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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Gift of

LOUIS M. RABINOWITZ

CHRISTIANITY

MODERN INFIDELITY.

CHRISTIANITY

MODERN INFIDELITY,

RELATIVE INTELLECTUAL CLAIMS

COMPARED.

BY THE
REV. R. W. MORGAN,
PERPETUAL CURATE OF TREGYNON, MONTGOMERYSHIRE, AUTHOR OI
"THE VERITIES OF THE CHURCH," U VINDICATION OF
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND," ETC., ETC.

WITH AN INDEX,
I'KEPAKKD FOlt TIIE AMERICAN EDITION.

NEW YORK :
DANIEL DANA, .Ih., asi MIOADWAY.
l.s.VJ.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859,
By DANIEL DANA, Jr.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern
District of New York.

Mpd53

1^2-

PREFACE

The following work contains the substance of cer
tain conversations between a person of property and
position professing Infidel principles and the author,
on the relative intellectual merits of Christianity and
modern Infidelity.
The larger number of works published in vindica
tion of Christianity labor under one of two defects.
The first is, the Christianity they defend is not de
fined. The reader not being put in possession of the
specific data of the question at issue, rises after their
perusal as ignorant as ever of what Christianity is,
or of what constitutes Infidelity. This vagueness
and uncertainty takes away from the sectarian works
on this subject, which have fallen under the author's
observation, all value as defences of Christianity.
The second is found in those publications which,
assuming to defend Christianity against aggression
or corruption from one quarter, rely upon arguments

VI PREFACE.
which are retorted upon it with deadly effect from
opposite but not less dangerous antagonisms. The
ultra-Protestant controversialist, whose mind or lim
ited sphere of view incapacitates him from taking in
the whole bearings of the subject, habitually urges,
as he thinks against Eome, arguments of a nature
to subvert, not Kome, but Christianity and the
Scriptures themselves. "Works of this description,
indiscriminately destructive of both the substance
and corrupt additions of Christianity, teem from the
press and supply the unbelieving with some of their
most specious objections, especially against the Scrip
tures. It is observable, also, that in many of these works
the points selected for vindication bear so slightly,
or not at all, on the doubts of gravest import in the
minds of unbelievers, that, by appearing to ignore
the real difficulties of the subject, the writers rather
confirm than confute the Infidelity they combat.
The Author, in attempting to avoid these errors,
may possibly have fallen into the commission of
others not less grave. He has, however, done his
best to keep himself clear of such an imputation ;
whether successfully or not must be left to the judg
ment of his reader.
The Orthodox Faith vindicated in this work is
strictly that of the Anglo-Catholic Church of England,

PREFACE. Vll
as defined by the Standard common to herself and
the whole of Catholic Christendom.
The Author feels that unless we can demonstrate
that Infidelity, with all the intellect it can command,
has no chance, on an appeal to sense and reason, of
standing its ground against Christianity, we must
either confess it as rational to be Infidels as Chris
tians, or we must accept that form of Christianity
which insists on the entire surrender of our reason
to the fiat of its own authority. It is in this latter
position that the Church of Kome, through the
medium of certain of her most eminent theologians,
is desirous to place every Christian not within her
own pale. She would persuade us that as a rational
system Christianity is not maintainable ; that we
have no alternative than to be Infidels if we follow
Reason, or members of her community if we follow
Faith. As a protest against so unseemly an assump
tion, as well as in the hope of calling back attention
from petty religious differences to those great doc
trines of Christ, which, before Rome had added a
single figment of her own to the Catholic Faith,
overthrew the organized Infidelity of the ancient
heathen world, these papers are respectfully submit
ted to the consideration of the public.
As the principles of Infidelity are unfortunately
not confined to any one class of society, the coiuposi-

Vlll PREFACE
tion has been made as plain, and the diction as little
technical, as the nature of the subjects under discus
sion admitted. The purport of the work will be well
answered if it convinces even a single mind, among
either rich or poor, of the utter falsehood and hol-
lowness of that system of " swelling words" which, as
Modern Unbelief, presumes to impeach the Divine
origin of the religion of Christ, and substitue a claim
of its own to the allegiance of educated and enlight
ened intellect.
Bognoe, August 26, 1864^

CHRISTIANITY

MODERN INFIDELITY.

CHRISTIAN. INFIDEL.
INFIDEL.
I have, you see, surrounded myself with the pro
ductions of those able minds which, with myself,
reject intellectual allegiance to Christianity — Strauss,
Fichte, Martineau, Carlyle, Froude, Emerson, Par
ker, Hennell, Newman, and others, who, though not
all on the same grounds, concur in the conclusion
that the Scriptures are not inspired, nor the religion
of the Scriptures to be accepted as of divine origin
and force. This opinion constitutes what you, as
a Christian, term infidelity. The question at issue
between us is, Which of these two, Infidelity or
Christianity — pure reason, or intellect, being judge — :
is the truth of God, of nature, and of the soul ? In
what order shall we conduct our discussion ?
Christian. In any way most satisfactory to your
own judgment.
Inf. I propose, then, first to examine the validity
or. nullity of such objections against Christianity

2 SUBJECT O"? DETSATR.
as, advanced by others, have produced the deepest
impression on my own mind. Secondly, that we
investigate such of the main doctrines of Christianity
as in the greatest degree shock and offend my intel
lect. And lastly, that we confront the principal
features of Christianity with those of Infidelity, and
pronounce which of the two best entitles itself to the
verdict of sense and reason.
Chr. I doubt the feasibility, in a discussion of this
nature, of observing such order, without constantly
fusing these three considerations in one and the same
examination of a subject. We will, however, as well
as we may, adhere to it generally.
Inf. I then, being an infidel, am to consider my
self at liberty to use arguments of every fair and
honorable description, and from every armory, against
the religion you profess, without being chargeable
with the remotest intention of wounding your feel
ings, or paining the conscientious sensibilities of your
co-religionists. Chr. Certainly — it is a passage of arms in the
court of reason.
Inf. I may assault you thus in front, flank, or
rear, with weapons and engines of contrary species
and effect. The victory, if gained, must be acknowl
edged as such by the defeated party, be it effected
by one, or any, or all united, of these hostile
appliances. Chr. Agreed.
Inf. Then again, I being infidel — that is, no
believer in Christianity — may combat under any
standard I please, provided it be not Christian ; for

SUBJKCT OF DEBATE. 3
all standards not Christian are infidel. You, on the
other hand, being not only Christian, but a Christian
of a certain Church, must hoist the flag of that Church
only. You must not assume at one moment the
uniform and password of the Church of England,
then in repelling an attack the Church of England is
impotent to sustain, adopt the arms and cry of Kome ;
or, vice versa, when mere Protestantism breaks down,
throw yourself on Church principles ; or, when Church
principles explode, save yourself by flight behind the
platitudes, of Protestantism. Nor in your advocacy
of Christianity must you, to serve different designs,
propose it to me — now in the character of a Catholic,
then of a Presbyterian, presently of a spiritual phi
lanthropist — nor still less sink and ignore to-day,
against an external foe, the very doctrines you chiefly
allege and depend upon for successful resistance to
morrow, on different grounds, against an internal
seceder or Nonconformist.
Chr. I concede all this.
Inf. It is fair you should. For if I hear an indi
vidual on one occasion at Exeter Hall, in some mis
sionary meeting, describing Christianity as " covering
the earth as the waters do the sea," and drawing all
nations, kindred, and languages in the train of its
triumphs, to suit his special convenience then — and
I hear the same individual on another occasion, for
some other convenience, proclaim the Church of
Christ to be still, in the nineteenth century, only '' a
little and despised flock," I can only suppose such a
person to be void of either sense or principle, or such
Christianity to be not worth confutation. But this

SUBJECT OF DEBATE.

expedient is, I regret to observe, a common trick
with your orators and writers. They play fast and
loose with their religion in such a way, that it would
baffle the most patient inquirer to discover what their
religion is. Thus, if I address a Protestant, "Sir,
the great principle of Protestantism is, that every
person should have the right of interpreting the
Scriptures according to his or her private judgment,"
he will warmly assent, and add, that " such religious
liberty is the most glorious privilege of Englishmen."
If I proceed to exercise my Protestant right, " my
glorious privilege," by interpreting certain portions
of these Scriptures in a sense opposed to his own, I
find him a very Proteus — he is no longer a Protes
tant, but a bigoted sectarian, intolerant of all other
interpretations than his own ; or a rigid, intractable
High Churchman, commanding me to bow my re
bellious neck to the authority of the public judg
ment of the Church. You will understand that infi
delity may converse with such persons, but to reason
with them, seeing they are their own contradictories
and the refutations of their own principles, would
be entirely supererogatory. ISTow what banner of
Christianity do you raise, and under which alone do
you engage in these lists against the shock of infi
delity ?
Chr. The banner of the Church of England.
Inf. Yes. But again, High Church or Low
Church? Chr. Is the Church the priesthood, or is it the
priesthood and people united ?
Inf. The priesthood and people in one body.

