woman who was a goddess before her birth,
who was always a goddess. This was something absolutely incredible to them, and it showed the great difference between Christians and Moslems, between Spaniards
and Arabs. This became the general rule among the
Spaniards of the southern part of the country, in Andalusia especially; and when they met one another they did
not salute with words of good greeting, but for centuries
it was the habit in Andalusia, when one Spaniard met
another, to say to him, Ave Maria purissima, and the
other answered, Sin pecado concepida, which means that
that dogma was proclaimed every time two persons met.
This dogma has been taken into special favor by the very
powerful order of Jesuits. They thought it was important
to the church; it was putting Mary in the highest honor,
to have that dogma become the law of the church. But
92 
01  TIIE ROMIISH CH[URCH.
up to the present century, up to last year in the Roman
Catholic Church, people could believe it or not; now the
Pope has declared that henceforth every man who does
not believe that dogma is eternally lost and damned.
This he has decreed, after consulting with some bishops,
with whom he conferred about it, but declaring that lihe
did so of his own accord, because, as pope, he had a right
to decide on that. He said, it is no new doctrine; it has
always been in the church. As the great writer Father
Perrone wrote, "That doguila has been developing itself
in the church a long tiime."  When I saw the Church of
Rome speaking of a do-gma " developing itself," I thought,
This is the beginning of the end. If they understand
that dogmas develop themselves, that they have not fallen
like aerolites firom the heavens, it seems to me that that
is the end of infallibility. Some people think it was the
beginning of infillibility, that it was the Pope for the
first time declaring a dogma for all men without consulting officially or legally any one, and that when he had
done this he had augmented his power.  I must remark
here, that when a pope is very weak, the general rule is,
he does something extremely strong. When he is extremely weak, politically, materially, he generally makes
some  great demonstration  of spiritual power.  When
Pope Gregorius VII. kept Henry in his shirt a whole night
at the door of the castle of Canossa without opening the
door to him, saying, "You are a sinner, do penance,"when he did that, the Pope had been expelled firom
Rome, he had lost Rome, therefore he  must prove his
inmense spiritual power, because his temporal power was
lost. And when the present Pope has done acts of authority greater than any other pope, it has not been because
93 
THlE RISE AND DECLINE
he was strong, but because he was weak; to remain on
his throne he wanted to have the bayonets of Louis Bonaparte to keep him in power.  His own subjects would
very soon have shown him a second time the way to the
frontier, if they had not been prevented by the bayonets of
that man. Thus the Pope did more towards asserting and
confirming his own power than any of his two hundred and
fifty odd predecessors. When afterwards he took a new
step, it was in continuance of this. He called a council
when three hundred years had elapsed since an ecumenical
council had been called. I know old Roman Catholic
families who had been waiting for centuries for the moment
when an cecumenical council should assemble, to denounce
before that council the encroachments of the Pope, and to
ask that the popedom be kept within bounds for the future.
Pio IX. had an cecumenical council called, and held it in
his own house, in the Vatican. And there, in one end of
one of the transepts of the immense church of Saint Peter,
the Pope had himself declared infialible by the council.
Thus all the other councils which had been the hope of
such persons in the church as could not accept every word
of the Pope, all those councils have been sacrificed, have
abdicated, in the last of them, at the foot of the Pope.
Now,  the Roman  Catholic  Church  has become  very
logically, what it ought to become, the same thing in the
spiritual world that the Roman Empire became in the
temporal world.  The Roman Emperor was every thing;
there had been priests and magistrates who had great
powers; then the emperor made himself dictator, consul,
tribune of the people; made himself high bri(lge-maker;
took upon himself all dignities.  IIe was every thing; and
then the whole Roman Empire was one man; and some
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times it happened that that man was a madl man like
Caligula, who said, "I am sorry that all men have not one
head that I might cut it off." Stuch was the unity of the
Roman Empire, and we see the same fact in the Roman
Catholic Church to this extent, that there is one human
brain that thinks for  ill Roman Catholics in the world,
and if that human brain decides that such a thing is or is
not, all other human brains must believe it, or be damned
eternally; there is no choice. This is perfectly logical;
this is not an unexpected change; this must have come
to pass. As the Pope became physically weak, the more
absolute became the necessity that this should be done.
Now, he is weak, he has lost Rome. Although it was
not in my way, I passed through Rome a few months ago
for the purpose of seeing Rome free, and it was an immense joy to see that.  I had seen Rome groaning under
that proud, domineering government of the priests, who
declared that their government was the best in the world,
while the whole world called it emphatically il real governo.  Now I have seen it free; and I think no Bonaparte
of France, nor any French Government, nor any other
government, had any right to give up Rome to the priests,
to prevent the Romans from being masters in their own
house, from being firee in their own city. I must declare
to you, that if in one sense the Roman Catholic Church
has lost a great deal because  she has lost that great
tradition, lost that long habit of ruiling in Rome, and the
high prestige that comes firom it, yet the Roman Catholic
Church has gained more perhaps than she has lost in this.
You must not believe that the Roman Catholic Church is
to disappear to-morrow, or the next day: that shall not
happen. There are hundreds of thousands of souls who
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'HE RLISE AND DECLINE
like better to have one man on a throne thinkiiig for them,
takiing on his conscience anti his honor the question of
their salvation, - they like tihat better than to tlhink for
themselves; and there will be Roman Catholic churches
for a long time to come. They will even be stronger in
one sense, because that temporal power was so exercised
that it caused great weakness; anld now the Pope will be
strengthened; will fildl more interest and symnpathy, because he is a king without a crown, a king without a
throne: in his weakness he will find new strength.
What must we do, we Protestants, in the presence of
this fact?  MIust we exaggerate, must we be unfair in our
attacks?  No.  alust we go to sleep, thinking there is
nothing to do?  No, not that either.  We must work; we
must work steadily to give light and instruction to all.
We have here, - and I have tried in a very rapid way to
give you an idea of it, -we have here history.  That is
the greatest of weapons in such a case as this. Usurpers
never like history, because they know very well that history condemns them.   We  must make history known,
make the facts known, and proclaim liberty and the rights
of the human conscience.   WVe must do that over the
whole world. I do not believe that Protestantism, as it
has often been said, is ilothing else but Romnan Catholicism
stripped of some of its abuses, and without some of its
errors. It is something else. If there were time, and I
could begin now insteadl of ending, I would try to show
you that in the history of Protestantism, and even before
Protestantism  appeared, there has always been, next to
that stream of power of Romani  Catholicism, always becoining stronger and more encroactling up to these last ldays,
another current of protest; there have always been men
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OF THE ROM-SH CHURCH.
struggling for faith with liberty, who said, "That cannot
be;" who understood better the Gospel, who liked the
spirit of the Gospel, the spirit of God in Christ, better
than the spirit of Rome. For centuries their mouths may
have been closed; their speaking and teaching punished
by death; but always they became more and more numerous, and active, and vigorous; and then came the great
day of Luther. Protestantism has not been a negation, a
remnant of Roman Catholicism, the negative side of
Christianity. I cannot adopt that idea in the least. True
Protestantism is full of the spirit of the Gospel; it is tle
living soul of Christ in the Church, it embodies the perfect conviction that there is truth, that there is salvation,
that there is liberty, in the Gospel, and nowhere else so
completely.
Now, we must consider the Roman Catholic Church as
being an organization of power, the most dreadful, the most
tyrannical, the most crushing organization of power that
ever was. It is the master-piece of Roman genius. It has
been preparing during centuries, and it has been complete
only since yesterday. It is a great organization against
liberty, against man's rights, against man's conscience, for
the honor of a church and of a man. And this we must
resist, too. In my country, I declare that the cause of all
our ills, the fact that is at the basis of all our suffering
and all our misfortunes, is nothing else than Roman
Catholicism. This is against the conscience of many
souls; this throws many people into sheer Atheism,
because they see no choice between kissing the shoe of the
Pope, as is done in ceremonies, and denying the existence
of God. So they deny God rather than submit to the
Pope. We must give them sound teaching, religious
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teaching; we must give them the Gospel. And I came to
this country to say these things to you; to ask you to help
us with all your might, and with all your heart, to do what
is necessary should be done in France to-day; what will be
necessary to be done in this country sooner or later, and
what will be necessary to be done in all countries, to show
more and more that "where is the Spirit of the Lord
there is liberty." 
A
SELFHOOD AND SACRIFICE.
BY ORVILLE DEWEY.
I
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::.-.E::. " 1
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SELFHOOD AND SACRIFICE.
TIHE title which I have chosen for this discourse, is
Selfhood and Sacrifice. My purpose is, to consider
what place these principles have in human culture.  I use
the word, selfhood, rather than self-regard or self-interest,
because I wish to go back to the original principle - selfhood, according to the analogy of our language, describing the simple and absolute condition in which self exists;
as manhood does that of man, or childhood, that of a
child.  And I say sacrifice, rather than self-sacrifice, because the true principle does not require the sacrifice of
our highest self, but only of that which unlawfully hinders outflow fi-om self.
The subject of culture has been brought before the public of late, by Professor Huxley, and Matthew Arnold, and
Mr. Shairp. I do not propose to enter into the questions
which have engaged their able pens, but to go back to
those primary and foundation principles, which I have
proposed to consider - the one of which is the centre,
and the other, the circumference of human culture,Selfhood and Sacrifice.
It is the object of this course of lectures, in part at
least as I understand it, to discuss this subject - to discuss, i.e. the principles and grounds, on which right reason
and rational Christianity propose to build up a good and
::.a.**::*. "
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SELFHOOD AND SACRIFICE.
exalted character. Now with regard to what Christianity
teaches, has it never occurred to you, or has it never
seemed to you, in reading the Gospels, that they appeal
to self-interest, to the desire to be saved, in a way that is
at variance with the loftiest motives? But it is appealed
to, and therefore is, in some sense, sanctioned. And yet,
as if this self-interest were something wrong, the prevalence of it in the world, the world's selfishness in other
words, is represented by many preachers, as if it were the
sum of all wickedness, the proof indeed, of total depravity. Here then, it seems to me, whether we look at
Christianity or at the teachings of the pulpit, there is
urgent need of discrimination. And there is another
aspect of the same subject, which seems to require attention; and that is what is called, individualism- the
mentally living, if not for, yet in and out of ourselves;
claiming to find all the springs and forces of faith and
culture within ourselves, to the exclusion of the proper
influence of society, of Christianity, of the whole great
realm of the past, by which we have been trained and
formed; individualism, which says, "I belong to myself,
and to nobody else, and do not choose to be brought or
organized into any system of faith or action with anybody
else." This, indeed, is an extreme to which, perhaps, but
few minds go; but there is a tendency of this kind, which
needs to be looked into.
Now there is a way of thinking, in matters of practical
expediency, to which I confess that I am committed by
my life-long reflections; and which has always prevented
me from going to the extreme with any party, whether in
reforms, in politics, in religious systems, or in any thing
else; and that is, to look to the mean in things; to look
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upon human nature and human culture, as held in the
balance between opposing principles. With this view, I
shall first undertake to show that the principle of self regard, or of individualism, is right and lawful - is indeed,
an essential principle of culture.
There is a remarkable passage in the old "Theologia
Germanica," which hits, I think, the very point in this mat ter of self-regard. Speaking of its highest man, it says,
"All thought of self, all self-seeking, self-will, and what
cometh thereof, must be utterly lost, surrendered and given
over to God, except in so far as they are necessary to make
up a person." This personality, this stand-point, we must
hold to, go where we will.
But let me state more precisely what it is, that is here
conceded, and must be maintained; and why it is important to defend and justify it. I call it self hood; and the
word, I conceive, is philosophically necessary to meet the
case. Because it is a principle, that goes behind selfishness; and of which selfishness is the excess and abuse.
Selfishness calculates, overreaches, circumvents. But
self hood is simpler.  It is the instinctive, instantaneous,
uncalculating rush of our faculties, to preserve, protect
and help ourselves. Selfishness proposes to take advantage of others; selfhood only to take care of itself.  It is
not, as a principle of our nature, a depraved instinct; animals possess it. It is not moral, or immoral, but simply
unmoral. It is a simple force, necessary to our self-preservation, to our individuality, to our personality.   The
highest moral natures feel it as well as the lowest. The
martyr, who gives up every thing else, holds his integrity
fast and dear. It is written of the great Martyr, that,
"for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross,
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despising the shanime."  No being that is not an idiot, can
be divested of all care and regard for himself. And not
only does necessity enforce, but justice defends the principle.  If happiness is a good, and there are two equal
amounts of it, the one of which is mine, and the other my
neighbor's, I may in strict justice, value and desire my
own as much as his.  If I love his more than my own, I
go beyond the commandment.  It is not worth while to
put any Utopian strain upon the bond of virtue; nay, it
does positive harm.
Yet this is constantly done; to the injury of virtue, of
conscience, and of a proper self-respect. In our theories
of culture, we demand of ourselves, what is impossible,
what is unjust to ourselves, what repudiates a part of the
very nature we would cultivate.  We demand of ourselves,
and we suppose that Christianity demands of us, a certain
unattainable perfection, - or what we call perfection,a sinking of ourselves out of sight, and an absorption into
the love of God and men, quite beyond our reach: and
failing of that- thinking it entirely out of our sphere, we
give up the proper rational endeavor to be Christians.
We make the highest virtue something exceptional, instead of regarding it as a prize for us all.  We  imagine
that some few have attained it; that Jesus did, and that
a few persons, denominated saints, have approached him;
but that for the common run of men, this is all out of the
question.  The fact is, that Christianity is regarded by
many, as an enigma, a secret of the initiated, as an idle
vision or hard exaction - not as a rational culture. Listen
to the conversation of the mart or the drawing-room, you
will find that the high Christian law is but a mocking
dream in their eyes. "Giving to him that asketh, and from
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him that would borrow, turning not away, and to him
that takes from us our coat, giving our cloak also; and
turning the other cheek to the smiter;"- what is this
they say, but extravagance and fanaticism? As if they
did not know that there is such a figure of speech as
hyperbole; and that it was perfectly natural, in a society
where the poor and the weak were trodden under foot, for
the greatest heart that ever was, thus to pour out itself
in pleadings for sympathy, commiseration and kindness.
But the same Master said, "It is profitable for thee- it
is better for thee," to have some of thy pleasures cut off thine offending hand or eye; rather that, than to have thy
whole being whelmed in misery.
It is really necessary in this matter, not only to vindi cate Christianity as a reasonable religion, but to vindicate
human nature to itself; to save it firom the abjectness of
feeling that the necessity of self-help is an ignoble neces sity.  Men say, "Yes, we are all selfish, we are all bad;"
and they sink into discouragement or apathy, under that
view.
The conditions of true culture are attracting increased
attention at the present time; and it is natural that they
should, when men's minds are getting rid of theologic
definitions and assumptions, and are coming to take broad
and manly views of the subject. I am endeavoring to
make my humble contribution to it; and with this view,
to show, in the first place, what part our very selfhood,
both of right and of necessity, has in it.
This principle lies in the very roots of our being; and
it is developed earliest in our nature. Before the love of
, right, of virtue, of truth, appears this self-regard. Disin terestedness is of later growth.  Infancy comes into the
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world like a royal heir, and takes possession, as if the
world were made for itself alone. Itself is all it knows;
it will by and by, take a wider range. There is a natural
process of improvement in the very progress of life.
"You will get better," says a dramatic satirist,1 "as you
get older; all men do. They are worst in childhood, improve in manhood, and get ready, in old age, for another
world. Youth with its beauty and grace, would seem bestowed on us, for some such reason, as to make us partly
endurable, till we have time to become so of ourselves,
without their aid, when they leave us. The sweetest
child we all smile on, for his pleasant want of the whole
world to break up, or suck in his mouth, seeing no other
good in it- would be roughly handled by that world's
inhabitants, if he retained those angelic, infantile desires,
when he has grown six feet high, black and bearded; but
little by little, he sees fit to forego claim after claim on
the world, puts up with a less and less share of its good
as his proper portion, and when the octogenarian asks
barely for a sup of gruel or a fire of dry sticks, and thanks
you as for his full allowance and right in the common
good of life, - hoping nobody will murder him- he who
began by asking and expecting the whole world to bow 
down in worship to him -why, I say, he is advanced far 
onward, very far, nearly out of sight."
This advancement, thus springing out of the very ex —
perience of life, I am yet to consider, and have it most at
heart to consider. It is of such priceless worth, it so embraces all that is noble in humanity, that the importance   i
of the opposite principle, is liable to be quite overlooked. 
Selfishness, which is the excess of a just self-regard, is the
1 Browning: A Soul's Tragedy, p. 250. 
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SELFHOOD AND SACRIFICE.
one form of all evil in the world. The world cries out
upon it, and heaps upon it every epithet, expressive of
meanness, baseness and guilt.  Andl let it bear the branding scorn; but let us not fail to see, though selfishness be
the satirist's mark, and the philosopher's reproach, and the
theolog,ian's argument, the real nature and value of the
principle, from which it proceeds.
Self hood I have preferred to call it; self-love, be it, if
you please.  It is that, which satire and false criticism
have misconstrued, when they have said that love of kindred, of friends, of country, of God himself, is but selflove. The mistake arises from that primal and vital part
and participation which ourself has in every thing that
we enjoy or love or adore. This magnificent I- and I
emphasize it, because all meanness is thought to be concentred in that word- this mysterious and magnificent
I- this that one means, when he says I- we may utter,
but can never explain, nor fully express it. There are
great men in the world, whose lives are of far more importance than mine - statesmen, commanders, kings - but I
-no being can feel an intenser interest in his individuality than I do in mine; no being can be of more importance to himself than I am to myself; the very poles of
thougrht and being turn upon that slender line; that simple unity, like the unit in figures, swells to infinite multiplication; that one letter, that single stroke of pen or
type, may be varied and complicated, till it writes the
history of the world.  "I think, therefore I am," said the
philosopher; but the bare utterance of the word I, yields
a vaster inference. No animal ever knew what that word
means. It is some time before the little child learns to
say, I. It says, "Willy or Ellen wants this or that- will
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SELFHOOD AND SA CR1FICE.
go here or there."  What is insanity, but the wreck of
this personality?  The victim loses himnself.  And the
morally insane, the prodigal, when he returns to reason
and virtue, comes to himself.
"A  man's self," says Thackeray, " must always  be
serious to him, under whatever mask or disguise or uniform he presents it to the public."  Yes, though it were
as mimne, harlequin, jester, fool almnost; nor could there be
a more deplorable or desperate condition for a human being, than to account himself nothing, or nothing worth,
or worthy only to be the butt of universal scorn and contempt. From this utter ruin, every man is protected by
that mysterious and momentous personality that dwells
within him.  We may be little in comparison with the general mass of interests, little in comparison with kingdoms,
little in comparison with the swelling grandeur of thrones
and empires, little in comparison with the great orb that
rolls round the sun, and bears millions of such; but we
are forever great in the sense of individual destiny.  This
swells beyond kingships, grandeurs, empires, worlds, to
infinitude and eternity.
There is another element in this selfhood, to be considered, besides its conscious importance, and that is free
will- itself also unmoral, but indispensable. For imagine
a rational being to be placed in this world, without free
will.  He can choose neither wrong nor right. He has a
conscience, but no freedom; no power to choose any thing.
It is, I think, an incongruous and impossible kind of existence; but imagine it.  Evils, troubles, temptations press
against this being, and he can do nothing,; he cannot even
will to resist.  Could there be a condition more horrible?
No; man is a nobler and happier being than this amounts
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to. Free will is put in him, on purpose to fight the great
battle against evil. He could not fight, if he could not
will.  He could not choose the right, without being free
to choose the wrong; for choosing one path without being
at liberty to take the other, would be no choosing. Free
will is to fight the battle. It is a glorious prerogative.
And man, I believe, is out of all proportion, happier, with
this power, all its aberrations included, than he would be
without it. I am glad for my part, that I am not passing
through this world, like a car on a railroad, or turning
round like a wheel in a mill; that I can go, this way or
that, take one path or another; that I can read, or write,
or study, or labor, or do business; and that when the great
trial-hour, between right and wrong, comes, though I may
choose the wrong, yet that I can choose the right.  What
better would there be for me than this - what better
constitution of a rational nature? I know of no better
possible.
Selfhood, then- this interest in ourselves, being seen
to be right, and the play of free will which is a part of it
desirable; let us turn finally to the useful working of the
principle.  You may have said in listening to me thus far,
"What need of insisting so much upon self-regard, which
we all perfectly well understand?" I doubt whether it
is so well understood; and this must be my apology. We
have seen that the principle is native and necessary to us;
let us look a moment, at its utility.
I am put in charge of myself- of my life, first of all.
So strong is the impulse to keep and defend it, that selfpreservation has been called the first law of our being.
But that argues an antecedent  fict - self-appreciation,
Why preserve that which we value not? We defend
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ourself, because we prize ourself. We defend our life,
with the instant rush of all our faculties to the rescue.
" Very selfish," one may say; "And why does a man care
so much for himself; he isn't worth it." He can't help it.
Hle obeys the primal bond; he is a law to himself. Is it
not well? Man's life would perish in a thousand ways, if
he did not thus care for it. The great, universal and most
effective guardianship over human life everywhere, isnot government nor law, not guns nor battlements, not
sympathy, not society -but this self-care.
I am put in charge of my own comfort, of my sustenance. I must provide for it. And to provide for it, I
must have property- house, land, stores, means- something that must be my own, and not another's. If I were
an animal, I might find food and shelter in the common
storehouse of nature's bounty. But I have other wants;
if I have no provision for them that is my own; if some
godless International League, or Agrarian Law, could break
down all the rights of property, there would be an end to
industry, to order, to comfort, and eventually to life itself.
Whatever evils, whatever monstrous crimes come of the
love of gain, its extinction would be infinitely worse.
I am put in charge of my good name, my place among
men. I must regard it. I am sinking to recklessness
about virtue if I cease to value approbation. Even the
martyr, looking to God alone, seeks approval. And good
men's approbation is the reflection of that. To seek honor
fiom men at the expense of principle, is what the Master
condemns -not the desire of honor. It has been made a
question whether the love of approbation should be appealed to, in schools. It cannot be kept out, from there,
nor from anywhere else. If it could, if the vast network
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of social regards, in which men are now held, were torn
asunder, society would fall to pieces.
Finally, I am put in charge of my virtue - of that above
all. And that I must get and keep for myself; no other
can do it for me. Another may stretch out the hand to
defend me from a fatal blow; another may endow me
with wealth; another may give me the praise I do not
deserve; but no friendly intervention, no deed of gift, no
flattery, no falsity, can give me inward truth and integrity.
That solemn point in human experience, that question
upon which every thing hangs- shall I do right? -or
shall I do wrong? - is shrouded in the secrecy and silence
of my own mind. All the power in the world, cannot do
for me the thing that I must do for myself. To me, to
me, the decision is committed.
Now what I have been saying, is this; it is well that
that self-regard, upon which so much is devolved, should
be strong; that there should be no apathy, no indifference, upon this point; that if ever a man wanders away
into recklessness, into idleness, into disgrace, into utter
moral delinquency and lawlessness, he should be brought
to a stand, and brought back again, if possible, by this
intense and uncontrollable regard for himself- for his
own well-being. I do not resolve every thing in human
nature, into the desire of well being. I do not say that
the love of life, of property, of reputation, still less of
virtue, is the same as the love of happiness; but I say that
to the pursuit of all these a man is urged, driven, almost
forced, by this love of his own well-being; nay more to
the pursuit of the highest eventually, and that, by the
very laws of his nature.
Let us now turn to the other principle which I propose
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to discuss- that which opens the whole field of our culture- the principle that carries us out of, and beyond
ourselves.
It has been no part of my design, in discussing the
principle of selfhood, to show the hinderance to culture,
and the evil every way, that come from the abuse of it.
That will be sufficiently manifest, if it be made to appe'tr,
that all culture and happiness are found in the opposite
direction. But if I wanted to put this in the strongest
light, I should point to the pain and obstruction which are
experienced in a diseased self-consciousness. It would be
a powerful argument for that going out of self, which I am
about to speak of  Self, if it is a necessary stand-point, is
yet liable to be always in our way. A morbid anxiety
about our position, our credit with men, the good or ill
opinion others have of our talents, tastes or merits, causes
more misery, I am inclined to think, than any other form
of human selfishness. See a company of persons, inthralled with music, charmed by eloquence, transported by
some heroic action set before them; and they forget
themselves; they do not think, how they look, how they
are dressed, what others think of them, in their common
delight.
The sense of this, I believe it was, that lay at the bottom of the old Buddhist doctrine of Nirwana -i.e., selfoblivion. To lose this wearisome, diseased self, seemed to
Gautama, the great apostle of Buddhism, to be the chief
good.  Nirwana has been taken to mean absolute ainihilation. I do not believe the Buddhists meant that; for
to me, it is incredible, that any great sect, numbering
millions, should have so totally given up the natural love
of existence, and desire of immortality; and Max Miller
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and others have brought that construction of the Buddhist creed, into doubt. Individuals may go that length.
Unhappy Blanco White, tortured in body and mind, could
say that he desired no more of life, here or hereafter. A
German naturalist could say, "Blessed be the death hour
-the time when I shall cease to be." But this revolt
against self and very self-existence, whether ancient or
modern, I advert to, only to show the necessity of going
out from it, in order to build up the kingdom of God
within us. It is notable; it is suggestive; but it is neither
healthy, nor true to human nature. Far truer is that
admirable little poem of David Wasson's, originally entitled "Bugle Notes," which in unfolding the blessing and
joy of existence, touches, I think, the deepest and divinest
sense of things.
But let us proceed to consider the law of sacrificenot sacrifice of happiness nor improvement, but the finding of both, in going out from self, to that which is beyond
and above it.
A man's thought starts from himself; but if it stopped
there, he would be nothing. All philosophy, science,
knowledge presuppose certain original faculties and intuitions; but not to cultivate or carry them out, would leave
their possessor to be the mere root or germ of a man. A
line in geometry presupposes a point; but unless the
point is extended, there can be no geometry; it is a point
barren of all science, of all culture.
Every intellectual step is a step out of one's self. The
philosopher who studies himself, that he may understand
his own mind and nature, is but studying himself objectively; his very self then lies out of himself, and is an
abstraction to him. And the mathematician, the astron
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omer, the naturalist, the poet, the artist, each one goes
out of himself. HIis subject, his theorem, his picture it is,
that draws him- not reward, not reputation. Doubtless
Newton or Herschel, when he left his diagram or his
telescope, and seated himself in the bosom of his family,
might say, "We must live; I must have income; and if
public or private men offer to remunerate and sustain me,
it is right that they should do so." But the moment he
plunges into deep philosophic meditation, he forgets all
that. Nature has more than a bridal charm, science more
than golden treasures, truth more than pontifical authority,
to its votaries. Not wooing, but worship, is found at its
shrines and altars. In the grand hierarchies of science,
of liter.uure, of art, there is a veritable priesthood, as
pure, as unworldly, as can be found in any church. It is
delightful to look upon its work, upon its calm and loving
enthusiasm. The naturalist brings under his microscope,
the smallest and most unattractive specimen of organized
matter, and goes into ecstasies over it, that might seem
ridiculous; but no, this is a piece of holy ncLture- a link
in the chain of its majestic harmonies.
And so every intellectual laborer, when his work is
noblest, forgets himself- the lawyer in his case, the
preacher in his sermon, the physician in his patient. Is
it not true then, and is it not noteworthy, that all the
intellectual treasures that are gathered to form the noblest
humanity, all the intellectual forces that are bearing it
onward, come of self-forgetting?
Equally true is it - more true if possible, in the moral
field.  The man who is revolving around himself, must
move in a very small circle. Vanity, self-conceit, thinking
much of one's self; may be the foible of some able and
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learned men, but never of the greatest men: because the
wider is the circle of a man's thought or knowledge, at
the more points does he see and feel his limitations.
Vanity is always professional, never philosophic. It belongs to a narrow, technical, never to the largest, moral
culture. And all the moral forces in the world, are
strongest, dvi nest, when  clearest of self.  When  the
public man seeks his own advancement, more than the
public weal, he is no more a statesman, but a mere politician; and when the reformer cares more for his own
opinion than for the end to be gained, the people will not
regard nor respect him. The world may be very selfish,
but it will have honesty in those whom it permits to
serve it.
The truth is that the whole culture of the world, is
built on sacrifice; and all the nobleness in the world lies
in that.  To show that, it is only necessary to point to
those classes of men and spheres of action, which exert
the widest influence upon the improvement and welfare
of mankind. They will all be found to bear that mark.
Look, first, at the professional teachers of the worldthe authors, artists, professors, schoolmasters, clergymen.
In returns of worldly goods, their services have been paid
less, than any other equal ability and accomplishment in
the world.  Doubtless there have been exceptions; some
English bishops and Roman prelates have been rich; and
some authors and artists have gained a modest competence. MIore are doing it now, and yet more will. But
the great body of intellectual laborers, has been poor. The
instruction of the world, has been carried on by perpetual
sacrifice. A grand army of teachers - authors, artists,
schoolmasters, professors, heads of colleges -have been
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through ages, carrying on the war against ignorance; but
no triumphal procession has been decreed to it; no spoils
of conquered provinces have come to its coffers; no crown
imperial has invested with pomp and power. In lonely
watch-towers the fires of genius have burned, but to waste
and consume the lamp of life, while they gave light to the
world.
It is no answer to say that the victims of intellectual
toil, broken down in health or fortune, have counted their
work, a privilege and joy. As well deny the martyr's
sacrifice, because he has joyed in his integrity. And many
of the world's intellectual benefactors, have been martyrs.
Socrates died in prison, as a public malefactor; for the
healing wisdom he offered his people, deadly poison was
the reward. Hiomer had a lot so obscure, at least, that
nobody knew his birthplace; and indeed some modern
critics are denying that there ever was any Homer. Plato
travelled back and forth from his home in Athens to the
court of the Syracusan tyrant, regarded indeed and feared,
but persecuted and in peril of life; nay, and once sold for
a slave. Cicero shared a worse fate. Dante, all his life
knew, as he expressed it, -
" How salt was a stranger's bread,
How hard the path still up and down to tread,
A stranger's stairs."
Copernicus and Galileo found science no more profitable
than Dante found poetry. Shakspeare had a home; but
too poorly endowed to stand long in his name, after he left
it; the income upon which he retired was barely two or
three hundred pounds a year; and so little did his contemporaries know or think of him, that the critics hunit in
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vain for the details of his private life. "The mighty space
of his large honors," shrinks to an obscure myth of a life
in theatres of London or on the banks of the Avon.
I might go on to speak, but it needs not, of the noble
philanthropists and missionaries, often spoken of lightly
in these days, because what is noblest must endure the
severest criticism; of inventors, seldom rewarded for their
sagacity and the immense benefits they have conferred
upon the world; of soldiers, our own especially, buried by
thousands, in unknown graves- green, would we fain say,
green forever be the mounds that cover them! Let processions of men and women and children, every year, bring
flowers, bring garlands of honor, to their lowly tombs!
But there is another form of self-consecration which is
yet more essential, and which is universal. And yet because it is essential and universal, the very life-spring of
the world's growth; because it is no signal benefit, but the
common blessing of our existence; because it moulds our
unconscious infancy, and mingles with our thoughtless
childhood, and is an incorporate part of our being, it is apt
to be overlooked and forgotten. The sap that flows up
through the roots of the world- it is out of sight.
The stately growths we see; the trees that drop balsam
and healing upon the nations, we see; the schools, the
universities, the hospitals, which beneficence has builded,
we see; but the stream that, through all ages, is flowing
from sire to son, is a hidden current.
It is one of the miracles of the world -this life that is
forever losing, merging itself in a new life. We talk of
martyrdoms; but there are ten thousands of martyrdoms,
of which the world never hears. Beautiful it is to die for
our country; beautiful it is to surrender life for the cause
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of religious freedom; beautiful to go forth, to bear help
and healing to the sick, the wounded, the outcast and forlorn; but there are those who stay at home, alone, unknown,
uncelebrated, to do and to bear more than is ever done, in
one brief act of heroism or hour of martyrdom. In ten
thousand homes are those, whose life-long care and anxiety
wear and waste them to the grave.  They count it no
praise; they consider it no sacrifice. I speak not, but for
the simple truth, of that which to me, is too holy for eulogy.
But meet it is, that a generation coming into life, which
owes its training and culture and preservation to a generation that is passing away, should be sensible of this truthof this solemn mystery of Providence -of this law of
sacrifice, of this outflow from self into domestic, into social
life, which lies at the very roots of the world.
There is one further application of the principle of disinterestedness, which goes beyond classes and instances
such as I have mentioned, and embraces men simply as
fellow-men. Much has been said among us of late years,
and none too much, of the dangers of an extreme individualism. We began as a religious body, in a strong
assertion of the rights of individual opinion; and we went
on in that spirit for a considerable time; till it seemed, at
length, as if we were liable to lose all coherence and to
fall to pieces in utter disintegration. But a few years ago,
moving in that zig-zag line which marks all human progress, we awoke to the dangers of the situation; and happily found that if we could not agree upon any technical
definition of Christian faith, we could combine for Christian
work. The National Conference was formed; a new impulse was given; new funds were poured into our treasury;
we are circulating books and tracts more widely than we
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have ever done before; we are helping feeble churches
and founding new ones, besides doing something for mis sions abroad: in short, we are trying to do the work which,
in common with other Christian communions, properly
belongs to us.
But there is another movement, which I regard with
equal interest, and which promises in fact, to go deeper
than any thing else we can do.  I allude to those Unions,
in which, I think the city of Providence leads the way:
and in which New Bedford, Worcester, and Brooklyn have
followed the example. These associations provide a public room or rooms, well lighted and warmed, for those who
will, to resort to them; but especially for the young, who
most need good culture, entertainment and encouragement; and in these rooms are found books, pictures,
games, and music perhaps; and classes for regular instruction may be formed, and lectures occasionally given, or
discussions held; in fact, whatever will contribute to the
general improvement and to the pleasant and profitable
passing of social evenings, may be introduced. This kind
of institution is especially adapted to our smaller cities;
and may be extended to our country villages. Our people
in the country, live too much apart and alone; and besides
the direct advantages of these gatherings together, a mutual acquaintance and a kindly feeling would be promoted,
which are of scarcely less importance.