PRELIMINARY INQUIRY. 5
Chr. Then the banner of the Church of England,
as a Church, must be one to whose inscription and
motto, clergy and laity are alike sworn ?
Inf. Clearly.
Chr. The banner of the Church of England, then,
under which I am content to come into collision with
infidelity, is that of " The Scriptures and the three
Creeds — the Apostles', the Nicene, and the Atha-
nasian." Inf. Let our preliminary discussion be confined
then to this point. But why do you select the
Scriptures and the three Creeds, and not the Ar
ticles, for the standard of the Church of England ?
Chr. Because, as you affirmed, not the clergy
alone, but the clergy and laity, as one indivisible
body, constitute the Church ; the Articles, binding
the clergy alone, cannot be such standard — the
Scriptures, and the three Creeds professed in public
liturgy by the mouths of both clergy and laity, thus
binding both, must, of the whole Church, be the one
common standard — and this is the standard I elevate
against you.
Inf. Solely because it is the standard of your
Church ? For no other reason ?
Chr. It is the standard of the Church of England,
because it is the standard of the orthodox faith of
Christ and Christendom. By it the Church of Eng
land is part integral of that Catholic Apostolical
Church, which in all ages has been the trustee and
depository of the orthodox faith. Whether, there
fore, you consider and deal with it as the criterion of
the orthodox faith in Christendom at large, or in

b piii-.r.iMiNAiiy inquiry.
England in particular, is immaterial. The banner is
one and the same.
Inf. Here, then, our outposts must begin the
battle. You use the term Orthodox Faith. What
is this Orthodox Faith ?
Chr. Cannot you define it ?
Inf. I — an infidel ?
Chr. It appears to me that an infidel ought to be
able most accurately to define the propositions, as to
the truth of which he professes himself an infidel.
If, in ordinary life, I affirm I do not believe such-and-
such a report, I am expected to be able to state
clearly what the report is which I do not believe.
You cannot, I conceive, until you have yourself
defined the Orthodox Faith, profess yourself an
infidel in it, for you cannot clearly know in what
you are an infidel.
Inf. But supposing I desire to be an orthodox
Christian, how am I, among the multitudinous sects
of Christianity, to discover the Orthodox Faith ? Not
being able to discover it, I must remain an infidel ;
not in the sense of impugning, but of being utterly
ignorant of true Christianity. What, therefore, again
I ask, is this Orthodox Faith ? for it is evident the
pith of the whole matter is in the Orthodoxy, not
the Faith. The grossest idolater has greater Faith
than most Christians, but he has no Orthodoxy ;
his faith, as you would say, is simply superstition.
So among Christian sects each professes to hold the
orthodox faith, but where is an ignorant infidel to
assure himself of finding it? The Roman Church
avers it one thing — the Greek Church another — the

ST AND A RD OF ORTHODOXY. 7
Anglican Church another : then suddenly starts up a
Wesley, an Irving, a Ronge, claiming its discovery
for the first time by himself. When, therefore, you
quote the Orthodox Faith, may you not as well refer
every man, with his Bible in his hand, to his own
imagination? Is it not a phrase for every one's
opinion in religion, claimed by each for himself, and
conceded by none to his neighbor ? It resembles
the panacea which every empiric advertises as pecu
liarly his own discovery and property ; warning, at
the same time, the world against every competitor in
the same profession as an ignoramus, an impostor, a
non-qualified practitioner. How are we, the igno
rant non-professionals, to decide when such doctors
disagree ?
Chr. Your present argument is unconsciously the
Roman argument as advanced against the Bible.
The Jews say it is one book, the Samaritans another,
the Protestants another, the Mormonites another,
and so forth. Who can tell what the Bible is ?
Inf. And the argument is sound. Who can posi
tively state which is the true Bible, or which is the
orthodox faith ? These fundamentals being uncertain,
your whole religion, it follows, is an uncertainty also.
How can you answer that initial objection?
Chr. As I intend to answer your subsequent ob
jections; by analyzing them, by decomposing them,
by examining what they really amount to. You say
all the different churches differ in their definition ot
the orthodox faith ?
Inf. I do : and is it not a fact?
Chr. Pardon me. It is the reverse. Neither the

8 STANDARD OF ORTHODOXY.
Roman, Greek, Eastern, or Anglican Churches hold
different definitions of the orthodox faith. All hold
the same three Symbola or Creeds of the one faith
in Christ. Ask any member of any one of these
Churches " whether he does not hold any clause you
please to specify in any one of these Creeds as a
divine truth."
Inf. I would ask then a Greek, whether he holds
the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father
and the Son, as interpolated in the Nicene Creed, for
a divine truth ?
Chr. He would certainly answer " Yes." He
would tell you his objection was not to the doctrine,
but to its after insertion as a Western Church inter
polation in a Creed once for all settled and limited.
And with this view many in the Western Church
sympathize, holding at the same time the truth of
such procession in its full integrity. Mention a
second clause.
Inf. I cannot call to mind another.
Chr. There is no other. That is the only shadow,
for it is nothing but a shadow, of difference in the
definition of the Orthodox Faith, as laid clown in
the three Universal Creeds by the whole Catholic
Church of Christ, and accepted and taught by the
same. Inf. Do you mean to say that whoever holds the
three Creeds, the Apostles', the Nicaean, and the
Athanasian, does therein and thereby hold the
Orthodox Catholic faith ?
Chr. Certainly. They are the accepted Creeds of
universal Christendom : to accept them is to accept

STANDARD OF ORTHODOXY. 9
the Orthodox Faith, to reject them is to reject the
Orthodox Faith.
Inf. How then comes Rome to insist upon the
acceptance of another, the Tridentine Creed, as an
essential part of the Orthodox faith ? Ha, how is
that ? and Rome is at least one half of Christendom.
Now what becomes of your non-difference ?
Chr. It is not affected by such a fact, any more
than it would be by your citing the Thirty-nine
Articles of the English Church instead of the Tri
dentine Creed of Rome. Neither the one nor the
other are acknowledged by the rest of Christendom ; '
they are articles partial, not universal. The rest of
Christendom need in no way accept them. Not
accepting them, it remains as Orthodox and Catholic
as ever, because it holds that which held alone and
by themselves, without excrescence or addition, has
always constituted both Orthodoxy and Catholicity — •
the Three creeds. Neither, again, is Rome or Eng
land less orthodox or catholic, because it pleases
them to symbolize or articulize other, as they judge,
divine truths of Revelation. Reject them or accept
them, you are not, provided you stand fast on these
universal Creeds, less or more Orthodox or Catholic.
Inf. But no one can become a minister of the
English Church, unless he accepts the Thirty-nine
Articles. Chr. True.
Inf. Yet you say his acceptance of them does not
make him a whit more orthodox or catholic ?
Chr. It does not. They may confirm him in his
catholicity and orthodoxy, or they may test him in

10 STANDARD OF ORTHODOXY.
them, that's all. They do not bind, nor are they
imposed upon the laity; yet a layman who never
signs them, but repeats as his confession of faith the
Three Creeds in the liturgy of the Church, is as
thoroughly catholic and orthodox as the clergyman
who signs and is bound by them. They might be
added to or entirely cancelled to-morrow, without
affecting the catholicity or orthodoxy of the Church,
always provided the standards of the Universal Faith
remained intact and inviolate.
Inf. That opens a wider view than I anticipated
of the Unity of Christendom in faith.
Chr. We are to debate, at your request, not on
petty, frivolous points of difference, — black gowns or
white gowns, reading or intoning, singing or chanting,
low waistcoats or high waistcoats, — nor upon those
profound, and perhaps unholy speculations about
predestination and free will, reprobation and election,
which are utterly beyond the capacities of limited
beings like ourselves to determine, but on those
great, salient, prominent doctrines of Christianity,
which, as point-blank opposed to heathenism, over
threw Heathenism and the whole heathen Infidelity.
These doctrines thus laid down and accepted by the
universal Church are Catholic as opposed to other
doctrines, which, however true, have not been so laid
down or accepted, and are therefore not Catholic. And
they are orthodox, because the only possible, true,final,
and authoritative construction of the faith, as taught
and delivered from the beginning to the Church
of Christ, must be the construction put upon it and
accepted by such Universal Church of Christ itself.

STANDARD OF ORTHODOXY. 11
These Creeds constitute that construction, and are
therefore Orthodoxy, or the right and true interpre
tation of the faith. They were universally put for
ward from every branch of the Church, as the inter
pretation such branch had from the first admitted
and taught ; they were consequently universally
laid down, and subsequently in their promulgation
universally again received. In other words, the
General Councils did no more in framing them than
give back to Christendom, in a summary form, what
they themselves had from Universal Christendom
brought and received. So far then from no one
knowing what the Orthodox Faith is, no one that at
tends divine worship in our Church need be, or in
deed with common attention can be, ignorant of it.
Inf. But suppose they never attend Church, —
myself for instance ?
Chr. Then in lieu of saying " who can know what
the orthodox faith is ?" you should frankly say, " I
don't wish to know, I don't care to know, and I
won't know what the Orthodox Faith or heterodox
heresy is ; they are all the same to me. I don't care
whether Christendom really holds Unity of Faith at
the bottom of all its different hierarchies or not."
But is it just to say, " Who can know ?" when a very
brief interpellation brings out the great fact, that
nothing is easier than to ascertain that all Christen
dom has one and the same foundation of both Ortho
doxy and Catholicity ? It is not, therefore, every
man's imagination, a phantom in a cloud, metamor
phosing itself to each spectator's fancy ; it is not the
sand, but the pyramid ; not the whirlwind, but the

12 STANDARD OF ORTHODOXY.
rock; not a morass, but a high and very distinct
way ; nothing uncertain, formless, or shifting, but an
indestructible, inerasible seal, always at hand, to be
put, as it were by God Himself, before the eyes of
every one who really desires to see what is "That
truth in Jesus which saves the soul." It is not diffi
cult then to know what the Orthodox Faith is, for it
is not difficult to read and digest the three Creeds of
the Catholic Church.
Inf. It is not so hard, certainly, according to your
explanation ; but a Romanist might give me a very
different explanation. How then am I to decide ?
Chr. No Romanist lives who will not exhort you
to believe and hold these Creeds. Do that first —
being done, other creeds are in my opinion superflu
ous. If he think otherwise, exercise then your own
judgment. But thus far, Anglican, Roman, Greek,
all Christendom agree — to this point all would con
cur in leading you.
Then as to your next assertion, that every man
thinks that he has the orthodox faith whilst at the
same time he refuses to concede the possession of it
to his neighbor ; if it were so, it would only prove
that every man without exception was convinced
there was an orthodox faith, that in his own case at
least there was such a thing as special revelation,
and that for some mysterious reasons God had refused
his neighbor the illumination He had mercifully
granted to him. How would the concession of this
assist your infidelity ? To me it only appears as an
intensified application of a divine truth in our own
favor, a specimen of Judaizing Christianity, an

CATHOLICITY. 13
attempt to roll up the standard of the Church within
some presumed experience of our own. But it has
no relation to infidelity.
Inf. But it staggers an infidel disposed to consider
the truth of Christianity, when its first aspect thus
presents such an infinite variety of individual ortho
doxies, treating every other Christian opinion but his
own as an heterodoxy.
Chr. We said that the whole Church of Christ
had both received and established the Criterion of
Orthodoxy, did we not ?
Inf. Yes.
Chr. No Catholic Churchman dissents from that
criterion. No catholic churchman therefore can
possibly regard any man whatever who holds the
Three Creeds as guilty of heterodoxy. If he did, he
would in that degree swerve from the Church : he
would so far be a dissenter, not a churchman. Your
objection therefore applies simply to schismatics, and
these I must leave to vindicate themselves. It does
not apply to nine-tenths of professing Christians ;
we, for instance, concede orthodoxy to the Roman
and Eastern Churches on the Three Creeds. On the
same creeds they concede it to each other and to us.
These creeds are the criterion, and therefore beyond
them or on one side of them concession or non-con
cession is immaterial. To hold them in common is
to hold the community of the orthodox faith. Even
in the schismatic view therefore the objection mili
tates against infidelity; on the Church view, it is
based on an erroneous assumption and falls entirely
to the ground.