Let me add that there is a new ideal of libfe, which, I
think, is slowly arising among us; and which, when it is
fully carried out, I believe, will make an impression upon
society, never before seen in the world. This is the, idea
of mutual helpfulness; of every mnan's living not to himself, but to God, in loving and helping his kind. Helpfill
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ness, I say - that which BIb. Ruskin describes as the most
glorious attribute of God himself; and which has so seized
upon his imagination, that he ventures to substitute for
"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord," IIelpfuil, helpfiil, helpful, is
the Lord God Almighty!  This will not do; but it indicates a glorious tendency of modern thought. The old
ideal of life has been, to get together the means of comfort and enjoyment; to get wealth, to get a fine house, to
get luxuries for wassail and feasting, or to get books and
pictures; and then to sit down and enjoy all this good
estate, and transmit it to fortunate heirs, with little thought
of others - with some charities perhaps, but without taking into heart or life, the common weal, happiness and
improvement of all around.
What a millennium would it begin, if, instead of this,
every man should be thinking, just so far as he can go
beyond taking care of his own body and soul, what he can
do for others -not in any merely eleemosynary way; not
merely to instruct and improve men, with the pharisaic
assumption of being better or better off than they; but
by acting a brotherly part towards them, spe-aking neighborly words, doing neighborly deeds, smoothing the path,
softening the lot, seeing all erring and sorrow, and joy and
worth, as if they were their own; and wherever there is
any difficulty or trial or need, to "lend a hand."  Whenever such a spirit enters into and pervades society, it will
make a world, compared with which, our time will sink
back among the dark ages.
In short, when is it, that a man does and is, the highest
that he is capable of?  The answer is, when forgetting
himself, forgetting advantage, gain, praise, famne, he pours
himself out, in intellectual or moral, and, any way, benefi
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cent activity. When does culture or art in him attain to
the highest? It is when going beyond all thoughts of
culture and art, he flings himself, in perfect sympathy and
free communion, into the great mass of human interests.
It is so that the greatest things have been achieved in all
the higher fields of human effort- in writing, in eloquence,
in painting and sculpture and music; and it is so, espe cially, that the doers of great things, have become the
noblest men. "Art for art's sake," has been the motto for
culture, with some. And to a certain extent, that is true
It is fine to work for the perfection of the work, and with out any intrusion of self. But a man may work so, upon
a theme of little or no significance to the world's improve ment or welfare. He may work so, with small thoughts,
small ideals, for which nobody cares, or has any reason to
care. But so can he not work grandly, however finished
be the result. Art is for the sake of something beyond
itself. Only when it goes out into great ideals that
mingle themselves with the widest culture and improvement of men, only when it strikes for the right, for
liberty, for country, for the common weal, does it achieve
its end.
We have had literature enough, and have it now, in
which the writer seems hardly to go beyond himselfwriting out of himself and into himself- occupied with
making fine sentences, without any earnest intent; and
which readers, used to feed upon the honest bread of plain
English speech, hardly know what to make of. Very fine,
these sparkling sentences may be, very beautiful, very apt
to strike with admiration; but they divert attention with
surprises, or cover up thought with coruscations. They
are like gems that lie scattered upon the table; they are
6
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not wrought into any well-woven fabric; they do not
move on the subject to any conclusion.
Men may win great admiration and great fame, but not
great love; though they gain, perhaps, as much as they
give. Only by writing out of the bosom of a great humanity to the great humanity, can one fill the measure of
good art or good culture. Even Goethe, of whom Professor Seeley says, that "he found every thing interesting
except the fact that Napoleon was trampling upon Germany "-a fatal exception: even Goethe, with all his art,
his marvellous versatility and fine accomplishment, failed
to reach the highest place, either in the best self-culture, or
in men's best love. Savant, poet, novelist, of high mark,
as he was, he has no such place as Newton, Wordsworth,
and Walter Scott, in men's love. Schiller and Richter, I
believe, are more beloved in Germany, than Goethe.
In mere art, in perfection of style, no writers have
equalled Homer and Shakspeare. But they did not say,
"Art for art's sake."  They had no thought but to communicate their thought. If singular felicities appear in
their style, little eddyings of exquisitely turned conceits,
as especially in Shakspeare, they made a part of, and
swept on the strong current of their ideas. They were
not introduced for their own sake, or merely to please the
writer.
It has been said that great authors are born of great
occasions. Some remarkable era, some turn or tide in
human thought, or in human affairs, have borne them on
to their supreme greatness. Will not the time come, when
men shall so look into the depths of the human heart, into
the tragic or blissful experiences of all human life, that no
great era shall be necessary to make great writers?
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I believe it. I believe in a perpetual human progress -
progress in every kind, material, mental, moral, religious,
divine; and I greatly desire to say a few words in close,
if you will indulge me upon this point. For I found this
faith in progress, on the two principles which I have been
considering in this lecture. Selfhood obliges a man to
take care of himself. To go out of himself is the only
way, in which he can take care of himself- can take care,
that is to say, of his own improvement and happiness. In
selfhood, necessary as it is, there is no virtue, and little
joy.   Outflow from it -love, generosity, disinterested ness - embraces the whole sphere of our culture and
welfare.
Can there be any doubt upon either of these points either the culture or welfare?
Upon the culture, I say; upon what makes for human
improvement. There is evil enough in the world; but
what nation or age ever approved of it? What people
ever praised selfishness, injustice, falsifying of speech or
trust? No literature ever celebrated them. No religion
ever enjoined them. No laws ever enacted them. Imagine a law that proposed to reward villains and to punish
honest men. The world would spit upon it. Imagine a
book or essay or poem or oration, that plainly set about to
tell what a beautiful and noble thing it is, to lie, to defraud, to wrong, corrupt, and ruin our fellows. No man
ever had the face to do such a thing. No; books may
have taught such things, but they never taught them as
noble things. The man never lived, that would stand up
and say, "It is a glorious thing to betray trust, or to ruin
one's country, or to blaspheme God." Men do such things,
but they don't reverence nor respect themselves for doing
them
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This ttlen being settled - and it is a stupendous fact -
the right principle about culture, being thus set up, high
and irrepealable in the human conscience and in the sentiments of all mankind -what says the common judgment
of men about the happiness or misery of following the
right?  Does it say -" It is a blessed thing to be a bad
man; it is good and wise to be a base or cruel man." Does
it say - " Happy is the miser, the knave, the drunkard."
No, it does not. There is temptation to do wrong; that
all know; there is a notion that it may promote some
temporary interest or pleasure; there is a disposition in
many, to prefer some sensual gratification to the purer
satisfactions of the higher nature; but there is, at the same
time, a deep-founded conviction, that misery in the long
run must follow sin; that the everlasting law of God has
so ordained it to be; and that only the pure, the noble,
the heroic, the good and godlike affections can ever make
such a nature as ours, content and happy.
Here then is another stupendous principle settled. And
now, I say, this being is a lover of happiness. He is not
wise; he is not clear-seeing; he is not good either -i.e.,
he is not fixedly and determinately good; he is weak too;
he is easily misled; he is often rebellious to the higher
laws of his nature; but - I hold to that - he is a lover of
happiness; and happiness, he knows, can never be found,
but in obedience to those higher laws. He is a lover of
happiness, I say; he cannot be worse off, without wishing
to be better off; if he is sick, he wants to be well; if his
roof lets in the rain, he will have it repaired; if the meanest implement he uses, is broken, he will have it mended.
Is it not natural- is it not inevitable, that this tendency
should yet develop itself in the higher concerns of his
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being? Is it not in the natural order of things, that the
higher should at length gain the ascendency over the lower,
the stronger over the weaker, the nobler over the meaner?
How can it be thought   how can it be, in the realm of
Infinite Beneficence and Wisdom, that meanness and vileness, sin and ruin should be strong and prevail, and gain
victory upon victory, and spread curse beyond curse, and
draw their dark trail over the bright eternity of ages!
No, in the order of things, this cannot be. Grant that
there are evils, difficulties, obstacles in the way. But in
the order of things, principles do not give way before
temporary disturbances. Law does not yield to confusion.
Gravitation binds the earth, notwithstanding all the turmoil upon its bosom. Light prevails over darkness, though
cloud and storm and night interrupt its course. The moral
turmoil upon earth's bosom, war and outbreak and widespread disaster, the cloud and storm and darkness of human
passions and vices, the bitter struggles and sorrows of
humanity, the dark shadows of earthly strife and pain and
sin, are yet to give place to immutable law, to all-conquering might and right, to everlasting day.
I am as sure of it, as I am of the being of God- as
I am of my own being. The principles of progress are
laid in human nature. If man did not care for himself, I
should have no hope of him. If he could not go out from
himself, and find therein his improvement, virtue and happiness, I should have no hope of him. But these two
principles yoked together, in the Heaven-ordained frame
of our being, will draw on to victory.
i
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THE RELATION OF JESUS
TO THE
PRESENT AGE.
BY CHARLES CARROLL EVERETT. 
I' 
THE RELATION OF JESUS
TO THIE
PRESENT AGE.
THE  writer to the Hebrews affirms that Jesus Christ
is "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever."  Paul
exclaims to the Corinthians, "Though we have known
Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no
more." Christ was the same; yet before the generation
that he left upon the earth had passed away his relation to
the earth had changed. Thus does the work of Christ
shape itself afresh to meet the needs of every generation.
Conmpare together the Christ of the first century, the
Christ of the thirteenth, the Christ of the sixteenth, and
the Christ of the nineteenth centuries, and you would
hardly think they all represent the same personality.
Christ is always the same. His work is always substantially the same; but because the ages change, the method
of this work changes. The same needs always exist in the
heart of humanity, but in different ages these needs manifest themselves in different ways, and are to be met by
different instrumentalities. And, further, it is not merely
because the needs of humanity continually change their
aspect that the work of Christ is ever changing. No ago
is a recipient alone. There is no action without reaction.
6*
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THE RELATION OF JESUS
Each age contributes something to the work of Christ. It
adds new forces, new methods, new machinery. Its spirit,
and by this I mean its real, vital, energizing spirit, becomes
united with the spirit of Christ, as it is present and active
in the world.
In considering the relation of Christ to the present age,
we have then to consider it under two aspects. We have
to consider each as a giver, and each as a receiver. We
may help to make this double relation clear by saying that
Christ is present to this nineteenth century at once as a
problem and as a power. No questions have stirred more
deeply the heart of the age than those which have to do
with the person and the office of Christ. The answers to
these questions shape the aspect in which he stands to the
age, and become therefore parts and elements of the power
by which he acts upon the world. But this statement does
not exhaust the twofold relation of which I speak. That
which the age gives to Christ is not merely its thought
about him.  The secular thought and life of the age bring
their contribution, they are themselves a contribution to
him.  They furnish one part of that complete organism
of which Christ furnishes the other. If the age, in any
fundamental forms of its thought and life, seems to stand
in opposition to Christ, this apparent opposition is only
the antithesis of elements which belong together. If what
we call the spirit of the age seems, in any respect, to stand
in opposition to the spirit of Christ, this only shows the
need that each has of the other. The spirit of this nineteenth century needs the spirit of Christ, and the spirit of
Christ needs the spirit of this nineteenth century.  It is
not then merely that the thought of the age clears away
something of the obscurity and the misconception that
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TO THE PRESENT AGE.
have gathered about the person and the work of Christ.
If all he said and did were as truly comprehended now as
they could have been at the first, no less real, no less im portant, would be the offering which this.age wouldl bring
to him.  Neither does the fiact, that the work of Cl-hrist
needs the work, and that his spirit needs the spirit, of the
century in which we live, necessarily imply any imperfec tion in his orig,inal work, or any thing originally lackingr
in his spirlit. The question as to what he had in reserve,
as to the limit, or the lack of limit, of his insight and conm prehension, is one that I do not need, and do not intend
here to raise. There is a kind of work that cannot be
done all at once. There is a fulness of spirit that cannot
manifest itself all at once. It is sufficient to know that
Christ recognized this fact as well as we can.  He affirmed
it as clearly and as confidently as it is possible for us to
do.  "I have," he said to his disciples, "yet many things
to say unto you, but y-e cannot bear them now.  Ilowbeit,
when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall lead you into
all truth."  All, so far as we can see, that it was possible
for any spirit to do at one moment, Christ did. He infused
into the world a spirit of love and faith and consecration,
a principle of enthusiasm for humanity. I-e added to
these the vitalizing power that came fiom his personality.
This he did, and with this he was forced to be content.
lie told us the nature of his work, and foretold to us its
history.  It was to be as a little leaven which a woman
hidleth in a measure of meal till the whole is leavened.
lie hid in the world the leaven of his truth. That was all
that he could do. It is for us to witness, and to contribute
to, the completion of his work.
In considering the theme before us, I shall speak, first,
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of the external history of Christ, next of his teaching, and
finally of his personality, in their relation to the present age.
In considering the relation of Christ to the present age,
we are met, then, first by the most external form of this
relation. The external history of Christ, the very fiainework of many of his hig(rhest and )purest teachings, contains
elements that are utterly opposed to the habits of thought
which are most peculiar to the present century.  I refer
to whatever in the history of Christ implies the exercise
of any miraculous power by him.
The idea of a miracle is opposed to the fundamental
axioms of the popular thought of the present.   The
writers who best represent this thought do not hold it
necessary to disprove the fitct of miracles.  They siimply
affirm, with Strauss, that the time is past when a miracle
can be believed.  On the other hand, the miraculous is
inextricably intertwined with the history of Christ.  We
find miracles recognized, not merely in records the geniiuineness of which has, with or without reason, been siispeeted. In Epistles of Paul, the genuineness of which
no critic of repute has ever dreamed of assailing, the
miraculous element is recognized as distinctly as in the
Gospels. We have at least the testimony of'Paul -one
of the grandest souls that ever lived, a man whom we
know and honor as we know and honor few - that he
believed himself to have wrought miracles, and that he believed the other apostles had done and were  in the habit
of d(loing the same.  And we further have his testimony,
with that of others indorsed by him, in regard to the
most important of the miracles of Jesus;  namely, the
manifestation by Jesus of himself to his disciples after
his death.
132 
TO THE PRESENT AGE.
Here is a collision between the form of the external
manifestation of Christ and the spirit of the age. The
age itself has given such prominence to this that we
cannot overlook it.  The idea of miracle is so foreign
to the spirit of the age that it has a fascination for it.  It
has less importance than any thing else in the history of
Jesus, and yet nothing has more occupied the thoughts
of the thinkers of the present generation.
For the reasons already stated, we must concede a cer tain degree of right to both sides of the great controversy.
If we cannot eliminate the miraculous fiom the history
of Jesus, neither can we, nor would we if we could, elimi nate from the spirit of the age that element which finds
it hard to accept a miracle. The very antagonism he tween the two, the right which each maintains being
granted, shows the need  that each has of the other.
Each has a contribution for the other which could be
received from no other source.
In the first place, the absolute incredulity with which
the most thorough representatives of the thought of the
time receive any story of the miraculous shows that now,
for the first time, a miracle is seen to be in the truest sense
of the word a miracle.  To the child or the  savage  a
miracle is hardly possible.  Either every thing is a miracle or nothing is. It is only as the absoluteness of law
is recognized that a miracle, which is in appearance,a
violation of this law, begins to produce its full impression.
The present age has placed behind miracle a mighty background of law.  From out this does miracle first stand
forth in its true nature, as something demanding yet dlefying credence.  Those who blame the spirit of the age for
lack of faith in this direction should at least give it credit
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THE RELATION OF JESUS
for this immense contribution to the idea of miracle, by
which, for the first time, a miracle stands forth absolutely
in its true nature.
Not only does the spirit of the age thus furnish to
miracles the background that they need:  it furnishes to
them also a content.  The thought of law does not stop
with the background of laws of which I spoke.  Laws
may be finite: law is infinite. The miracle sets at defiance
the great background of recognized laws; but itself can
be only the manifestation of some higher, grander, more
comprehensive law. Thus does a miracle more truly than
ever before come as a real revelation. For the first time
it has its full and logical meaning. It was before expected
to prove something which from the nature of the case it
could not prove. No miracle, however stupendous, can
prove the truth of a principle in morals. It can show,
indeed, some superiority, in some respect, in him who
works the miracle; but this superiority may not be of a
nature to demand implicit confidence towards the person
in all respects. It may be like the superiority of the
European over the ignorant savage.  The missionary may
win the trust of the simple barbarian by sending a message written upon a chip; but the sailor, bringing the
seeds of all the vices of civilization, can "make the chip
speak" as well as the missionary. But when the miracle
testifies of the comprehensive law which it manifests, then
first does it have a meaning which cannot be wrcsted out
of it. Nay, then first does it become really sublime. Before, it was a single meteor flashing in short-lived brightness across the sky. Now, it is the first manifestation of
a vast system of worlds of which we had not dreamed.
Such is the contribution which the spirit of the age,
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through the very antagonism of which I spoke, makes to
the miracles which constitute so much of the external
form in which Christ meets it.
On the other hand, miracle brings a no less important
contribution to the spirit of the age. This spirit tends, not
only to look upon law as absolute, but to look upon the
system of laws which it has discovered as final. These
laws tend continually to become narrow and hard. They
tend to become merely a system of physical forces. There
is danger that the spirit may become shut up within
these physical laws as in a prison-house. The miracle
demonstrates to the senses that these physical laws are
not absolute, even in their own realm; that these physical
forces are encompassed and interpenetrated by spiritual
forces; that matter is at the last subordinate to spirit. It
may not reveal the nature of these spiritual forces; but it
does reveal their presence.  All do not need this demonstration. The same truth may be reached in other ways.
The laws of thought reveal it. The spiritual consciousness may be sufficient unto itself. Christ himself regarded
his miracles as of comparatively small account. He wrought
them because he was moved to use whatever power he
had to bless mankind. If he healed the'sick, it was
because he loved to heal them. He sympathized with
sorrow and suffering, and, so far as he could, would
remove their cause.  But the miracles carry,as we have
seen, their own revelation with them; and they have
their place, however lowly, in regard even.to the spiritual
consciousness. The albatross, we are told, with all its
magnificent sweep of wing, cannot lift itself from  the
fiat surface of the deck on which it may be lying. Just
because its wings are so strong and large, it needs to be
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lifted a little, that they may have space to move, that
they may have freedom to smite the air. When this
freedom has been given it, then it mounts upward, sustained by its own inherent strength.  So is it, sometimes
with the spirit. It has strength of its own. It has a
self-sustaining power. But it sometimes needs to be lifted
a little way above the dead level of its daily life, above
the plane of physical relations, before its wings find
strength and freedom to beat the air. Then, leaving its
temporary support behind it, it mounts in glad flight
heavenward. Such help many have found, and may yet
find, in the miracles of Jesus. The miracle may lift the
level surface of' life as if into a wave, from the crest of
which the spirit may start upon its flight.
From the external manifestation of the history of Christ,
and the external relations in which through this he stands.
to the present age, we pass to the inner power of this life.
Within these external manifestations we find his teachings. We have, then, next to consider the relation in
which Christ stands to the present age as a teacher. We
shall find here the same twofold relation which we have
found before; and the external m.ay thus stand as a type
and illustration of the internal. We will first consider,
under this aspect, the basis and form of the teaching of
Christ, and next its substance.
The spirit of the age is truth-seeking.  We  speak often
of the eagerness for wealth that marks the age. I think
that when, fiom the distant future, men shall look back
upon this period of the world's history, the search for wealth
will not be seen to fill the place that to us it seems to occupy. The age will be seen to be animated by a nobler
quest than this. The search for truth will be seen to be
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the quest by which it is marked most really. We speak
of the corruption of the age, of the trickeries of trade, of
the unscrupulousness of speculation, of the pretence and
display of fashion, of the venality of politics. All this is
true.  These  things deserve the denunciation of the
moralist and the preacher. But behind all this is the life
which truly marks the age. It is the life of patient, earnest,
honest search for truth. I believe that never and nowhere
has there been manifested, to so great extent, such conscientious and self-forgetful love of truth for its own sake as
may be found in the scientific investigations of the present
day. Such accuracy of research, such microscopic delicacy
of measurement, such patient and unprejudiced examination, I believe to be unequalled in the history of man. This
proves that, in spite of the firauds and falseness of which
I spoke, the age is really sound at heart. Theologians
sometimes speak of the flippancy and conceit of the scienco
of the day. The terms would be more true applied in the
opposite direction. Theology is more open to such charges
than science. A love of truth that would fling away even
the highest glory of the earth and the hope of heaven, if
so be truth may stand pure and perfect, has something
sublime about it. Well might the theologian take a
lesson from the man of science in regard to this consecration to truth. For theology, with its presumption, its
prejudice, its pretence, its glossing over of difficulties, its
leaning upon authority which it feels at heart is not authority, its saying what it does not exactly believe, that
it may not contradict those who perhaps do not believe
exactly what they say, may well stand ashamed in the
presence of the science of the day that has left all to follow truth. Theology should give to science not tolerance,
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not patronage, but reverence. While it utters fearlessly
the truth that is given it to speak, it should in its turn seat
itself as a learner at the feet of science, and seek not only
to gather the facts which it has to teach, but to catch
something of its spirit, the spirit that loves truth, and
that will suffer nothing to take the place of this.
But Christ was not a truth-seeker. It does not appear
that he ever doubted or questioned. Pilate asked the
question, What is truth? It does not appear that Jesus
ever did. Jesus came not to seek the truth, but to an nounce it.  "To this end," he cried, "was I born, and
fbr this cause came I into the world, that I should bear
witness unto the truth." He came to bear witness unto
the truth, but it was truth that came to him without his
seeking. Neither does it appear that Christ loved truth
above all things. To the Jesuit there is something better
than truth, and to this he will sacrifice truth itself. I assert nothing like this in regard to Christ. Truth was to
him fuindamental and essential. He would not accept or
tolerate what was false. But still to know was not the
great object of his life. There was something better to
him than truth; namely, life. He would rather be than
know. At his touch truth sprang into life. If he came to
bear witness to the truth, this was only a step in his
grander work, the work which he proclaimed at the very
beginning of his mission, when he cried, "I am come that
they might have life, and that they might have it more
abundantly."  And, further, Christ did not merely teach
life through truth: he taught truth through life. "If any
man," he said, "will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine." And John was full of the spirit of his Master
when he cried, " The life is the light of men."
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We see more clearly the antithesis between Christ as a
teacher on the one side, and the present age on the other,
in this fact: viz., that Christ speaks with authority to an
age which rejects authority. The cry of the age, in the
world of the intellect as well as in that of politics, is for
liberty. But to this age, as to every age, Christ comes as
a inaster.  "My yoke," he says, " is easy;" but it is a yoke
none the less.
If the relation of Christ to his truth is so different from
that of the spirit of the age to its truth, it must follow that
the two forms of truth rest on different bases. The facul ties by which the age seeks truth must be different from
those through which the truth came unsought to Jesus.
This age seeks truth by the discriminating and investigat ing power of the understanding. Truth came to Jesus
through the intuitions of the soul. In him the moral and
spiritual faculties were full of strength. He lived as
naturally in the world of spiritual realities as other men
live in the world of physical realities. As we need only
open our eyes and see, so his spirit had only to open its
eyes and it saw. As the voices of the outward world
come to us without our listening for them, so the voice of
God came to him whether he would or no. And this was
the ground of the authority with which he spoke. Whoever speaks from the moral and spiritual consciousness
to the moral and spiritual consciousness may and must
speak with authority. We may illustrate this by an
extreme case. When a man is lurking for the commission of some crime, or after he has committed it, he
feels the mastery of all innocent things. The rustle of a
leaf may excite his dread. To a voice denouncing his
crime, or crime like his, he listens as to the voice of God.
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This recognition of the mastery of a higher degree of life
after its own kind is felt at every stage of moral and spiritual development. If the soul be comparatively guilty, it
recognizes this mastery with dread. If it be comparatively
innocent, it recognizes it with joy. Such was the authority with which Jesus spoke. Though he spoke with authority, what he said did not rest on this authority. It
was the authority with which the awakened calls to the
sleeper, bidding him awake, for the world is bright witl
the morning. The voice penetrates to the obscured consciousness of the sleeper. He stirs himself, he opens his
eyes, and rejoices for himself in the morning brightness.
So Christ called to a sleeping world. Nay, he called to
those who were dead in trespasses and sin, and they that
were dead heard the voice of the Son of Man and lived.
If the truth taught by Jesus and the truth that is sought
by the present age rest on such different bases, they must
be, we should suppose, in some respects different each
from the other. But, if each be truth, they must be the
complements each of the other. And, if they are the
complements each of the other, they must need one another. Each must be imperfect without the other. Each
must find a certain confirmation and support from the
other, and each must complete for the other the circle of
truth. We are thus led to look at some points in the
teaching of Christ, and to see how these complete and
are completed by the truth which the present age seeks
and finds.
In the first place, Christ teaches us of the loving providence of God. He awakens in our hearts all childlike
instincts of trust and confidence. He tells us that God
is our father, that his love watches over all his children,
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that it follows the prodigal in his wandering and greets
him on his return, that even a sparrow does not fall to
the earth without it. This teaching is sufficient for the
spiritual necessities of our nature. The spirit that has
adopted these principles into itself will live a strong and
blessed life. They have been the inspiration of the centuries ever since Christ uttered them. They contain all
that could be told of God in the age when Jesus lived.
But they do not exhaust the truth of God. They leave
space for misconception. Love may be universal, and yet
be not without caprice. Providence may watch over all,
and yet in every case be only a special providence. God
may watch over every individual of the race, but over
each merely as an individual. If there May be the caprices of love, then it is not a long step to the possibility
of caprices which spring from the lack of love. Love
may alternate with hate. If each'individual be dealt with
singly, as though he existed by himself, the step is not a
long one to the thought of discrimination between individuals. The caprices of love may become favoritism,
and the special favor shown to one implies the neglect of
another. All these things are foreign from the spirit and
the teaching of Christ. They contradict the fundamental
principles of his teaching. And yet, men's habits of
thought being such as they were, the teaching of Christ
could not be absolutely fortified against them. He told
men that the love of God was like the sunshine that visits
all alike, but the words passed through their ears unheeded.
Thus Christianity all along has been corrupted by misrepresentations of its truth in which the thought of love
had suggested caprice, and the thought of special love
and special providence had suggested the thought of
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favoritism, and favoritism had suggested discrimination
and neglect. All men were seen to stand in the presence
of God as individuals, which is true; and merely-as indi
viduals. which is false.
The truth that God is love needs to be supplemented
by another truth; namely this, that God is Law. The
great truth of the absoluteness of law cannot be taught in
a single lesson. No man can tell it to another. It must
be demonstrated to be believed. It must be shown in
its myriad and unvarying applications to all forms of being
before it can be felt as a reality. One must see for one's
self the grand march of the order of the universe, the
unfailing sequence of cause and effect, the mathematical
exactness of the correlation of all the forces of the world,
before one can have a sense of the truth which lies at the
basis and forms the culmination of scientific thought today. This truth has not been reached suddenly. The
ages have been groping after it. This age has reached,
by slow and patient thought, a comprehension of this
truth which is its inspiration. The ages to come will
only add to it new illustrations as they follow its mighty
sweep. This truth is what seems at times to put this age
into antagonism with the spirit of Christ. It is really the
offering which the thought of the age brings to Christ.
The teaching of Christ needs, as we have seen, this truth
as its complement. The antithesis between the two
shows the intimate relationship between them. When
we bnLg the two together in one thought, we have the
most sublime conception that ever dawned upon the mind
of man. The truth of Christ finds a body: the truth of
the age finds a soul. On the one side, all possibility
of caprice is driven from our thought of God. The love
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of God, as strong and tender as the lips of Jesus could
describe it, is seen to be as regular and as calm as the
movements of the heavens. This truth only adds to the
strength and the clearness of our thought of the love of
God. We see demonstrated before us how his care pur  sues all thinos, how not a sparrow falls to the earth unfol  lowed by this watclhlul providence, how every grain of dust
that floats in the summer sun has its place and work iii
the great whole, not a single mote forgotten. We learn in
what direction to look for the action and succor of this
providence. We do not look for it to come to us in
weakness, but in strength.  We see that this perfect order
is the truest providence, that the care of each is most
perfect that recognizes each in its relations to all the rest.
So soon as we recognize the divinity of law and the love
that is enshrined in it, we feel the omnipresent might of
this divinity, the omnipotence of this love. The restlessness
and passion of our hearts are stilled. Trust in God takes
on the peace and the calmness of the heavens. Such is
the offering which the age brings to Christ.  It brings a
body in which his spirit may incarnate itself afiesh.
The result of the union of the thought of the age with
the thought of Christ may be seen in all the relations in
which the soul stands to God.  Christ bade his followers
preach his gospel to every creature. The age has taught
us the necessitv of educating and civilizing the barbarian,
if we would christianize him. Christ taught us to love the
sinner while hatingr sin.  This has seemed to some paraO,)xical; but the age has removed some of the difficulty by
showing how much of what we call character is the result
of inherited tendencies and outward circumstances. Jesus
tau(ght the doctrine of immortality. Men have tended to
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1.)ok upon the future life as something standing over
against the present. The agcre teaches us that such a break
in life is impossible, that if there be an immortality it must
lie hidden in the present.  It teaches, too, that the judgments of God, if there be a God, are never arbitrary. He
does not hold blessing in one hand and cursing in another,
and give each, by an outward bestowal, as hlie may see that
it is deserved. Men's acts drag their consequences after
them.  Thus the old Scripture phrases are just coming to
their meaning. It is not an angry God that pursues the
sinner: it is his own sin that has found him out. MAen do
reap the firuit of their own sowing. There is no scientific
truth of the day that stands in any stronger antagonism to
the truth of Christ than is implied in such antitheses as
have been referred to.  Even the theories of development,
so rife at present, do not stand in the way of Christ.
Christ looks not downward but upward, not backward but
forward.  Such theories, if established, would only show
the progressive power of spirit, the omnipotence of life.
But if the thought of Jesus needs that of the present
age, still more does the thought of the age need that of
Jesus. If the spirit needs a body, still more does the body
need a spirit.  The laws, the forces on which the thought
of the age dwvells, until this divineness is added to them
are hard and cold. The body, which could carry on all
the functions of its life, yet without life, would be a
machine, perfect indeed and wonderful, but  a machine
none the less. The thought of the age, taken by itself,
uninspired by Christian truth, tends to drag down the
soul, to imprison it in mere mechanism, to take fi'omn it its
divine inspiration; and while we need the thought of the
present age to illustrate to us the methods of God's deal
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ings with the soul, none the less does the thought of the
age need the knowledge that there is a soul. Among all
the forces of the universe, the power of the soul, the cul mination of them all, is apt to be lost sight of. The
thought of the age tends to look upon things from with out, and to lose that which is their essence. It needs the
voice that shall awaken its own inner life, and thus bring
it to a consciousness of the life that lies at the heart of all
things.
Thus we see how the thought of Christ and the thought
of the age need and complement each other. The thought
of Christ is spiritual, the thought of the age tends to
become material. In this world we are neither-wholly
spiritual nor wholly material. And we must bear in mind
that the two elements should not exist over against one
another in our thought.  We must not hold the two conceptions, however opposite they may appear, as two. In
life the. spirit and the body do not exist as two but as one.
As soon as they exist as two, there is death. So must the
truth of Jesus and the truth of this present age be blended
in one thought. We must not say love and law, but love
in law. We must not see the divine power setting at
work forces that by their natural operation shall reward
or punish the spirit.  We must see the divine power working in and through these forces. Then, as science makes
us feel that we are encompassed by law, the words will
not need translating to us; for we shall feel that we are
encompassed by God.
The relation which we have found to exist between the
intellectual teaching of Christ and the thought of the age
is no less marked between the moral teaching of Christ
and the life of the age. The moral teaching of Christ is
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absolutely true. It is as true as his thought of God; yet
like that it needs its complemental truth. Further, the
moral teaching of Christ needs instrumentalities. Love,
however strong, cannot work without means. The heart
needs the hands and the feet.
In both of these respects the age brings its offering to
Christ.  Christ teaches love and self-sacrifice.  He bids ius
do for others as we would have them do for us. He bids
us give to him that asks, and lend to him that would borrow. These principles are the very life of society. They
are the very truth of God. But yet these principles carried out, without explanation and qualification, would produce harm as well as good. The church of every age, in
striving to carry out these precepts, has done much good;
but it has done much harm also. It has done good by
bringing succor to the lives that needed it. It has done
immeasurable good by keeping alive on the earth the
spirit of Christian love. AIen have been blest by the power
of the spirit, even more than by its specific acts of mercy.
But, while it has relieved the poor, it has too often tended
to perpetuate poverty.  Indiscriminate alms-giving, mere
alms-giving, is the very mother of pauperism. We see in
some Catholic countries how the alms-giving which the
church has taught in the very words of Christ has degraded whole populations, has taken from manhood its
real dignity and strength. WVe need, then, not only the
principle of love, but also a knowledge of all social laws.
The science of political economy must be understood
but this, like physical science, cannot be taught in a day.
Ages must teach the lesson.  The present age has only
half learned it. But it has learned enough to bring a
magnificent contribution to Christ.  Christ bids us help
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men: the age, in its pooi' blundering way, is just beginining
to tell us how to help them. It teaches that the best way
to help the poor is to strike at the root of poverty. No
less does the age furnish means for cariying out the princilples of Jesus.  It brings the ends of the earth togethel.
Christ bids us love our neighbor. This age has made those
fi'om whom the sea parts us our neighbors. There is fimline,
or some more sudden calamity, on the other side of our contiuent, or in a foreign land.  Christ bids us help those who
need. How shall we carry sudden help unless we hear
at once the story?  How shall we send prompt help if
there be no strong and swift messenger waiting at our
door?  But now the lightning tells the story the moment
in which there is a story to be told, and the unwearied
steam bears our gifts as soon as they can be gathered.
The commands of Jesus are absolute. The power of the
age to fulfil these commands is approaching absoluteness.
Thus does the age add to the teaching of Christ the coinpleteness that it needs.
But does not the age in turn need this teaching? Materialisin and  mechanism in thought are bad enough:
they are worse in life. The life of the age has a tendency
to materialismn and mechanism. The science of political
economy tends to become a hard system of rules, in
which the spontaneous sympathy of the helper and the
individuality of the helped are lost together. The eagerhess of the world after material prosperity tends to a
practical absorption in these ends.  Thus we have the
gIeed, the excitement, the mladness, the display, the corrupltioil that to so great an extent characterize the age.
We  have seen that there is a deeper life beneath this
suplerficial one; but these evils, however superficial, need
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prompt and constant care lest they eat into the very heart.
The body needs the spirit, or it will sink into decay.
I have spoken of the two elements which we are consideriing as if they stood simply over against one another.
This is in some respects true. The thought and life of
the age are, indeed, largely indebted to the stimulus of
Christianity; but they are not, like the painting and
architecture of the 3Iiddle Ages, the direct outgrowth of
it.  The science of the present day is self-developed and
self-sustained.  The machinery of the world  has been
invented  for the world's uses.  Its political economy
has been thought out to facilitate its own ends.
But though the two elements, to some extent, stand over
against one another, yet each, by its natural development,
is approaching the other, and each is becoming penetrated
by the other.  Oln the one side, religion is catching the
spirit of the age, and is approaching the clearness and
accuracy of scientific thoutght.  On the other side, science
is becoming conscious of truth which is unattailnable by
its methods, and which is to it therefore the unknowable.
Already does IHlerbert Spencer, who represents the forenmost thoulght of the time, feel the awe of this mystery,
and see gleamiing  through it something of the  presenlce of the infinite love. The life of the age, also, by
bringing men near to one another, tends to produce
the sense of humnan brotherhood.  Its vast business enterprise, in some of its aspects, does more for the cause of
humanity than many a professed charity.  Further, the
age is, to some extent at least, directly inspired by Christianity.  Its zeal for hlumalnity, its sympathy with the
oppressed and suffering everywhere, its giganitic and
unparalleled charities, show it to be more truly Christian than any age that has preceded it.
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If however, in spite of all this, we are sometimes
tempted to doubt whether the power of the truth which
Christ represents is to win the mastery, or whether it is
destined to be lost in the great struggle, we must remember that its authority is that of elements that are fundamental in human nature. The spiritual instincts may be
repressed: they cannot be exterminated. As in every
little creek and inlet along the shore the water answers
to the call of the ocean, and feels the might of the outgoing and the incoming tide, so in human life deep answers unto deep.
We must remember, too, that Christ is not a mere
teacher. His power is not alone that of the truth he
utters. It is no mere accident of history that the higher
truth and life which we have been considering confront
the age as Christian truth and life. They receive a
power from their union with Christ which they could not
have received, even had the thought of men attained to
them, without this. We have looked at the external form
of his life and at his teaching in their relation to the age.
There is yet another step to take. There is still an inner
reality to be unveiled. Behind the power of his teaching
is the power of his personality. In this is found the
climax of the antithesis in which he stands to the present.
The tendency of the present age is, consciously or unconsciously, to disown personality. The laws which make
the substance of its thought, the mechanism that makes
the framework of its life, both tend to assert themselves
against the power of a free personality. We may illustrate this by the modern method of warfare. In ancient
times the victory depended on the strength of the individual arm and the courage of the individual heart. Now
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it depends more upon the drill of the army and the clear
head of the general.
This tendency of the thought of the age is not based on
error.  It brings to our 4hought of personality the correc tion that it needs. The tendency of the past has been to
look upon personality as existing by and for itself. It
has recognized no limits to the power of freedom. Each
individual stood by and for himself in the universe. Now
we see a common element in all lives. All lives are entwined together. We see limits which freedom cannot
pass. We understand something of the limits of each
individual. We understand something of the laws of descent and of the power of education. Even the personality
of Jesus does not stand by itself as it seemed to once.
We see in him the power of the common nature. We see
in him the effect of forces which had been in operation
since the world was. He was no stranger upon the earth.
He was the Son of God, but he was no less the Son of
man. He was the flowering of a nation's history, the
flowering of humanity. The flower is drawn forth by the
sun, but it is drawn out from the plant. Even the
sun can kindle the flame of no rose upon the bramble's
stalk. While, however, the age teaches us what is the
background out from which the power of personality stands
forth, and what are the elements that are fused together
in it, personality itself remains too much unrecognized.
But, I repeat, the integrity of human nature can never be
violated; and personality is the culmination of human
nature. The power of a modern army, we have seen, depends largely on its drill; yet even here the impetuous
courage of a leader may infuse a life into this vast machine that shall decide the victory. Mere signals, it is
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found, upon a ship will not answer the purpose of communication between the captain and the men.  In times of
peril, in the midst of the fury of the storm, the sailor needs
the inspiration of the captain's voice, ringing with a force
that is mightier than the temnpest; namely, the force of
human will and courage.  No matter how nechanical the
age may become, no matter how the idea of freedom may
be eliminated from its thought, the great heart of humanity beats still in its bosom, and the voice of a strong,
free personality will sooner or later arouse it to an answering consciousness. The very bands which it sets
about personality will make its power more strongly felt
when it is perceived.  Its very knowledge of the elements
that are united in it will make it feel more really the
might of the force which can fuse these into one burning
point.
Personality involves three elements. The first is freedom; the second, a purpose freely chosen; the third, devotion to this purpose. There is no slavery like sin. Absolute
freedom, and thus absolute personality, can be found only
in a nature wholly pure and unselfish. Christ was thus
free. His purpose was the vastest that any human soul
has grasped; and he gave himself to it with all the power
of his nature. Thus Christ possessed the most intense
personality eyer felt upon the earth. His teaching came
forth glowing with its fire.  We  feel to-day the effect
which his personality produced upon those who came into
direct contact with it. This influence has propagated
itself firom age to age. The Church grew out of it, and
its influence is felt to-day far beyond the limits of the
Church. Besides this indirect power of the personality
of Jesus, we may feel its force directly, as we bring our
151 
THIE RELATION OF JESUS
selves into personal relation with him. It has not lost
its original miWilt.  It still tends to reproduce itself in the
present.
The form in which truth first utters itself has a power
which no subsequent repetition can equal.  There is a
kind of work that can be done only once. The first dliscoverer or announcer of any truth stands in a relation to
it which no other can ever fill. Many navigators have
crossed the sea, but there is only one Columbus. Mlany
astronomers have searched the heavens, but there has
been no second Newton. This fact is most noticeable in
regard to truths that represent not merely the intellect,
but the whole moral and spiritual nature of him who
first uttered them in their fulness. There is a fact in
science strange, apparently illogical, but yet unquestionable. It is this: The power of heat-bearing rays to pass
through any resisting medium depends not upon the
temperature of the rays, but upon that of the body friom
which they come.  The heat-be'iing rays of the sun that
approach the earth hardly differ in temperature firom the
rays that are reflected from it; but the former pass
almost unimpeded through the atmosphere by which the
latter are to a great extent imprisoned. The rays reach
the earth without difficulty, but are entrapped by the
principle referred to, and remain to bless the world. The
first have this power to pass through the atmosphere because they come direct from the burning body of the sun.
The reflected rays have lost this power, because they proceedcl firom the colder earth. This law is as true in the
intellectual and spiritual as it is in the physical world.
The power of moral and spiritual truths to penetrate to
the hearts of men has this strange dependence upon the
152 
TO THE PRESENT A GE.
moral and spiritual power of him who utters them. The
very spontaneity of this utterance is a revelation of this
power. It is because the truth that Jesus uttered came
forth from his glowing heart of love, it is because it sprang
fi-esh and spontaneous from the intensity of his spiritual
life, that it has such power to-day to touch the hearts of
men. As the sun's rays preserve their penetrating force
through all the interplanetary spaces, so the teachings of
Christ have preserved it through all the reaches of history.
No subsequent repetition of these truths can ever have
quite the power that their first complete utterance still
retains. And the power that they exercise is largely in
this, that they excite in the hearts of men a spiritual life
akin to that from which they originally sprang. Scientific
truths are taught by demonstration. Spiritual truths are
taught chiefly by stimulating the spiritual life. When
we live merely in the contemplation of laws, in the study
of external relations, our intellect is stimulated, but our
moral and spiritual nature may be comparatively dormant.
Our life is stimulated as we are brought into living
relationship with the universe. As our inner nature is
thus stimulated, as it rounds itself into completeness,
the moral and spiritual consciousness is awakened. This
is the reason why it so often happens that spiritual truths
are so real in moments of sorrow. In its sorrow the soul
lives wholly in love, and it receives the enlightenment of
love.  Our nation had almost forgotten God; but in those
terrible years of war, when every soul was full of life and
earnestness, the earth and the heavens were full of God.
Our nation's history became transparent to us, as the
history of the Hebrews was transparent to them, and we
saw God's providence in it all. Theology has wrestled
7*
153 
154    THE RELATION OF JESUS, ETC.
vainly with science. In such a struggle it will always be
the loser. Christian theology can never conquer science.
Christian life must absorb science into itself.
The truths that Jesus uttered, as they have been
absorbed into the common thought of men, or as they are
received directly from the record of his life, have a mighty
power to purify the thought and elevate the hearts of
men. But I think that the greatest power of Christ today is that of imparting his life to the men and women
who are now living in the world. The power of the
Church will depend upon its power to receive this life and
to impart it. It is well to have a true theology; but the
church that has the most of the life of Christ will accomplish the most for men. It brings to this truth-seeking
and law-investigating age the pure personality which it
needs. And it will at last possess the truest theology,
for now and evermore it is the life that is the light of
men.
t
I 
THE MYTHICAL ELEMNIENT
IN1 THE
NEW TESTAMENT.
By FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE.  
THE MYTHICAL ELEMENT
IN THE
NEW TESTAMENT.
"<ta      orepoV scat alrov6atwrepo, 7roiT2ct' laropiac la-rv."
ARISTOTLE.
HEN  Dr. Strauss, thirty-five years ago, in his "Life
of Jesus," advanced and applied to the narrative
of the New Testament a theory of interpretation, in principle the same with that which a Christian Father of the
third century had employed in his treatment of the Old,
the theological world was profoundly shocked by what
seemed to be the last impiety of criticism. A hundred
champions rushed with drawn pen to the rescue of the
old interpretation of the text. The truth of Christianity
was supposed to be assailed; the belief in Christianity as
divine revelation was felt to be imperilled by a theory
which substituted mythical figment for historic fact. That
no such harm was intended, or was likely to ensue from
his labors, the author himself assures us in the preface to
that extraordinary work.  "The inner kernel of Christian
fiith," he declares, "is entirely independent of all such
criticism. Christ's supernatural birth, his miracles, his
resurrection and ascension, remain eternal truths, however their reality as facts of history may be called in
question." 
THE MYTHICAL ELEMENT
In this declaration I find a fitting text for the following
discourse.
How far does the cause of Christianity depend on the
facts, or alleged facts, of the Gospel narrative? Or, to
state the question in other words, Is the truth of Christianity identical and conterminous with the literal truth of
its record?
It is obvious at the start that a certain amount of historic truth must be assumed as implied in the very existence of any religion which dates from a personal founder
whose thought it professes to embody, and whose name it
bears. Christianity purports to be founded on the ministry of a Jewish teacher, entitled by his followers "the
Christ." We have the testimony of a nearly contemporary Latin historian to the fact that an individual so
named was the leader of a numerous body of religionists,
and was put to death by command of Pontius Pilate, in
the reign of Tiberius. But, without this confirmation, the
very existence of the Christian Church compels us to accept
as historic facts, the ministry of Jesus, the strong impression of his word and character, his purity of manners and
moral greatness, his life of beneficent action, his martyr
death, and his manifestation to his disciples after death,
however that manifestation be conceived, whether as
subjective experience or as objective reality. So much,
beyond all reasonable question, must stand as history,
vouched by documentary evidence, and by the existence,
in the first century, of a church universally diffused, which
affirmed these facts as the ground of its being, and in the
strength of them overcame the world.
But, observe, it is Christianity that assures the truth of
these facts, and not the facts that prove Christianity. To
158 
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
base the truth of Christianity on the credibility, in every
particular, of the Gospel record; to measure the claims of
the religion by the strict historic verity of all the narrative
of the New Testament, is to prejudice the Christian cause
in the judgment of competent critics. It is to challenge
the cavil and counter-demonstration of unbelief.
Christianity assures the truth of certain facts; but by
no means of all the facts affirmed by the writers of the
New Testament. Faith in Christianity as divine dispensation does not imply, and must not be held to the belief,
as veritable history, of all that is recorded in the Gospel.
Not the historic sense, but the spiritual import; not the
facts, but the ideas of the Gospel, are the genuine topics
of faith.
Christianity, like every other religion, has its mythology, - a mythology so intertwined with the veritable facts
of its early history, so braided and welded with its first
beginnings, that history and myth are not always' distinguishable the one from the other. Every historic religion, that has won for itself a conspicuous place in the
world's history, has evolved from a core of fact a nimbus
of legendary matter which criticism cannot always separate, and which the popular faith does not seek to separate,
from the solid parts of the system. And in one view the
legends or myths which gather around the initial stage
of any religion are as true as the vouched and substantial
facts of its record: they are a product of the same spirit
working, in the one case, in the acts and experiences; in
the other, in the visions, the ideas, the literary activity of
the faithful. It is one and the same motive that inspires
both the writer and the doer.
When I speak of historic religions, I mean such as trace
159 
THE MYTHICAL ELEMIENT
their origin to some historic personage, and bear the impress of his idea, in contradistinction to those which have
sprung from unknown sources, the wild growths of natureworship as found in ancient Egypt, in the Indian and
Scandinavian peninsulas, and in Greece.
No distinction in religion is so fundamental as that
between the wild religions and those which have sprung
from the word of a human sower going forth to sow; the
religions of sense and those of reflection, the "natural"
and the "revealed."  The  prime  characteristic of the
former is polytheism; that of the latter, monotheism.
Mosaism, Mohammedism, Buddhism, -so far as it knows
any God, - even Parsism, is monotheistic in as much as
its dualism is resolvable into the final triumph and supremacy of the good. No founder of a religion ever
taught a plurality of gods.
Another characteristic of the wild religions is their
transitoriness. The Egyptian, the Greco-Roman, the
Scandinavian, perished long ago. Bramanism, the last
survivor of the ancient polytheisms, is fast melting beneath the advancing heats of Islam and the Brahmo
Somaj.  The "revealed" religions on  the contrary are
permanent. No religion of historic origin, so far as I
know, has ever died out. Judaism, the eldest of them,
still flourishes: never since the destruction of Jerusalem
has it flourished with a greener leaf than now. Mohammed(lism is pushing its conquests faster than Christianity
in the East, Parsism is still strong in Bengal, Buddhism
in one or another form calls a third part of the population
of the globe its own.
All religions have their mythologies, but with this
distinction: polytheism is mythical in principle as well as
160 
IN THiE NEW TESTAMENT.
form, in soul as well as body, and mythical throughout.
Its whole being is myth. Whatever of scientific or historic truth may be hidden in any of its legends, such as
the labors of Herakles, the fire-theft of Prometheus, or
the rape of Europa, is matter of pure conjecture. In the
"revealed" religions, on the contrary, the mythical is incidental, not principial, and always subordinate to doctrine
or fact. Always the truth shines through the myth,
explains it, justifies it.
Before proceeding any farther, I desire to explain what
I mean by myth in this connection. I shall not attempt
a philosophic definition, but content myself with this
general determination. I call any story a myth which for
good reasons is not to be taken historically, and yet is
not a wilful fabrication with intent to deceive, but the
natural growth of wonder and tradition, or a product of
the Spirit uttering itself in a narrative form. The myth
may be the result of exaggeration, the expansion of a
veritable fact which gathers increments and a posse comitatus of additions as it travels from mouth to ear and
ear to mouth in the carriage of verbal report; or it may
be the reflection of a fact in the mind of a writer, who
reproduces it in his writing with the color and proportions
it has taken in his conception; or it may be the poetic
embodiment of a mental experience; or it may be what
Strauss calls "the deposit I of an idea," and another critic
"an idea shaped into fact."  I think we have examples
of all these mythical formations in the New Testament;
and I hold that the credit of the Gospel in things essential is nowise impaired, nor the claim of Christianity as
divine revelation compromised, by a frank admission of
1 Niederschlag.
161 
THE MIYTIIl4CAL, ELEAITENT
this admixture of fancy with fact in its record.  On the
contrary, I deem it important, in view of the vulgar radicalism which confounds the Christian dispensation and its
record, soul and body, in one judgment, to separate the
literary question from the spiritual, and to free the cause
of faith from the burden of the letter.
It has been assumed that the proof of divine revelation
rests on precisely those portions of the record which are
most offensive to unbelief On this assumption the Christian apologists of a former generation grounded their plea.
Prove that we have the testimony of eye-witnesses to the
miracles recorded in the Gospels, and Christianity is shown
to be a divine revelation.  In the absence of such proof
(the inference is) Christianity can no longer claim to be,
in the words of Paul, "the power of God unto salvation."
This is substantially Paley's argument.  Planting himself on the premise that revelation is impossible without
miracles, in which it is implied that miracles prove revelation, he labors to establish two propositions: 1. "That
there is satisfactory evidence that many professing to be
original witnesses of the Christian miracles passed their
lives in dangers, labors, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the accounts which they delivered,
and solely in consequence of their belief in those accounts;
and that they also submitted from the same motives to
new rules of conduct." 2. "That there is not satisfactory
evidence that persons pretending to be original witnesses
of any other similar miracles have acted in the same manner in attestation of the accounts which they delivered,
and solely in consequence of their belief in the truth of
those accounts." The argument is stated with the characteristic clearness of the author, and as well supported
162 
IN THE AE W TESTAMENT.
perhaps as Anglican church-erudition in those days would
allow; but the case is not made out, and, if it were, the
argument fails to satisfy the sceptical mind of to-day.
To say nothing of its gross misconception of the nature
of revelation, which it makes external instead of internal,
a stunning of the senses instead of mental illumination,
an appeal to prodigy and not its own sufficient witness,waiving this objection, the argument fails when confronted with the fact that, in spite of the evidence which
scholars and critics the most learned and acute of all time
have arrayed in support of the genuineness of the Gospels,
the number is nowise diminished, but rather increases, of
intelligent minds that find themselves unable, on the faith
of any book, however ancient, to receive as authentic a
tale of wonders which contradict their experience of the
limits of human ability and their faith in the continuity
of nature. For myself, I beg to say, in passing, I am not
of this number. I do not feel the force of the objection
against miracles drawn from this alleged constancy of nature, which it seems to me reduces the course of human
events to a dead mechanical sequence, makes no allowance
for any reserved power in nature or any incalculable forces
of the Spirit, and virtually rules God, the present inworking God, out of the universe. I can believe in any
miracle which does not actually and demonstrably contravene and nullify ascertained laws, however phenomenally
foreign to nature's ordinary course. But the possibility
of miracles is one thing, the possibility of proving them
another. With such views as these objectors entertain
of the constancy of nature, I confess that no testimony,
not even the written affidavit of a dozen witnesses taken
on the spot, supposing that we had it, would suffice to
163 
THE M)THI CAL ELEMENT
convince me of the truth of marvels occurring two thousand years ago, of the kind recounted in the Gospels. My
Christian prepossessions might incline me to believe in
them: the weight of evidence would not. No wise defender of the Christian cause, at the present day, will
rest his plea on the issue to which Paley committed its
claims. After all that Biblical critics and antiquarian
research have raked from the dust of antiquity in proof of
the genuineness and authenticity of the books of the New
Testament, credibility still labors with the fact that the age
in which these books were received and put in circulation
was one in which the science of criticism as developed by
the moderns- the science which scrutinizes statements,
balances evidence for and against, and sifts the true from
the false -did not exist; an age when a boundless credulity disposed men to believe in wonders as readily as in
ordinary events, requiring no stronger proof in the case
of the former than sufficed to establish the latter, - viz.,
hearsay and vulgar report; an age when literary honesty
was a virtue almost unknown, and when, consequently,
literary forgeries were as common as genuine productions,
and transcribers of sacred books did not scruple to alter
the text in the interest of personal views and doctrinal
prepossessions. The newly discovered Sinaitic Code, the
earliest known manuscript of the New Testament, dates
from the fourth century. Tischendorf the discoverer, a
very orthodox critic, speaks without reserve of the license
in the treatment of the text apparent in this manuscript,
- a license, he says, especially characteristic of the first
three centuries.
These considerations, though they do not discredit the
essential facts of the Gospel history, -facts assured to us,
164 
IN THE NEW TESTAMIENT.
as I have said, by the very existence of the Christian
Church, -might seem to excuse  the hesitation of the
sceptic in accepting, on tlhe faith of the record, incidental
marvels of a kind very difficult of proof at best.  I recall
in this connection the remarkable saying of an English
divine of the seventeenth century.   "So great, in the
early ages," says Bishop Fell, "was the license of fiction,
and so prone the facility of believing, that the credibility
of history has been gravely embarrassed thereby; and
not only the secular world, but the Church of God, has
reason to complain of its mythical periods." 1
It is not in the interest of criticism, much less of a wilful iconoclasm, from which my whole nature revolts, but
of Christian faith, that I advocate the supposition of a
mythical element in the New Testament. I am well
aware that in this advocacy I shall lack the consent of
many good people who identify the cause of religion with
its accidents, and fancy that the sanctuary is in danger
when a blind is raised to let in new light. I respect the
piety that clings to idols which Truth has outgrown, as
Paul at Athens respected the religion which worshipped
ignorantly the unknown God. But Truth once seen will
draw piety after it, and new sanctities will replace the
old. No Protestant in these days feels himself bound to
acceplt as history the ecclesiastical legends of the postapostolic age. Some of them are quite as significant as
some of those embodied in the canon; but no Protestant
scruples to reject as spurious the story of the caldron of
boiling oil into which St. John was thrown by order of the
1 Tanta fuit primis seclis fingendi licentia, tam prona in cridendo facilitas, ut reruin gestarLum fides graviter exinde laboraverit, nec orbis tantum
terrarum sed et Dei ecclesia de temporibus suis mythicis mnerito qieratur.
165 
THE MYTHICAL ELEMENT
Emperor Domitian, and from which he escaped unharmed,
or that of the lioness which licked the feet of Thecla in
the circus at Antioch, or PetePs encounter with Christ
in the suburbs of Rome. If we talk of evidence, I do not
see but the miracles said to be performed by the relics of
martyrs at Milan, attested by St. Augustine, and those
of St. Cuthbert of Durham, attested by the venerable
Bede, are as well substantiated as the opening of the
prison doors and the liberation of the Apostles by an
angel, attested by Luke. The Church of Rome makes no
such distinction between the first and the following centuries: she indorses the miracles of all alike. But modern
Protestantism draws a line of sharp separation between
the apostolic and the post-apostolic ages. On the farther side the portents are all genuine historic facts: on
the hither side they are all figments. While John the
Evangelist, the last of the twelve, yet breathed, a miracle
was still possible: his breath departed, it became an impossibility for evermore. And yet when Conyers Middleton first ran this line between the ages, and published his
refutation of the claim of continued miraculous power in
the Church, religious sensibility experienced a shock as
great as that inflicted in our day by Strauss, and resented
with equal indignation the affront to Christian faith. The
author of the "Free Inquiry" published in 1748 was
assailed by opponents, who "insinuate" he tells us "fears
and jealousies of I know not what consequences dangerous to Christianity, ruinous to the faith of history, and
introductive of universal scepticism." The larger work
had been preceded by an "Introductory Discourse" put
forth as a feeler of the public pulse; for "I began," hlie says,
"to think it a duty which candor and prudence prescribed,
166 
IN THE NE IV TESTAMIIENT.
not to alarm the public at once with an argument so
strange and so little understood, nor to hazard an experi ment so big with consequences till I had at first given out
some sketch or general plan of what I was projecting."
The experiment which required such careful preparation
was to ascertain how far the English plll)lic in the middle
of the eighteenth century would bear to have it said that
the miracles affirmed by Augustine and Chrysostom and
Jerome, as occurring in their d(lay, were not as worthy of
credit as any of the wonders recorded in the New Testament.  Up to that time, English Protestants as well as
Romanists had given equal credence to both, and esteemed
the former as essential to Christian faith as the latter.
Men like Waterland and Dodwell and Archbishop Tillotson held that miracles continued in the Church until the
close of the third century, and were even occasionally
witnessed in the fourth. WVhiston, the consistent Arian,
maintained their continuance up to the establishment of
the Athanasian doctrine in 381, and "that as soon as the
Church became Athanasian, anticlristian, and popish, they
ceased immediately; and the Devil lent it his own cheating and fatal powers instead."
To me, I confess, the position of the Church of Rome
in this matter seems less indefensible than that of Middleton and modern Protestantism. Either deny the possibility of miracles altogether to finite powers, or admit
their possibility in the second century, and the third century, as well as the first, and in all centuries whenever a
worthy occasion denmands such agency.  I can see no reason for separating, as Middleton does, the age of the Apostles firom all succeeding.  Ilad he drawn the line between
the miracles of Christ and those ascribed to his followers,
167 
THE MIYTI1CAL ELEIMENT
the principle of division would hav e been more intelligible,
and more admissible on the ground of ecclesiastical
orthodoxy.
But the question here is not of the possibility or probability of miracles, as such, in one age rather than another.
It  is a question  simply of Biblical interpretation,
whether the literal sense of the record is in every case
the true sense, whether history or fiction is the key to
certain Scriptures. Those who insist on the verbal inspiration of the New Testament will be apt to likewise insist
on the literal historic sense of every part of every narrative.  And yet that mode of interpretation is by no means
a necessary consequence or logical outcome of that theory.
Origen believed in the verbal inspiration of the  Old
Testament, but Origen did not accept in their literal sense
the Hebrew theophanies: he allegorized whatever seemed
to him to degrade the idea of God. The Spirit can utter
itself in fiction as well as fict, and in communicating
with Oriental minds was quite as likely to do so. And
surely, for those who reject the notion of verbal inspiration, the way is open, in perfect consistency with Christian faith, for such interpretation as reason may approve
or the credit of the record be thought to require. The
credit of the record will sometimes require an allegorical
interpretation instead of a literal one.
It is a childish limitation which in reading stories can
feel no interest in any thingr but fact; and a childish misconception which supposes- that where the form is narrative, historic fact must needs be the substance. Recount
to a little child a fable of Pilpay or /sop, and his questions betray his inability to apprehend it otherwise than
168 
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
as literal fact. He has no doubt of the truth of the
story; " what did the lion say then?" he asks; and "what
did the fox do next?"  The maturer mind has also no
doubt of the truth of the story, but sees that its truth
is the moral it embodies. Of many of the Gospel stories
the moral contained in them is the real truth. In the
height of our late civil war there appeared in a popular
journal a story entitled "A Man without a Country,"
related with such artistic verisimilitude, such minuteness
of detail, such grave official references, that many who
read it not once suspected the clever invention, and felt
themselves somewhat aggrieved when  apprised that fiction, not fact, had conveyed the moral intended by the
genial author. But those who saw from the first through
the veil of fiction the needful truth and the patriotic
intent were not less edified than if they had believed the
characters real, and every incident vouched by contemporary record. The story of William Tell was once universally received as authentic history: it was written in
the hearts of the people of Uri, and so religiously were
all its incidents cherished, that when a book appeared
discrediting the sacred tradition it was publicly burned by
the hangman at Altorf. For five centuries the chapel on
the shore of the Lake of the Four Cantons has commemorated a hero whose very existence is now questioned, of
whom contemporary annals know nothing, of whose tyrant
Gessler the well-kept records of the Canton exhibit no
trace, whose apple placed as a mark for the father's arrow
on the head of his child is proved to have done a foregone service in an elder Danish tale. The story resolves
itself into an idea. That idea is all that concerns us; and
that idea survives, inexpugnable to criticism, a truth for
169
8 
THE MYTHICAL ELEMENT
evermore. In the world of ideas there is still a William
Tell who defied the tyrant at Altorf, and slew him at
Kusnacht, and whose image will live while the mountains
stand that gave it birth.
And so all that is memorable out of the past, all that
tradition has preserved, the veritable facts of history as
well as the myths of legendary lore, pass finally into ideas.
Only as ideas they survive, only as ideas have they any
abiding value. The anecdote recorded of Aristides- his
writing his own name at the request of an ignorant citizen
on the shell that should condemn him - embodies a noble
idea which has floated down to us from the head-waters of
Grecian history. Do we care to know the, evidence on
which it rests? If by critical investigation the fact were
made doubtful, would that doubt at all impair the truth
of the idea? The story of Damon and Pythias, reported
by Valerius Maximus, for aught that we know, may be a
myth: suppose it could be proved to be so, the truth that
is in it would be none the less precious. We do not
receive it on the faith of the historian, but on the faith of
its own intrinsic beauty. There is scarcely a fact in the
annals of mankind so vouched and ascertained as to be
beyond the reach of historic doubt, if any delver in
ancient documents, or curious sceptic, shall see fit to call
it in question. But, however the fact may be questioned,
the idea remains. We have lived to see apologies for
Judas Iscariot, and the literary rehabilitation of Henry
VIII. But Judas is none the less, in popular tradition,
the typical traitor, the impersonation of devilish malice;
and Henry VIII. is no less the remorseless tyrant whose
will was his God. When Napoleon I. pronounced all
history a fable agreed on, he reasoned better perhaps than
170 
IN THE NEW  TESTAMENT.
he knew. The agreement is the thing essential; but that
agreement is never complete, is never final.  Every original writer of history finds something to qualify, and often
something to reverse, in the judgment of his predecessors. How can it be otherwise, when even eye-witnesses
disagree in their observation and report of the same trans.
action; when even in a matter so recent as the siege of
Paris, or the conflagration of Chicago, the verification of
facts is embarrassed by contradictory a,counts?  The best
that history yields to philosophic thought is not facts, but
ideas. These are all that remain at last when the tale is
told,- all, at least, that the mind can appropriate, all that
profits in historical studies, the intellectual harvest of the
past. A fact means nothing until thought has transmuted
it into itself: its value is simply the idea it subtends.
Homer's heroes are as true in this sense as those of Plutarch. Ajax and Hector are as real to me as Cimon or
Lysandler; Don Quixote's battle with the windmills which
Cervantes imagined is as real as the battle of Lepanto in
which Cervantes fought;  and Shakespeare's Hamlet is
incomparably more real than the Prince of Denmark
whom Saxo Grammaticus chronicles.
I do not underrate the importance of facts on their own
historic plane. The historian, as annalist, is boulnd by the
rules of his craft with conscientious investigation to ascertain, substantiate, and establish, if he can, the precise facts
of the period he explores. I only contend that historic
truth is not the only truth; that a fact, - if I may use that
term in this connection for want of a letter,- that a fact
which is not historically true may yet be true on a higher
plane than that of history, true to reason, to moral and
religious sentiment and human need. The story of Christ's
171 
THE MYTtI1CAL ELEMENT
temptation is none the less true, but a great deal more so,
when the narrative which embodies the interior psychological fact is conceived as myth, than when it is interpreted as veritable historv. The truth that concerns us
is that the Son of MIan "was tempted in all points as
we are," not that he was taken by the Devil and set on
a pinnacle of the Temple, and thence spirited away "into
an exceeding high mountain."
We have now attained a point of view from which to
estimate on the one hand the real import of what I have
ventured to call the myths of the New Testament, and
on the other hand to overrule the petulant radicalism
which, not distinguishing truth of idea from truth of fact,
contemns these legends, and perhaps contemns the Gospel,
on their account. I have wished to show how unessential
it is to the right enjoyment or profitable use of those portions of the record that we receive them as fact; to show
that, if we seize and appropriate the idea, those narratives
are quite as edifying firom a mythical as fiom an historical
point of view; in other words, that the Holy Spirit may
and does instruct by fiction as well as fact.  If I am
asked to draw the line which separates fact from fiction,
or to fix the criterion by which to discriminate the one
from the other, I answer that I do not pretend to decide
this point for myself, much less should I presume to
attempt to settle it for others. I am not disposed to
dogmatize on the subject. It is a matter in which each
must judge for himself.  I will only say that for myself
I do not place the line of demarcation between miracle
and the unmiraculous, for the reason that it seems to me,
as I said before, unphilosophical to make our every-day
experience of the limits of human power and the capabili
172 
IN TlIE NEW T  ESTAMENT.
ties of nature an absolute -standard by which to measure
the possible scope of the one or the other.
I content myself with a single illustration of what I
regard as a mythical formation. My example is the story
known as "The Annunciation."  Luke alone, of all the
evangelists, records the tale. The angel Gabriel is sent
to a virgin named Mary, and surprises her with the
tidings, "Thou shalt conceive in thy womb,  and shalt
bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He
shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest.
And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his
father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob
for ever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end." This
beautiful legend, the most beautiful, I think, of all the
legends connected with the birth of Christ, the favorite
theme of Christian art, so lovingly handled by Fra Angelico, by Correggio, Raphael, Titian, Andrea del Sarto, and
a host of others, is best understood as a Jewish-Christian
conception, taking an historic form and "shaped into a
fact." The legend represents the humility and faith of a
pious maiden communing with the heavenly Presence,
drawing to herself divine revelations of grace and promise,
and thus sanctioning the hope so dear to every Jewish
maiden, - that of becoming the mother of the Messiah.
The sudden inspiration of that hope is the angel of the
Annunciation.
A word more. How far is our idea of Christ affected
by a mode of interpretation which supposes a mingling
of mythical with historic elements in the Gospel record?
That idea is based on the representations of the evangelists. Will not our confidence in those representations be
impaired by this view of their contents? I see no cause
173 
THE MYTHICAL ELEMENT
to apprehend a result so distressing to Christian faith.
The mythical interpretation of certain portions of the
Gospel has no appreciable bearing on the character of
Christ. The impartial reader of the record must see that
the evangelists did not invent that character; they did
not make the Jesus of their story; on the contrary, it
was he that made them. It is a true saying that only a
Christ could invent a Christ. The Christ of history is a
true reflection of the image which Jesus of Nazareth imprinted on the mind of his contemporaries. In that image
the spiritual greatness, the moral perfection, are not more
conspicuous than the well-defined individuality which permeates the story, and which no genius could invent.