14 CATHOLICITY.
Inf. But, practically, Unity of Worship at any rate
does not exist. An Anglican will not worship with
a Romanist ; a Romanist will not pray with an An
glican ; a dissenter holds and avoids Rome as the
scarlet harlot, the pope as the man of sin, thinking
also the Church of England little better than a red
rag or purple remnant of the same Corruptress.
Practically it is so ; your orthodox unity is but a
paper unity ; as living men you are a body torn into
pieces, not two limbs of which will consent to act and
harmonize together.
Chr. Let us again analyze. All Roman Catholics
will worship in common, will they not ?
Inf. Of course.
Chr. There at once is an Unity of Worship amongst
two hundred millions, a vast consolidation in itself.
Next, all Christians of the Greek Church will pray
and worship in common : another consolidation of
one hundred millions. You cannot call such masses
" pieces," otherwise than as the sun or a planet is a
" piece" of the universe. Compared to such enormous
populations any single European kingdom is indeed
a " fragment," much more " a mere chip" of civiliza
tion than these are of Christianity. Thirdly, no
Anglican refuses to pray with either Romanist or
Greek ; nor any Protestant, I believe, with an An
glican. Thus there does exist such a practical unity
as considering the freedom of mind and spirit, there
fore the liability to opinionative differences which
Christianity generates is a fact unparalleled, and, only
because it is a fact, credible. But, further, your
present objection does not in reality touch Chris
tianity itself, it only touches it — as the devil himself

UNITY OF FAITH. 15
always has and can touch it— "in its heel," as man's
nature incarnates it with its own weakness and
passions. Mankind will not be of one heart and of
one mind; the not being so you impute to Chris
tianity, not to man's nature, refusing to see that the
greatest unity that ever has been effected of that
nature, in its hope, faith, and charities, is the act
of that Christianity alone. Introduce the simplest
question for free discussion into the House of Com
mons, that House will split into at least two, perhaps
into half-a-dozen judgments upon it: is that an argu
ment against the existence or utility of the House ol
Commons or of the English Constitution ? If its
members agree to discuss and differ within the Con
stitution, is it not rather a positive proof of the
excellency of that constitution which permits ful]
liberty of mind and speech, but yet deals with any
attempt to dissolve the unity of the empire as capital
treason against itself? The crime would be in the
criminal, not in the constitution. So the sin of schism
is in our individual nature, not any inherency or
result of Christianity.
Inf. Rome is not an individual nature : she is, as
you say, a mass of two hundred millions, and she
treats you, the Anglican Church, as the great schism
of the West, — she does not and will not pray with
you, — where then is the Unity, when only one party
does not decline, the other rejects, Common Prayer?
Chr. What then ? I am not to answer for Rome
as Rome extra the Catholic Church. Let Rome, as
Joash said of Baal of old, plead for herself and her
own peculiar Romanisms. I do not bring forward
mere Anglicanisms, why do you bring forward mere

16 UNITY OF FAITH.
Romanisms? These and such like questions form
questions between England and Rome, not between
Christianity and Infidelity.
Inf. But you must admit such lack of Unity,
whichever side be in fault, to be a shameful spectacle
in your religion.
Chr. Quoad the great Creeds of that religion, I
again remind you, such lack of unity does not exist ;
quoad the chasms which divide our Spires as they
each rise from the foundation of those creeds, the
infidel has nothing to do. His objection is not " your
Spires are different and separate, but the very founda
tion on which they all rest is utterly unsound." On
that objection we confront him. If he shift his ground
to the different architecture of the spires themselves,
he ceases to be an infidel, and we cease arguing with
him as such. Is not the truth this? You do not
wish Christianity proved divine : you look out for the
strongest apparent arguments against its divinity :
want of unity strikes you as being one of such. On
examination you discover a fearful fundamental
Unity, fearful I mean to such a frame of mind. You
then fall back upon poor human nature, as if that
were Christianity ; or upon Rome, as if she were the
Church Catholic. If, on the other hand, I forgot
myself and quoted the communion of Rome to you
as an example of unity, you would at once retort,
"Unity! the unity of night! of darkness! of igno
rance ! of the Dead Sea !"
Inf. Quite fair, too.
Chr. I think not. It would be fair, were I a
Romanist ; the attack would be on Rome, and as a

UNITY OF FAITH. 17
Romanist I should defend myself and her. 1^ am an
Anglican Catholic, and am not called upon to answer
any objection which applying to Rome does not
apply to catholicity.
Inf. Nevertheless, numbers tell : when Kome with
her two hundred millions treats your dozen millions
or two dozen millions as heretics, when all red-hot
Protestants damn her in return as the lady of Baby
lon ; such a spirit in a Church which professes to be
divine charity itself is enough to make and to keep
one an infidel.
Chr. Which is as much as to say that just in pro
portion as the spirit of the Devil prevails against the
spirit of Christ in the Church, so much less effective
will the Church be against the devil or the world, so
much less powerful will she be to convert souls or
extend her Master's faith. And who doubts it, in
fidel or Christian ? That which you now state is a
truism in which all concur, which all feel, only the
Infidel exults, the Christian mourns for it. It does
not enter into our debate at all : no one disputes that
the less of Christ we have, the less likely we are to
make others Christians ; what has such a wretched
fact to do with the truth itself of Christ and his
faith? Nothing. He has Himself told us that it
would be a miserable fact and produce miserable
effects : that the want of this unity amongst all
believers would be the most potent of all bars to the
conversion of the world: that its existence would
more than any thing else prevent faith in the world.
" I pray that all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in
me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us :

18 UNITY OF FAITH.
that t\e world may believe that Thou hast sent me."
But how is the existence of such a spirit, any more
than the existence of sundry other vices amongst
professing communities, any real plea for infidelity ?
We will not be Christians, because all other men are
not already angels. We will not be sober, because all
other men are not temperate. We will not believe
God, because men that do believe in Him are not yet
" perfect in one." I submit there is neither logic nor
intellect in such ratiocination, " untempered mortar,"
as at the best it is. All men may be liars to their
profession, liars from the very fact of that profession
which they belie being the truth. Every Christian is
in this sense more or less a liar in life : no Christian
fulfils the whole truth which he professes and does
really believe. Is he therefore a hypocrite ? Far
from it. Or is that holiness of which he falls short,
because he falls short of it, therefore a lie ? He
knows even from that which he has attained of it
the very contrary : it is a truth strong as the ever
lasting hills, which no short-comings of his own can
in a single grain of its existence detract from or
affect. The errors of human nature under the Gos
pel are not the test of the truth of that Gospel, they
are nothing but a witness to one of its first doctrines,
" That the very best men fall short of Christ, the
glory of God." Yet you object the existence of the
very fact of division which the Gospel in its truth
exposes, in its pity prays for, and in its power cures
as an argument against the truth of that Gospel ;
that Gospel and yourself agreeing in the fact, only
whilst you quote it as a reason for infidelity in God,

UNITY OF FAITH. 19
the Gospel would bring you to that God to correct
and remove it. But in another view, supposing the
whole Church were unanimous, and such unanimity
were guided by a central head, supported by the
whole body of the laity of the Church, would infi
delity or the world even as it is join and approve of
it ? Would not that very state, the non-existence of
which it now objects to the Church as a reason for
not believing in it, be the very last state in which it
would wish to see the Church existing, flourishing,
and reigning?
Inf. Possibly — for it might be an intolerable
tyranny. Three or four hundred millions ruled spir
itually by one man or by one Lay-Church conclave
and democracy ! — the world would not in these days
for a moment submit to such a revival of ecclesias
tical supremacy, lay or clerical.
Chr. The Unity of the Church, then, would not
be tolerated by such as were not of the Church ?
Inf. To speak frankly, I do not think it would.
Chr. Not if that Unity inferred, as it does, one
mind and heart among all the laity of the Church in
government and doctrines?
Inf. Make your conscience easy. It will never be.
Chr. Why not ?
Inf. The world, outside such a lay and clerical
Unity, would never permit it — it would be a Lay-
Papacy. Chr. Yet that state which Infidelity would never
permit, which of all possibilities it most deprecates
and exerts itself the most strenuously to prevent, is
that state the falling short of which by the Church,

20 UNITY OF FAITH.
through, in great measure, the machinations of this
Infidelity itself, is alleged as a principal argument
against belief in such a Church and its doctrines.
Is not this something beyond inconsistency? Has
it not the appearance of intellectual hypocrisy ?
Inf. Let us concede then that the banner of the
Church of England is the banner of the Orthodox
Faith in Christendom and England alike : that in the
acceptance of the Scriptures and the Three Creeds
consists the acceptance of the Orthodox Faith ; that
in this faith — saying nothing of extraneous addi
tions, Protestant or Papal — there is a living spiritual
Unity of four hundred millions of souls. Our rela
tive positions are thus fixed. I have a definite system
and a definite standard of that system in arms be
fore me; and unless I subvert the one and capture
the other, Orthodox Christianity retains her ancient
supremacy. These preliminaries settled, I shall, as
we agreed, proceed first with certain grave objections
against the Scriptures of this Christianity. Are you
acquainted with Newman's writings ?
Chr. With the writings of both the brothers — to
which do you refer ?
Inf. To my fellow-infidel, Francis William New
man. Some of the difficulties he specifies appear to
me insurmountable ; the more so, as they come from
a person of irreproachable morality, which, you will
I suppose admit, adds great weight to them.
Chr. A certain degree of moral weight to his
objections a moral man may justly claim — and such
is Mr. Newman. But I am at a loss to see what
greater intellectual force the objections of Mr. New-

INFIDELITY. 21
man can carry than those of Rousseau or Voltaire —
characters the reverse of moral. If pure morality of
life is to settle the question between Christianity and
Infidelity, infidels themselves will confess their posi
tion ridiculously hopeless. Infidelity hitherto has
been put forward and accepted as identical with
exemption from all spiritual and moral obligations ;
the only compliance it allowed was with the demands
of the law or of personal honor ; and of the latter,
every individual was himself the judge. And from
such obligations it is a notorious fact that infidels
have always exempted themselves. The best we can
say of your two best men in this respect, Gibbon and
Hume, is, that they were not coarse voluptuaries —
they were not indecorous Epicureans. But of active
morality on behalf of others I never heard them
accused. And as to the rest of the professing
infidels of the last and preceding centuries in Eng
land and on the Continent, their works are the mani
festo of the principles on which they lived. It is not
easy to select one who did not justify the utmost free
dom of conduct upon this very ground, that he was
an Infidel. The phase has now changed. Few of
our infidel writers in the present generation charge
themselves with personal licentiousness or profanity ;
an alteration upon which infidelity is very much to
be congratulated. But for each moral infidel, a
thousand moral Christians can yet be counted :
granting therefore a certain moral force to the
objection of a moral infidel, the moral force which
mnst on the same rule be conceded to the belief of a
thousand moral Christians, would in such a discus-

22 NEW PHASE OF INFIDEL MORALITY.
sion as ours reduce its value to nothing, or rather
decide the question summarily in favor of Christi
anity. Inf. But Infidelity has now nevertheless an ad
vantage in the personal characters of many of its
advocates, which it never perhaps previously pos
sessed — with that additional strength you 'must be
prepared to cope ?
Chr. True. But the right view, I conceive, of the
matter is this. If infidelity be true in itself, no
amount of improbity or immorality, in persons pro
fessing infidelity, will falsify the truth of their intel
lectual opinions. So also with Christianity and
Christians. The personal worthlessness or worth of
an astronomer does not affect the truths of astrono
my. The religion of a man is not necessarily true
because he is a Socrates or a Zeno in morality ; nor
necessarily false because he is a Charles or a Louis
in immorality — unless it is patent that in either case
the life is as naturally and inevitably the production
of the principles avowed, as an apple is of the apple-
tree or the hair of the animal body, in which case
the life is but the expletive of the religion. Let us
regard it in another light. Francis William Newman
is a man of unimpeachable moral life ; so is his more
celebrated brother, the Oratorian, John Henry New
man. The latter, as a conscientious Roman Catholic,
does not believe his brother to be within the pale of
salvation ; the former, again, affirms of his brother's
faith, " For the peculiarities of Romanism, I feel
nothing, and I can pretend nothing but contempt,
hatred, disgust, or horror — a system of falsehood,

RELATIVE VALUE OF PERSONAL MORALITY. 23
fraud, unscrupulous and unrelenting ambition."1
Here are two brothers, diametrically opposed in re
ligion, yet both of more than ordinary excellence
and purity of moral character.
Inf. What signifies it, then, whether they are Roman
Catholics or Infidels : cannot they both enter heaven ?
Chr. That is the very point to be solved.
Inf. I see no difficulty in its solution.
Chr. Do yon not ? What is the worth of a man's
personal morality if the whole weight and influence
of his character be devoted to color and support an
enormous system of " falsehood, fraud, unscrupulous
and unrelenting ambition," which is what Francis
William Newman affirms his brother's religion to be?
Personal morality becomes, on such a supposition, a
frightful misnomer — it ceases to exist — it is as the
countenance of moral Brutus was to conspiracy and
murder. It is absurd to speak of a man as moral
who applies his whole energies to the perpetuating
and extending of a thoroughly depraved and crimi
nal system. His own morality is as a drop of dew
compared .to the deluge of immorality he lets loose
on society, if the system he represents be such as
Francis William Newman describes Roman Catholi
cism to be. In such case, personal morality would
be, even in commercial judgment, only a white and
jewelled hand executing a forgery. The white hand,
the gentlemanly address and demeanor, would pass
the forgery, but you would not say they were any
compensation for the injury inflicted by the act on
society. > " Phases of Faith," p. 72.

24 RELATIVE VALUE OF PERSONAL MORALITY
Inf. I would treble the penalty.
Chr. On the other hand, if the Roman Catholic
be, as John Henry Newman believes, the only God-
appointed way of salvation, what is the worth, or
wherein consists the virtue of Francis William New
man's morality, when he denounces that " only way"
as a system of "falsehood, fraud, unscrupulous and
unrelenting ambition ?" If John Henry Newman be
right, then is Francis William Newman doing all in
his power, with all the great weight of his moral
character, to ruin irretrievably the souls of men, by
inducing them to regard the " only way" of salva
tion as a system of falsehood. Both these brothers
are equally sincere, moral, and conscientious in their
convictions, but one of the two is of necessity a most
pernicious character; one of the two must, just in
proportion to the influence he sways, be inflicting
ruin on the cause of truth and the souls of men.
Whichever it be, can he who has destroyed be ad
mitted, on any plea, to the same approbation as he
who has saved souls ? In the decision of so moment
ous a question, the petty circumstances whether the
individual dresses as a pietist or ordinary person,
drinks wine or water only, eats meat or vegetables
only, starves or indulges, are lost in comparison with
the character and general effects of the system which
that individual represents and would render supreme.
I am far from maintaining " the Cause" to be every
thing ; the characters of its supporters, nothing. By
the latter, we are often necessitated for a time to
form our conclusions of the former. But I affirm,
that correct habits of personal, social, or monastic

RELATIVE VALUE OF PERSONAL MORALITY. 25
life must be estimated in an individual as dust when
balanced against the results of that man's mental
and doctrinal teachings on perhaps millions of recip
ient souls. The responsibility attached to intellect
is as much greater than that attached to morality, as
the world of mind is greater than a man's domestic
or social circle. If Francis William Newman make
you an infidel, you are in his brother's belief lost
forever. Adjust his morality against your eternal
ruin ; is it not swallowed up as an invisible atom in
the most permanent of crimes f Is it not as if a
water-drinker should poison a eity reservoir, or a
punctual early-riser set fire to the Bank ? Or if
John Henry Newman eonvert you to Rome you
become, in his brother's opinion, the member and
abettor of a system of fraud and falsehood. If you
prove true to that system, you must yourself become
false and fraudful ; remaining so, your soul is lost ;
against that loss, poise your proselytizer's moral
character. It has become a nonentity, entirely out
of the question, further than as a vizor and decoy —
nothing more than if an assassin who poignarded
you was yet scrupulously clean in person and eorrect
in costume.
Inf. Who, then, is competent to judge between
two systems the antipodes of each other, especially
when the defenders of each are equally moral and
conscientious, both of great erudition and varied
accomplishments, in perfect command of all the data
and advantages necessary to enable them to form a
right conclusion — yet one diverges from your Church
to Romanism, the other to Infidelity.

26 RELATIVE VALUE OF PERSONAL MORALITY.
Chr. My dealing is at present with the Infidel. I
have stated, in a distinct work,1 my reasons as an
Anglo-Catholic for rejecting the additions of Rome
to the Scriptures and the Three Creeds. Within the
Three Creeds and the Catholic Canon England and
Rome are one — beyond it they split and differ. But
such difference is one of degrees in faith, radically
distinct from that which exists between both of us
and infidelity. I am now confronting infidelity on
intellectual grounds. If morality is to be the test,
not another word need pass between us — the victory
of Christianity has long since been won, and never
in this respect doubted or disputed for eighteen cen
turies. But we are so confident that intellectually
as well as morally Infidelity has not a shadow of a
chance against Christianity, that we cast aside the
morality or immorality, the good, bad, or indiffer
ent lives of its impugners — Voltaire, D'Alembert,
Hobbes, Paine, Robespierre, Marat, or their contra
ries, such as Strauss and Newman — as irrelevant to
the mental merits of the issue. Christianity can
well afford, I think, to present Infidelity with all it
would demand on that score, without giving away a
particle of its real strength. Newman, you observed,
has impressed you much.
Inf. I have been much struck by certain of the
difficulties he brings forward in his "Phases of
Faith" against the credibility of the Bible. Most of
the arguments which he advances are of course re
suscitations of old objections, which perhaps because
they are worn and hackneyd, or because they do not
1 " Vindication of the Church of England." Eivingtons.