If the Christ of the Church, of Christian faith, is, as
some will have it, an ideal being, it was Jesus of Nazareth
who made the ideal. The ideal in him is simply the result
of that disengagement from the earthly vestiture which
death and distance work in all who live in history. By
the very necessity of its function, history idealizes. The
historic figure and the individual represented by it, though
inseparably one in substance, are not so identical in outline that the one exactly covers the other, no more and no
less. The individual is the bodily presence as it dwells
in space; the historic figure is the image of himself which
the individual stamps on his time, and, so far as his record
reaches, on all succeeding time, -his import to human
kind. That image is a veritable portrait, but not in the
sense of a fac-simile. A material portrait, a portrait
painted with hands, if the painter understands his art, is
not a fac-simile: it presents the chronic idea or characteristic mode, not the temporary accidents, "the fallings
ofif; the vanishings," of the person portrayed. In the hero
174 
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
galleries of Tradition, as in the visions of the Apocalypse,
they are seen with white robes, and palms in their hands,
and uawrinkled brows of grace, who in life were begrimed
with the (lust and furrowed with the cares of their time.
St. Paul is there without his thorn in the flesh, Luther without his impatience, Washington without his fiery choler,
Lincoln without his coarseness, Dante and Miltoii without
their scorn.  Hlistory strips off the indignities of earth
when she dresses her heroes for immortality.  And the
transfilgurations she gives us are nearer the truth than the
limitations of ordinary life. The man is more truly himself in the epic strain of public action, with spirit braced
and harness on, than in the subsidence and undress of the
closet. It is not the gossiping anecdotes, the spoils of
the ungirt private life, so dear to antiquaries and literary
scavengers, but the things which history hastens to record,
that show the man. We must take the life at full-tide;
we must view it in its freest determination, in its supreme
moment, to know the deepest that is in him.  And the
deepest that is in him is the true man. That is his idea,
his mission to the world, his historic significance.  It is
this that concerns us in all the great actors of history,the historic person, not the individual. And the more the
historic person absorbs the individual, the higher we rise
in the scale of being until we reach the idea of God, from
which all individuality is excluded, and only the Person
remains, filling space and time with the ceaseless procession of his being.
We misread the Gospel and reverse the true and divine
order, if we suppose the ideal Christ to be an essence
distilled firom the historical. On the contrary, the ideal
Christ is the root and ground of the historical; and without
l't 5 
176     TIlE 1MYT1TIICAL ELELMEN-'VT, ETC.
the  antece(lent idea inspiring, commanding, the history
would never have been.
It has not been lay intention in any thing I have said to
make light of the record.  The recordl to nme is a literary
relic of inestimable value, aboriginal memorial of the
dearest and divinest appearance in human form that ever
beamed on earthly scenes. I sympathize with every
attempt to clear up and verify its minutest details, with
the labors of all critics and archcologists devoted to this
end. I rejoice in all topographical adjustments and illustrations; in all that local researches, following in the steps
of "those blessed feet," have gleaned fiom  the soil of
Palestine.  But all this is important only as it draws its
inspiration firom  and leads my  aspiration to the ideal
Christ, "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever."  Dissociated from this idea, the acres of Palestine are as
barren as any which the ebbing of a nation's life has left
desolate. 
THE PLACE OF MIND IN NATURE i
INTUITION IN
BY JAMES  MARTINE
8*
AND
MAN.  
THE PLACE OF MIND IN NATURE
INTUITION IN MAN.
"Behold, there went forth a Sower to sow." - MARK iv. 8.
HAT  the universe we see around us was not always
there, is so little disputed, that every philosophy
and every faith undertakes to tell how it came to be.
They all assume, as the theatre of their problem, the field
of space where all objects lie, and the track of time where
events have reached the Now. But into these they carry,
to aid them in representing the origin of things, such
interpreting conceptions as may be most familiar to the
knowledge or fancy of their age: first, the fat of Almighty
Will, which bade the void be filled, so that the light
kindled, and the waters swayed, and the earth stood fast
beneath the vault of sky; next, when the sway of poetry
and force had yielded to the inventive arts, the idea of a
contriving and daclapting power, building and balancing the
worlds to go smoothly and keep time together, and stocking them with self-moving, and sensitive machines;  and
now, since physiology has got to the front, the analogy of
the seed or germ, in itself the least of things, yet so prolific
that, with history long enough, it will be as spawn upon
AND 
180   THE PLACE OF MIND IN NATURE
the waters, and fill every waste with the creatures as they
are. The prevalence of this newest metaphor betrays itself in the current langun,ge of science: we now "uw7fold"
what we used to "takce to pieces;"  we  "dcevelol]" the
theory which we used to "construct;" we treat the system of the world as an "organism  " rather than a "mechanism; " we search each of its members to see, not what
it is for, but what it is from; and the doctrine of Evolution only applies the image of indefinite growth of the
greater out of the less, till from some datum invisible to
the microscope arises a teeming universe.
In dealing with these three conceptions, - of Creation,
Constr?ection, Evolittion, - there is one thing on which
Religion insists, viz., that Jliincl is first, andc rules for ever;
and, whatever the process be, is its process, moving towards
congenial ends. Let this be granted, and it matters not
by what path of method the Divine Thought advances, or
how long it is upon the road. Whether it flashes into
realization, like lightning out of Night; or fabricates, like
a Demiurge, through a producing season, and then beholds
the perfect work; or is for ever thinking into life the
thoughts of beauty and the love of good; whether it calls
its materials out of nothing, or finds them ready, and disposes of them from without; or throws them around as
its own manifestation, and fiom within shapes its own purpose into blossom, - makes no difference that can be fatal
to human piety. Time counts for nothing with the Eternal; and though it should appear that the system of the
world and the ranks of being arose, not by a start of
crystallization, but, like the grass or the forest, by silent
and seasonal gradations, as true a worship may be paid to
the Indwelling God who makes matter itself transparent 
AND INTUITION IN MAN.
with spiritual meanings, and breathes before us in the
pulses of nature, and appeals to us in the sorrows of men,
as to the pre-existing Deity who, firom an infinite loneliness, suddenly became the Maker of all. Nay, if the poet
always looks upon the world through a suppliant eye,
craving to meet his own ideal and commune with it alive;
if prayer is ever a "feeling after Him to find Him," the
fervor and the joy of both must be best sustained, if they
are conscious not only of the stillness of His presence, but
of the movement of His thought, and never quit the date
of His creative moments.   In the idea, therefore, of a
gradual unfolding of the creative plan, and the matuling
of it by rules of growth, there is nothing necessarily prejudicial to piety; and so long as the Divine Mind is left in
undisturbed supremacy, as the living All in all, the belief
may even foster a larger, calmer, tenderer devotion, than
the conceptions which it supersedes. But it is liable to a
special illusion, which the others by their coarsely separating lines manage to escape. Taking all the causation of
the world into the interior, instead of setting it to operate
fiom without, it seems to dispense with God, and to lodge
the power of indefinite development in the first seeds of
things; and the apprehension seizes us, that as the oak
will raise itself when the acorn and the elements are given,
so from its germs might the universe emerge, though
nothing Divine were there. The seeds no doubt were on
the field; but who can say whether ever "a Sower went
forth to sow "? So long as you plant the Supreme Cause
at a distance from His own effects, and assign to Him a
space or a time where nothing else can be, the conception
of that separate and solitary existence, however barren,
is secure. But in proportion as you think of Him as
181 
182   THE PLACE OF MIIND IN NATURE
never in an empty field, waiting for a future beginning of
activity, as you let Him mingle with the elements and
blend with the natural life of things, there is a seeming
danger lest His light should disappear behind the opaque
material veil, and His Spirit be quenched amid the shadows
of inexorable Law. This danger haunts our time. The
doctrine of Evolution, setting itself to show how the
greatest things may be brought out of the least, fills us
with fear whether perhaps Mind may not be last instead
of first, the hatched and full-fledged form of the protoplasmic egg; whether at the outset any thing was there but
the raw rudiments of matter and force; whether the hierarchy of organized beings is not due to progressive differentiation of structure, and resolvable into splitting and
agglutination of cells; whether the Intellect of man is
more than blind instinct grown self-conscious, and shaping
its beliefs by defining its own shadows; whether the Moral
sense is not simply a trained acceptance of rules worked
out by human interests, an inherited record of the utilities; so that Design in Nature, Security in the Intuitions
of Reason, Divine Obligation in the law of Conscience,
may all be an illusory semblance, a glory from the later
and ideal days thrown back upon the beginning, as a
golden sunset flings its light across the sky, and, as it
sinks, dresses up the East again with borrowed splendor.
This doubt, which besets the whole intellectual religion
of our time, assumes that we must measure every nature
in its beginnings; admit nothing to belong to its essence
except what is found in it then; and deny its reports of
itself, so far as they depart from that original standard.
It takes two forms, according as the doctrine of Evolution
is applied to Man himself, or to the outward universe. In 
AND INTUITION IN MAN.
the former case, it infuses distrust into our self-knowledge,
weakens our subjective religion or native faith in the
intuitions of thought and conscience, and tempts us to
imagine that the higher they are, the further are they
fiom any assured solidity of base. In the latter case, it
weakens our objective religion, suggests that there is no
originating Mind, and that the divine look of the world
is but the latest phase of its finished surface, instead of
the incandescence of its inmost heart. Let us first glance
at the theory of   UMAN evolution, and the moral illusions
it is apt to foster.
I. Under the name of the "Experience Philosophy,"
this theory has long been applied to the mind of tl,e individual; and has produced not a few admirable analyses
of the formation of language and the tissue of thought;
nor is there any legitimate objection to it, except so far
as its simplifications are overstrained and cannot be made
good. It undertakes, with a minimum of initial capacity,
to account for the maximum of human genius and character: give it only the sensible pleasures and pains, the
spontaneous muscular activity, and the law by which
associated mental phenomena cling together; and out of
these elements it will weave before your eyes the whole
texture of the perfect inner life, be it the patterned story
of imagination, the delicate web of the affections, or the
seamless robe of moral purity. The outfit is that of the
animal; the product but "a little lower than the angel."
All the higher endowments - our apprehension of truth,
our consciousness of duty, our self-sacrificing pity, our
religious reverence - are in this view merely transformed
sensations; the disinterested impulses are refinements spun
out of the coarse fibre of self-love; the subtlest intellect
183 
184   THE PLACE OF MIND IV NATURE
ual ideas are but elaborated perceptions of sight or touch;
and the sense of Right, only interest or fear under a
disguise. If this be so, how will the discovery affect our
natural trust in the intimations of our supreme faculties?
Does it not discharge as dreams their most assured reve latioris? By intuition of Reason we believe in the Law
of Causality, in the infinitude of Space, in the relations
of Number, in the reality of an outside world, in all the
fundamental conceptions of Science; but here are they,
one and all, recalled to the standard of Sense, which they
seem to transcend, and emptied of any meaning beyond.
By vision of Imagination we see an ideal beauty enfold ing many a person and many a scene, and appealing to
us as a pathetic light gleaming from within; but here we
find it all resolved into curvature of lines and adjustments
of color. By inspiration of Conscience we learn that our
sin is the defiance of a Divine authority, and, though hid
from every human eye, drives us into a wilderness of
Exile, - for" the wicked fieeth, though no man pursueth;"
but here we are told that the ultimate elements of good
and evil are our own pleasures and pains, from which the
moral sanction selects as its specialty the approbation and
disapprobation of our fellow-men. Thus all the independent values which our higher faculties had claimed
for their natural affections and beliefs are dissipated as
fallacious; they are all based upon a sentient measure of
worth which lies at the bottom; they are like paper
money, refined contrivances representative of the ultimate
gold of pleasure, but, where not interchangeable with this,
intrinsically worthless. And so the feeling almost inevitably spreads, that we are dupes of our own characteristic
capacities; that the loftier air into which they lift us is a 
AND INTUITION IN lMAN.V.
tinted and distorting medium, and shows us glories that
are not there; that the idea of an eternal Fount of
beauty, truth and goodness, behind the pleasingness and
concinnity of phenomena, is an illusion; and that the
tendency, irresistible as it is, to cling to'this idea as something higher than its denial, is but a part of the romance.
Is this scepticism imaginary?  Let any one, in studying
the modern writers of this school, compare  the soli(d,
manly, sensible way in which they deal with every thing
on the phlysiological and sensational level, with their
manner towards all the convictions and sentiments usually
recognized as the supreme lights of our nature; the tone
now of forbearing indulgence, now of sickly appreciation,
often of hardly concealed contempt, that is heard beneath
the interminable conjectural analyses of AIoral andI Religious affections,- and he will feel the difference between
the honor that is paid to truth, and the constrained
patience towards what other men revere.'
By a recent extension, the theory of Evolution has been
applied to the whole natural history of our race; and the
resources of Ifctbit, already serviceable in explaining the
aptitudes of individuals, have been turned to account on
the larger scale of successive generations, transmitting by
inheritance the acquisitions hitherto made good. In the
training of a nature, the world thus becomes a permanent
school, the interruption of death is virtually abolished, and
life is laid open to continuous progress. By this immense
gain of power, it is supposed, all the differences which
separate SIan from other animals may be accounted for as
gradual attainments; and many an intuition of the mind,
too immediate and self-evident to be a product of personal
experience, may yield to analysis as a more protracted
185 
186   THE PLACE OF MIND JN NATURE
growth, and stand as the compend of ages of gathering
feeling and condensing, thoug,ht.  Among creatures that
herd together for common safety, each one learns to read
the looks of angelr or of good-will in its neighbors, and discovers what it is that brings upon him the one or other;
and insensibly he forms to himself a rule for avoiding the
displeasure and conciliating the favor in which he has so
large an interest.  This rudimentary experience imprints
and records itself in the nervous olganization, and descends
to ulterior generations as an original and instinctive recoil
from what offends and impulse towards what gratifies the
feeling of the tribe: so that the lesson needs not be gone
over again; but the offspring, taking up his education
where the parent left off, accumulates his feeling, quickens
his mental execution, and hands down fiesh contributions
to what at last emerges as a Moral Sense.  In this way,
it is contended, the Conscience is a hoarded fund of traditionary pressures of utility, gradually efftcing the
primitive vestiges of fear, and dispensing itself with an
affluence of disinterested sympathy.  And the  religiolus
consciousness that visits the soul in its remorse, of an
invisible Witness and Judge who condemns the sin,
comes, we are told, fiom the deification of public opinion,
or the fancy that some dead hero's ghost still watches
over the conduct of his clan.
This vast enlargement of the doctrine of Evolution,
while increasing its power, and removing it from the
reach of accurate tests, alters neither its principle nor its
practical effect.  It undertakes to exhibit the highest and
the greatest in our nature as ulterior phenomena of the
lowest and the least. And it usually treats as a superstition our natural reverence for the rational, moral, and 
AND INTUITION IN MAN.
religious intuitions as sources of independent insight and
ultimate authority; and, in order to estimate them, translates them back into short-hand expressions of sensible
experience and social utility. Nor can we wonder at this
scepticism. If the only reality at bottom of the sense of
duty is fear and submission to opinion, whatever it carries
in it that transcends this ground, and persuades us of an
Obligation in which fear and opinion have no voice, is an
ideal addition got up within us by causes which produce
in us all sorts of psychological figments. If the only facts
that lie in our idea of Space are a set of feelings in the
muscles and the skin and the eye, then whatever beliefs
it involves which these cannot verify are naturally discredited, and treated as curiosities of artificial manufacture. If our human characteristics are throughout the
developed instincts of the brute, differing only in degree,
then the moment they present us with intuitions which
are distinct in kind, they begin to play us false; and those
who see through the cheat naturally warn us against
them. And so we are constantly told that our highest
attributes are only the lower that have lost their memory,
and mistake themselves for something else.
It is not my present intention to call in question either
of these varieties of evolution. Inadequate as the evidence of them both appears to be, I will suppose their case
to be made out: and still, I submit, it does not justify
the sceptical estimate which it habitually fosters of the
intellectual, moral, and religious intuitions of the human
mind. For,
(1) Though  animal sensation, with its connected instinct, should be the raw material of our whole mental
history, it is not on that account entitled to measure
187 
188   THE PLACE OF MIND IN NATURE
all that comes after it, and stand as the bowdary-line
between fact and dream, between terra firma and "airy
nothing." That which is first in Time has no necessary
priority of rank in the scale of truth and reality; and the
later-found may well be the greater existence and the
more assured. If it is a development of Faculty, and not
of incapacity, which the theory provides, the process
must advance us into new light, and not withdraw us
fiom clearer light behind: and we have reason to confide
i the freshest gleams and inmost visions of to-day, and
to discard whatever quenches and confuses them in the
vague and turbid beginnings of the Past. With what
plea will you exhort me, "If you would rid yourself of
intellectual mysteries, come with us, and see the stuff
your thought is made of: if you would stand free of ideal
illusions, count with us the medullary waves that have
run together into the flood-tide of what you call your
conscience: if you would shake off superstition, look at
the way in which the image of dead men will hang about
the fancy of a savage, or the personification of an abstract
quality imposes on the ignorance of simple times "? Is
our wisdom to be gathered by going back to the age before our errors? And instead of consulting the maturity
of thought, are we to peer into its cradle and seek oracles
in its infant cries? If the last appeal be to the animal
elements of experience, we can learn only by unlearning;
and by shutting one after another of the hundred ideal
eyes of the finished intellect, we shall have a chance of
seeing and feeling things as they are. If nothing is to be
deemed true but what the pre-human apes saw, then all
the sciences must be illusory; with the suicidal result
that, with them, this doctrine of Evolution must vanish 
AND INTUITION IN MAN.
too.  Or if, stopping short of this extreme distrust of the
acquired intuitions, you make a reservation in favor of
the new visions of the intellect, what right can you show
for discharging those of the conscience?  The tacit assumption therefore that you upset a super-sensual belief,
by tracing the history of its emergence among sensible
conditions, is a groundless prejudice.
(2) Further, the question to be determined may be
presented as a problem in physiology, to be resolved by
corresponding rules:  Vhat is the fuinction of certain parts
of our human constitution, viz., the Reason and -tie Moral
Faculty?  Now it is a recognized principle that, in estimating function, you must  study the organ, not in its
rudimenitary condition, before it has disenga.gedl itself firom
adjacent admixtures and flung off the foreign elements,
but in its perfect or differentiated state, so as to do its
own work and nothing else.  In order to give the idea of
a timepiece to one who had it not, you would not send him
to one of the curious medieval clocks which could play a
tune, and fire a gun, and announce the sunrise, and mnark
the tides, and report twenty miscellaneous things besides;
but to the modern chronometer, simple and complete, that,
telling only the moment, tells it perfectly. And in natural
organizations, to learn the capabilities and project of any
structure, you would not resort to the embryo where it is
forming but not working,: you would wait till it was born
into the fill presence of the elements with which it had
to deal; not till th)en could you see how they played upon
it, and what was its response to them.  In conformity
with this rule, whither wouldcl you betake yourself, if you
want to measure  the intrinsic comp)etency of our intellectual faculty, and determine what its very nature
4
189 
190   THE PLACE OF MllIND IN NATURE
gives it to know? Would you take counsel of the nurse
who held you "when you first opened your eyes to the
light," 1 or otherwise study " the first consciousness in any
infant," "before the time when memory commences," 2
and disregard every thing "subsequent to the first
beginnings of intellectual life"?   On the contrary, you
would avoid that soft inchoate promise of nature, only
nominally born, where the very structures of its finer
work have not yet set into their distinctive consistency
and form; and will hold your peace till the faculty is
awake and on its feet, and can clearly tell you what it
sees for itself, and what it makes out at second-hand: just
as, to gauge the lunar light, you must have patience while
the thin crescent grows, and wait till the full orb is there.
Still less can you take the report of the Moral Faculty
from the confessions of the cradle, or from the quarrels
and affections of the apes; the conditions being not yet
present for the bare conception of a moral problem. The
most that can be asked of an intuition is, that it shall
keep pace with the cases as they arise, and be on the spot
when it is wanted; and if you would know what provision
our nature holds for dealing with its Duty and interpreting its guilt, you must go into the thick of its moral
life, and bid it tell you what it sees firom the swaying
tides of temptation and of victory. The "purity" of intuitions is not "pristine," but ultimate; cleared at length
from accidental and irrelevant dilutions, and with essence
definitely crystallized, they realize and exhibit the idea
that lay at the heart of all their tentatives, and constitutes
their truth. Am I told that it is hopeless at so late an
1 3ill's Examination of Hamilton, 3d ed. p. 172.
2 Ibid.                    3 Ibid, p. 160. 
AND INTUITION IN MAN.L
hour to separate what is an indigenous gift firom what is
implanted by education? I riply, it no doubt requires,
but it will not baffle, the hand of skilled analysis; it is a
difficulty which, in other cases, we find it not impossible
to overcome; for there arc assuredly instincts and affections, strictly original and natural, that make no sign and
play no part till our maturer years, yet which are readily
distinguished from the products of artificial culture.
If, to find the functions of our higher faculties, we must
look to their last stage, and not to their first, we at once
recover and justify the ideal conceptions which the expositors of Evolution are accustomed to disparage as romance.
For among these functions are present certain Intuitive
beliefs- for the Reason, in Divine Causality; for the Conscience, in Divine Authority; together blending into the
knowledge of a Supreme and Holy Mind.   These au,guIst
apprehensions we are entitled to declare are not the illusions, but the discoveries, of Man;  who, by rising into
them, is born into more of the Universe of things than
any other being upon earth, and is made conscious of its
transcendent and ultimate realities. If these trusts are
indeed the growth of ages, fiomn seeds invisibly dropped
upon the field of time, be it so; it was not without hand:
there was a Sotcer that went forth to sow.
II. WVe turn now to the Second Form of doubt raised
bv the doctrine of Evolution: under which it weakens our
ob)jective trust in an originating Mind.
A naturalist who to his own satisfaction has traced the
perigree of the human intellect, conscience, and religion,
to Ascidlian skin-bags stickini  to the sea-side rocks, is not
likely to arrest the gei'e:nlo.,y there, at a stage so little
fitted to serve as a staarting-4)oiIit of derivative being. Or,
191 
192   THE PLACE OF MIIVD IN NATURE
if his own retreat should go no further, others will take lup
the regressive race, and, st)on passing the near and easy
linle into the vegetable  kingdom, will work  thirough its
provinces to its lichen-spotted edge: and, after perhaps
one shrinking look, will dare the leap into the dead realmn
beyond, and bring home the parentage of all to the prinmitive elements of "matter and force."  To give effect to
this extension over the universe at large of the theory of
Evolution, the scientific ima,gination of our day has long
been meditating its projected book of Genesis, and has
already thrown out its special chapters here and there; and
though the scenes of the drama as a whole are not yet
arrangced, the general plan is clear:  that the Lucretian
method is the true one; that nothing arises for a purpose,
but only from a power; that no Divine Actor therefore is
required, but only atoms extended, resisting, shaped, with
spheres of mutual  attraction and repulsion; that, with
these mg-tinia to begin with, a growth will follow of itself
by which the n,ctximct will be reached; and that thus far
the chief and latest thing it has done is the apparition of
3Iind in the human race and civilization in human society,
conferring upon man the melancholy privilege of being, so
far as hlie knows, at the summit of the universe.
The main support of this doctrine is found in two arguunients, supplied respectively by physical science and by
natural history; each of which we will pass under review.
i. The fornmer relies on the new scientific conception of
the t7?ity of Force.  When Newton established the composition of Light in his treatise on Optics, and the law of
Gravitation in his Pincipia, hie conceived himself to be
treating of two separate powers of nature, between whlich,
quick as he was to seize unexpected relations, he dreamt 
AND LINTUITION IN M1AN.
of no interchange. Yet now it is understood that when
collisions occur of bodies gravitating on opposite lines, the
momenta that seem to be killed simply burst into light
and heat. When Priestley's experiments detected the
most important chemical element on the one hand, and
the fundamental electrical laws on the other, he seemed to
move on paths of research that had no contact.  Yet, in
the next generation, chemical compounds were resolved by
electricity; which again turns up in exchange for magnetism, and can pass into motion, heat, and light. To see the
tranismigration of natural  agency, trace only through a few
of its links the effect of the sunshine on the tropic seas.
So far as it warms the mass of waters, either directly or
through the scorched shlores that they wash, it stirs them
into shifting layers and currents, and creates mechanical
power.  But it also removes the superficial film; and thus
far spends itself, not in raising the temperature, but in
changing the form firom liquid to vapor, and so altering the
specific gravity as to transfer what was on the deep to the
level of the mountain-tops. It is the Pacific that climbs
and crowns the Andes, resuming on the way the liquid
state in the shape of clouds, and as it settles crystallizing
into solid snow and ice. The original sqt of solar rays
have now played their part, and made their escape elsewhere.  But there is sunshine among the glaciers too,
which soon begins to resolve the knot that has been tied,
and restore what has been stolen. It sets free the waters
that have been locked up, and lets their gravitation have
its play upon their flow. As they dash through ravines, or
ling,er in the plains, they steal into the roots of grass and
tree, and by the tribute which they leave pass into the new
shape of vital force. And if they pass the homesteads of
9
193 
194   THE PLACE OF MIND IN NATURE
industry, and raise the food of a civilized people, who can
deny that they contribute not only to the oirganic, but to
the mental life, and so have run the whole circuit from the
lowest to the highest phase of power? That the return
back may be traced from the highest toethe lowest, is shown
by every effort of thought and will; which through the
medium of nervous energy in one direction sets in action
the levers of the limbs, and in another works the laboratory
of the organic life, and forms new chemical compounds, of
which some are reserved for use, while others pass into the
air as waste. Still further: all doubt of identity in the
force which masks itself in these various shapes is said to
be removed by the test of direct measurement befbre and
after the change. The heating of a pound of water by one
degree has its exact mechanical equivalent; 1 and a given
store of elevated temperature will overcome the same
weights, whether applied directly to lift them, or turned
first into a thermo-electric current, so as to perform its
task by deputy.2  The inference drawn from the phenomena of which these are samples is no less than this: that
each kind of force is convertible into any other, and undergoes neither gain nor loss upon the way; so that the
sum-total remains for ever the same, and is only differently
represented as the proportions changcre amongst the different forms of life, and between the organic and the inorganic realms. Hence arises the argument that, in having
any force, you have virtually all; and that, assuming only
material atoms as depositories of mechanical resistance and
momentum, you can supply a universe with an exhaustive
1 Viz., thle fall of 772 lbs. through a foot. See AIr. Joule's Experiments
in Grove's Correlation of Physical Forces, p. 34, 5th ed.
2 See Grove's Correlation, p. 255, 5th ed. 
AND INTUITION IVN S1AN.
oosmogony, and dispense with the presence of M1ind, ex cept as one of its phenomena.
To test this argument, let us grant the data which are
demanded, and imagine the primordial space charged with
matter, in molecules or in masses, in motion or rest, as you
may prefer. Put it under the lawv of gravitation, and in vest it with what varieties you please of density and form.
Thus constituted, it perfectly fulfils all the conditions you
have asked; it presses, it moves, it propagates and distributes impulse, is liable to acceleration and retardation,
and exhibits all the phenomena with which any treatise on
Mechanics can properly deal. In order, however, to keep
the problem clear within its limits, let us have it in the
simplest form, and conceive the atoms to be all of gold;
then, I would fain learn by what step the hypothesis proposes to effect its passage to the chemical forces and their
innumerable results. Hlet it may manage to reach by the
fiiction and compression of the materials at its disposal;
and its metal universe may thus have its solid, liquid, and
gaseous provinces; but, beyond these varieties, its homogeneous particles cannot advance the history one hair's
breadth through an eternity.  It is not true, then, that the
conditions which give the first type of force suffice to promote it to the second; and in order to start the world on
its chemical career, you must enlarge its capital and present it with an outfit of heterogeneous constituents. Try,
therefore, the effect of such a gift; fling into the pre-existimg caldron the whole list of recognized elementary substances, and give leave to their affinities to work: we
inmediately gainl an immense accession to our materials
for the architecture and resources for the changes of the
world,- the water and the air, the salts of the ocean, and
195
0 
196   THE PLACE OF MILVD IN NATURE
the earthy or rocky compounds that compose the crust of
the globe, and the variable states of magnetism and heat,
which throw the combinations into slow though constant
change. But with all your enlargement of data, turn
them as you will, at the end of every passage which they
explore, the door of ly  is closed against them still; and
though more than once it has been proclaimed that a way
has been found through, it has proved that the living thing
was on the wrong side to begin with.  It is not true, therefore, that, from the two earlier stages of force, the ascent
can be made to the vital level; the ethereal fire yet remains in Heaven; and philosophy has not stretched forth
the Promethean arm that can bring it down. And if, once
more, we make you a present of this third phase of power,
and place at your disposal all that is contained beneath
and within the flora of the world, still your problem is no
easier than before; you cannot take a single step towards
the deduction of sensation and thought: neither at the
upper limit do the highest plants (the exogens) transcend
themselves and overbalance into animnl existence; nor at
the lower, grope as you may among the sea-weeds and
sponges, can you persuade the sporules of the one to
develop into the other. It is again not true, therefore,
that, in virtue of the convertibility of force, the possession of any is the possession of the whole: we give you
all the forms but one; and that one looks calmly down on
your busy evolutions, and remains inaccessible. Is, then,
the transmigration of forces altogether an illusion? By
no Tr. cans; but before one can exchange with another, both
mtst be there; and to turn their equivalence into a universal formula, all must be there.  With only one kind of
elementary matter, there can be no chemistry; with only 
AND  INTUITION IN MAN.
the chemical elements and their laws, no life; with only
vital resources, as in the vegetable world, no beginning of
mind. But let Thought and Will with their conditions
once be there, and they will appropriate vital power; as
life, once in possession, will ply the alembics and the testtubes of its organic laboratory; and chemical affinity is no
sooner on the field than it plays its game among the cohesions of simple gravitation.  Hence it is impossible to
work the theory of Evolution upwards firom the bottom.
If all force is to be conceived as One, its type must be
looked for in the highest and all-comprehending term;
and Mind must be conceived as there, and as divesting
itself of some specialty at each step of its descent to a
lower stratum of law, till represented at the base under
the guise of simple Dynamics. Or, if you retain the forces
in their plurality, then you must assume them all among
your data, and confess, with one of the greatest living
expositors of the phenomena of Development, that unless
among your primordial elements you scatter already the
germs of mind as well as the inferior elements, the Evolution can never be wrought out.' But surely a theory,
which is content simply to assume in the germ whatever
it has to turn out full-grown, throws no very brilliant light
on the genesis of the Universe.
ii. The second and principal support of the doctrine
under review is found in the realmn of natural history, and
in that province of it which is occupied by living beings.
Here, it is said, in the field of observation nearest to us, we
have evidence of a power in each nature to push itself and
gain ground, as against all natures less favorably constituted. There is left open to it a certain range of possible
1 Lotze's Mikrokosmus, B. iv. Kap. 2, Band ii. 33, seqq.
197 
198   THE PLACE OF MIND IN NATURE
variations from the type of its present individuals, of which
it may avail itself in any direction that may fortify its posi tion; and even if its own instincts did not seize at once
the line of greatest strength, still, out of its several tenta tives, all the feeble results would fail to win a footing, and
only the residuary successes would make good their ground.
The ill-equipped troops of rival possibilities being always
routed, however often they return, the well-armed alone
are seen upon the field, and the world is in possession of
"the fittest to live." We thus obtain a principle of self adjusting adaptation of each being to its condition, with out resorting to a designing care disposing of it from
without; and its development is an experimental escape
from past weakness, not a pre-conceived aim at a future
perfection.
I have neither ability nor wish to criticise the particular
indications of this law, drawn with an admirable patience
and breadth of research, from every department of ani mated nature. Though the logical structure of the proof
does not seem to me particularly solid, and the dispropor tion between the evidence and the conclusion is of neces sity so enormous as to carry us no further than the
discussion of an hypothesis, yet, for our present purpose,
the thesis may pass as if established; and our scrutiny
may be directed only to its bearings, should it be true.
(1) The genius of a country which has been the birthplace and chief home of Political Economy is naturally
pleased by a theory of this kind; which invests its favo:ite
'lord and master, Competition, with an imperial crown and
universal sway. But let us not deceive ourselves with
mere abstract words and abbreviations, as if they could
reform a world or even farm a sheep-walk. Competition 
A-D INTUITION IN MllAN.
is not, like a primitive function of nature, an independent
andt original power, which can of itself do any thing: the
term only describes a certain intensifying of power already
there; ma,kingl the difference, under particular conditions,
between function latent and function exercised.  It may
therefore turn the less into the more; and it is reasonable
to attribute to it an increment to known  and secured
effects; but not new and unknown effects, for which else
there is no provision. It gives but a partial and superficial account of the phenomena with which it has concern;
of their degree; of their incidence here or there; of their
occurrenlce now or then: of themselves in their characteristics it pre-supposes, and does not supply, the cause.
To that cause, then, let us turn. Let us consider what
must be uponl the field, before competition can arise.
(2) It cannot act except in the presence of some possibility of a better or woorse.  A struggle out of relative disadvantage implies that a relative advantage is within
grasp,- that there is a prize of promotion offered for the
contest.  The rivalry of beings eager for it is but an
instrument for?akci,).q the best of things; and only when
flung into the midst of an indeterminate variety of alternative conditions can it find any scope. When it gets
there and falls to work, what does it help us to account
for? It accounts certainly for the triumph and survivorship of the better, but not for there being a better to survive.
Gice;i, the slow and the swift upon the same course, it
makes it clear that the race will be to the swift; but it does
not provide the fleeter feet by which the standard of speed
is raised. Nay more; even for the prevalence of the better
( "or fitter to live" ) it would not account, except on the
assumption that whatever is better is stronger too; and a
199 
200   THE PLACE OF MLYID IlV N1 TURE
universe in which this rule holds already indicates its
divine constitution, and is pervaded  by an ideal power
unapproached by the forces of necessity.  Thus the law
of" natural selection," instead of dispensing with anterior
causation and enabling the animal races to be their own
Providence and do all their own work, distinctly testifies
to a constitution of the world pre-arranged for progress,
externally spread with large choice of conditions, and
with internal provisions for seizing, and realizing the best.
On  such a world, rich in open possibilities, of beauty,
streng,th, affection, intellect, and character, they are
planted and set free; charged with instincts eagerly
urging them to secure the preferable line of each alternative; and disposing themselves, by the very conditions
of equilibrium, into a  natural  hierarchy, in which the
worthiest to live are in the ascendant, and the standard
of life is for ever rising.  What can look more like the
field of a directing Will intent upon the good(l?  Indeed,
the doctrine of "n atural selection" owes a large part of
its verisimilitude to its skilful imitationI of the conditions
and method of Free-will; - the indeterminate varieties
of possible movemenit; the presentation of these before a
selective power; the determination of the problem by fitness for preference, - all these are features that would
belong no less to the administration of a presiding, Mind;
and that, instead of resorting for the last solution to this
high arbitrament, men of science should suppose it to b)e
blindly fouglht out by the compl)eting creatures, as if they
were sulprel e, is one of the marvels which the professional
intellect, -whlatever its department, more  often exhibits
than explains.
(3) But, before competition can arise, there must be, 
AND INTUITION IN MAN.
besides the field of favorable possibility, desire or instinct
to lay hold of its opportunities. Here it is that we touch
the real dynamics of evolution, which rivalry can only
bring to a somewhat higher pitch. Here, it must be
admitted, there is at work a genuine principle of progression, the limits of which it is difficult to fix. Every
being which is so far individuated as to be a separate
centre of sensation, and of the balancing active spontaneity, is endowed with a self-asserting power, capable, on
the field already supposed, of becoming a self-advancing
power. Under its operation, there is no doubt, increasing differentiation of structure and refinement of function
may be expected to emerge; nor is there any reason,
except such as the facts of natural history may impose,
why this process should be arrested at the boundaries
of the species recognized in our present classifications.
Possibly, if the slow increments of complexity in the
organs of sentient beings on the globe were all mapped
out before us, the whole teeming multitudes now peopling
the land, the waters, and the air, might be seen radiating
from a common centre in lines of various divergency, and,
however remote their existing relations, might group themselves as one family. The speculative critic must here
grant without stint all that the scheme of development
can ask; and he must leave it to the naturalist and physiologist to break up the picture into sections, if they must.
But then, Wthy must he grant it? Because here, having
crossed the margin of animal life, we have, in its germ of
feeling and idea, not merely a persistent, but a self-promoting force, able to turn to account whatever is below
it; the mental power, even in its rudiments, dominating
the vital, and constraining it to weave a finer organism;
9*
201 
202 THE PLACE OF I MIND IN NATURE
and, for that end, to amend its application of the chemical
forces, and make them better economize their command
of mechanical force. Observe, however, that, if here we
meet with a truly fruitful agency, capable of accomplishing
difficult feats of new combination and delicate equilibrium,
we meet with it here first; and the moment we fall back
from the line of sentient life, and quit the scene of this
eager, aggressive, and competing power, we part company
with all principle of progress; and consequently lose the
tendency to that increasing complexity of structure and
subtlety of combination which distinguish the organic
from the inorganic compounds. Below the level of life,
there is no room for the operation of "natural selection."
Its place is there occupied by another principle, for which
no such wonders of constructive adaptation can be claimed;
-I mean, the dynamic rule of Action on the line of least
resistance,- a rule, the working of which is quite in the
opposite direction. For evidently it goes against the
establishment of unstable conditions of equilibrium, and
must therefore be the enemy rather than the patron of
the complex ingredients, the precarious tissues, and the
multiplied relations, of sentient bodies; and on its own
theatre must prevent the permanent formation of any but
the simpler unions among  the material elements.  Accordingly, all the great enduring masses that form and
fill the architecture of inorganic nature, - its limestone
and clay, its oxides and salts, its water and air, -are
compounds, or a mixture, of few and direct constituents.
And the moment that life retreats and surrenders the
organism it has built and held, the same antagonist principle enters on possession, and sets to work to destroy the
intricate structure of "proximate principles" with their 
AND INTUITION IN MAN.
"compound radicals."   With  life and mind therefore
there begins, whether by modified affinities or by removal
of waste, a tension against these lower powers, carrying
the being up to a greater or less height upon the wing;
but with life it ends, leaving him then to the perpetual
gravitation that completes  the loftiest flight upon the
ground. Within the limits of her Physics and Chemistry
alone, Nature discloses no principle of progression, but
only provisions for periodicity; and out of this realm,
without fuirther resources, she could never rise.
The downward tendency which sets in with any relaxa tion of the differentiating forces of life is evinced, not only
in the extreme case of dissolution in death, but in the
well-known relapse of organs which have been artificially
developed into exceptional perfection back into their earlier
state, when relieved of the strain and left to themselves.
Under the tension of a directing mental interest, whether
supplied by the animal's own instincts or by the controlling care of man, the organism yields itself to be moulded
into more special and highly finished forms; and a series
of ascending variations withdraws the nature firom its original or first-known type. But wherever we can lift the
tension off, the too skilful balance proves unstable, and the
law of reversion reinstates the simpler conditions. Only
on the higher levels of life do we find a self-working principle of progression: and, till we reach them, development
wants its dynamics; and, though there may be evolution,
it cannot be self-evolution.
These considerations appear to me to break the back of
this formidable argument in the middle; and to show the
impossibility of dispensing with the presence of Mind in
any scene of ascending being, where the little is becoming
203 
204   THE PLACE OF MIND IN NATURE
great, and the dead alive, and the shapeless beautiful, and
the sentient moral, and the moral spiritual. Is it not in
truth a strange choice, to set up " Evolution," of all things,
as the negation of Putrpose pre-disposing what is to come?
For what does the word mean, and whence is it borrowed?
It means, to unfold firom within; and it is taken firom the
history of the seed or embryo of living natures. And
what is the seed but a casket of pre-arranged futurities,
with its whole contents prospective, settled to be what
they are by reference to ends still in the distance. If a
grain of wheat be folded in a mummy-cloth and put into a
catacomb, its germ for growing and its albumen for feeding sleep side by side, and never find each other out. But
no sooner does it drop, thousands of years after, on the
warm and moistened field, than their mutual play begins,
and the plumule rises and lives upon its store till it is able
to win its own maintenance fi'om the ground. Not only
are its two parts therefore relative to each other, but both
are relative to conditions lying in another department of
the world, - the clouds, the atmosphere, the soil; in the
absence of which they remain barren and functionless'and this, from a Cause that has no sense of relation! The
human ear, moulded in the silent matrix of nature, is
formed with a nerve susceptible to one influence alone,
and that an absent one, the undulations of a medium into
which it is not yet born; and, in anticipation of the whole
musical scale with all its harmonies, furnishes itself with
a microscopic grand-piano of three thousand stretched
strings, each ready to respond to a different and definite
number of aerial vibrations - and this, from a Cause that
never meant to bring together the inner organ and the
outer medium, now hidden from each other! The eye, 
AND ILNTUITION ILVN MAN.
shaped in the dark, selects an exclusive sensibility to
movements propagated from distant skies; and so weaves
its tissues, and disposes its contents, and hangs its curtains, and adjusts its range of motion, as to meet every
exigency of refraction and dispersion of the untried light,
and be ready to paint in its interior the whole perspective
of the undreamed world without:-and this, fiom  a
Cause incapable of having  an end in view!   Surely,
nothing can be evolved that is not first involved; and if
there be any thing which not only carries a definite future
in it, but has the whole rationale of its present constitution grounded in that future, it is the embryo, whence, by
a strange humor, this denial of final causes has chosen to
borrow its name. Not more certainly is the statue that
has yet to be, already potentially contained in the preconception and sketches of the artist, than the stately tree
of the next century in the beech-mast that drops upon the
ground; or the whole class of Birds, if you give them a
common descent, in the eggs to which you choose to go
back as first; or the entire system of nature in any germinal cell or other prolific minimum whence you suppose its
organism to have been brought out. Evolution and Prospection are inseparable conceptions. Go back as you will,
and try to propel the movement from behind instead of
drawing it from before, development in a definite direction towards the realization of a dominant scheme of
ascending relations is the sway of an overruling end. To
take away the ideal basis of nature, yet construe it by the
analogy of organic growth, will be for ever felt as a contradiction.  It is to put out the eyes of the Past, in order
to show us with what secure precision, amid distracting
paths, and over chasms bridged by a hair, it selects its
way into the Future.
205 
206   THE PLACE OF MIND IN NATURE, ETC.
If the Divine Idea will not retire at the bidding of our
speculative science, but retains its place, it is natural to
ask, what is its relation to the series of so-called Forces in
the world?. But the question is too large and deep to be
answered here. Let it suffice to say, that there need not
be any overruling of these forces by the will of God, so
that the supernatural should disturb the natural; or any
supplementing of them, so that He should fill up their
deficiencies. Rather is His Thought related to them as,
in Man, the mental force is related to all below it; turning them all to account for ideal ends, and sustaining the
higher equilibrium which else would lapse into lower
forms. More truly, yet equivalently, might we say, these
supposed forces, which are only our intellectual interpretation of classes of perceived phenonema, are but varieties
of His Will, the rules and methods of His determinate
and legislated agency, in which, to keep faith with the
universe of beings, He abnegates all change; but beyond
which, in His transcendent relations with dependent and
responsible minds, He has left a glorious margin for the
free spiritual life, open to the sacredness of Personal
Communion, and the hope of growing similitude. 
THE RELATIONS
OF
AND THEOLOGY.
By ANDREW P. PEABODY.
ETHICS  
THE RELATIONS
OF
AND THEOLOGY.
Y  subject is the mutual relations of Ethics and
Theolog,y.
Ethics is the science of the Right; and we would first
inquire whether this science is a mere  department of
theology, or whether it has its own independent existence,
sphere, and office. Our opening question then is: What
is the ground of right?  Why are certain acts right, and
certain other acts wrong? Are these characteristics incidental, arbitrary, created by circumstances; variable with
time or place, or the intelligence of the agent; contingent
on legislation, human or Divine? Or are they intrinsic,
essential, independent of command, even of the Divine
command?
We can best answer this question by considering what
is implied in existence. Existence implies properties, and
properties are fitnesses. Every object, by virtue of its
existence, has its place, purpose, uses, relations. At every
moment, each specific object is either in or out of its place,
fuilfilling or not fulfilling its purpose, subservient to or
alienated from its uses, in accordance or out of harmony
with its relations, and therefore in a state of fitness or of
ETHICS 
TIlE RELA TIONS
unfitness as regards other objects. Every object is at every
moment  under the control of the intelligent will either
of the Supreme Being or of some finite being,, andl is by
that will maintained either in or out of its place, purpose,
uses, and relations, and thus in a state of fitness or unfit ness as regards other objects.  Every intelligent being, by
virtue of his existence, bears certain definite relations to
outward objects, his fellow-beings, and his Creatori. At
every moment each intelligent being is either faithful or
unfaithful to these relations, and thus in a state of fitness
or unfitness as regards outward objects and other beings.
Thus fitness or unfitness may be predicated at every
moment of every object in existence, of the volitions by
which each object is controlled, and of every intelligent
being with regard to his voluntary position in the universe.
Fitness and unfitness are the ultimate idleas that underlie
the terms riglit and woroneg. These last are metaphorical
terms: right, rectzus, straight, upright, according to rule,
and therefore fit; wrong, wrztg, distorted, twisted out of
place, abnormal, and therefore uwzfit.  We  are so constituted that we cannot help regarding fitness with esteem
and complacency; unfitness, with disesteem and disapproval, even though we ourselves create it or impersonate it.
Fitness is the law by which alone we have the knowledge
of sin, by which alone we justify or condemn ourselves.
Duty has fitness for its only aim and end. To whatever
object comes under our control its fit place or use is due;
and our perception of that (&re constitutes our duty, and
awakens in us a sense of obligation.  To ourselves and to
other beings and objects, our fidelity to our relations has
in it an intrinsic fitness; that fitness is their and our due;
210 
OF ETHICS AND THEOLOGY.
and the perception of that clue constitutes our duty, and
awakens in us a sense of obligation.
Conscience is the faculty by which we perceive fitness
or unfitness. Its fulnctions are not cognitive, but judicial.
Its decisions are based upon our knowledge, real or imagined, from whatever source derived.  It judges according to such law and evidence as it has; and its verdict
is always, relatively, a genuine verdict (verum dictum),
though potentially false and wrong by defect of our
knowledge,- even as in a court of law an infallibly
wise and incorruptibly just judge may pronounce an
utterly erroneous and unjust decision, if he have before
him a false statement of facts, or if the law which he is
compelled to administer be unrighteous. What we call
the education of conscience is merely the accumulation
and verification of the materials on which conscience is to
act; in fine, the discovery of fitnesses.
Permit me to illustrate the function of conscience by
reference to a question now mooted in our community, -
the question as to the moral fitness of the temperate use
of fermented liquors. Among the aborigines of Congo
and Dahomey, there being no settled industry, no mental
activity, and no hygienic knowledge as to either body or
mind, it seems fitting, and therefore right, to swallow all
the strong drink that they can lay their hands upon; for
it is fitted to produce immediate animal enjoyment, - the
only good of which they have cognizance. Among civilized men, on the contrary, intoxication is universally
known to be opposed to the fitnesses of body and mind, an
abuse of alcoholic liquors, and an abuse of the drinker's
own personality; and it is therefore condemned by all consciences, by none more heartily than by those of its vic
211 
THE RELATIONS
tims. But there still remains open the question as to the
moderate use of fermented liquors; and this is not, as it
is commonly called, a question of conscience, but a mere
question of fact,- of fitness or unfitness. Says one party,
"Alcohol, in every form, and in the least quantity, is a
virulent poison, and therefore unfit for body and mind."
Says the other party, "Wine, moderately used, is healthful, salutary, restorative, and therefore fitted to body and
mind." Change the opinion of the latter party, their consciences would at once take the other side; and, if they
retained in precept and practice their present position,
they would retain it self-condemned. Change the opinion
of the former party, their consciences would assume the
ground which they now assail. Demonstrate to the whole
community- which physiology may one day do - the
precise truth in this matter, there would remain no differences of conscientious judgment, whatever difference of
practice might still continue.
From what has been said, it is necessarily inferred that
right and wrong are not contingent on the knowledge of
the moral agent. Unfitness, misuse, abuse, is none the
less wrong because the result of ignorance. If the result
of inevitable ignorance, it does not indeed imply an unfitness or derangement of the agent's own moral powers.
Yet it is none the less out of harmony with the fitness of
things.  It deprives an object of its due use.  It perverts
to pernicious results what is salutary in its purpose. It
lessens for the agent his aggregate of good and of happiness, and increases for him his aggregate of evil and
of misery. In this sense- far more significant than that
of arbitrary infliction- the maxim of jurisprudence, Ignorantia legis neminem excusat ("Ignorance of the law
212 
OF ETHICS AND THEOLOGY.
excuses no one"), is a fulndamental principle of human
nature.
We are now prepared to consider the relation of moral
distinctions to theology. In the first place, if the ground
which I have maintained be tenable, ethical science rests
on a basis of its own, wholly independent of theology.
Right and wrong, as moral distinctions, in no wise depend
on the Divine will and law; nay, not even on the Divine
existence.  The atheist cannot escape or disown them.
They are inseparable fiom existence. For whatever exists,
no matter how it came into being, must needs have its
due place, affinities, adaptations, uses; and an intelligent
dweller among the things that are cannot but know something of their fitnesses and harmonies, and, so far as he acts
upon them, cannot but feel the obligation to recognize
their fitnesses, and thus to create or restore their harmonies.
Even to the atheist, vice is a violation of fitnesses which he
knows or may know.  It is opposed to his conscientious
judgment.  He has with regard to it an inevitable sense
of wrong.  I can therefore conceive of an atheist's beingthough I should have little hope that he would be -a
rigidly virtuous man, and that on principle.
But while atheism does not obliterate moral distinctions,
or cancel moral obligation, these distinctions are a refutation of atheism; and firom the very fitness of things, which
we have seen to be the ground of right, we draw demonstrative evidence of the being, unity, and moral perfectness
of the Creator: so that the fundamental truths of theology rest on the same basis with the fiundam(,ntal principles
of ethics. Let me ask you to pursue this argument
with me.
213
-I
I "I:. - 1.:,.
I 
THE RELATIONS
Every object, as I have said, must, by virtue of its
existence, have its fit place and use; but, in a world that
was the dice-work of chance, there would be myriads of
probabilities to one against any specific object's attaining
to its fit place and use. This must be the work of will
alone. If chance can create, it cannot combine, co-ordinate, organize. If it can throw letters on the ground by
the handful, it cannot arrange them into the Iliad or the
Paradise Lost. If it can stain the sky or the earth with
gorgeous tints, it cannot group them into a Madonna or
a landscape. Its universe would be peopled by straylings,
full of disjointed halves of pairs, - of objects thrown together in such chaotic heaps that seldom could any one
object find its counterpart or subserve its end.
The opposite is the case in the actual world. The first
discoveries which the first human being made were of the
fitnesses of the objects around him to himself and to one
another. With every added year his microcosm enlarged,
so that, before he left the world, he had within his cognizance a range of fitnesses and uses sufficient to guide his
own activity, and to enable him to predict its results,
together with numerous other results not contingent on
his own agency. Beyond this microcosm, indeed, lay a
vast universe impenetrable to his search, in which hie
could trace no relations, no filaments of order; in which
all seemed to him a medley of chaotic confusion, mutually intruding systems, clashing and.jarringi forces.  On
this realm of the unknown man has ever since been
making perpetual aggressions; and every step of his progress has been the discovery of fitnesses, relations, reciprocal
uses, among the most remote, diverse, fnd at first sight
mutually hostile objects, classes, and systems.  Natural
214 
OF ETHICS AND TIlEOLOGY.
history, physics, and chemistry, are the science of mutual
fitnesses and uses among terrestrial objects.  Astronomy is
the science of harmonies among all the worlds,- of fitnesses in their relations and courses to the condition of
things in our own planet, approximnately to other bodies
in the solar system, and, by ascertained analogies, to those
distant orbs of which we know only that they stand and
]ove ever in their order. Geology is the science of
mutual fitnesses in forimer e(pochs and conditions of our
own planet, and of prospective fitnesses in them  to the
needs and uses of the present epoch; so that by harmonies
which run through unnumbered aeons we are the heirs,
and sustain our industries by the usufruct, of the ages,
the great moments of whose history we are just beginning
to read.  BIathematical science reveals geometrical and
numerical fitnesses, proportions, and harmonies, which are
traced alike in the courses of the stars and in the collocation of the foliage on the tree, and which promise one day
to give us the equation of the curve of the sea-shell, of the
contour of the geranium-leaf, of the crest of the wave.
There is still around us the realm of the unknown; yet
not only are daily aggrcessions made upon it, but science
has advanced so far as to render it certain that there is no
department or object in the universe, which is not compreliended in this system of mutual fitnesses, harmonies,
and uses.
Now consider the relation of organized being to this
system.  What is an organ?  It is the capacity of perceivingi, choosing, and( utilizing a fitness.  The rootlets of
the tree by the river-sid(le perceive the adjacent water,
elongate themselves toward it, in a drou,'ht make  convulsive and successful efforts to reach it; while the corolla
215 
THE RELATIONS
of the heliotrope perceives the calorific rays, and turns
toward their source in the heavens.  The oigans of 4.he
plant select fiom the elements around it such  substan,es
as are fitted to feed its growth, andcl aIpprol)riate themI to
its use, even though they be found in ilnfinitesimial proportions, in masses of alien substance.  In all this there is
a semi-self-consciousness, corresponding,  not  indeed to
the action of mind, but to that of the sI)ontaneous li'
processes ill iatelligcnt beiugs.
The animal carries us a step higher.  His instincets are
an unerringo knowledge  of fitnesscs and uses within his
sphere.  He seeks what is fitted, slhuns what is unfitted to
his sustenance and growth, is never deceived when left to
his own sagacity, and fails only when bro,ught into anomalous relations with the superior knowNledge of man.  He
lives, merely because hlie is conscious of the fitnesses of
nature, and yields up his life to a stronger beast, in accordance with those same fitnesses   beneficent stillby which all realhs of nature are kep)t fully stocked, yet
never overstocked, with healthy and rejoicing, life.
. The fitness which thus pervades and unifies the entire
creation, man as an animal perceives, as a living soul
recognizes andcl comprehends; and to his consciousness it
is an imlperative law, obeyed always with self-aplproval,
disobeyed only with self-condclemnation.  Of disobedience
he alone is capable, yet he but partially.  In order to
live, he must obey in the vast majority of instances; still
more must he obey, if he would have society, physical
comfort, transient enjoyment of hovwever low a ty-)e; and
the most depraved wretch that wvalks the earth purchases
his continued being by a thousand acts of uninitended
yet inevitable obedience to one of voluntary guilt. Man's
216 
OF ET-HICS AND THEOLOGY.
law -the law which, in violating or scorning it, he cannot ignore or evade -is the very same fitness which runs
through all inorganic nature, and which the semi-conscious
tree, shrub, or flower, the imperfectly self-conscious bird,
fish, or beast uniformly obeys.
Now can chance have evolved this universal fitness. and
the sou's that own their allegiance to it?  Is it no4 the
clear self-revelation of a God, one, all-wise, omnipot(,:t?
Has it any other possible solution?  Bears it not, in inscriptions that girdle the universe in letters of light, the
declarations of the Hebrew seer, "In the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth," and "The Lord our
God is one Lord"? I am not disposed to cavil at the
argument from design in the structure and adaptations of
any one organized being; but immeasurably more cogent
'is this argument from a consenting universe, in which
filaments of fitness, relation, and use cross and recross one
another from bound to bound, firom sun to star, from s
to earth, from the greatest to the least, from the order of
the heavens to the zoophyte and the microscopic animalcule. In the human conscience I recognize at once the
revelation and the perpetual witness of this all-pervading
adaptation, this universal harmony. Conscience is the
God within, not'n figure, but in fact.  It is the mode in
which He who is enshrined in all being, who lives in all
life, takes up his abode, holds his perpetual court, erects
his eternal judgment-seat, within the human soul.
We pass to the consideration of the moral attributes of
the Creator. I have spoken of moral distinctions as logic:tlly separable firom and independent of the Divine nature.  From this position alone  can we  establish the
holiness, justice, and mercy of the Divine Being. In order
10
10
217 
THE RELATIONS
to show this, let me ask your attention to the distinction
between necessary and contingent truths; that is, between
truths which have an intrinsic validity, which always were
and cannot by any possibility be otherwise than true, and
truths which were made true, which began to be, and
the opposite of which might have been. Mathematical
truth is necessary and absolute truth, - not made truth
even by the ordinance of the Supreme Being, but truth
from the very nature of things, truth co-eternal with
God.  Omnipotence cannot make two and two five, or
render the sum of the angles of a triangle more or ]ess
than two right angles, or construct a square and a circle
of both equal perimeter and equal surface.  In our conception of mathematical truth we are conscious that it
must have been true before all worlds, and would be
equally true had no substance that could be measured or
calculated ever been created. Every mathematical proposition is an inherent property or condition of the infinite
space identical with the Divine omnipresence, or of the
infinite duration identical with the Divine eternity.
Moral truth is of the same order, not contingent, but
necessary, absolute. This is distinctly declared in one of
the most sublime bursts of inspiration in the Hebrew
Scriptures. If you will trace in the book of Proverbs
the traits of Wisdom as personified throughout the first
nine chapters, you will find that it is no other than a
name for the inherent, immutable, eternal distinction between right and wrong. It is this Wisdom, who, so far
from confessing herself as created, ordained, or subject,
proclaims, "Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his
way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was....
218 
OF ETHICS AND TIHEOLOGY.
When he prepared the heavens, I was there.... When
he appointed the foundations of the earth, then I was by
him, AS ONE BROUGHT UP WITH HII; and I was daily
his delight, rejoicing always before him."
It is only on the principle thus vividly set forth that
we can affirm moral attributes of the Supreme Being.
When we say that He is perfectly just, pure, holy, beneficent, we recognize a standard of judgment logically independent of his nature.  We mean that the law of fitness,
which He promulgates in the human conscience, and
which is our only standard of right, is the self-elected law
of his own being.  Could we conceive of omnipotence and
omniscience devoid of moral attributes, the decrees and acts
of such a being would not be necessarily right. Omnipotence cannot make the wrong right, or the right wrong;
nor can it indue either with the tendencies of the other,
so that the wrong, that is, the unfitting, should produce
ultimate good, or the right, that is, the fitting, should produce ultimate evil.  God's decrees and acts are not right
because they are his; but they are his because they are
right.  On no other ground, as I have said, can we affirm
moral attributes of him. If his arbitrary sovereignty can
indue with the characteristics of right that which has no
intrinsic fitness, beauty, or utility, then the affirmation that
He is holy, or just, or good, is simply equivalent to the
absurd maxim of human despotism, "The  king can do
no wrong."  It is only when we conceive of the abstract
right as existing of necessity from a past eternity, and as
a category of the Divine firee-will and perfect prescience,
ill which the creation had its birth and its archetypes,
that holiness, justice, and goodness, as applied to the
Divine character, have any meaning.
219 
THE RELATIONS
We thus see that our ethical conceptions underlie
our theology, an(l that, however explicit the words of
revelation may be as to the Divine nature, he alone can
understand them, who recognizes in his own heart the
absoluteness and immutableness of moral distinctions.
How many Christians have there been in every age since
the primitive, who, in using the terms just and holy witk
reference to the Almighty, have employed them in an
entirely different sense from that in which they are applied
to human conduct, and with regard to supposed dispositions and acts, which in man they would call unjust and
cruel! And this simply because they have attached no
determinate meaning, but only a conventional and variable sense to ethical terms, and have imagined that arbitrary power could reverse moral distinctions, or that God
could impose on man one law of right, and himself
recognize another.
We have thus seen that theology is indebted to the
fundamental principles of ethics for the most luculent
demonstration of the being, omnipotence, and omniscience of God, and for the clear conception of his moral
attributes.
We will now consider the reciprocal obligations of
ethics to theology; and, in the first place, to Natural Religion.  Pure theism attaches the Divine sanction to the
verdicts of conscience, makes them the will, the voice of
God, enforces them by his authority, and elevates the conception of virtue by establishing a close kindred between
the virtuous man and tlihe Rutler of the universe. And
this is much, but not for many. It has raised some
elect spirits to a degree of excellence which mig,ht put
220
0 
OF ETHICS AND THEOLOGY.
Christians to shame. It has conjoined virtue with lofty
devotion and earnest piety in a Socrates and a Marcus
Antoninus, and refined it into a rare purity, chasteness,
and tenderness of spirit in a Plutarch and an Epictetus.
But on the masses of mankind, on the worldly and carecumiberedl, on the unphilosophic and illiterate, it has
exerted little or no influence. MIoreover, while among
the virtuous men of pre-Christian times and beyond the
light of the Jewish revelation, we recognize some few of
surpassing excellence, we find not a single ethical system,
or body of moral precepts, which does not contain limitations, deficiencies, or enormities utterly revolting to the
moral sense of Christendom. Thus Plato had lofty conceptions of virtue, but there are directions in which his
precepts give free license to lust and cruelty; and even
Socrates sanctioned by his unrebuking intimacy and fondness the leaders and ornaments of the most dissolute
society in Athens.
The acme of extra-Christian piety, and consequently of
moral excellence, is presented in the writings and lives
of the later Stoics, whose incorruptible virtue affords the
only relief to our weariness and disgust, as we trace the
history of Rome through the profligacy of the declining
commonwealth and the depravity of the empire. We
find here the Simeons and Aninas of the Pagan world,
who, though with the fleshly arm they embraced not the
Son of God, needed but to see him to adore and love
him. Yet in nothing was Stoicism more faulty than in
its exalted sense of virtue. For it had no charity for sin,
no tolerance even for the inferior forms of goodness. It
was the ethics of the unfallen. It proffered no hope of
forgiveness; it let down no helping hand from the heav
221 
THE RELATIONS
ens; it uttered no voice firom the eternal silence; it
opened no Father's house and arms for the penitent. In
Moore's "Lalla Rookh" the Peri, promised forgiveness and
readmission to Paradise on condition of bringing to the
eternal gate the gift most dear to heaven, returns in vain
with the last drop of the patriot's blood. Again, when
she brings the expiring sigh of the most faithful human
love, the crystal bar moves not. Once more she seeks the
earth, and bears back the tear of penitence that has fallen
from a godless wretch melted into contrition by a child's
prayer; and for this alone the golden hinges turn. Stoicism could boast in rich profusion the patriot's blood, could
feed the torch of a love stronger than death; but it could
not start the penitential tear,- it failed of the one gift
of earth for which there is joy in heaven.
Let us rise, then, from the purest philosophy of the old
world to Christianity in its ethical relations and offices.
Christianity, as a revelation, covers the entire field of
human duty, and gives the knowledge of many fitnesses,
recognized when once made known, but undiscoverable
by man's unaided insight. The two truths which lie at
the foundation of Christian ethics are human brotherhood
and the immortality of the soul.
1. ffunman brotherhood. The visible differences of race,
color, culture, religion, customs, are in themselves dissociating influences. Universal charity is hardly possible
while these differences occupy the foreground. Slavery
was a natural and congenial institution under Pagan
auspices, and the idea of a missionary enterprise transcends the broadest philanthropy of heathenism. We
find indeed in the ancient moralists, especially in the
writings of Cicero and Seneca, many precepts of human
222 
OF ETHICS AND TIIEOLOGY.
ty toward slaves, but no clear recognition of the injustice
inseparable friom the state of slavery; nor have we in all
ancient literature, unless it be in Seneca (in whom such
sentiments might have had more or less directly a Chlristian origin), a single expression of a fellowship broad
enough to embrace all diversities of condition, much less
of race.' Even Socrates, while he expects himself to
enter at death into the society of good men, and says
that those who live philosophically will approach tho
nature of the gods, expresses the belief that worthy, industrious men who are not philosophers will, on dying,
migrate into the bodies of ants, bees, or other hard-working members of the lower orders of animals.
The fraternity of our entire race- even without involving the mooted question of a common human parentage
— is through Christianity established, not only by the
Divine fatherhood so constantly proclaimed and so luculently manifested by Jesus, but equally by the unifying
ministry of his death as a sacrifice for all, and by his parting commitment of" all the world" and "every creature"
to the propagandism of his disciples.  Though the spirit
of this revelation has not yet been embodied in any coinmmunity, it has inspired the life-work of many in every
age; it has moulded reform and guided progress in social
ethics thro,ughout Christendom; it has twice swept the
civilized world clean fiom domestic slavery; it has shaken
every throne, is condemning every form  of despotism,
1 The verse so often quoted from Terence, "HIomo sum; humani nihil
a me alienum puto," will probably occur to manv as inconsistent with my
statement.   The sentiment of this verse is, indeed, as it stands by itself,
truly (:hristian; but in the Comedy from which it is quoted, so far from having a philanthropic signlificance, it is merely a busy-body's  apology for
impertinen  interference with the concerns of his neighbor.
223 
THE RELATIOLVNS
monopoly, and exclusiveness, and gives clear presage of
a condition in which the old pre-Christian division of
society into the preying and the preyedcl-upon will be
totally obliterated.
2. The immortality of the soul, also, casts a light, at
once broad and penetrating, upon and into every department of duty; for it is obvious, without detailed statement, that the fitnesses, needs, and  obligations of a
terrestrial being of brief duration, and those of a being in
the nursery and initial stage of an endless existence, are
very wide apart, -that the latter may fnd it fitting to
do, seek, shun, omit, endure, resign, many thlings which
to the former are very properly matters of indifference.
Immortality was, indeed, in a certain sense believed before
Christ, but with feeble assurance, and with the utmost
vagueness of conception; so that this belief can hardly be
said to have existed either as a criterion of duty or as a
motive power.  How small a part it bore in the ethics of
the Stoic school may be seen, when we remember that
Epictetus, than whom there was no better man, denied
the -life beyond death; and in Miarcus Antoninus imnmortality was rather  a devout aspiration than a fixed
belief. In the Christian revelation, on the other hand,
the eternal life is so placed in the most intimate connection with the life and character in this world as to
cast its reflex lights and shadows on all earthly scenes
and experiences.
Christianity, in the next place, makes to us an ethical
revelation in the person and character of its Foundelr,
exhllil)itilng in him the very fitnesscs which it prescribes,
showing us, as it could not by mere precepts, the proportions and harmonies of the virtues, and manifesting
224 
OF ETHICS AND THEOLOGY.
the unapproached beauty, nay, majesty, of the gentler
virtues,- virtutes lenziores, as Cicero calls them,- which
in pre-Christian ages were sometimes made secondary
sometimes repudiated with contempt and derision.
It is, I know, among the commonplaces of the rationalism and secularism of our time, that the moral precepts
of the Gospel were not original, but had all been anticipated by Greek or Eastern sages. This is not literally
and wholly true; for in some of the most striking of the
alleged instances there is precisely the same difference
between the heathen and the Christian precept that there
is between the Old Testament and the New. The former
says, "Thou shalt not;" the latter, "Thou shalt." The
former forbids; the latter commands. The former prescribes abstinence from overt evil; the latter has for its
sum of duty, "Be thou perfect, as thy Father in heaven is
perfect." But the statement which I have quoted has
more of truth in it than has been usually conceded by
zealous champions of the Christian faith; and I would
gladly admit its full and entire truth, could I see sufficient evidence of it. The unqualified admission does not
in the least detract fiom the pre-eminent worth of Him
who alone has been the Living Law. So far is this anticipation of his precepts by wise and good men before him
from casting doubts on the divinity of his mission upon
earth, that it only confirms his claims upon our confidence.
For the great laws of morality are, as we have seen, as
old as the throne of God; and strange indeed were it,
had there been no intimation of them till the era of their
perfect embodiment and full promulgation. The Divine
Spirit, breathing always and everywhere, could not have
remained, without witness of right, duty, and obligation
10*
225 
THE RELATIONS
in the outward universe and in the human conscience.
So, struggling through the mists of weltering chaos, were
many errant light-beams; yet none the less glorious and
benignant was the sun, when in the clear firmament he
first shone, all-illumining, and all-guiding.
But in practical ethics a revelation of duty is but a
small part of man's need. According to a Chinese legend,
the founders of the three principal religious sects in the
Celestial Empire, lamenting in the spirit-land the imperfect success which had attended the promulgation of
their doctrines, agreed to return to the earth, and see if
they could not find some right-minded person by whose
agency they might convert mankind to the integrity and
purity which they had taught. They came in their
wanderings to an old man, sitting by a fountain as its
guardian. He recalled to them the high moral tone of
their several systems, and reproached them for the unworthy lives of their adherents.   They agreed that he
was the very apostle they sought. But when they made
the proposal to him, he replied, "It is the upper part of
me only that is flesh and blood: the lower part is stone.