EXCEPTIONS TO THE SCRIPTURES CONSIDERED. 27
in effect succeed against Christianity, I am disposed
to lay little stress upon. Unsuccessful objections,
fifty times repeated, and always with the same
failure, speak for themselves — that however sound
they appear to the disputant, the world at large
pronounces them frivolous or nugatory. Mere verbal,
incidental, or petty inculpations, of so mighty a
system as it must be confessed Christianity, rightly
or wrongly, is, are as little likely to overthrow the
hold it has established upon the superstitious faculties
of mankind, as the peckings of a hen, or the marble
shots of a boy, to loosen the mortar and stone of an
ancient Norman stronghold. I care therefore little
for such disputations as the two Genealogies ; or at
what time, or if at all, Christ was in Egypt ; or if the
narratives of the resurrection can in every minute
point be made to accord. These are rather disserta
tions for microscopic minds than questions by which
to test the vitality or divinity of Christianity. But
those I have selected from Newman's "Phases of
Faith," are of such range and calibre, as becomes
artillery brought to bear upon such a spiritual Gib
raltar as your Christian Church. They are broad,
massive, radical statements, aimed at once at the root
of the matter, at the foundation-stones of your reli
gion. I will adduce them in order. The first is this
assertion :
" Prophecy is generally regarded as a leading
evidence of the divine origin of Christianity. But
this had also proved to me a more and more
mouldering prop. As to the prophecies of the Pen
tateuch, they abound as to the times which precede

28 EXCEPTIONS TO THE SCRIPTURES CONSIDERED.
the century of Hezekiah: higher than which we
cannot trace the Pentateuch. No prophecy of the
Pentateuch can be proved to have been fulfilled,
which had not already been fulfilled before Heze
kiah's day."1
Can you refute this last especial statement, which
to my mind infers the entirely human fabrication of
the oldest portion of your Scriptures. What prophecy
of the Pentateuch can be proved to be fulfilled which
had not already been fulfilled before Hezekiah's day ?
Chr. Does Newman mean visual or oral prophecy ?
Prophecy spoken to the ear, or prophecy acted to the
eye, or prophecy combining both oral and visual
delivery ?
Inf. He does not specify. He affirms prophecy
generally ; if there are distinctions, take the last you
have mentioned, which combines the two kinds, oral
and visual.
Chr. Genesis is the first book of the Pentateuch.
The twenty-second chapter contains what Christians
consider a typical or esoteric prophecy of the Cru
cifixion of Christ, and of the birth of the Catholic
Church. The visible signs of this sacramental act
are, —
A father, distinguished, for certain reasons, as the
Father of the Faithful — Abraham. A son — mirac
ulously begotten by the Word of Promise, not by
the operation of nature, and on the preservation of
whose life and consequent progeny entirely depended
the realization of many sublime and celestial en
gagements to his race. A mountain — Moriah, in
1 " Phases of Faith," pp. 113, 114.

VISUAL PROPHECY. 29
Palestine, which in one sense, that of birth, was the
native country of such son ; in another sense, that
of race, was only the land of his temporary sojourn.
The sacrifice of this son by his own father, command
ed by Divine authority ; the son bearing himself
the altar-wood on which he was to be sacrificed ; the
father nevertheless proceeding with him. The son
bound and laid by his father on such altar, so borne
and constructed. The sacrifice itself, though in act
prevented, in type fully consummated — a death
inflicted which yet was no death, for the son lives
after such death. A name assigned the mountain,
to distinguish it as the exact spot of the whole world
where the great act thus predicted would in the sight
of all nations take place : " Jehovah-Jireh, in the
Mount of the Lord it shall be seen." The creation
out of this sacrifice, after its death, of a Seed which
was to be multiplied as the stars of heaven, to possess
the gate of its enemies, and in which all the nations
of the earth should be blessed.
First, for the visual part of this prophecy. Is there
any record of such a sacrifice as is here described
taking place before the days of Hezekiah, on Mount
Moriah, the mountain on which Jerusalem and the
Temple were subsequently built, and of which Cal
vary formed an eminence ?
Inf. I cannot recollect any.
Chr. No one, I believe, would assert the existence
of a shadow of evidence to such effect.
Inf. But is it, in fact, a Prophecy at all, and has it
been fulfilled since Hezekiah's day ?
Chr. To believe that it has, is part of that faith

30 VISUAL PROPHECY.
which constitutes us Christians, in contradistinction
to those who believe that it has not — Infidels. To us
the visual part of this prophecy explains itself as
clearly as the representation of the tragedy of Julius
Caesar presents to an historic audience his fall and
death in the Capitol. We believe that in this type
Abraham and Isaac bear the same relationship to
God and to Jesus Christ, as the representatives of
Caesar and Cassius in such a drama, do to Caesar and
Cassius themselves. As these latter represent to the
audience what was indeed transacted at the Capitol,
so Abraham and Isaac represented to the ancient
Church what was to be transacted at a future time on
Mount Moriah. Such as had full faith that such an
act would be consummated for the salvation of man
kind, became by such faith " the faithful" — " the
Church" — heirs, therefore, of all the Divine promises
sealed by the blood of so awful a victim. We who
now believe that it has been effected, become by the
same belief members of the same church, heirs of
the same promises as they of old ; only they looked
forward, we look backward, to the Great Sacrifice
itself. To the realization of the promises they and
we — they in Paradise, we on earth — look forward
in common as to one inclusive heaven. Neither
they without us, nor we without them, are to be
glorified. We hold, therefore, that in this dra
matic parable of the Kingdom of God given to
the ancient family of the faithful, Abraham sig
nifies Almighty God, the Father of the Faithful —
of all that believe in Jesns Christ. Isaac is Jesus
Christ, born not by nature, but of the Holy Ghost

VISUAL PROPHECY. 31
and the Blessed Virgin. Of Mount Moriah, where
the prophetic type was acted, and to which the
Church constantly looked as the future scene of its
fulfilment, Mount Calvary is, as we observed, an
eminence. The altar-wood is the Cross borne by
the co-eternal Son Himself. " Jehovah-Jireh " — the
Crucifixion was prepared and seen on this Mount
of the Lord before the face of all nations, on the
national Feast of the Passover, in the very centre, as
it were, of the civilized world, between the Eastern
and Western divisions of the Roman Empire. Christ,
the Lamb of God, slain before the foundation of the
world, was there laid by His own Almighty Father,
as the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, upon
this Altar of the Cross ; He was " smitten of God :"
" the Lord laid upon him the iniquities of us all."
And 'yet, though thus dead and buried, He rose again
the third day, and ascended "whither he was before,"
to the same Father, to inherit the same glory as he
had with the Father before the world began. The
Christian Church, therefore, maintains the visual
part of this prophecy to have been fulfilled eighteen
hundred and fifty-four years since on Mount Calvary.
Inf. But I, as an Infidel, deny that it is either
prophetic of such an event, or, if prophetic, that it
has been so fulfilled.
Chr. Of course you do ; otherwise you would not
be an infidel. Vast, radical, fundamental differences,
high as heaven, deep as hell, exist between Christi
anity and Infidelity. No morality can fill the infinite
gulf up ; no philosophy can bridge it ; no knowledge
ignore it. These differences will stand forth more

32 VISUAL PROPHECY.
distinctly as we proceed. But what I have now to
maintain is, that, in these differences, intellect and rea
son are with the believer and against the unbeliever.
Inf. Do you aver that reason and intellect are
with you in the very point under examination — a
father commanded to slay his son ?
Chr. In this case entirely. Were I an infidel,
neither believing prophecy nor its fulfilment, but
rejecting the whole scheme of Gospel salvation, —
regarding this act in an isolated light, not in its
illustrative connection with an eternal and ever-
progressive Spiritual System, I should, with you,
pronounce it contrary to nature and reason. That
System being now revealed to me, as I believe, of
God, I see that unless the father had been com
manded himself to offer up his son, there would not
to the Ancient Church have been in this solemn act
of sacrifice any representation or teaching whatever
of that most blessed truth which lies at the founda
tion of the Church's faith — that the sacrifice of
Christ is the sacrifice made and offered up by the
Almighty Father Himself to reconcile the world
unto Himself. " God so loved the world, that he
gave his only-begotten eon, to the end that who
soever believeth on him should not perish, but have
everlasting life." 1 On this truth reposes our whole
faith, that the Gospel is not merely the dispensation
but the evidential act of the precedent love of God
to us, the creatures He, from the moment of our
creation, designed to reign with Him in a blessed
immortality. Sin and its consequences brought us
1 St. John iii. 16.

VISUAL PROPHECY. 33
so fearfully into collision with God's holiness, that
his eternal love for us and our souls could find no
scope for action, consistently with such holiness,
towards us, in the condition to which we had
reduced ourselves — enemies to it in the very spirit
of our minds. We were, therefore, by the same
eternal love which created us at first, to be created
anew. This new creation in Christ originates
solely and proceeds solely on the divine fact, that
however low our race degraded itself, the love
of God towards us has never for a moment been
quenched or diminished. But unless the Ancient
Church had been made to see that it was the Father
Himself whose will thus decreed, and whose hand
thus executed, the atoning sacrifice between his
justice against sin and his love for our souls, what
assurance could they have had that this sacrifice
was, indeed, not of man, nor of the will of men, but
of the supreme and almighty Creator of heaven and
earth Himself? That assurance was given them:
they believed it, and sueh belief became the " right
eousness of Christ " to them. Had another than the
father been commanded to offer up "his son, his
only son Isaac," then this great type would have
broken down, and failed to teach the Ancient Church
in the very article on which it was designed to be
the revelation of God to them — that the sacrifice of
our spiritual restoration is the sacrifice of the Father
Himself, out of that love wherewith He had from the
beginning loved us, and the full flow of which our
fall in Adam alone had interrupted. I maintain,
therefore, the command in this instance to Abraham
2s

34 VISUAL PROPHECY.
to be in complete harmony with the reason and
intellect of every man who believes and compre
hends the Gospel scheme of salvation. But to you,
the Infidel, not so believing, but objecting to the
command as in the last degree contrary to the first
instincts of nature, my reply upon the narrative
itself, without reference to its subsidiary character
as a manifestation of the Gospel, is — The same God
who commanded, stopped also the sacrifice. Your
objection, therefore, neutralizes itself, and yet de
mands from you this explanation — Why was the
sacrifice up to a certain point commanded by Divine
authority ; and beyond such point, which, according
to the Christian system, completes the visual type,
by the same authority not permitted to proceed ? It
is thus that many objections of infidelity are to us,
who know the Gospel, confirmations of our faith.
The fact that it was Abraham the father who was
commanded to lay the wood of the altar on his son,
and bind him, and, in type, slay him, proves to us
that the God who did thus, according to the type,
sacrifice his only-begotten Son, is indeed the Author
of the type and of the Scriptures in which that type
is recorded.Inf. This ratiocination is plausible but not con
vincing, as you adduce no evidence beyond your
faith that this fulfilment has really taken place in
Mount Moriah.
Chr. We consider the historical or external evi
dence, which establishes that the Crucifixion of Jesus
Christ in every way corresponded to this typical
description of such a sacrifice, incontrovertible. We

VISUAL PROPHECY. 35
also consider the Pentateuch as beyond cavil the
work of the great Jewish legislator. We find the
type and antitype of two of the most extraordinary
facts recorded in all history or in all literature to be
explanatory of each other. But this single type
being, though not a minimum, yet only one of
many illustrations of our faith, we bring it into court
and comparison with all the rest of the voluminous
evidence in favor of Christianity. The concert is
complete. We feel ourselves rationally compelled
to believe. I venture to affirm, that no intellectual
Christian ever became such except through the
process of Infidelity. You must not suppose that I
or other educated Christians have not passed through
the same spiritual agonisms as to the truth or false
hood of Christianity as you are now undergoing.
To suppose so is, I think, a common error on the part
of Infidels. Most educated Christians have been
infidels. The same examination, research, science,
or conscience, which discovers to them mysteries in
Christianity, discovers also to them insurmountable
contradictions and absurdities in Infidelity. And
therefore, not because they can explain every thing
in Christianity, but because, so far as it is explicable,
it forces their intellectual assent, their intellect suc
cumbs to it in its integrity in both the intelligible
and in that which is at present unintelligible — the
Mysterious. Inf. Permit me. Your religion imparts to you
enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is soul-action. We Infidels
have, if you Christians have, souls : yet we have not
soul-action. Why ? We are content with our or-

36 ISAACAL SACRIFICE.
ganization and repudiate other influence than such
as this organization exercises of itself upon us. I
admit that, putting aside Christianity, creation re
mains no less a tremendous mystery ; so great and
frightful a mystery in the very permission and ex
tension of misery and pain, that I do not, by reject
ing Christianity, approach an inch the nearer to its
solution. I only reject one scheme, among many,
which pretend to its solution. Perhaps it is not
solvable ; perhaps from the very nature of the ma
terials of the universe, the meaning of the terms
" evil" and " good" are not fixable. Yon must admit
that which is " good" under certain circumstances
to be positively " evil" under others. And we both
admit certain fundamental instincts of nature to be,
if any thing can be so called, sanctities. Now, in
this case of Abraham, there is a command, violating
this sacred instinct of our own nature. I take up
the Bible and read these words, " It came to pass
after these things that God did tempt Abraham,
and said unto him, Offer up thine only son Isaac for
a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which
I will tell thee of." J Conceding, as I am prepared
to do, that the identity between this mountain and
Calvary, between the very process, mode, and order
of the Isaacal and Christian sacrifices are com
plete, I by no means admit the Divine authority of
this transaction and its inferences. I appeal to you,
if you, having an only son, the hope of your race,
heard from earth, heaven, or hell, a command, "Sac
rifice him with your own hand," could you believe
1 Gen. xxii. 1, 2.

ISAACAL SACRIFICE. 37
such to be the voice of the Creator of our natural
instincts ? Is it possible it could be ?
Chr. Most possible.
Inf. How in, for instance, this case ?
Chr. God is the Creator of both our natural
powers and of the instincts resultant from their use.
He has, therefore, if we proceed on the question of
right, the same undoubted right of commanding us
to devote both to Him, as he has of commanding us
to devote our money, time, or devotion to Him.
Inf. Granted, granted ! But here is the crux. We
are certain the God of nature has implanted in us
such affections and antipathies as our nature possesses.
Chr. Not as our present nature ; but proceed.
Inf. Parental affection is perhaps the strongest
instinct of nature ; yet in Abraham's case this is
overridden by — what shall I call it ? — something
termed God commanding him to make to this God
a sacred immolation of his son. The statement of
itself is enough to make a man of any natural affec
tions an infidel.
Chr. Or a Christian.
Inf. How possibly so ?
Chr. I am not adducing now the notorious facts of
society, that such parents as are not indeed Chris
tian do sacrifice their children without the slightest
reference to natural affection, to the most contempt
ible and degraded idols : they murder the souls of
such children for the sake of their own temporal
aggrandizement. I reject entirely the idea that a
parent who has no natural affection towards his God,
can have any true natural affection towards his own
children.

38 ISAACAL SACRIFICE
Inf. Why, the very savage has such.
Chr. Far from it; the savage will educate his
child to steal, rob, murder, assassinate ; and doing
all this himself, will do so with all the affection of
his nature, such as it is, to his child. The thief in
London will, with all affection for his child, yet
bring it up thoroughly a thief : in higher stations,
the most worthless woman of fashion will, with all
affection for her daughter, bring her up as a heart
less, soulless, most contemptible frivolist. On the
facts, therefore, of human nature, savage or refined,
I might, I think, refute your notion that interference
in the abstract between parent and child is in any
degree unnatural.
Inf. But in the concrete, as here — interference
authorizing, in fact, murder. Strong language, but
Christianity is strong ; therefore answer it.
Chr. " Thou shalt do no murder," from the oracles
of the same Deity, would prove the inapplicability of
such a term to the sacrifice of Isaac. It is absurd to
say that the Author and Giver of all life can be
guilty in taking away his own gift. If you admit
the Pentateuch to be of God, all objections to any
command of God therein, are by that very fact
annulled. If you deny the credibility in this partic
ular instance of the command to a father to sacrifice
a son, being God's, I respond, the circumstances pre
ceding that command prove it to my judgment to
emanate absolutely from God, and from God alone.
" It came to pass after these things," what things ? — ¦
a series of Divine visions, appearances, and miracles,
extended for the space of fifty years, through which
Abraham had held personal communication with tlie

ISAACAL SACRIFICE. 39
Angel of the Covenant, and had himself witnessed so
many instances of a power above all nature exercised
by Him, as to leave him no alternative than to believe
that the Being who was thus manifesting Himself
and his ways to him, was the Lord God of creation.
Isaac himself was one of these many miracles. It
seems, therefore, beyond the bounds of probability
that Abraham should be either deceived in the
source whence the command to slay his son issued,
or, however severe the parental conflict, he should
not exercise the same faith, in with his own hand
recommitting the life of his son to God, as he had
done in receiving him, contrary to all nature, from
the hand of God. The firm belief that the same
God, who, by his Almighty power, has given us this
life, can and will by the same power restore that
life, once, twice, a thousand times from death, or
place it utterly above the reach of death, is part of
the common faith of Abraham and ourselves — of our
one Church. "The resurrection from the dead," faith
in which was by this act of faith required from Abra
ham, in the sacrifice of his son, is, as you know, a
standing article of the Church Catholic. It is the
very vis vitce of Christianity. " If the dead rise not,"
says St. Paul, " what profits it me to have fought with
beasts ?" It underlies the whole religion of respon
sibility — call it Christian or otherwise — to God in a
future state. Now had this command been the first
which had emanated from the Almighty to Abraham,
I would concede nature might have justified his re
jecting it as the suggestion of a power far different
from that of the author of nature. But the preceding

40 ISAACAL SACRIFICE.
experience of all his life since he quitted Babylon
preserved him from error on this point. That which
constitutes faith is the belief that there does exist, far
above nature, a nature-creating, nature-controlling,
nature-dissolving God, and that He addresses Himself
to that part within us which in one sense is as supe
rior to this material, inanimate system of nature, as
He Himself, its author, is. Abraham had this faith.
"He believed God as above nature;" this belief con
stituted both his righteousness, and his faithfulness
of action. You, as an infidel, do not believe that
there exists any power above nature able to give life
to the dead. According to your infidelity, your son
being dead, is dead forever. No power in or above
nature can revivify him. Any power, therefore,
celestial or otherwise, promising such an eventuality
to you, and challenging you to test the truth of such
promise, would from the very fact of your infidelity
be regarded as a self-created delusion of your own
senses. To my mind, Abraham's reason as well as
faith was of a higher cast than yours. All the ex
perience of his life was on the side of a personal,
superintending Deity, to whom nature was nothing
more than his own material pleasure. He had from
Him received Isaac from the grave, for so far as
nature was operant the womb of Sarah was as dead
as the grave. If he committed him at his command
to a second grave, the God who had once given, could
give him again from death. On that faith he pro
ceeded ; that faith is the truth ; there is such a God ;
nature and life are nothing but forms or phases of
his will ; if He reveals Himself to us, the acceptance

ISAACAL SACRIFICE. 41
of such revelation places us on a rock higher than
nature ; it connects us with Himself. What we do in
such faith is done as if it were done in the certainty
that his omnipotence is ours. An Infidel, therefore,
who has never been once in all his life in any
communication with Deity, who has no faith in the
existence of Deity, who considers the grave the " be-
all and the end-all" of our present existence, is
necessarily staggered at this proof in Abraham of
his faith in God and his omnipotence. Knowing
that Abraham could not mistake the voice of Jeho
vah, we Christians, on the other hand, deem it most
reasonable both that God should have exacted this
proof of his faith in one of the main articles of the
Christian Creed, and that he should have been will
ing to prove the full sincerity of his faith in such
article, though the death to be inflicted by his own
hand was that of his only son in whom " his Seed was
called." We believe the faith thus exercised by
Abraham to be sanctioned by the soundest Reason.
Let me or any other man only be certain that the
command is that of the Almighty, given to me
for purposes I am not called upon to comprehend,
I or any reasonable being in Abraham's circum
stances would act as Abraham did, and for the same
reason which St. Paul assigns, "accounting that
God was able to raise Isaac up, even from the dead ;
from whence also he received him in a figure."1
What is more dead than the dust from which we are
originally created ? We return to it ; yet, like Abra
ham, we believe that the same omnipotence which
created us from the first, can, and according to his
1 Heb. xi. 19.