I can talk about virtue, but cannot follow its teachings."
The sages saw in this man, half of stone, the type of their
race, and returned in despair to the spirit-land.
There is profound truth in this legend. It indicates at
once the mental receptivity and the moral inability of
man, as to mere precepts of virtue. It is not enough that
we know the right. We know much better than we do.
The words which Ovid puts into the mouth of Medea,
Video reeliora, probogue, deteriora sequor  (" I see and
approve  the  better, I pursue  the worse"), are the
formula of universal experience. We, most of all, need
226 
OF ETHICS AND THEOLOGY.
enabling power. This we have through Christianity
alone.  We  have it: 1. In the Divine f,ther]lood, as exhibited in those genial, winning traits, in which Jesus
verifies his saying, "He that hath seen me hath seen the
Father," - a fatherhood to feel which is to render glad
and loving obedience to the Father's will and word; 2. In
the adaptation of the love, sacrifice, and death of Christ
to awaken the whole power of loving in the heart, and
thus by the most cogent of motives to urge man to live
no longer for himself, but for him who died for him; 3. In
the assurance of forgiveness for past wrongs and omissions,
without which there could be little courage for future
well-doing; 4. In the promise and realization of Divine
aid in every right purpose and worthy endeavor; 5. In
institutions and observances designed and adapted to
perpetuate the memory of the salient facts, and to renew
at frequent intervals the recognition of the essential
truths, which give to our religion its name, character, and
efficacy.
Thus, while right and obligation exist independently of
revelation, and even of natural religion, Christianity alone
enables us to discern the right in its entireness and its
due proportions; and it alone supplies the strength which
we need, to make and keep us true to our obligations,
under the stress of appetite and passion, cupidity and
selfishness, human fear and favor.
Morality and religion, potentially separable, are yet inseparable in the will of God, under the culture of Christ.
It used to be common to place the legal and the evangelical element in mutual antagonism. Nothing can be
more profane or absurd than this. That which is not
227 
228 THE RELATION.S OF ETHICS AND THEOLOGY.
legal is evangelical only in name  and pretence.  That
which is not evangtelical is lcgil to no 1)upl)ose.  The
religiouts belief or teaching, which lays not supr)lreme stress
on the whole moral law, is an OUtl'tre on the Gospel and
the Saviour.  The morality, which  rests  oil any  other
foundation than Jesus Christ and his religion, is built on
the sand, the prey of the first onrush or inrush of wind
or wave. "What therefore God hath joined together, let
not man put asunder." 
CHRISTIANITY:
WI/AT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS.
BY G. VANCE SMITH.  
CHRISTIANITY:
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS.
I. 
N looking back upon the past history of Christianity,
it is easy'to trace the existence of two very different
ideas of the nature of that religion. Their influence is
discernible in what may be termed its incipient form, in
perhaps the earliest period to which we can ascend, while
it has been especially felt during the last three hundred
years, as also it materially affects the position and relations of churches and sects at the present moment. From
obvious characteristics of each, these ideas may be respectively designated as the ritualistic, or sacerdotal, and the
dogmatic, or doctrinal. It is scarcely necessary to add,
that the two have been  constantly intermingled  and
blended together, acting and reacting upon each other,
and either supporting or else thwarting each other with
singular pertinacity. Neither of them is found, in any
instance of importance, existing wholly apart from the
other, so as to be the sole animating principle of a great
religious organization.  The nature of the ease renders
this impossible. Ritualistic observances cannot be rationally followed without dogmatic beliefs. The former are
the natural exponents of the latter, which indeed they are 
CHRISTIANI TY:
supposed to represent and to symbolize. Nor can doctrinal creeds, again, wholly dispense with outward rites
and forms. Even the most spiritual religion requires
some outward medium of expression, if it is to influence
strongly either communities or individuals.   It must,
therefore, tacitly or avowedly adopt something of the
dogmatic, if not of the ritualistic, idea, although this
may not be put into express words, much less formed
into a definite creed or test of orthodoxy.
A common factor of the greatest importance enters
into the two conceptions of Christianity just referred to,
though not perhaps in equal measure. I allude to the
moral element, which may also be denoted as the sense
of duty, -duty towards God and towards man.  It may,
indeed, be said to be a distinguishing glory of Christianity,
that it can hardly exist at all, under whatever outward
form, without being more or less strongly pervaded by
the moral spirit of which the ministry of Christ affords
so rich and varied an expression. It is true, however, that
the ritualistic idea has constantly a tendency to degenerate into a mere care for church observances, devoid of
any high tone of uprightness and purity in the practical
concerns of ordinary life.  It is a common thing, in that
great religious communion of Western and Southern
Europe which is so strongly animated by this idea, to see
people in the churches ceremoniously kneeling in the act
of prayer, while all the time they are busy, with eager
eyes, to follow every movement in the crowd around
them. In certain countries, many of the ritualistically
devout, it is well known, have no scruple in practising
the grossest impositions upon strangers; a statement
which is especially true of those lands that in modern
232 
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS.  233
times have been governed and demoralized beyond othiers
by the influence of the priestly class, with their religion
of material externalities. A Greek or an Italian brigand,
it is said, will rob Iand murder his captive with a peaceful
conscience, provided only that he duly confesses to the
priest, and obtains his absolution.  This last is a gross
and, happily, a rare case.  But, equally with the more
innocent acts, it illustrates the natural tendencies of ritualistic Christianity among various classes of persons. In
ordinary civilized society, such tendencies are kept powerfully in check by other influences. Hence it is not to be
denied that, throughout the Christian world, devotional
feeling and the sense of duty are usually deep and active
in their influence, and that the practical teachings of
Christ, directly or indirectly, exercise a potent control,
whatever may be the ritualistic or the dogmatic idea with
which they are associated.
The ritualistic conception now spoken of offers us a
Christianity which secures "salvation," by the intervention of a priest, -a man who, though, to all outward
appearance, but a human being among human beings, yet
alleges, and finds people to believe, that he can exercise
supernatural functions, and has the power of opening or
closing the gates of heaven to his fellow-men. It is needless to say how large a portion of Christendom is still
under the influence of this kind of superstition, or how
pertinaciously the same unspiritual form of religion is, at
this moment, struggling to establish itself, even in the
n-dst of the most enlightened modern nations.
Nor is it necessary here to argue, with any detail,
against the notion of its being either inculcated upon us
within the pages of the New Testament, or enforced by 
CHRISTIANITY:
any legitimate authority whatever. Probably no one
who cares to hear or to read these words would seriously
maintain that the Gospel of Christ consists, in any essential
way, in submission to a priesthood, fallible or infallible, in
the observance of rites and ceremonies or times and seasons,
or in a particular mode or form of church government,
whatever doctrines these may be supposed to embody or
to symbolize.  Such things have, indeed, variously pre
vailed among the Christian communities firom the beginning.  Generation after generation has seen priests, and
Popes, and patriarchs, and presbyters, without number.
These personages have decked themselves out in sacred
garments, assumed ecclesiastical dignities and powers, and
sought, many of them, to heighten the charm and the
efficacy of their worship by the aid of altars and sacrifices,
so called, of prostrations, incense, lamps and candles, and
many other such outward accessories.   But are such
things to be reckoned among the essentials of Christian
faith or Christian righteousness? Does the presence or
the blessing of the Spirit of God, to the humble, penitent,
waiting soul of man, depend upon any thing which one
calling himself a priest can do or say for us? Will any
one, whose opinion is worth listening to, say that it does?
The teaching of Christ and his Apostles is, in truth,
remarkably devoid of every idea of this kind. So much
is this the case, that it may well be matter of astonishment to find men who profess to follow and to speak for
them holding that in such matters there can be only ore
just and adequate Christian course, -that, namely, which
commends itself to t]eir judgment! It is evident, on the
contrary,- too evident to be in need of serious argument,
-that the very diversities of opinion and practice which
284 
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS.  235
prevail in the world - as expressed by such names as
Catholic and Protestant, Greek Church and Latin Church,
Church of England and Church of Scotland, Episcopalian,
Presbyterian, Congregational- prove conclusively that
nothing imperative has been transmitted to us. The
great Christian brotherhood, in its various sections and
diverse  conditions, has manifestly been left, in these
things, to its own sense of what it is good and right to
follow. Thus, too, if we will not close our eyes to the
plainest lessons of His Providence, the Almighty Father
gives us to understand that He only asks from us the
service of heart and life that is "in spirit and in truth;"
and, consequently, that we may each give utterance to
our thoughts of praise and thanksgiving, to penitence for
sin, to our prayer for the divine help and blessing, in
whatever form of words, through whatever personal
agency, and with whatever accompaniment of outward
rite and ceremony we may ourselves deem it most becoming to employ.
The second, or dogmatic, conception of the Gospel has
been less generally prevalent than that of which I have
been speaking. Yet, ever since the days of Luther, not
to recall the older times of Nicene or Athanasian controversy, it has been possessed of great influence in some of
the most important Christian nations. Protestant Christianity is predominantly dogmatic.  Under various forms
of expression, it makes the Gospel to consist in a very
definite system of doctrines to be believed; or, if not
actually to consist in this, at least to include it, as its most
prominent and indispensable element. We are informed,
accordingly, that a man is not a Christian, cannot be a
Christian, and perhaps it will be added, cannot be "saved," 
CHRISTIANITY:
unless he receives certain long established doctrines, or
reputed doctrines, of Christian faith.
What these are, it is not necessary here minutely to
inquire. It is well, however, to note with care that there
would be considerable differences of opinion in regard to
them, among those who would yet be agreed as to the
necessity of holding, firmly to the dogmatic idea referred
to. A Roman Catholic, of competent intelligence, would
not by any means agree with an ordinary member of the
Anglican church equally qualified. Both of these would
differ in essential points fiom a member of the Greek
church; and the three would be almnost equally at variance
with an average representative of Scotch Presbyterian
Calvinism, as also with one whose standard of orthodoxy
is contained in the Sermons, and the notes on the New
Testament, of the founder of Methodism. Nay, it is well
known, even within the limits of the same ecclesiastical
communion, differences so serious may be found as are
denoted, in common phrase, by the terms ritualistic and
evaingelical, and by other familiar words of kindred import.
Among the great Protestant sects the want of harmony
under notice is, doubtless, confined within comparatively
narrow limits. But there is diversity, not to say discord,
even here. No one will dispute the fact who has any
knowledge of the history of Protestant theology, or who
is even acquainted with certain discussions, a few years
ago, among well-known members of the English Episcopal
Church, or with others, of more recent date, among English Independents,- in both cases on so weighty a subject
as the nature of the Atonement.1 Moreover, in the same
1 Between Archbishop Thomson, in Aids to Faith, and some of the writers of Tracts for Priests and People; also between several eminent Independent Ministers, in the English Independent newspaper (August, 1871).
N
236 
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAI' IT IS.  237
quarters, varieties of opinion are notorious on such topics
as Baptismal regeneration, the authority of the Priesthood, the inspiration of Scripture, eternal punishment,all of them questions of the most vital importance, in one
or other of the popular schemes of the doctrine.
Now the indisputable fact referred to -the existence
of this most serious diversity and opposition of opinion
and statement -affords the strongest reason for consideing, it an error of the first magnitude to regard Christianity as essentially consisting in a definite system of
theological dogmas. For is it possible to believe that a
divine  revelation of doctrine, such as the Gospel has been
so commonly supposed to be, would have been left to be
a matter of doubt and debate to its recipients? Admitting, for a moment, the idea that the Almighty Providence
had dlesigncd to offer to men a scheme of Faith, the right
reception of which should, in some way, be necessary
for their "salvation," must we  not also hold that this
would have been clearly made known to them? so clearly,
plainly stated as to preclude the differences just alluded
to, as to what it is that has been revealed?  It is impossible, in short, on such an assumption, to conceive of Christianity, as having been left in so doubtful a position that
its disciples should have found occasion, from age to age,
in councils and assemblies andl conferences, in books and
in newspapers, to discuss and dispute among themselves,
often amidst anger and bitterness of spirit, upon the question of the nature or the number of its most essential
doctrines.  Of all possible suppositions, surely this is the
least admissible, the most extratvagantly inconsistent with
the nature of the case.
To this consideration must be added another, of even 
CHRISTIANITY:
greater weight. We gain our knowledge of Christianity,
and of the Author of Christianity, from the New Testament. And, in this collection of Gospels and Epistles, it
nowhere appears that it was the intention of Christ or of
the early disciples, to offer to the acceptance of the future
ages of the world a new and peculiar Creed, a Confession
of faith, a series of Articles of belief in facts or in dogmas,
such as the speculative theologian of ancient and of
modern times has usually delighted to deal with. This is
nowhere to be seen in the New Testament, although it
speedily made its appearance when the Gospel had passed
from the keeping of the primitive church into that of
Greek and Hellenistic converts.
The only thing that can be supposed to approach this
character, within the sacred books themselves, occurs in
such phrases as speak of faith in Jesus Christ, or also of
"believing" in the abstract, without any expressed object.
But in none of these instances can a dogmatic creed be
reasonably held to be the object implied or intended.
What is meant, is simply belief in Jesus as the Christ,' as
may be at once understood from the circumstances of the
case, and may easily be gathered from a comparison of
passages. In the early days of the Gospel, the great
question between the Christians and their opponents was
simply this, whether Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ or
not. One who admitted this, and received him in this
character, had faith in him, and might be an accepted
disciple. One who denied and rejected him, as the multi..
tudes did, was not, and could not be, so accepted. A man
could not, in a word, be a Christian disciple, without
recognizing and believing in the Founder of Christianity.
1 Comp. Matt. xvi. 14-16; Acts ix. 22, xvi. 31; Rom. iii. 22, viii. 6, 9.
238 
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS. 239
This explanation of the nature of the Faith of the Gospel will be found to apply throughout the New Testament
books. An illustration may be seen in one of the most
remarkable passages, the last twelve verses of St. Mark's
Gospel,- a passage, it should be noted, usually admitted
to be of later origin than the rest of the book. Here
(v. 16) we read, " IIe that believeth and is baptized shall
be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned"
(condemned). The meaning is explained by a reference
to the related passage, in chapter xxv. of the first Gospel. Here we learn that at the second Advent, shortly to
come to pass, those who, having received Jesus as Lord,
had approved themselves by their works obedient and
faithful disciples, would by him be recognized as his,
and admitted to share in the blessings of the promised
kingdom of heaven: those who had not done so should be
rejected and driven from his presence. It is clear that
there is, in such ideas, no sufficient ground for supposing
faiith or belief in a creed or a dogma to have been intended
by the writer of either Gospel.
Let me further illustrate my meaning by a brief reference to an ancient and, by many persons, still accepted
formula of orthodox doctrine. This professes to tell us
very precisely what is the true Christian faith. In plain
terms it says, Believe this, and this, and this: believe it
and keep it "whole and undefiled;" unless you do so,
"without doubt" you shall "perish everlastingly."
Now my proposition is, that this kind of statement, or
any thing like it, is not to be met with in the teaching of
Christ, or in any other part of the New Testament. Had
it been otherwise, - had he plainly said that the form of
doctrine now referred to, or any other, was so essential, 
CHRISTIANITY:
tlhere could havle been no room for hesitation amolng those
hllo acnliowledged him as'reaclier and Lord.  But he has
manlli'tstly not done this, or any thing like this.  I-Ience,
as before, we are not justified in thinkling that the religion
which takes its name from him, and professes to represent
his teaching, consists, in any essential degree, in the
acceptance, or the profession, of any such creed or system of doctrine, exactly defined in words, after the manner of the churches, - whether it may have come down
to us from the remotest times of ante-Nicene speculation,
or only from the days of Protestant dictators like Calvin
or Wesley; whether it may have been sanctioned by the
authority of an ecumnenical council, so called, or by that
of an imperial Parliament, or only by some little body of
nonconformist chapel-builders, who, by putting their creed
into a schedule at the foot of a trust-deed, show their distrust of the Spirit of Truth, and their readiness to bind
their own personal belief, if possible, upon their successors
and descendants of future generations.
We may then be very sure that, if the Christian Master
had intended to make the "salvation" of his followers
dependent upon the reception of dogmas, whether about
himself or about Him who is "to us invisible or dimly
seen" in His "lower works," he would not have left it to
be a question for debate, a fertile source of angry conten.
tion or of heartless persecutions, as it has often virtually
been, what the true creed, the distinctive element of his
religion, really is.  The very fact that this has been so
much  disputed, that such differences do now so largely
exist before our eyes, forms the strongest possible testimony to the non-dogmatic character of the primitive or
genuine Christianity. The same fact ought to rebuke and
0-40 
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS.  241
warn us against the narrow sectarian spirit in which existing divisions originate, and which is so manifestly out of
harmony with "the spirit of Christ."
II.
This absence from the Christian records of all e-xi'ess
instruction, on the subjects above noticed, clearly warrants us in turning away from any merely dogmatic or
ecclesiastical system, if it be urged upon us as constituting
the substance, or the distinctive element of Christianity.
We are thus of necessity led to look for this in something
else. But to what else shall we turn? In what shall we
find an answer to our inquiry, as to the true idea of the
Christian Gospel?
The reply to this question is not difficult. The true
idea of Christ's religion can only be found in the life and
words of the Master himself.  And these it may well be
believed, in their simple, rational, spiritual, practical form,
are destined to assume a commanding position among
Christian men which they have never yet held, and, in
short, to suppress and supersede the extravagancies alike
of ritualism and its related dogmatism, whatever the form
in which these may now prevail among the churches and
sects of Christendom.
This conclusion is readily suggested, or it is imperatively dictated, by various expressions in the New Testament itself. "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast
the words of eternal life: "- such is the sentiment attributed to the Apostle Peter by the fourth Evangelist.
Paul has more than one instance in which he is equally
11 
CHRIS.TIANITY:
explicit:  "Other foundation can no man lay than that is
laid, which is Jesus Christ;" while in another place he
writes, "If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is
none of his." Jesus himself speaks in terms which are
even more decided, when he declares, "I am the Way,
the Truth, and the Life." 1
In such expressions as these we may, at the least,
plainly see the surpassing importance, to the judgment of
the earliest Christian authorities, of the personal Christ,
of his teaching and example. We are thus emphatically
taught, in effect, that we must look to CHRIST, and take
HIM, in his life, his words, his devout and holy spirit, as
the impersonation of his religion. When it is asked,
then, What is the true idea of Christianity, no better
answer can be given than by saying, it is Christ himself;
that it is in Christ himself, in what he was and says and
does, in all that made him well pleasing in the sight of
God, as the beloved Son of the Almighty Father.
What Jesus was, in his visible life among men, we
learn from the Gospel records. We learn it from them
alone; for nowhere else have we information respecting
him that deserves to be compared with theirs in originality or fulness of detail. It is not necessary to our present
purpose to enter at length into the particulars which they
have preserved for us, or into the differences between the
three synoptical Gospels and the Fourth, in regard to
the idea which they respectively convey of the ministry
of Christ. The latter Gospel, it may, however, be observed, is usually admitted to be the last of the four in
order of time. It is also, without doubt, the production
of a single mind; and cannot be supposed, like the others,
1 John vi. 68; 1 Cor. iii. 11; Rom. viii. 9; John xiv. 6.
242 
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WIIAT IT IS.  243
simply to incorporate, with little change, the traditions
handed down among the disciples, for perhaps a long
series of years before being committed to writing. But
whatever accidental characteristics of this kind may be
thought to belong to the respective Gospels, they all agree
ill the resulting impression which they convey, as to the
high character of Jesus. And, it will be observed, they
(do this very artlessly, without any thing of the nature of
intentional effort or elaborate description. They state facts,
and report words, in the most simple manner, often with
extreme vagueness and want of detail. It thlus, however,
results, that the image of Christ which the Evangelists,
and especially the first three, unite to give us is, above all
things, a moral image only; in other words, it has been
providentially ordered that the impression left upon the
reader is almost entirely one of moral qualities and of
character.
It may even be true, as some will tell us, that we have
in each of the first three Gospels, not simply the productions of as many individual writers, but rather a growth
or a compilation of incidents, discourses and sayings
from various sources, and drawn especially from the oral
accounts which had long circulated among the people,
before they were put together in their present form.
But even so, the result is all the more striking.  The
identity and self-consistency of the central object, the
person of Christ, is the more remarkable. Such qualities
lead us safely to the conclusion that one and the same
Oriiginal, one great and commanding personality, was the
true source from which all were more or less remotely
derived. Hence, even the imperfect or fragmentary character of the Gospel history becomes of itself a positive 
CHRISTIANI TY:
evidence for the reality of the life, and the peculiar nature
of the influence, of him whose career it so rapidly, and it
may be inadequately, places before us.
It is, however, to be distinctly remembered that we
reach the mind of Christ only through the medium of
,)ther minds. So far as can now be known, no words of
-is writing have been transmitted to our time, or were
ever in the possession of his disciples. To some extent,
therefore, it would appear, the thoughts of the Teacher 1
may have been affected, colored and modified, by the
peculiar medium through which they have come down to
us. Under all the circumstances of the case, this inference
is natural and justifiable. It is one too of some importance, inasmuch as it directly suggests that, in all probability, the actual Person whose portraiture is preserved
for us by the Evangelists must have surpassed, in his
characteristic excellences, the impression which the narratives in fact convey. The first generation of disciples
were evidently men who were by no means exempt from
the influence of the national feelings of their people, or of
the peculiar modes of thought belonging to their class.
In the same degree in which this is true, they would be
unable rightly to understand, and worthily to appreciate
the teaching and the mind of Christ. This remark applies
perhaps more  especially to the first three Gospels, but it
is not wholly inapplicable to the Fourth. Indeed, the
fact referred to comes prominently out to view at several
points in the Evangelical narrative, - as in the case of
Pe ter rebuking his Master for saying that he must suffer
1 The term Teacher is constantly used of Christ in the Gospels, though
usually disguised in our English version under the rendering "Master"
Comp. e.g. Mark ix. 17, 38; Luke x. 25.
244 
IVWAT IT IS NOT, ANID WHAT IT IS. 245
and die at Jerusalem; in that of the request made by the
mother of Zebedee's children; and in the anticipations
ascribed by the first three Evangelists to Jesus himself, of
his own speedy return to the earth,- anticipations which
are recorded very simply, and without any corrective
observation on the part of the writer.'
But, whatever the hindrances of this kind in the way of
a perfectly just estimation by the modern disciple, the
portrait of Christ preserved for us by the Evangelists is,
in a remarkable degree, that of a great Religious Character. The Christ of the Gospels is, before all things, a
Spiritual Being, unpossessed, it may even be said, of the
personal qualities which might mark him off as the product of a particular age or people. He is, in large measure, the opposite of what the disciples were themselves,
fiee from the feelings and prejudices of his Jewish birth
and religion. This he evidently is, without any express
design of theirs, and by the mere force of his own individuality. He is thus, in effect, the Christ2 not merely of
his immediate adherents, or his own nation, but of all
devout men for all ages. He stands before us, in short, so
wise, and just, and elevated in his teaching, so upright
and pure in the spirit of his life, so engaging in his own
more positive example of submission to the overruling will,
and touching forbearance towards sinful men, that innumerable generations of disciples, since his death, have
been drawn to him and led to look up to him even as
their best and highest human representative of the Invisible God Himself.
1 Matt. xvi. 22, xx. 20, xxiv. 24-36; Mark viii. 31-33, x. 3545, xii'
24-30; Luke xviii. 31-34.
2 That is to say, "anointed," or King, -in other words, Leader, Teacher,
Saviour from sin, as the Gospels also expressly term him. 
CHRISTIANITY:
It is very probable, however, that all this was not so
fufly seen by those who stood nearest to Jesus during his
brief and rapid career, as it has been since. At least
many, even the vast majority of his day, failed to perceive
it.  And yet, to-a Hebrew reader of the Gospels, the
greatness of his character could be summed up in no more
expressive terms than by claiming for him that he was
the Christ; that he embodied in himself the moral and
intellectual pre-eminence associated with that office. In
this light he is especially represented in the first three
Gospels. In John, too, we have substantially the same
thing, though very differently expressed. In that Gospel,
he is also the Christ, but he is so by the indwelling of
the divine Word.   "The Word became flesh and dwelt
among us," and the glory which had been seen among
men, "full of grace and truth," was the glory even "as of
the only-begotten of the Father." Probably no language
could have been used that would have conveyed to a
reader of the time a higher idea of the moral and spiritual
qualities of any human being. And this corresponds
entirely with the impression given by other writers of the
New Testament, to some of whom Jesus was personally
known, - by Peter, for example, by James, by Paul, and
by the writer to the Hebrews. They evidently looked
back to their departed Master, and up to the risen Christ,
as a person of commanding dignity and spiritual power,
and this not merely on account of the official title of
Messiah which, rightly or wrongly, they applied to him,
but for the lofty moral virtues with which his name was
to them synonymous.'  He "who did no sin, neither was
1 1 Pet. ii. 21, seq.; iv 1-5, 13-16; James ii. 1, seq.; Gal. vi. 22-24; Eph.
iv. 13-15 andpassim; Phil. i. 27, seq.; ii. 1-11; Rom. xiii. 14; 2 Cor. iv.
246 
WHAT IT IS NOT  AND  WHAT IT IS.   47
WHA T IT IS NO T, AND WVHA T IT IS. 247
guile found in his mouth," was, without doubt, the most
perfect example which they could cite of all that was
acceptable in the sight of God.  "The spirit of Christ,"
without which we are "none of his," could be nothing
else, and nothing less, than a participation in Christ-like
goodness; nor can it therefore possibly be wrong, if we
too lay the main emphasis of the Christian profession
precisely here, where it is laid by the apostles; if, in other
words, we pass over, or leave out of sight, as altogether
of secondary importance, or of none, those various and
often conflicting dogmas and forms and "diversities of
administration," about which the Christian world is so
sorely, and for the present, so irreparably divided.
The character of Christ stands in very intimate relations
with the miraculous powers attributed to him by the
Gospels. Those powers, it is needless to say, have been
seriously called in question, as actual facts of history, by
the critical investigations of recent times. Many persons,
it may be, cannot see, and will not admit, that their value
has been affected by the inquiries alluded to.  To such
persons the miracles will naturally retain whatever efficacy
they may be conceived to possess as evidence of the divine, that is, supernatural, claims of him who is recorded
to have wrought them. They are entitled to their own
judgment in the case, as well as to whatever support to
Clristiaii faith they think they can derive from such a
quarter. At the same time other inquirers may be permittecd to think differently.  If the lapse of time and the
increasing grasp andc penetration of critical knowledge
necessarily tend to lessen the certainty of the miraculous
element of the Evangelical history, may not this too be a
part of the providential plan - contemplated and brought 
CHRISTIlANI T Y:
about for great and wise ends?  May it not be that now
the spiritual man shall be left more entirely firee to discern
for himself the simple excellence of the Chiistian teaching
and example? left increasingly without that support from
the witness of outward miracle w-hich has usually been
deemed so important, and which is unquestionably found
to be the more commonly thus estimated, in proportion
as we descend into the lower grades of intelligence and
moral sensibility.
But, on the other hand, if this be true, one who may
thus think need not of necessity also hold that the miracles
of the Gospels did not take place, but that the history
relating to them is the mere product of weak and credulous exaggeration.  For, in truth, the ends which might
be subserved by such manifestations are easily understood.
Occurrences so unwonted and remarkable could not fail
both to secure the attention of the spectator, and make
him ponder well upon the words of the mniracle-worker,
and also to awaken in him new feelings of reverence
towards the mysterious Being who had given such power
to men. Thus it is readily conceivable, that a miracle
might be a thing of the highest utility to those who
witnessed it and to their generation. But then, on the
other hand, it is nQt to be alleged that such occurrences
are needed now to show us that God is a living Spirit in
the world; or, consequently, that religious love and veneration are in any way dependent upon them, either as
facts beheld by ourselves, or as incidents recorded to have
been seen by others who lived many cenituries ago.  And,
if this be so, surely we may look with ind(lifference upon
1 In illustration of this remark, it is scarcely necessary to mention the
"miracles" of the Roman Catholic Church in all ages.
248 
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS. 249
the most destructive operations of literary or scientific
criticism, being anxious only, and above all things, for the
simple truth, whatever it may be.
Again, however, it is not to be denied that the possession of miraculous power may have been for Christ himself, not less than for those who saw his works, of the
deepest spiritual import. The formation of a character
like his would seem peculiarly to require the training that
would be afforded by such an endowment. We know
how, with ordinary men, the command of unlimited power
is, in fict, a test of rectitude, self-government, unselfishness, of the most trying and, it may be, most elevating,
kind. The temptations which necessarily accompany it
are proverbial.  Was Christ exempt from that kind of
moral discipline, that supreme proof of fidelity to God?
Allowing, for a moment, what the narratives directly intimate, that he felt within himself the force of miraculous
gifts, and the capacity to use them, if he had so willed,
for purposes either of personal safety or of political ambition;1 in this, we may see at once, there would be an
end to be served of the greatest moment both to himself
and to the future instruction of his disciples. By such an
experience, the moral greatness of his example might be
doubly assured. It would be made possible to him to
deny and humble himself,- even, in apostolical phrase, to
"empty" himself of his Messianic prerogatives, in order
the better to do the Heavenly Father's will, and, preferring even the cross to a disobedient refusal of the cup
which could not pass from him, to be "made perfect
through suffering," thus showing himself worthy to be
raised up at last to be, as he has been, the spiritual Lord
of the Church.
1 Matt. iv. 1, seq.
11*
9 
CHRISTIANITY:
This idea was, in fact, a familiar one to Paul, as to
others of the Christian writers.' Its literal truth is enforced by the consideration of the strange improbability
that one by birth a Galilean peasant, without any special
gifts or powers to recommend him to the notice of his
people, should yet be acknowledged by many of them as
the promised Messiah; should, in spite of an ignominious
death, be accepted in that character by multitudes; and
finally, in the same or a still higher character, should acquire the love and reverential homage of half the world.
And yet it may remain true that, as time passes, this
consideration shall lose much of its weight, in the judgment of increasing numbers of earnest inquirers. They,
accordingly, will cease to place reliance on the outward
material sign.  Jesus, nevertheless, may still be to them
as an honored Master and Friend, whose name they would
gladly cherish, for what he is in himself. To those who
thus think his character and words will appeal by their
own intrinsic worth. He will be Teacher, Saviour, Spiritual Lord, simply by the inherent grace and truth spoken
of by the Evangelist of old.
If this be the destined end, we may gladly acknowledge
the providential guiding even in this; and we shall certainly guard ourselves against judging harsh or uncharitable judgment in reference to those who on this subject
may not see as we see, or feel as we feel; -who, nevertheless, in thought and deed and aspiration, may not be
less faithful to Truth and Right, or less loyally obedient
to all that is seen to be highest and best in Christ himself.
1 2 Cor viii. 9; Eph. i. 20-23; Phil. ii. 5-11; Heb. ii. 9, 10, 18; 1 Pet.
ii. 21.
250
. 
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS.  251
III.
Christ, then, I  repeat, thus standing before  us  in
the Evangelical records of his ministry, is the  imlpersonation of his religion.  What we see in t-im is Christianity. Or, if it be not so, where else shall we look with
the hope to find it?  Who  else has ever had a true
authority to place before us a more perfect idea, or to tell
us more exactly what the Gospel is? The Church, indeed,
some will interpose, has such authority! But examine
this statement, and its untenable character speedily
appears. The Church at any given moment is, and has
been, simply a body of faillible mortals, like ourselves. If
the Christian men of this present day cannot suppose
themselves to be preserved from intellectual error in
matters of religion, neither can we think the Christian
men of the past to have been more highly privileged. In
fact, it must be added, as we ascend into the darker
periods of Church history, we come upon the most undeniable traces of ignorance, misunderstanding, worldliness and folly, on the part of the ecclesiastics of the
early and the middle ages, such as deprive their judgments
on the subject before us of all right or claim to unquestioned acceptance.  Let any one read, for example, the
accounts given by trustworthy historians I of that great
assembly of the Church which produced the Nicene
Creed. Will any one allege that in the passion and prejudice, the smallness of knowledge, the subtlety of speculation, and narrowness of heart, pervading the majority
of that assembly, the Divine Spirit was peculiarly present
to dictate or guide the decision aTrrived at, and make it
1 E.g., in Dean Stanley's History of the Eastern Church. 
CHRISTIANITY:
worthy of the blind adhesion of future Christian generations? And, if we cannot thus admit the peculiar idea
of Christianity there approved, it will surely be in vain to
look to any similar quarter, either of the past or of the
present, for what shall supersede the living "grace and
truth," seen in Christ himself.
This conclusion is greatly strengthened by the briefest
reference to the negative results of unbelief and iirreligion,
so prevalent in those countries which have been the
longest under the influence of the old ritualistic idea of
the Church and the priesthood. Positively speaking, this
idea, it is needless to add, has largely failed in almost
every thing except the encouragement among the people
of the grossest superstitions 1  superstitions  of which
there is no trace whatever in immediate connection with
the Christian AMaster. Not, however, to dwell in detail
on this unpromising theme, let us rather turn to the considerations by which our leading position may be confirmed; from which too we may learn that a better future
is yet in store for us.
The experience of past ages, the existing sectarian
divisions of Christendom, the errors and superstitions
involved in the grosser assumptions of Church authority,
all unite to compel us to the conclusion of the essentially
erroneous character of the old ritualistic and dogmatic
conceptions  of the nature of the Gospel.  They show us
not only that dogmas and rites about which the most
1 A good authority has recently obsecrved, "Catholicism, substituted for
Christ, has turned the thought of Southerin Europe to simple Infidelity,
if not to Atheism: let us take iheed that P'rotestantism does not bring about
the same thing in another way in the North." -Bishop E,wilng, in a Letter
to the Spectator newspaper, April 8, 1870. The remark here quoted is of
much wider application than the Bishop himself would probably admit!