42 ISAACAL SACRIFICE.
Word will, re-create us from the second dust — the
dust of our own death and dissolution. What can
be more consistent with the first instincts of the
heart, or the first inferences of reason ? There is thus
no question between Christianity and Reason on this
subject. Both admit that, if God so commanded,
it was the highest reason in Abraham to obey with
out any reference whatever to consequences. Infi
delity takes the ground that God did not, or could
not, so command at all. Christianity shows that no
other command than such would have been didactic
to the Ancient Church of the radical truth which
underlies the whole Gospel of salvation, and that
obedience to it by Abraham completed and perfected
the whole tenor of a life passed in communion with
the Divine power which issued it. It would have
been more marvellous for Abraham to have dis
obeyed than to have obeyed the Divine injunction.
The faith of the resurrection he had ; with such, in
the mere abstract, God was not content: He tried it
therefore in the deepest well of his earthly affections ;
yet so profound was his faith in the power of God,
that, God commanding, he at once resigned his son
to prove it. No reasonable man having such faith,
and being placed beyond all doubt, as Abraham was,
that the command proceeded from God, but would
act as the Father of the Faithful did. I repeat, there
fore, that in the case of the Isaacal sacrifice, reason
is entirely in accordance with Christianity and in
opposition to Infidelity.
Inf. Your argument, I think, still labors under
this objection. Abraham believed the voice to be
that of God ; you now believe it because Abraham

ORAL PROPHECY. 43
then did ; you thus build your faith not on a foun
dation of its own, but on Abraham's credence and
credibility. This is what Newman characterizes as
" faith at second hand ;" not your own, but another's,
at least, yours by adoption only.
Chr. Not so. Abraham's faith is mine, not by
such imputation, but on distinct grounds, such as
Abraham could not from the nature of things pos
sess. That Abraham could not otherwise than know
of a very truth the command to be of God, is proved
to me by the whole tenor of his past life. He
believed in the power of God in the resurrection to
life from the dead. That faith in God was righteous
ness to him. He obeyed in that faith, the command
to sacrifice Isaac ; that obedience, as St. James states,
made such faith perfect. I have the same faith, and
it constitutes the same righteousness or medium of
my acceptance by the Almighty as it did of his.
Then, in addition, I have now evidence, which
Abraham had not, that this voice was, as he believed,
the voice of God.
Inf. How?
Chr. The fulfilment of the second or oral part of
the prophecy delivered by the same Angel of the
Covenant who commanded the sacrifice itself. Out
of the crucifixion of Christ, from his dead body, the
Church Catholic of all peoples, nations, and lan
guages has been born. Its numbers are as the stars
of heaven. It possesses the gate of our spiritual
enemies, the powers of the keys to bind and loose
from sin, Satan, and the world. Against it the gates
of hell never have or can prevail. It was intended

44 ORAL PROPHECY.
to, and does, embrace all nations without exception
in its preaching, responsibilities, and privileges.
" Teach and baptize all nations." And it has thus
become the blessing of the earth by the Almighty,
through the death of his Son. Now that there is such
a Church, that including its celestial and terrestrial
members, it is in number as the sand of the sea
shore; that its Sacraments assume to bar hell and
open heaven ; that it dates its birth from the sacrifice
of Christ on Mount Moriah ; that it owns Him only
as its Author, High-priest, Prophet,' and Sovereign;
that it comes and is by all the nations professing it,
accepted as the blessing of Salvation to their souls,
are facts of universal acknowledgment. I find all
these facts promised in the prophecy by the same
Being who commanded the sacrifice. What is the
necessary conclusion of my intellect ? The same as
that of Abraham's faith — -the Being who spoke to
him was God. But I come to that conclusion, not on
the same personal evidence as Abraham did, but on
vaster grounds — grounds covering thirty centuries
in time, and the extent of all Christendom in space.
Abraham believed the command to be Divine from
previous, I believe it to be so from subsequent, evi
dence. Supposing I reject its Divinity, the difficulty
of explaining the identity of the Isaacal sacrifice with
the crucifixion of Christ, and of the distinctive prom
ises attached to it with the distinctive facts of the
Church catholic, on any grounds short of omnipotence
and omniscience in prescribing the one and realizing
the other, is to my mind insuperable. The solution
that it was God who commanded, who promised, who

ORAL PROPHECY. 45
has by the creation of the Christian Church verified
the promises, is the only one which approves itself
to my intellect. Neither the visual nor the oral part
therefore of this typical prophecy was fulfilled before
Hezekiah's day. Since his day the visual has been
fulfilled in the crucifixion of our Lord ; and the
oral, already largely fulfilled, continues its course
towards full verification in the gradual progress and
acceptance of the religion of the Cross by " all the
nations of the earth."
Inf. Newman, you are aware, affirms that the
Pentateuch was the production of a later age than
the Mosaic.
Chr. He affirms so, it appears to me, repugnantly
to all the evidence we have or can have on the sub
ject. Even if this prophecy dates 800 and not 1500
years before Christ, it is not the less of divine inspi
ration, nor, except as such, is its fulfilment at all
more explicable.
Inf. That inference may, I think, be admitted :
and that the effect also upon Abraham, Isaac, and
the Church of that time, from the mysterious and
appalling nature of the Ordeal, was more impressive
than the mere word-reading of the whole Bible a
hundred times over would be to us.
Chr. But this is only one of many prophecies
which may be adduced in disproof and subversion
of Newman's assertion. Let me take one other of
quite another kind ; such a one as the popular mind
can easily understand and decide upon. We took
the former from the first, we take this from the
last Book — Deuteronomy — of the Pentateuch. The
twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy contains, ac-

46 ORAL PROPHECY.
cording to our Faith, the prophecy of the future
specific judgments of God on the Jewish nation in
the event of their rejection of Jesus Christ " as the
end of their Law and Prophets," — as the Messiah of
the Promises. As the language itself in which these
denunciations are couched has scarcely a parallel in
the whole circle of literature for plain sublimity of
expression, I will not apologize for reading certain
parts of it aloud :
" The Lord shall make the rain of thy land
powder and dust. Thy heaven that is over thy
head shall be brass, and the earth that is under
thee shall be iron. The Lord shall cause thee to
be smitten before thine enemies : and thou shalt
be removed into all kingdoms of the earth. Thou
shalt not prosper in thy ways : and thou shalt be
only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man
shall save thee. Thou shalt be only oppressed and
crushed alway: so that thou shalt be mad for the
sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see. The
stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee
very high ; and thou shalt come down very low.
The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from
far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle
flieth ; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not under
stand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall
not regard the person of the old, nor show favor to
the young. And he shall besiege thee in all thy
gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down,
wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land :
and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout
all thy land, which the Lord thy God hath given
thee. And thou shalt eat of the fruit of thine own

OKAL PROPHECY. 47
body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, in
the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine
enemies shall distress thee. The tender and delicate
woman among you, which would not adventure to
set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicate-
ness and for tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward
the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and
toward her daughter, and toward her young one that
cometh out from between her feet, and toward her
children which she shall bear : for she shall eaj; them
for want of all things secretly in the siege and strait
ness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in
thy gates. And ye shall be left few in number,
whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multi
tude. And the Lord shall scatter thee among all
people, from one end of the earth even unto the
other ; and among these nations shalt thou find no
ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest : but
the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart,
and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: and thy
life shall hang in doubt before thee : and thou shalt
fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance
of thy life : in the morning thou shalt say, Would
God it were even ! and at even thou shalt say, Would
God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart
wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine
eyes which thou shalt see." l
Inf. Sublimity and simplicity combined, certainly.
The grandeur, the massive Doric grandeur of the
language of Scripture, I am the first to acknowledge ;
it has, I believe, very much to do with the hold its
1 Deut. xxviii.

48 SOLEMNITY OF THE STYLE OF SCRIPTURE.
doctrines obtain over men's minds. But its sub
stance may for all that be as pure fiction as that of
other masterpieces of composition, — the poems of
Homer, Virgil, Milton, or Shakspeare.
Chr. You must, I think, admit a distinction.
Virgil and Shakspeare, for instance, wrote ex
pressly with a view to beauty of composition in
the putting forth of confessed fictions, avowed such
by themselves — known to be such by their readers.
No one perusing the Scriptures fails, on the con
trary, to observe, that the whole stress in them is
laid not on the language, but on the truths the
language is intended to convey. It would be im
possible, I think, for any impartial judicious critic
to point out in the whole volume of the Scriptures
one attempt at what we call "fine writing." The
Book of Isaiah is, perhaps, the highest composition
the world possesses in magnificence of both ideas
and language. Yet it would be hard to find a verse
in it in which the language is not entirely subordi
nated to the truth designed to be expressed. Take
the most elaborate compositionist in this centuiy, —
Macaulay, the historian. Some of his pages contain
a remarkable union of distinct excellences of style ;
but the impression produced on our minds in read
ing such language is, in kind, entirely different from
that which the Scriptures compel us to feel in read
ing their language. In one sense, that of comparison
with the magnitude of the truths revealed in it, the
language of Scripture is felt by us to be considered
by the Scriptures themselves as nothing. In another
sense, that of being such language as absolutely

SOLEMNITY OF THE STYLE OF SCRD?TURE. 49
forces us, from the humblest parable to the highest
soarings of prophecy, to be conscious of this inten
tion, infers to my mind more than human wisdom.
Setting aside the question as to whether every single
word is inspired, it might, I think, be without dif
ficulty established, that the ordering of the whole
tone and style of the language of the Scripture, is no
less of God than are the truths of which such lan
guage is the medium of communication to our souls.
There is another point also observable : you would,
though an infidel, be startled and shocked at finding
a jest in either words, intention, or act, in the Scrip
tures, would you not ?
Inf. Certainly.
Chr. But why should you?
Inf. It is contrary to all our ideas of the character
of the Scriptures.
Chr. Whence came those ideas of such character ?
Inf. From the Scriptures themselves. There is
not a jest in them : the world knows it ; the knowl
edge grows up and forms part of our nature. If I
then really chanced to meet lightness of words or
verbal abuse in them, such nature would of necessity
be much, and, if I were a Christian, would be pain
fully surprised.
Chr. Here then is a whole literature extending
through fifteen centuries, and of course through
many successive generations of writers of different
eras, circumstances, condition, erudition, habits, and
feelings, standing alone in this respect, that from its
first to its last page there is an utter abhorrence
from all " foolish jesting," facetiousness, derisiveness,