252 
WHAT IT I.5 NOT, AND WHAT IT IS.  253
earnest men are so utterly at variance cannot possibly be
of the essence of Christianity, but further that the latter
is nowhere to be found except in Him whom in spite of
diversities all alike agree to hold in honor. An-d, in
truth, his life, brief and fleeting  as it was, may well be
said to constitute the Christian revelation. That it does
so, and was intended to do so, may, as atlready observed,
be seen better in our day, than it was by the earliest
disciples. Their thoughlts were preoccupied, their vision
obscured, by various influences which prevented  them
fiom clearly discerning the one thing needful.  The temporal kingdom of their Mlaster for which  they  were,
many of them, so eagerly looking; his speedy return to
judge the world, - an expectation of wlich there're so
many traces in Gospels and Epistles alike; the great and
urgent question of the Law  and its claims, with that of
the admission of the Gentiles to the faith of Christ without the previous adop)tion of Judaism;-such thoulghts
and such cares as these largely engaged and filled the
minds of the disciples, within the limits of the period to
which the origin of the principal New Testament books
must be assigned. After the close of that period, firesh
subjects of controversial interest continually arose, until
these were gradually overshadowed by the rising authority of the Church and the later growth of sacerdotal
power, followed in due course of time by the grosser
corruptions of the primitive Gospel which marked the
Christianity of the darker ages, and which have by no
means as yet spent their power.  Thus has it pleased the
Great Disposer that men should be led forward to truth
and light through error and darkness.  Even  as  the
Hebrews of old were gradually brought by many centuries 
CHRISTIANITY:
of experience, and in the midst of imperfections  and
backslidings innumerable, to their final recognition of
the One Jehovah, so have the Christian generations been
slowly learning and unlearniniig according as their own
condition and capacities allowed. Thus the great development has been running its destined course, and will
doubtless conduct us eventually to yet better and truer
ideas of what the Almighty purposes had, in Christ, really
designed to give to the world.
To vary the form of expression, the life of Christ itself
constitutes the revelation of His will which the Almighty
Father has given to man by His Son. And that life does
constitute a revelation, in the most full and various
imnport of this term. It shows us, in a clear and engaging
light, the One God and Father of all, the Just and Holy
One, who will render to every man accordiing to his deeds.
It shows us the high powers and capacities of man himself; for, while and because it tells him to be perfect even
as the Father in Heaven is perfect, it not only recognizes
in him the capability to be so, but also abundantly affords
the spiritual nutriment by which the higher faculties of
his nature may be nurtured and strengthened within him.
It shows us how to live a life of religious trust and obedience to the commands of duty, and, amidst many sorrows
and trials, still to preserve a soul unstained by guilt. It
shows us that this high devotion to the sacred law of
Truth and Right is that which is well pleasing to God;
and that His will is that man should thus, by the discipline
of his spirit, join the moral strength and sensibility in this
world which shall fit him, if he will, to enter upon the
higher life of the world to come. All this we see plainly
expressed and announced in Christ, constituting him the
254 
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS. 255
Revealer in the best sense of this term. All this we do
see, even though it may be very hard to find any doctrinal creed laid down in definite words, or any system of
rites and ceremonies of worship, of Church government,
or of priestly functions and dignities, placed before us as
constituting an indispensable part of our common Christianity.
And it is here an obvious remark that, while Christian
men have so often questioned and disputed with one another about the essentials of their religion; while they
have sometimes, again, been forgetful of its spirit, in their
controversies as to its verbal and written forms, - all this
time they have been substantially agreed as to the matters
which are the greatest and weightiest of all. About the
Gospel as embodying and expressing man's faith in God
and in heaven, and as setting forth the highest moral law
with its exemplification in an actual human life; about
the Gospel in these, which are surely its most serious and
interesting aspects, there has been no dispute. The great
spiritual principles taught by Christ, and the power of his
practical exhibition of human duty, have been constantly
admitted and - may it not be added? - constantly felt in
the world, among all the sects and parties of Christendom,
in spite of the differences of forms and creeds which have
separated men from each other.
This fact suggests a further consideration of obvious interest. Regarded as a dogmatic or an ecclesiastical system,
the Gospel is one of the greatest failures which the world
has seen, no two sects or churches, scarcely any two congregations, being agreed as to some one or other of what
are deemed its most essential elements. Regarded as a
moral and spiritual energy and instructor among men, it 
CttRISTIANITY:
is and always has been a quickening power,- tending d
rectly, in its genuine influences, to support and to gui6 
aright, and, even amidst the worst distractions or perversions of human passion and error, whispering thoughts of
hope, comfort, and peace, to many troubled hearts. This
should not be forgotten in our estimates of the part played
by Christianity in past times, or in the judgments sometimes so lightly uttered by a certain class of its critics,
who show themselves so ready to confound the religion
with its corruptions, and to include it and them in one indiscriminate condemnation. It should help to call us back
to juster views of the nature and the function of Christ's
religion, and lead us the better to see that these consist,
not in its capacity or its success as an imposer of dogmas
or of ceremonial acts to be received and carefully performed by either priests or people, but in its power to
strengthen with moral strength, to guide in the path of
duty, to save us from our sins, to breathe into us the spirit
of Christ, and so to brineg us nearer to God. Such is the
true fuinction and the real power of the Gospel, even
though it may constantly have had to act in the midst of
gross ignorance, or of false and exagg,erated dogmatic con.
ception; nor is it too much to say that this its highest
character has not been altogether wanting to it, even in
the darkest periods of man's intellectual experience, during
the last eighteen centuries.
And not only is this so; but, further, it is evidently not
through the peculiar doctrines of his church or sect that
a man is most truly entitled to the name of Christian, but
rather by his participation in what is common to all the
churches and sects which are themselves worthy of that
name. For let us call to mind, for a moment, some of the
256 
TVHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS. 257
more eminent Christian men and women of modern times,
to whatever sectarian fold they may have owned theimselves to belong. Recall the names of a Fcnelon, an
Oberlin, a Vincent de Paul, a Xavier, a MIelancthon, a 3lilton, a Locke, a Chalmers, a Clarkson, a Wilberforce, a Ilis.
Fry, a Keble, a HIleber, a Wesley, a Lardner, a Piiestley,
a Channing, a Tuckermian, with innumerable other truehearted followers of him who both bear witness to the
truth, and "went about doing good."  In such persons we
have representatives of nearly all the churches, with their
various peculiarities of doctrinal confession. And must
we not believe that such men and women were true Christians? If so, will it not follow that in every one of their
differing communions true Christians are to be found?
Probably no man, unless it be one of the most bigoted ad.
herents of Evangelical or hicgh Anglican orthodoxy, would
venture to deny this. There are, then, good Christians,
let us gladly admit, in all the various sects and parties of
Christendom; menI whom Christ himself, if he were here,
would acknowlecldge and welcome as true disciples.  But
what is it that entitles such persons all alike to the Christian character and name? It cannot be any thing in which
each difers from the rest, but rather something which
they all have in common. It cannot be any thing that is
peculiar to the Roman Catholic alone, for then the Protestant would not have it; nor any thing that is peculiar to
the Protestant alone, for then the Roman Catholic would
not lhave it; nor any thing that is pecu-liar to the Trinitarian alone, for then the Unitarian would not have it.  It
must be somiething apart from the distinctive creed of
each.  It is then something which all must possess, otherwise they would not be truly Christian; which they must 
CHPRISTIANlITY:
have in addition to their several distinguishing doctrines,in company with which the latter may indeed be held, but
which is not the exclusive property of any single church,
or sect, or individual, whatever.
What then do all the Christian sects and parties, of
every name, hold in common, and never differ about?  Is
it not simply in this, that they receive and reverence Jesus
as the beloved Son in whom God was well pleased? that
they hold the Christian f'tith in the Father in Heaven, with
all that this involves of love to God and love to man? that
they accept the law of righteousness, placed before us in
the " living characters " of Christ's own deeds and words,
and strive to obey it in their conduct? that they hold the
same common faith as to the presence and the providence
of God, the future life and the judgment to come?  This
Christian allegiance, it is true, is expressed under the most
different forms of statement, and in many a case it may
hardly be definitely expressed at all; but yet even this, and
such as this, is, by belief and practice, the common property
of every Christian man; and so far as he lives in the spirit
of this high faith is he truly a disciple and no further
whatever may be the church or sect, c r forms of doctrine and worship, to which he may attach himself. And
all this, I repeat, is most plainly revealed to us in the spirit
and the life of Christ, -insomuch that we feel the statement to be incontrovertibly sure, that he is the truest
Christian of all whose practical daily spirit and conduct
are the most closely and constantly animated and governed by the spirit and precepts and example of the Alaster Christ.
It seems strange, when we think about it, that men
should have gone so far astray, in times past, firom the
258 
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS. 259
more simple and obvious idea of Christianity thus laid
before us. We may have difficulty in explaining how this
has come to pass; how it is that so much of the weight
and stress, as it were, of the Christian religion should have
been laid upon obscure metaphysical creeds and dogmas,
the obvious tendency of which is, and always has been, to
divile men from each other, to degenerate into gross superstition, and destroy the liberty "wherewith Christ has
made us fiee," and which, moreover, are nowhere contained in the Scriptures, and cannot even be stated in the
language of the Scriptures; how it is, again, that so little
emphasis should be laid in these dogmatic formulas upon
that obedience which is better than sacrifice, even that
doing the Heavenly  Father's will, which- strange to
tell! - is the only condition prescribed by Christ for
entering into the kingdom.
Truly this question is not without its perplexities. But
some explanation may be found. It is the obvious law of
Divine Providence, it is and has been a great law of human
progress, that Truth shall not be flashed upon the mind
at once, either in religion or in any other of the great fields
of interest and occupation to man; but that it shall be
conquered and won through the medium of slow and gradual approach, even in the midst and by the help of misunderstanding and error.  It is thus, doubtless, that men
are trained to appreciate rightly the value of the truths
and principles which they ultimately gain. In other words,
past experience goes far to show us that moral excellence
and the apprehension of truth, by such a being as man,
can only be acquired by means of previous conflict with
evil and untruth, in some one or other of their manifold
forms; or, if not by an actual personal conflict for each of 
CHRISTIANITY:
us individually, at least by means of the observed or
recorded experience of others, more severely tried than
ourselves.
Thus it has doubtless been with the reception and gradual prevalence of Chlistian truths and principles. Men
have had slowly, by a varied and sometimes painful experience, to learn that it is not by saying, Lord, Lord,
by confessing some formal creed, or being included within
the limits of some visible church; not by forms and ceremonies of any kind, such as baptism at the hands of a
priest, or the confession of sin into his ear, that we may become truly recipients of the light and strength of the Gospel of Christ; but much rather by personal communion
with the Spirit of God, by doing the things which the
Lord hath said, by striving to be like Christ, in heart and
in life, active in goodness, submissive to the Heavenly
Father's will, and ready to the work of duty which He has
given us to do.
In proportion as this conception of Christianity comes
forward into view, and assumes the pre-eminence to which
it is entitled, and which is either implied or expressly declared in the principal writings of the New Testament, in
the same degree must the merely dogmatic and sacerdotal
idea sink into insignificance. It will be seen that moral
and spiritual likeness to the Christian Head is what is allimportant; and, consequently, that within the limits of the
same communion, bound together by the common principle of Christian faith,- the principle of love and reverence
for the one Master, Christ, -there may exist the most
complete mental freedom, and even, to a very large extent,
the most diverse theological beliefs.
260 
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS.  261
IV.
But here I may be met by certain objections which will
hardly fail to occur to different classes of readers.
In the first place, it may be said, the idea of the Gospel
above presented is itself dogmatic; and indeed that the
conception of Christianity as involving definite forms of
doctrine is not to be got rid of. This remark I am by no
means concerned wholly to escape. Doubtless the Gospel,
as it is given in the words of Christ, includes various
clearly stated truths respecting the Divine Providence and
Will, and the retributions of this world and the next,truths, I may add, which are not only level to the apprehension of the human faculties, but also in harmony with
the highest dictates of the natural conscience and reason
of man. But these great truths are not dogmatically laid
before us in the Gospel. The mind of each reader is left free
to gather them for itself. They are so stated as to quicken
and elevate, not to stupefy or render useless, the religious
and moral sense of the disciple. They serve thus, in the
result, to arouse in him the strength of deep individual
conviction, without which they could have little practical
value. The teaching function of the Gospel is of this kind,
rather than dogmatic and denunciatory, in the manner of
the creeds. It does o(-)t attempt to put before us a readymade body of doctrine, in such a way as to save the disciple the trouble of inquiry and reflection for himself, as
though it would make him the mere recipient of what is
imposed upon him fi'om without. Not in this mechanical
way, either in the world of outward nature, or in the Gospel of His Son, does the Great Parent speak to the hearts
of His children; but chiefly by awakening their higlher, 
CHRISTIANITY:
devouter sensibilities, and letting them feel the force of
truth and right within their own secret spirits. No impo sition from without could fitly accomplish this divine work;
and we may be well assured that no man living, and no
church or sect on earth, has a legitimate authority to define
exactly the limits within which Christian belief shall con fine itself, or beyond which belief shall not extend, without
ceasing to be Christian. Obviously and unquestionably
Christ himself has nowhere attempted to dictate his re ligion in such a way; neither has any of his apostles, not
even the ardent and impetuous Paul. On the contrary,
the latter, like his Master, constantly attaches the greatest
importance to the practical virtues, and to a devout spirit,in no case making his appeal to a dogmatic statement, or
giving us to understand that he had the least idea of any
dogmatic system whatever, similar, in spirit or in form, to
the creeds of modern orthodoxy.
A second objection may be urged by a defender of the
prevailing forms and dogmas of the churches. Such a
person may say that, in taking Christ as the measure and
representative of his own religion, we leave out of sight
all that may have been contributed to its development
by the Apostles, to say nothing of their successors, and
that the-Epistles of the New Testament contain much
that is not met with in connection with him. Ill reply,
let it be observed in what terms the Apostles speak of
their Master, and of the obedience, the faith, and veneration
due to him. Paul, for example, in various forms, tells them
to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ;" to let his mind be in
them, his word dwell in them richly, to acquire his spirit, to
follow him in love and self-sacrifice. Ile will know nothing,
he says, "save Jesus Christ, and him crucified;" and we
262 
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS. 263
know how closely he treads in his MIaster's steps, in the absolute preference which he gives to the Love which, he declares, is greater than faith, and the very fulfilling of the law
itself. The same strain is held by others of the Apostles;
and there can be no doubt that Christ, under God, was
constantly looked up to by them as thle great object of
the faith, the love, and the imitation of every disciple. It
is true, indeed, that there are many things in the Apostolical writings other than we find in connection with
Christ's personal life; but these will be found to belong,
almost exclusively, to the peculiar circumstances and controversies of the times succeeding his death. In truth,
they belong so entirely to them as to have little of practical reference, or utility, beyond. Paul's Epistles, for instance, are full of the long debated question as to the claims
of the law upon Gentiles, and the mystery which, he says,
had been hidden "firom the foundation of the world," that
the Messiah should be preached even to those who were
not of the fold of Israel.  But these are only temporary
incidents of the early career of Christianity.  They have
no intimate connection with the permanent influence of
Christ; and we of modern times have little concern with
them, except only to be on our guard against letting them
unduly sway our judgment and turn us away firom subjects of greater consequence, - as too often has happened
to the ingenious fiamers of theological systems. Christianity, ill a word, has been only perplexed and impeded
in its course, by those thoughtless or over-zealous expouncders who have insisted upon constructing schemes of
orthodtloxy out of the antiquated disputes of Jews and
Gentiles.'
I See, e.g., the Essay on the Death of Christ, in Aids to Faith. 
4CHRISTIAN1TY:
In all his Epistles St. Paul, in the true spirit of his
AIaster, gives us clearly to know what is of chief importancee.  After treating, as he usually does, of the local
and passing concerns and disputes which engaged many
of his correspondents, he never fatils to turn at last to
speak of the practical goodness, the purity of heart and
life, the kindly affections towards one another, the reasonable service of love and duty, by which the Christi,an
disciple may be known, by which alone he can present
himself as a "living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unito God."
In such qualities as these, the attainment or the practice
of which he so earnestly urges upon his friends, we hare
precisely what constitute the most marked features in the
life and the teachings of Christ. Thus we are brought
once more to the old conclusion that in faithful loyalty to
Christ, to the highest ideal presented to us of his spirit
and character, are to be found the true light and joy and
peace of the Christian Gospel.
A third objection is of a different character. There are
some things, it will be said, in immediate connection with
him whom  we term Teacher and Lord, some things in
his words and ideas, if not in his actions, which are far
from being in perfect harmony with the highest truth, as
known to men in these later times. For example, when
he speaks as though he believed diseases and insanity to
be caused by the presence of a devil, or demon, in the
afflicted person, are we to attach importance to this, so as
ourselves to think that such disorders are (or were) so
produced? - or shall we not rather follow the guidance
of modern science, and believe that the various infirmities
which, in ancient times, were attributed to evil spirits
arose from natural causes, and that the manner in which
264 
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS. 265
such things are spoken of in the New Testament is a
product simply of the imperfect knowledge of those
days?
In reply, there need be no hesitation in saying that we
are bound, as beings of thought and reason, to follow th;e
best guidance which God has given us, in these and all other
subjects; and by the term best can only be understood
that which commends itself most forcibly to our rational
intelligence. It can in no way be claimed for Christ that
he was intellectually perfect; that he did not share in the
prevailing beliefs'of his countrymen, and partake even of
their ignorance. Such a claim as this is certainly nowhere
advanced in the New Testament, but the contrary; and
those who, in our time, would bring it forward should ask
themselves whether, by so doing, they are most likely to
benefit, or to injure, the cause which doubtless they would
desire to support. Jesus himself makes no pretension to
intellectual infallibility, but lets us see, in no uncertain
way, that he was not unconscious Qf the limitation of his
own knowledge.
In general terms it may be added, the Gospel, when
first preached in the world, was necessarily adapted to
the people to whom it was addressed. It conformed, in
many respects, to their ideas and modes of expression,
and also made use of these for its own ends. Had it not
done so, how could it have touched and moved them as it
did, and as, through them, it has touched and moved the
world ever since? Jesus, therefore, himself, and those
who took up his work after him, were, in a large degree,
men of their own day, imbued with prevailing ideas
and feelings, and employing these in their speaking and
1 Mark xiii. 32.
12 
CHRISTIANITY:
preaching in the most natural manner. Is it not even so
with ourselves at the present moment? For how, indeed,
can it be otherwise? And if many of the primitive Christian ideas were more or less erroneous and ill-founded, it
is easy to understand that, while the overruling Providence made them its instruments for leading men on by
degrees to something better, still it can have been no part
of the great design of God that misunderstanding and
ignorance should be removed by any other process than
by the natural growth of knowledge among men. They
were not to be supernaturally refuted, but left to be corrected in due course of time; and the needed correction
was and is to come even as men grow wiser and more
thoughtful and able to bear it.
Hence, it is not to be questioned, many errors, chiefly
of the intellectual kind, attached to the early preaching of
the Gospel, and some certainly did to the words of Christ
himself; just as very much of human ignorance and prejudice has since and continually been involved in the6 ideas
prevailing as to the character and purposes of his religion.
As before observed, man has been made by his Creator to
find his way up to light and truth from the most imperfect beginnings, and by a prolonged conflict against and
amidst darkness and manifold error. Such is our human
nature, and the position which the Divine Will has assigned to us. And so in the early ages after Christ there
sprung up the idolatrous worship of the Virgin Mary and
of innumerable saints; nor is the world yet free, though
it is slowly freeing itself, from the influence of these superstitions and their related errors of thought. Successive
generations inherit much of the evil as well as the good,
the ignorance as well as the knowledge, of those who have
266 
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WItAT IT IS. 267
been before them. Thus does the Almighty Father exercise and discipline his human family in patience, in selfcontrol, in the search after truth, even by letting us suffer
and work for the good firuits of knowledge and righteousness, instead of giving them to the world at once without
thought or effort of our own. This is eminently true in
connection with the whole course of Christian development.  In Christ's own teachings and those of the Apostles, as time has amply shown, erroneous ideas were not
wanting. Peter denied his Master, and thought at first
that only Jews could be disciples. Both he and Paul, as
well as James, with probably all the early Christians,
long cherished the hope of their Master's return to the
earth within that generation; a belief which is to be
traced also, equally with that in demoniacal possessions,
in the recorded words of Jesus himself. Other instances
of a similar kind might easily be mentioned.
But, while all this seemns perfectly undeniable, has not
Divine Providence so ordered that what is really wrong
and false in men's ideas of Christian truth shall sooner or
later be seen in its real character, in the advancing progress of human knowledge?- and therefore, if we are
ourselves only patient and faithful, each of us, to what we
see, or think we see, to be right and good, that the untrue
in our ideas shall be eventually separated from the true,
however close may be the connection which at any time
may  subsist between them?   Such is, doubtless, the
Almighty purpose, such the all-sufficient process provided
in His wisdom for securing the training and growth of the
races and generations of men in the knowledge of Divine
things. It follows, again, that whatever in the Christian
teaching, as in other teaching, shall stand the test of 
CIIRISTIANITY:
advancing knowledge, and still approve itself as true and
honest and just and pure and lovely and of good report"
to the purified conscience and practised intellect of man,
that shall be God's everlasting Truth; that too He must
have designed not only by the word of Christ, but through
the living souls of His rational children, to proclaim to the
world with the mark of His Divine approval.
It is not necessary here to ask in detail what it is in
existing schemes of Christian theology, or in the outward
forms and arrangements of priesthoods and of churches,
that will bear this test of advancing knowledge, and this
scrutiny of the educated intellect and conscience. Doubtless much in the popular creeds of our day will do so;
but much more will only be as chaff before the wind, or
stubble before the devouring flame. Among the perishable things will surely be the ecclesiastical systems which
vary with every different country and church, and along
with these the claims to priestly and papal authority and
infallibility, about which we again hear such angry contention.   Truly, none of these will bear the test and
strain of time and knowledge; but only those great and
unchangeable principles of spiritual truth, and those deeplying sentiments of moral right, which are common to all
the different sects and parties of. Christendom. These
will retain their place among the great motive forces of
tile world, even because their roots are firmly planted by
the Divine hand itself in the very nature of man, and
made to be a part of the constitution of his mind; while,
also, it is true, and the Christian disciple will ever gratefully.acknowledge, they owe their best and highest expression and exeml)lification to Jesus the Christ, the " beloved
Son," in whom God was "well pleased."
1 Philip iv. 8.
268 
WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS. 269
We may conclude then, as before, that in the mind and
life of Christ, -in his unshaken trust in the Heavenly
Father, and in the heaven to be revealed hereafter, -in
his readiness to obey the call of Duty, wherever it might
lead him, even though it might be to the shame and the
agony of the cross,- in his faithful adherence to the right,
and earnest denunciation of falsehood, hypocrisy, and
wrong-doing,- in his gentle spirit of forgiveness and filial
submission even unto death, - we have the lessons of
Christian truth and virtue which it most of all concerns
us to receive and to obey.  In this high "faith of Christ"
we have the true revelation of God's will for man; the
Gospel speaking to us in its most touching and impressive
tones, - either reproaching us for our indifference and
calling us to repentance, or else aiding and encouraging
us onward in the good path of righteousness.
So long as Christianity shall be thus capable of speakilig to the world, so long will it, amidst all the varieties
of outward profession, be a living power for good; and
vain will be the representation which would tell us that
it is now only a thing of the past, unfitted for the better
knowledge and higher philosophy of these modern times.
Surely not so! -but, rather, until we have each individually attained the moral elevation even of Christ himself,
and can say that we too, in character and conduct, in
motive and aspiration, are well pleasing in the sight of
Heaven, until we are this, and can feel and say this with
truth, the religion of Christ will be no antiquated thing of
the past to us; but from its teaching and its spirit- the
teaching and the spirit of Christ - we shall still have
wisdom and truth to learn.
May the time speedily come, which shall see Christ's 
CHRISTIANITY.
spirit ruling the individual lives of all around us, - more
truly inspiring the thoughts and efforts of our lawgivers,
-teaching men everywhere to be just and merciful towards each other; and thus making Christianity, in deed
and in truth, the "established religion," the guiding and
triumphant power of this and all other lands! Then,
indeed, will the daily prayer of all Christian hearts be
answered, and the "kingdom of heaven" on earth be truly
come.
270 
THE  AIM  AND  HOPE  OF  JESUS.
BY OLIVER STEARNS. 
I 
THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
A     LEARNED Historian of the Christian Theology of
the Apostolic age observes that what most distinguishes the Jewish religion, at least in its last centuries, is
not so much monotheism as faith in the future.  While
elsewhere we see the imagination of men complacently
retracing the picture of a golden age irrecoverably lost,
Israel, guided by its prophets, persisted in turning its eyes
towards the future, and attached itself the more firmly to
a felicity yet to come, the more the actual situation seemed
to give the lie to its hopes.'
What these hopes were in relation to the future of that
people and of the world, what the Messianic ideas and
expectations were, we learn from the New Testament,
particularly from the Gospels. And we find our impressions from this source made more clear in some points, and
in all confirmed, by a study of the Apocalyptic literature,
-of those writings of which it was the object to give
both shape and expression to the Hebrew thought of the
kingdom of heaven, and of the brilliant and miraculous
events which would introduce and establish it.
1 Reuss, History of the Christian Theology of the Apostolic Age.
12* 
274    THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
Jewish Theology in the age of Jesus Christ divided the
whole course of time into two grand periods; one, comprehending the past and the present, was that of suffering and sin; the other, embracing the future, a period of
virtue and happiness. The last years of the former period
formed the most important epoch in the History of Humanity, the transition to a new order of things, and was
designated by a peculiar phrase, -the consummation of
the age and the last days. It would be introduced by the
appearance of the great Restorer or Deliverer of the people of God, and of the world, whom the prophets predicted;
and who was called the Messiah, the Anointed of the Lord,
- i.e., the King by eminence, the King of Israel. He was
to be the successor and the son of David. The precise
moment of his appearance was not known. The Jewish
theologians tried to determine the precursive signs of the
near approach of his advent. The first of these was the
period of great wickedness and suffering, marked by a
particular name, the anguish, and compared to the pangs
of child-birth. Immediately preceding the advent of the
King, a prophet of the Old Covenant would be restored to
life to announce it, - a part in the miraculous drama commonly assigned to Elijah. The Messiah himself would
come on the clouds of heaven, with a retinue of angels,
and with a pomp and splendor which would leave no doubt
of the fact of his advent. He would come to found the
kingdom of God. This implied the political, moral, and
religious regeneration of the people.  A series of most imposing scenes would follow the advent. At the sound of
a trumpet, the dead would arise and appear for the judcgment of the last day. The just would take part in the
judgment of the reprobate, who would be thrown into 
THE AIM' AND HOPE OF JESUS.
the lake of fire, prepared for the devil and his angels to
suffer eternal torture.  And the killg(lomll of God ol of the
Messiah would be established immediately on the earth,
which, with the whole of the universe of which it was the
centre, would be gloriously transformed to fit it to be the
abode of the elect of God.
Into the circle of these ideas and expectations Jesus
was born. In it he passed his life, acted and suffered; and
claimed to found the kingdom of God. He claimed in
some sense to be the Messiah; and, though rejected by his
people and put to death, he has borne the name in history,
and now bears it. He is Jesus, the Christ. How did he
regard these ideas and expectations? Did he adopt them?
And, if at all, how far? Did he claim to be such a Messiah as the Jews expected? If so, then Christianity may
be what it has been called, "a natural development of
Judaism." It is not essentially a new religion. It is not
an evolution of a perfect universal, from an imperfect and
partial, religion.  It is essentially Judaism still; and "the
kingdom of God, which Jesus preached in both a temporal
and spiritual sense, developed naturally and logically into
the Popedom, which is the nearest approximation to the
fulfilment of the claim of Jesus. Judaism is germinal
Christianity, and Christianity is fiuctified Judaism." Christianity is only what is weakest and most fantastic in Judaism gone to seed. The fruit is the Roman Hierarchy and
Ritual. That which is alone characteristic of it is limited
and perishable. Jesus himself, though his ambition was a
lofty one, was mistaken in an essential point of his selfassertion; and the gospel is not destined to be an universal
religion, but only to.make some moderate contributions
thereto.
275 
276    THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
It is an important question, then,- one which concerns
his worth and position as a man, as well as his wisdom as
a founder of a religion, -What did Jesus aim at? and
what did he expect as the result of his movement? The
answers that have been given may be reduced to three
principal forms: 1. He expected to found a political Empire; 2. He expected to introduce a vast Theocracy, to
which believers of other nations should be admitted, and
which was to be established on the renovated earth, after
his death, at his return to take possession of it as King,
to reward his followers, and to put all opposition under
his feet; 3. He expected to found a purely spiritual communion or society in which he should continue to exercise
for ages, by his spirit, word, and life, a power of truth and
love over the minds and hearts of men, filling them with
the most exalted sense of God.
The first view has been presented by some able adversaries of Christianity, among whom Reimarus led the way
in a fragment "On the Aim of Jesus," published with others
anonymously in 1778. He charged Jesus with using religious motives as merely a means to a political end; but supposed that, after he found death impending, he renounced
the political aim, and pretended that his purpose was only
a moral one. A few able scholars have been disposed to
blend the last view with the others. They suppose an
original Theocratic purpose to have been entertained by
Jesus, in which the moral and religious principle predominated, but which was not at first exclusive of the political
element. They suppose, however, a progress in his aim;
that after his rejection by the people, "which he regarded
as God's rejection of any national limitation of his work,"
he inferred that his mission was to found a spiritual king 
THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
dom. Though the direct imputation of a political aimni
has not been a favorite expedient with ultra-rationalist
critics since Reimarus was answered by Reinhard and
others, it ought not to be posed without consideration.
It is continually reappearing in modified forms. And this
happens, because it is impossible to present the hypothesis
that Jesus intended to be a Jewish Messiah without involving the supposition of something political in his object,
and in his means of. accomplishing it. Accordingly a very
recent critic 1 of Christianity, writing in the interest of
"Free Religion," and representing Jesus as claiming to be
a Jewish Messiah, after saying very truly that "the popular hope of a Priest-king transformed itself in the soul of
Jesus into the sublime idea of a spiritual Christ ruling
by love," is constrained to say, inconsistently, in another
place, that, if Jesus had assumed the office, he would not
have hesitate( to discharge its political duties, and to
exercise political sway. Here, then, is a revival of the
imputation to Jesus of a political aim. But I am not
aware that it is anywhere in recent criticism enforced
with any new strength of argument. It is obviously contradicted by the general bearing of his actions, and by the
whole tone of his teachings when rightly apprehended.
It is contradicted by his utter neglect of political measures. He could not be induced or forced to take the position of a political ruler. Admirers wished to proclaim
him King: he sent them away, tore his disciples from
them, and went himself into the mountain to comniune
with God. Asked to settle a dispute about property, he
says he has never been constituted an administrator of
civil justice. When shown the tribute-money, and inquired
1 See "The Index," Toledo, Jan. 1 and Jan. 8, 1870.
277 
278    THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
of if it were lawful to pay tribute unto Coesar, he makes
the memorable reply in which he at once acknowledges
the rights of the government de facto; and the rights of
conscience and religion, which to deny would be usurpation.  He was the first to distinguish the spheres of the
church and of the state so intimately related, but never
to be blended. And this is just what the political Messiah, the Priest-king, could not have conceived. The outlines of his church may serve as the model of a free church
to-day.  There was no political motive to enter it.  It had
no officer who could exercise political power. There was
no authority but in the congregation. It was amenable to
no political head. Its fundamental truths were the equal
relation of all men with God as his children, and the
common relation of all men with one another as brethren.
The only end of his church was the moral and spiritual
development of its members and of all men; the only
condition of membership, the recognition of this end;
and, with it, of the providential gift of truth and life given
in Jesus Christ's consciousness of God, and an appropriating and co-operative sympathy with his character and purpose. Its method was free conference and prayer in the
spirit of unity, and in devotion to the regeneration of the
human family; a method, the results of which, he assured
them, would be the reaching of decisions which would
be in essential harmony with his own spirit, the Spirit
of God.  He drew more fiom the synagogue than fromn
the temple. Worship might ascend anywhere from the
heart.   One  need not go to Jerusalem.   No  political
Messiah could have thought of any centre of the restored Theocracy but the holy city, to which the tribes
should repair with their sacrifices, and the converted 
THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
heathen bring their votive offerings to Jehovah, the God
of Jews; but the temple must be destroyed, and not one
stone of it left upon another, according to Jesus, in
order to prepare for that worship of the Father by men
in spirit and in truth, which he, as the Christ, would
inaugurate.
We thus come naturally to another point in the discussion. The theories which recognize the political aim of
Jesus commonly suppose that he regarded it as his personal mission to restore Mosaism to its primitive purity.
And, if he shared in the hope of the restoration of the
Theocracy, he would probably take the most conservative
ground in regard to the Levitical institutions and the
Mosaic precepts.  He would believe the Jewish people
must be made independent, in order to give supremacy to those institutions. The Roman yoke must be
broken, and the coming kingdom be inaugurated with
war. Nothing of this, however, is found in the ministry
of Jesus Christ.  When he preached "the kingdom of
heaven is at hand," it was no summons to war. The
characteristic qualities of those who belonged to this
kingdom were opposed to the Theocratic spirit. And
the Sermon on the Mount taught, as clearly as the formal
declaration before Pilate, that it was not of this world.
Why should his followers be ready to suffer social persecution, if his aim tended in the direction regarded with
social favor? What mean the non-resistant exhortations,
instructing his followers to waive their rights for the sake
of the higher interests they were living for, if he and his
adherents are charged with the political duty of driving
the invader from the sacred soil? The rise and progress
of this kingdom, Jesus said, on another occasion, could
279 
280    THE AIM ANID HOPE O,' JESUS.
not be observed like those of an empire founded by force:
it would not "come with observation."  It had already
come unobserved. It began to come with John the Baptist, until whose work the law was in the ascendant; but
since whom men had been pressing into the kingdom of
heaven, which was tending to supplant the law. And, on
still another occasion, if he expected his movement to leave
th, Jewish ritual intact, how could he say, with pregnant
significance, that new wine must not be put into old wineskins, lest they break, and the wine be lost. I know great
stress is laid upon his saying, "Think not that I have come
to destroy the law, or the prophets: I have not come to
destroy, but to fulfil. For truly do I say to you, Till
heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or one tittle shall
pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." But, if taken
literally, they prove too much; for, according to other
passages, his teaching on some points - as, for instance,
divorce, and, as many think, the Sabbath - directly coinflicted with that of Moses.  He threw doubt directly upon
the tradition that God rested on the seventh day.  God,
he said, had been always working up to that hour, and in
his own acts of healing done on the Sabbath he had been
co-operating with God. We must therefore interpret fieely
this language, and understand by it the everlasting law.
The smallest requirement of the true law, however overlooked and despised it may have been in tile popular
exegesis, would have its emphasis in the new teachings;
and whoever slig,hted it would be the least in the kingdom of heaven. There is not a word which can be fairly
construed into commendation of the Levitical priesthood.
He gives to the AMosaic precepts cited the most spiritual
interpretation, or sets them aside when they cannot be 
THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
wrought into a more profound system of natural morality.
IHe implies his superiority to all preceding teachers, including  Ioses.  "It was said to the ancients, but Isay
unto you." Indeed, his tone in this discourse is any thing
but that of a Jewish Rabbi of his period. It is that of the
most human and universal teaching. It asserts, when we
penetrate beyond the immediate occasion of it to its principle, that which is true in all times and places. Those
affirmations with which it opens, what are they but declarations, the substantial verity of which it is possible for
every man, if he know not now, yet sometime to know in
himself. "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven." The spirit of those who can set a
limit to their wants and curb ambition, who do not live
blinded by interests to the demands of a pure soul, -the
spirit of such is always blessed. Happy he who imbibes
it from the circumstances of his life; and happy he who,
amidst the blandishments of riches, is taught it by the
discipline of Heaven. These are they to whom has come
the kingdom of heaven from Jesus' day until now. Then,
"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."
And is not a pure mind the very moral atmosphere in
which man sees God as he is, and rejoices in the sight?
A man's moral sentiments are the medium through which
comes to him the thought of God. Let those sentiments
be perverted, and he imagines either that God is not or
that he is different from what he is. His wrong mind
either obstructs entirely the beam which darts from the
Divine essence, or scatters the spotless white of that Sun,
the pure aggregate of Divine perfections, into the particolored tints of the earthly and sensual soul itself. Again,
"Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy."
281 
282    THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
It is even so. Those who sympathize with human wants
will feel the sympathy of God flowing into their souls,
and can never lack assurance of the Divine mercy so long
as they keep in themselves that pledge of it, - the merciful spirit. And so it is a grand caution, which every one
who has wantonly condemned others knows he ought to
keep in memory,   " Condemn not, lest ye be condemned."
For the undeserved, heavy sentence of condemnation which
a man lifts high to hurl with malignant intent at his
brother is arrested by an interposing law of Providence,
and falls from his weak hand with its full weight upon his
own head. And at length we come to what might be
thought a studied satire upon the boasted maxims of human
wisdom: "Blessed are ye when men shall speak evil of
you falsely for my sake." Is this the sober truth? Is not
Christ, so true elsewhere, mistaken here? It is a verity
as certain as the laws of God. Do not minds advance
unequally in truth, in all the successive phases of a soul's
spiritual growth? Whoever goes before others in thought
and life will find men laying this to his charge.  But, if
by following the command of Christian truth to his conscience he has opened upon himself the battery of human
censoriousness, he may exult; for every unjust word or
groundless suspicion will but remind him of his unbribed
devotion, and be changed before it touches his deepest
happiness into the benediction of God.
Were we to go through what was spoken on the MIount,
we might show its truth commanding unquestionably the
assent of our moral natures. It all takes hold of our mind
and life. It comes to us to throw light on what we do and
suffier, and to borrow confirmation from it in turn. Though
we fhll so far short of it, and could not have conceived it 
THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
originally and from ourselves, as Jesus did, it so accords
with the laws of our being as to seem to be the suggestion
of our experience, some admonition floating to us by intent
of God on that ever-heaving sea of life, of ambition, of
passion, of mutual misunderstanding, of strong loves and
piercing griefs, of various mingling sympathies, on whose
shore we do now stand, and whose tide, for our few
seconds here in time, laves our feet and dashes upon us
its spray.
We might turn over other pages of Jesus' instruction
beyond that introductory statement of the principles of
the kingdom of God, and evolve its sense in terms presenting an undeniable spiritual fact to all our race.  For
instance, "To him who hath shall be given, and he shall
have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be
taken away, even that which he seemeth to have." How
true! It is verified in the mental condition of every man
at this moment. We only seem to have the faculty we
do not use. There is no long, healthy sleep to the mind
and the moral will any more than to the body; but the
alternative is, live or die. And thus Jesus was ever holding up the law of the spiritual life to the light of that day
which dawned with his advent. He dwelt on what is
inward. Although you cannot find that once, in his popular teaching, he laid stress upon observances, times without number he studiously distinguished between every
thing of the nature of ceremonial and those everlasting
obligations of justice and humanity, of inward and outward purity, which ought to be recognized in the home
and in the state, in all the intercourse of man with man,
and in watching over the secret heart. We miay not infer
that he was hostile to religious forms. He observed them.
283 
284    THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
Hie knew that man needed them, and that souls instinct
with life would perpetuate them and adapt them to their
own wants. But he saw in the spirit of the Scribes the
evil of teaching that any arbitrarily imposed outward
act can in itself please God; and, in regard to such, the
whole emphasis of his teaching was, "These ought ye to
have done, and not to have left the other undone." He
quoted firom the prophets habitually, "I will have mercy
and not sacrifice."
Such is the genius of Christianity, - of Christianity as
it came from its Founder, - the religion which is said to
have ripened into the medieval theology and the Roman
hierarchy. Too little, indeed, has this genius of Christianity been regarded! The old Judaic spirit which
brought Jesus to the cross has, among Protestants  as
well as Catholics, too often crucified the Christianity of
Christ. Human metaphysics have been put into creeds
and catechisms.  Sects have been founded and built up
on the importance attached to the form of a rite as a
part of essential Christianity. Disputes have raged which
the traditions of the Church and the letter of Scripture
have failed to settle, and about which Jesus, if teaching
among us, would not waste a minute's breath.
If further proof were wanting of the breadth and spirituality of Jesus' view, it might be found in the fact that he
was brought to the cross by the pro-Judaism party. His
friends would interpret him differently from his enemies.
The universality and spirituality of his aim were not at
once apprehended by his followers. Their very trust in
him would make them slow to perceive his radical meaning; for, to impute to him what was in his mind, would
seem to be distrust. They would put a limited construc 
THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
tion upon what he said. It would be otherwise with his
enemies, who would be sharp and quick to see the full
extent to which his words would carry him.
The movement of Jesus, then, may be called revolutionary, not in the sense of aiming directly at political
revolution, but in the sense of his expecting to found a
free, spiritual, and universal religion, which would uproot
and remove in time the partial religions, Judaism included.
Still he designed to connect himself with the Old Dispensation. He recognized the Divine mission of Moses
and the Providential office of the prophets in preparing for
him. In the expectations which they fostered there was
something true as well as something false. When they
depicted a glorious and happy political condition of the
Jewish nation under the Messiah as an earthly king, Jesus
must have regarded them as being in error. We find
him pronouncing John the Baptist the greatest of the
prophets of the old order, and declaring that the least in
the kingdom of heaven was greater than he; and the reason is shown by the context of the words (Matt. xi.) to be
that John as a Jewish prophet regarded the kingdom of
God in part as a political kingdom. But the fundamental
idea of the Theocracy, that other nations would be united
Fith Israel under the dominion of the One True God, was
one in harmony with Jesus' thought.' This expectation
Jesus regarded it as his mission to realize and fulfil. He
had only to separate from the Theocratic predictions of the
prophets the partial political element, to bring them into
unison with his universal aim.  Whatever in the hitherto
prevailing ideas and hopes was capable of expansion he
absorbed into himself, that it might be given out in a
1 See Noyes's Introduction to his Translation of the Prophets.
285 
286    THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
wider and higher form, and live for ever. A case some what parallel might be found in the changes wrought by
our late war. Those who took a radical view of the issue
of the contest were exposed to the charge of being revo lutionary and destroying the Constitution. They could
reply, "Yes: the issue will be revolutionary.  There will
be a new state of law, and of the relations of the people
in important respects, effected by carrying out fundamental
principles. But those principles were the essence of the
Constitution; and to carry them out is only fully to accomplish its purpose, by annihilating transient provisions at
war with liberty and social justice, and giving scope to the
principles of the Declaration of Independence. We hold
to the Constitution. We have come not to destroy, but to
fulfil." So Jesus Christ came not to destroy all that had
gone before, but to fulfil whatever in it was fundamental
to the Divine purpose in relation to man. In this feeling
of a real connection between his movement and the Hebrew ideas and hopes is to be found the principal explanation of his confining his labors, and those of the apostles
when first sent forth, chiefly to Judea and Galilee. Not
only must his own work be limited in its local scope,for he could not go everywhere, - but the historical basis
of his movement lay in the Hebrew history. Among the
Hebrew people only could he find suitably prepared immediate disciples. Salvation was to be from the Jews. And,
foreseeing that the nation as such would reject him, he
saw that it was essential to the extension among the Gentiles of the truths and hopes he inherited as a Jew, essential to the breaking down of the partition wall which now
kept out the true doctrine of God firom the heathen world,
that he should come to a distinct issue with the Jewish 
THE AIMS AND HOPE OF JESUS.
authorities, and make it clear and notorious that it was
the narrow spirit of Pharisaism and legal formality which
crucified him. (If he were lifted up, he would draw all
men to him.) And firom the first the ruling sect, with
the acute instinct of self-interest, discerned the revolutionary character of his movement, - that it elevated man
above the Jew, and struck at the root of the idolized
Hebrew pre-eminence.
I pass now to a more subtle hypothesis, that Jesus
expected to establish the Theocratic empire by angelic
assistance on occasion of his return to earth, which would
occur at the same time with the great outward change of
the world. It is founded on such passages as this: "For
the Son of Man is to come in the glory of his Father, with
his angels; and then he will render to every one according
to his works." (Matt. xvi. 27. Comp. Matt. xiii. 41, and
xxvi. 29-60.)  It is thus stated by Strauss: 1 "He waited
for a signal from his heavenly Father, who alone knew
the time of this catastrophe; and he was not disconcerted
when his end approached without his having received
the expected intimation." His Messianic hope was not
political or even earthly. He referred its ffulfilment to a
supermundane theatre.
Strauss speaks of Jesus' hope as corresponding with
the MIessianic ideas of the Jews. It took its form from
those ideas. Scherer also represents Jesus' idea of the
kingdom as wholly Apocalyptic. The jfirst criticism to be
made upon this hypothesis is, that a Theocratic idea arising out of the Jewish expectations and conformed to them
could not dispense with all thought of earthly conflict.
i Life of Jesus, Part II. ~ 66. The charge of enthusiasm is retained, but
not discussed, in his Life of Christ for the German people.
287' 
288      THE AIJ[ AND HOPE  OF JE,7US.
The struggle could not have been altogether upon a supermundane theatre, nor the triumph of the Messiah achieved
without common warlike agencies.  The common Jewish
idea was founded on the language of some Hebrew prophets,
and appears in the Apocalyptic writings of Clhrist's age;
and his own mind in cherishing the hope attributed to him
must have quite surrendered itself to the popular expectation. This expectation supposed some outward conflict as
the occasion of supernatural interference. Nor do I know
any ground for thinking that in Christ's time the Jews
expected the Messiah to prevail with angelic aid without
a conflict of arms. Whoever will read Ezekiel and Daniel
will see that those prophets expected a contest on earth
with earthly weapons, as the occasion for the intervention
of Jehovah. And whoever will read the wars of the
Maccabees will see how Jewish courage, fired with the
expectation of celestial assistance, never stopped to compare the apparent strength of the respective forces.  Nor
did the Apocalyptic seers dismiss this thought of earthly
battle. The book of Enoch speaks of the unconverted
as delivered at the judgment into the hands of the righteous, whose horses shall wade in the blood of sinners,
and whom the angels shall come to help.1 The Apocalypse of the New Testament presents the picture of the
Messiah as mounted on a white horse, and riding forth to
judge and make war; and the comment of Dr. Noyes on
this and similar passages is that, in the mind of the writer,
there was to be war in heaven and upon earth, before
Christ should reign in final triumph.2  This theory has no
distinctive character without supposing the angels acting
1 Book of Enoch, Dillman, ch. 100.
2 Rev. xix. 11; comp. Christian Examiner, May, 1860, p. 382. 
THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
)n the st.age of sense and time, and giving the Hebrews the
victory. With this expectation is probably connected the
"sign from heaven" demanded of Jesus by the Pharisees,
a sign which should stimulate Hebrew faith to irresistible
warlike ardor. The unconverted were to be vanquished
by some mysterious exercise of Messianic power. Hence
many were not satisfied with Christ's miracles; not that
they disputed their reality, but as being not decisive of
his Messianic character. Now, if this had been the
thought of Jesus, he would have been disposed to seek an
occasion for such interference from on high. It is true, in
saying this, we say he must have given himself up to the
enthusiasm which so often fanatically manifested itself in
his age, and was always ready to break forth. But the idea
supposed, when one's whole being was yielded to it,- as
Jesus did yield his whole being to the ideas which possessed him, -could not have stopped short of practical
action. He must have been prepared in his thought to act
with fanaticism.  Strauss says, "He did not try to bring
about all this by his own will; but awaited a signal from
his heavenly Father." The actual Jesus did undoubtedly
as Strauss says; but the supposed Jesus would have at
some time believed the signal to be given. The idea, and
the sort of faith in supernatural aid which accompanied
it, would lead him to think the moment had come for this
demonstration.  "If such were the ideal of Jesus in fact,
why did he not seek to realize it at once? Why did he
prefer the way of renunciation and self-sacrifice to the
possession of the kingdoms of the world? Why,'in the
place of the Son of Man, have we not a Mahomet six
hundred years in advance."  The logical and necessary
result of belief in his Messiahship, and of faith in this sort
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290     THE ALIM  AND HOPE OF JESUS.
of supernatural aid in realizing it, was that he should
bring about an occasion for this demonstration. It was an
encounter with the Romans, in the hope that Jehovah and
the angels would fight for God's people, and be more than
strong enough against all odds.  "The Messianic Theocracy could not exist as a Roman province." 1 But Jesus
studiously avoids conflict with Rome. Besides, the second
part of the temptation of Christ sets aside at once this
ideal. His early consciousness of wonderful power had
not the effect of disposing his mind favorably toward
such Jewish Messianic ideas. That consciousness tended
rather to spiritualize his thought: we may say, it subdued
him. It made his whole feeling moderate, and his whole
thought wise and temperate. This is a very remarkable
part of the representation of him by the evangelists.
But, secondly, I will now suppose the expectation of
Jesus to have been purified from every notion of warlike
action. The regeneration (palingenesia) was to be not
a political revolution, but a renovation of the earth and
the heavens, attended by a resurrection of the dead, of
whom the accepted were to dwell with Christ in the renovated world, -not the present earth, but the earth restored, - and that his presence and return were to be
visible. This is his coming with the angels to set up his
kingdom and to reign.
I. The very language which this hypothesis is adopted
to explain, taken in its proper sense, proves too much.
Jesus was to be a king on the renewed earth, yet his
kingdom was to be different from those of this world. "It
is not," he says, " of this world." It is a real kingdom as
much as that of David; but it is not to be a worldly rule
1 Hlase's Life of Jesus. 
THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
on the one hand, nor a purely spiritual rule on the other.
It is political, and not political. According to the writer
of the Apocalypse, whose views are supposed to have been
sanctioned by Jesus, this king must reign until he has
put all enemies under his feet. When the kingdom is
consummated, he is to surrender it to his Father. The
hypothesis under consideration represents the kingdom as
to be consummated at the time of the world-catastrophe
which, with the second or real coming of Jesus as Messiah,
will occur, according to the alleged words of Christ himself,
immediately after the destruction of the city. Why shall
not the kingdom be given up immediately to the Father?
This king in "the proper sense," and in no purely spiritual
sense, who comes visibly, will have no occasion for a
reign in the proper sense of the word.   Strauss says,
"Jesus expected to restore the throne of David, and
with his disciples to govern a liberated people. But in
no degree did he rest his hopes on the sword of his
adherents, but on the legions of angels which the Father
would send him. He was not disconcerted when his end
approached without the kingdom having come. It would
come with his return." But how when he returned was
the throne of David to be restored, and a proper, literal
reign to exist, and not a mere spiritual reign? This king
has no business to perform: his work is all accomplished
immediately by a stupendous miracle. And he and his
apostles have nothing to do but to sit on idle thrones, or
to feast at tables loaded with luxuries which are at the
same time mundane and supermundane; to enjoy a sensual paradise, which differs from a Mohammedan paradise
only in that it does not consist of the coarsest forms of
sensual life. They are to partake of an actual wine, a
291 
292    THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
fruit of the vine,- a new kind of wine; to observe the
passover with supermundane food, but food pleasurable
to the taste. This Jesus is thought to have expected
and promised.' I sometimes think this attempt to find
a half-way doctrine of Jesus' expectation concerning the
future ascribes to him an apocalypticism more inept and
fatuous than that of the Jews themselves.  It attempts to
unite the contradictory. It cannot be stated by Strauss
in any thing like the literal sense of the passages on
which it is founded, without supposing something of that
political element which it is designed to exclude; or else
entirely dropping that relation to Jewish hopes to which
it is believed to owe its origin, and thus leaving it unexplained. For, if Jesus gave up all expectation whatever
of a kingdom of this world, we have no occasion for a
visible return.
II. The second objection to this view is that it is
incompatible with the most important expressions and
opinions of Jesus.
1. The kingdom is to come with the world-catastrophe;
and the King is then to come in some mysterious manner
on the clouds of heaven. How, then, could Jesus say the
kingdom of God cometh not with observation? Could
any political kingdom arise in a more outwardly striking
manner? How does that saying of Christ comport with
his promising a literal miraculous light in the heaven
(ilatt. xxiv. 30) which shall betoken his own coming
and the great world-change? That form of coming with
a precursive sign in the heaven is just what  he  contradicted.  Such a kingdom would come with a sign
which could be watched for,- a sign very different from
1 See Renan's Life of Jesus, first edition. 
THIE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
those signs of the time, the moral indications, which a
spiritual insight might discern. How could he say the
kingdom of God was among them already, if it were yet
to come at the time of the great world-change? How
could he say to Caiaphas: "Yes, I am the Messiah; and
moreover from this moment you shall see the Son of
Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming on
the clouds of heaven"?  It was equivalent to saying, "You
have arrested me, you have already doomed me to death.
But I am the Anointed of God to introduce the new
spiritual kingdom of Humanity; and, from this moment
in which you decree my death, my cause takes a Divine
impulse, and my purpose strides on to the triumph God
has destined for it."
2. This expectation is incompatible with what he says
on other topics related to the kingdom, the resurrection,
and the future life. This expectation implies the Apocalyptic view of the resurrection. The Messiah was to come
to raise the dead. (The Christian world has generally
entertained the same view.) The visible return and the
resurrection coexisted, probably, in Jesus' mind. If he
held the one, he held the other. The two opinions were
Siamese twins, connected by a vital bond; separate them
and you would kill them both. But Jesus gave a view
of the resurrection and the future life totally different
from the Apocalyptic one.  He taught the continuance of
life. His argument with the Sadducees proves that doctrine, or it amounts to nothing. God is the God not of
the dead, but of the living. The Rich Man and Lazarus,
of the parable, are already in a future state of retribution.
He who believes on him has " already passed from death
unto life." Jesus could not suppose that one who had
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294     THE AIM ANVD HIIOPE OF JESUS.
received from him the quickening of spiritual life could
pass into the under-world, and grope as a shade in the
intermediate state.  "Whosoever liveth and believeth in
him shall never die." Now, to one who is satisfied that
Jesus was emancipated from the doctrine of an inter mediate state, it must be evident that he could not have
held the Apocal3Ttic notion resting on it of a raising of
the dead at the coming of the Messiah, and could not
have held to the visible coming of the Messiah who was
to come to do that very thing.
The same observation is to be made of the judgment.
Jesus shows himself emancipated from the common notion
of the judgment, and of a future simultaneous judgmentday.  He that believeth on him is not judged.  He that
believeth not is judged already, in that he has not believed in the only-begotten Son of God. God sent him
not to judge or to punish the world, but to save it. The
judgment of the world is not to be exclusively at a
remote day. It has begun. It is now. Christ says, Now
is the judgment of this world; now is the Prince of this
world to be cast out; now, when Jesus is about to consummate by dying the moral means of that result. Jesus
is not to be a personal Judge of men at a remote time.
His principles are for ever to judge men, to judge them
finally. Not himself as the personal Logos, or as the reappearing Messiah, is to judge men, but "the word he has
spoken." These thoughts in the fourth Gospel must have
come from Jesus, not from the writer, who shows himself
in places not emancipated from the view of his time.
3. The doctrine of Christ's expectation which I am
considering is not congruous with the means which he
contemplates for accomplishing his work, and with the 
THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
view he took of the progress of his kingdom, and of the
moral duties and retributions of Humanity.  Nothing is
clearer than that his kingdom of God was to be a communion of men on earth bound together by the same
consciousness of the heavenly Father. It was to extend
into another life. But it was to spread more and
more widely, and subdue the world to his spiritual
dominion. By moral influence he is to be King. This
communion is to be the salt of the earth, the light of the
world. It is to extend its influence by holy example, by
good works. He will be in spirit with the apostles and
with his church.  He trains them to carry on his work,
and tells them to preach the good news to all nations.
He does this as if'founding a work which shall go on
indefinitely. He declares early, in a discourse designed
to explain his kingdom, that the law shall not pass away;
that it shall in its moral requirements be all realized.
Heaven and earth shall not pass away until all shall be.
And he directs his disciples to pray as much as for daily
bread that God's kingdom may come, and that God's
will may be done on earth as it is done in heaven. Is
it possible that this teacher expects all this to be closed
in thirty or forty years, by a violent catastrophe, and by
the substituting of a universal miracle for this moral in strumentality? He says it is not the Father's will that
one of the lowliest shall perish. Did he mean to limit
the opportunity of salvation for the race to forty years,
and to consign to the torment of Gehenna all who did
not accept the new truth in that time? And all this
impossibility is heightened by the nature of some of those
parables in which he treated of his kingdom. "If the
kingdom of God were to be established by an irresistible
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miracle, on a fixed day, in a manner so splendid, what
signify those admirable parables of tile m ustard-seed, of
the leaven, of the net, of the grain growing firom itself,
which suppose a development, slow, repelltr, organic, pro  ceeding fi'om an imperceptible point, but endowed with
a Divine vitality, and displaying successively its latent
energies?" I Besides, no one ever more strictly enjoined
the duties of life, the everlasting obligations. He con  templates such duties as are to be done in such a world as
ours was then and is now, as the essential sphere in which
the heavenly spirit must be formed in man. His prin ciple of final judgment is, "Inasmuch as ye have done
the duties of Humanity unto your fellow-men, ye have
done them unto me. Come, ye blessed of my Father."
Could that teacher suppose that the opportunity for per forming such duties would cease for ever before the last
of his apostles should have died? Could he think that
within that time the destinies of Humanity as he knew it
would be closed?
These are the principal reasons which determine me to
believe that Jesus did not expect to return visibly to raise
the dead, judge the world, and be the head of an external Theocratic kingdom on the renewed earth.  What,
then, shall be said of the language which appears to
express that opinion? "Ye shall drink the wine new
with me  in my  Father's kingdom."  "Ye shall sit on
thirones judging the twelve tribes of Israel," &c.  Two
considerations are to be kept in sight in establishing the
views and expectations of Jesus: first, that lie used this
languhage - so far as he used it - in a figuriative sense, to
represent spiritual and providential facts as he conceived
1 R6ville, Review of Renan's Life of Jesus. 
THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
them; second, that the evangelists may have sometimes
given to his language a precision and a connection which
did not belong to it, as delivered.  That he could not
have employed this language as it is reported to us, in its
literal and proper sense, is to my mind a necessary coInviction in the premises.  This would suppose that  he
entertained two orders of conceptions, which were opposed
to one another, with a clear profound conviction, and gave
them as revelations of God: one his spiritual and rational
beliefs; the other his Apocalyptic beliefs. This supposition is the vice of Renan's seventeenth chapter. The
language of the Apocalyptic beliefs Jesus might use to
some extent as a vehicle for conveying the spiritual and
rational to others;  and  the most explicit language in
which he conveyed his spiritual beliefs, so far as it was
retained in their feebler minds, might be forced into
harmony with their traditional opinions. But that in
Jesus' mind, so original, so manifestly filled with firesh
thought on every theme of Providence and man, these
spiritual apprehensions of a kingdom or communion of
God which should act under and within the state, renovating human life and society; of a Messiah who by such
a kingdom should fulfil the missionary function of Israel
to the race of man; of a resurrection which should be the
uninterrupted continuance of the blessed life, or an immediate renewal of the sense of wasted opportunity and
law violated on earth; of a judgment both immediate and
continual of every soul despising the truth revealed to it;
of a retribution to civil societies according to Divine law,
-should arise as original conceptions, be held with firm
decisive grasp, be of the essence of his instruction, and
so pronounced in him that our most advanced modern
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298     THE AIM AN.TD HOPE OF JESUS.
thought is but the distant echo of his profound and distinct enunciations; and that at the same time he should
hold those Apocalyptic traditions, of a visible coming,
of a Theocratic throne before whose splendor that of
Cesar would fade away, of a simultaneous resurrection
and judgment,- hold them in unimpaired conviction,
as truths to be solemnly insisted upon as a part of his
revelation, -this, it seems to me, comes as near a psychological contradiction as we can well conceive.  And
besides, if Jesus had clung to those beliefs as Divine convictions, the language ascribed to him would have had the
unity of that of the Epistles and the Apocalypse on this
subject. We should not be perplexed with apparent contradictions. As it is, we are obliged to use those words
which inculcate his spiritual thought for explaining that
part of his language which is conformed to Jewish conceptions.
But, it is said, this language would naturally create misunderstanding, and that it is too bold to be taken in a
figurative sense. In regard to the misunderstanding of
it, let it be said, if we suppose a mind inspired by God to
see far deeper and further than its contemporaries, it must
be liable to be misunderstood in proportion to the poverty of the vernacular language. Jesus' inspiration and
insight gave his speech a character such as the highest
poetic endowment always gives, and made it bold. It is
not to be forgotten that he belonged to the east and to
the people who have given us the Old Testament prophecies. The boldest tropes were natural to him. In moments of strong moral excitement, they fly from him aF
sparks from the flint or lightning from the charged cloud
It exposes him to the charge of mysticism. We forget 
THE AIM AND  LOPE OF JESUS.
that he was not a lecturer, a systematic teacher; but
a prophet, a converser in the streets, a popular teacher,
a poet sent from God to re-create humanity. Necessity
concurred with inspiration to make his speech tropical
and often liable to be misapprehended. He was obliged
to use images and terms which the people and the schools
applied to the Messiah in order to claim, as he meant to
claim, a predetermined, providential connection with Hiebrew history and hope.  When he said to Pilate, "I am
a king," it was a truth; but it was a trope. "I am the
bread of life,"- a truth, but a trope. "I am come to
send a sword on the earth, not peace;" "This cup of
wine is my blood sealing the new covenant," - truths,
but compact with the boldest tropes. When he said, "I
am the Messiah," it was a truth, but a trope. It was
liable to be misunderstood; but, without it, it was impossible that he should be understood. He saw Satan,
after the seventy returned from their mission and related
their success, "falling like lightning from heaven." If he
foresaw political revolutions which would occur within a
generation, and believed they would be employed by Providence to further the establishment of his principles or kingdom, which would then reach a point from which it would
be evident, to a sympathizing mind quick to catch the
glimpses of a new day, that they would become dominant
in humanity, would it be too bold a figure for him to say,
"The coming of the Son of Man will be as the lightning
which shoots from horizon to horizon," or too bold a figure
to describe those precursive overturns and downfalls of
the old in language borrowed from Isaiah and Joel, the
prophets whom he loved and knew by heart? Might he
not believe, identifying his religion and the Divine spirit
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800    THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS
which would spread it, that at the time of these changes,
conspiring providentially with the labors of apostles and
evangelists, his voice would call the chosen, those prepared by mental and moral affinity, to the new life-work,
to the new order of things; that his call to his own
would be like the supposed call of the last trumpet summoning them to come into a spiritual communion of
blessed work, and blessed hope? These figures were
naturally, almost inevitably, formed in these circum
stances.
He used the language given him in the speech of his
time in a figurative sense, partly because of the want of
proper terms suited to his purpose, and partly because as
a popular teacher, desirous to impress the common mind,
he could not sacrifice all the associations connected with
that. But we often find in proximity with it words of
his own, or something in the occasion, which he might ex pect to constrain the listeners to reflect that he was speaking figuratively; as John vi., "My words, they are spirit
and they are life," and the reply Luke xxii. 38, to the information, here are two swords, "It is enough."  Were the
accounts more full, it is fair to suppose we might have
more such expressions. They would not be so likely to
be remembered as the striking, figurative words.
There are words of Christ at the Last Supper which
seem to me to have occasioned quite unnecessary perplexity.  "I say unto you I will not henceforth drink of
the firuit of the vine until that day when I drink it new
with you in my Father's kingdom." They were the spontaneous outflow of mingled sadness, affection, and hope.
He might expect them to be interpreted to his disciples
by his situation, by all he had said of leaving them, and
a 
THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
by his habit-of conveying spiritual thought under the
sensuous images suggested by the moment.  They referred to the kingdom he died to establish.  They were
as natural as to say, "Where two or three are gathered
together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."
But they have been a stumbling-block to students whom
we should have expected to be able better to orient
themselves in the Master's genius and style.
Colani has spent a page to ridicule it, and show that it
is not fit for its place.' Yet a similar figure is used by
occidental preachers, who would not expect to be reproached for coarseness. A young minister on an occasion not unlike that on which Jesus sat with his disciples
- occurring as did that passover in the midst of sacrifice
and revolution, the Thanksgiving day celebrated after the
close of our great war, in our land at once so afflicted
and so blessed - addressed his hearers, some of whom had
lost sons or brothers in camp or field, in figurative but
very appropriate and touching language, in which we may
suppose he felt the inspiration of his Master's words at the
last meal. It was to the effect that, although those who
had fallen in the strife could no more partake with us in
the bounty with which the Thanksgiving table would be
spread, they would in all future festivals be with us in
spirit, and rejoice in the blessings ever more and more to
be realized which had been purchased by their sacrifices
for our disinthralled country.
Nor do I see any better cause of the offence which is
taken at the language ascribed to Jesus in Matt. xix. 28,
in the offer of thrones: "In the regeneration, when the
Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also
1 Jesus Christ and the Messianic Beliefs of his Time.
301 
802    THE AIMf AND HOPE OF JESUS.
shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of
Israel." Let us think how Jesus must have longed to
communicate his thought and his hope to those chosen
ones; how he would not be willing to drive them away
by his very greatness as he sometimes drove away the
careless and cavilling; how his mind, if he were a human
being and not an automaton, would alternate between the
sternest truth-speaking and the necessity of coming closer
to them, and giving them hope, and lifting them a little
nearer to himself; how like the mother bird, enticing her
brood to their first flight, and finding he had at one moment
gone beyond them, he would come back, and alight on a
point nearer to their apprehension, that he might tempt
them to use the untried pinions of their thought, -and
we need have no difficulty in seeing that he meant thrones
of moral power. I do not know how those men received
it; but I do not believe they thought then of political
power. If, after Jesus left them, they recalled this and
every other such expression as a means of nourishing the
hope of an Apocalyptic return and kingdom, the great
Teacher and Comforter was not accountable for that perversion.
Jesus' language, then, can be explained without supposing him to have expected visibly to return after death
to erect a kingdom of God of which he should be the
visible head.
The result of our inquiries is, that Jesus did not aim at
any political sovereignty, that he rose by the force of the
special endowment of his nature above the Apocalyptic
superstition of his age, and that he looked and labored
immediately for the moral and spiritual renovation of
humanity on this earth. He claimed to be a Messiah; 
THE AAIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
not a Messiah after the Jewish conceptions, but a man
anointed and endowed of God, to perfect by the manifestation of the Divine in the human, the means of this
moral renovation of humanity. He regarded the spiritual
Messiahship as a divinely appointed means to this end.
He aspired to spiritual rule for no end but this, and his
aspiration was disinterested, godlike. It has been said
that he was ambitious, though it is allowed that his ambition was the most elevated. And he has been compared
with disadvantage to Socrates, whose ambition, it is
said, was "to serve without reignif7g," while that of Jesus
was "to reign by serving," and the former is justly thought
to be the nobler purpose. It is no time to institute a
comparison between Jesus and Socrates. I have no wish
to disparage the great Pagan. I will allow Grote's estimate, that the Apology as given by Plato is the speech of
one who deliberately foregoes the immediate purpose of a
defence, the persuasion of his judges; who speaks for posterity without regard to his own life. The aim of Socrates
was disinterested, but not so elevated as that of Jesus.
The aim of Socrates belonged to the realm of the understanding; the aim of Jesus, to the realm of the Spirit.
They both took delight in the exercise of their gift: this
is innocent, when not an exclusive motive; but Socrates
more consciously sought this delight than Jesus. No selfabnegation can be conceived more entire than that of the
Christ as represented by the evangelists with every mark
of truth. He sought to reign only as all seek to reign who
put forth their powers to assist the development of other
minds. He would reign only so, and so far, as this mig,ht
be to serve his race.  He had no ambition.  His purpose
was not to reign by serving, but to reign that he might
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304    THE AIM AND HOPE OF JESUS.
serve. Hle respected the freedom of the mind. ITe ap
pealed to reason and conscience. He claimed authority
in the name of reason and conscience, and believed that
he thus claimed it in the name of God. And if his reign
has been more extensive, more durable, and more beneficent than that of others, it is because he has acted by the
highest kind and with the largest measure of truth and
life, on the highest powers and tendencies of man.
Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son.