50 SOLEMNITY OF THE MATTER OF SCRIPTURE.
levity, or frivolity of either thought or expression.
An uniform, uninterrupted gravity of diction, an
undeviating solemnity of thought, an unswerving
tenor of most impressive seriousness marks them as
apart and distinct from any other literature the
world has produced. This, I say, is of God, not of
man. We Christians explain it in a simple, easy
way, carrying complete conviction to our intellects.
The books which make up Scripture were each and
all written by the inspiration of one and the same
Holy Spirit; therefore, their tone is throughout one
and the same — most grave, earnest, serious, and
truthful ; the voice of the Spirit of God speaking in
human language to the souls of men on the things
pertaining to the salvation of those souls, and their
indissoluble connection with the kingdoms of eternity.
But how do you explain it ?
Inf. The very subject-matter of them would create
such solemnity of diction.
Chr. How so ? — what subject-matter ?
Inf. That of the connection which exists between
the souls of men and an eternal futurity. As Milton's
solemn subject compelled a solemn style, so the
solemn matter of the Scriptures admits no other than
a correspondent diction. Every successive writer
of the Scriptures, having the same solemn truths to
propound, must of necessity use, in their delivery,
similar solemnity of language; and thus resulted
the uninterrupted gravity of your Scriptural litera
ture from its origin to its close of fifteen centuries.
Chr. This reply is fatal to your infidelity ; it takes
for granted the truth Christians advance, that a sue-

SOLEMNITY OF THE MATTER OF SCRIPTURE. 51
cession of men were raised up on purpose to reveal
and propound these Divine truths to mankind. You
say their language was necessarily in unison with
the solemnity of their revelations. I do not see the
" necessity" of it, unless you come with us still fur
ther, and admit the language as well as the matter
to have been prescribed by one and the same Holy
Spirit. There would then be, as we hold, a neces
sary correspondence. But claiming the necessity of
the respondence, you even thus admit the Divine
succession of prophets and of prophecy. You cannot
get over the difficulty of accounting for this uniform
solemnity in the use of language by the Scriptures
otherwise than by taking it for granted that a suc
cession of men were really raised up to perpetuate
the revelation of the same uniform truths ; the uni
formity of the matter necessitating uniformity of
diction in all of them from Moses to St. John. This,
I apprehend, is imperfect Christianity, not infidelity.
If you concede the divinity of the matter of Scrip
ture or the Divine succession of the prophets and
apostles who in Hebrew and Greek delivered it, the
divinity of the language would rather be a question
between me as an orthodox and you as a heterodox
Christian, than between us as Christian and infidel.
If you cannot, as an infidel, surmount the fact of the
language of Scripture being from Genesis to Revela
tion in one unchanging character otherwise than by
becoming half Christian, I am not on the present
occasion called upon to meet you in this new aspect
of yourself. But this is episodical : let us revert to
the Pentateuchal prophecy I just in part read to

52 ORAL PROPHECY  THE JEWS.
you. Newman's position is, that unless it was fulfilled
before the days of Plezekiah, it has never been fulfilled
since. His words are, " No prophecy of the Penta
teuch can be proved to have been fulfilled which had
not been already fulfilled before Hezekiah's day."1
Inf. He holds the Pentateuch to be a composition
of Hezekiah's age, and therefore, in its Mosaic char
acter, spurious or a forgery.
Chr. We will first prove this Pentateuchal proph
ecy not to have been fulfilled before Hezekiah's day.
An enumeration of the specific judgments.denounced
in it, compared with the specific facts of Jewish his
tory before Hezekiah's period, will decide this point
at the cost of little research. Before Hezekiah's
century the land of Judaea had not become powder
and dust, nor did it so become till very many cen
turies after his time. Nor before his century were
the " whole nation of the Jews only oppressed and
crushed alway." Nor had they become a proverb
and a by-word among all nations ; nor a sign
and a wonder forever. Nor had any nation from
the ends of the earth, whose emblem was the eagle,
whose language was unintelligible to the Jews, be
sieged them in all their gates through all their
land. Nor had any such catastrophe as the siege
of the whole compressed nation in Jerusalem by
the nation of the eagle, of the fierce countenance, the
iron heart, and alien tongue ever taken place. Nor
had they ever been scattered among all people from
one end of the earth to the other. Nor had they
ever been, nor were they then, wanderers under a
1 Phases of Faith, p. 113.

ORAL PROPHECY  THE JEWS. 53
"wonderful plague of long continuance," without
home, ease, or rest, among all people. For genera
tions subsequent to Hezekiah's age, the Jews re
mained in possession of Judaea ; their land retained
its fertility ; they continued the peculiar people ;
their heavens were not made brass, nor their land
iron ; their patria, ritual, and temple continued their
own ; their high and fenced walls did not come
down ; no such siege, with its collateral effects, hap
pened to them in any one place in their collective
capacity as a nation ; nor any such universal inflic
tion of misery and contempt as is particularized in
the prophecy. These facts are as notorious as any
we can quote from any history of any nation. What
ever political or religious calamities the Jews under
went before or in Hezekiah's reign, none of them
can be forced into assimilations with the promineut
features of this prophecy.
Inf. History compels me so far to concur. But
the question here is, Has this prophecy been fulfilled
since Hezekiah's reign ? Newman emphatically de
nies it, his words being," No prophecy of the Penta
teuch can be proved to have been fulfilled, which
had not already been fulfilled before Hezekiah's
day." Admitting it was never fulfilled before, can
you refute his position that it has never been fulfilled
since his reign ? " It is a vain attempt," he adds, " to
forge polemical weapons out of these old prophets
for the service of modern creeds." 1
Chr. Infidelity is most confident in the making of
infidel assertions : the value of them we shall, as we
1 Phases of Faith, p. 113.

54 ORAL PROPHECY  PALESTINE.
proceed, put to the proof. You have travelled in
Palestine? thousands in these days do so. Is not
Palestine the land the Jews once inhabited ?
Inf. Beyond doubt.
Chr. What is the present soil of that land between,
for instance, Jerusalem and the Mediterranean ?
Can it be more truly described than that its rain is
powder and dust? A man, as you well know, may
travel there fifty miles without seeing fifty blades of
green grass on his journey. One of the rainy seasons
of Judaea has now for many centuries been entirely
suspended ; and, as a consequence, " the heaven over
head has long since become brass, and the ground
underfoot as the bare iron." The soil has been dried
to dust, and the winds have swept this dust, century
after century, into the sea, leaving nothing but the
aridity of the sand and the sterility of the rock
behind. This Palestine was once the land of " foun
tains and flowers, of the former and the latter rain,
of the vine, the palm, the cedar, the olive, and the fig
tree, of milk and honey, of kine and corn." The term,
" the glory of all lands," applied to it, was no ex
aggeration. Let us refer to any one who has passed
through it, or consult any trustworthy work of travels
on the subject, the words, " the heaven of Palestine
is brass, the ground iron, the rain thereof powder
and dust, Jerusalem a desolation," will sum up in
one sentence all the descriptions they give us of the
country and its aspect.
Inf. But other countries have in their physical
features undergone as extraordinary deteriorations
as Palestine.

ORAL PROPHECY  PALESTINE. 55
Chr. Has England ? or France ? or Germany ? or
Spain ? or Portugal ?
Inf. I do not allude to modern countries.
Chr. As countries these are not modern, they are
as old as Palestine ; even as states they may claim
a respectable antiquity. Eighteen hundred years
affords great scope for changes in nature as well as in
politics. But of none of these is the soil or climate
deteriorated ; probably in every one of them it is im
proved ; or, again, has such a deterioration occurred
in India, Algiers, Tunis, Morocco, Asia Minor, Ma
cedonia, the Mediterranean Isles, Italy, Greece?
Inf. A deplorable change for the worse has taken
place in all the countries you have named which are
under the Mohammedan rule.
Chr. Undoubtedly, but not in the soil, the sea
sons, the climates, the fountains, the atmosphere.
However disastrous Islamite barbarism has been to
the arts, sciences, civilization, and humanity of the
countries under its sway, nature itself in those we
have mentioned remains the same. It has not re
mained the same in Palestine.
Inf. But surely some other countries must in three
thousand years have experienced changes similar in
character to those which have occurred in Palestine.
Chr. There are other countries.
Inf. Then what becomes of the force of this argu
ment for the fulfilment of Prophecy ?
Chr. The force is infinitely increased and multi
plied by the fact that every one of these countries,
and these countries alone, are subjects of the very
same Word of prophecy which has passed upon

56 ORAL PROPHECY.
Palestine. Such are under the same category as
Palestine, all laboring under effects produced by a
power above nature, but none experiencing to the
same degree the severity of that power.
Inf. And you account for it by prophecy ?
Chr. I do ; thus — the God from whom proceeded
these emanations of omniscience which we call pro
phecy is He by whose will and pleasure alone, Na
ture is Nature. Whether He acts through nature,
without nature, or through new creations in nature,
matters, in result and effect, nothing. He is the
cause, and his the action. " The rain of thy land
shall be powder and dust," that was the word which
proceeded from Him more than three thousand years
since upon Palestine. Palestine has become powder
and dust. How, matters not — perhaps by his acting
in and through nature : perhaps by his changing,
reversing, and revolutionizing, nature ; perhaps by
his making that to be nature which previously had
neither existence nor imaginability.
Inf. Do you believe, then, that God is constantly
calling new existences forth ?
Chr. I do. He is not only an eternal but sempi
ternal God ; not only a creator to and from eternity,
but ever-creating in that eternity.
Inf. I can understand that He may be sempiter
nal in the sense of ever evolving new forms and
systems from nature and matter, but not in the
sense of ever-creating existences out of mere nihil
ity or nothingness.
Chr. You stop short then of where I do. But be
that as it may, the powers of creation being entirely

MEDIA OF PROPHECY. 57
under his control, the direction of them to any pur
pose He pleases, must on either supposition be con
ceded. All Nature in this sense is but the Medium
of God.
Inf. There, in one sentence, you define my whole
faith and religion.
Chr. Indeed!
Inf. I believe there is an Almighty God. I be
lieve nature to be the medium between Him and
ourselves, the only medium: in and through that
medium alone is He to be found by us ; the study of
nature is the study of God, therefore the only true
religion ; all others are imaginary. I hold the Works,
and not any Word of God to be to us the only true
medium of Himself and his will. Nature indeed is
God. Chr. We shall soon come to analyze your propo
sition and see what it is worth. Has God then
through nature, or Nature without a God, so changed
as we have described the physical aspect of Pales
tine? Inf. Nature without a God? No, I cannot say
so, except by denying my own position that Nature
is the medium of God.
Chr. Without ceasing to be, that is, a Deist, and
becoming an Atheist ; well, then, God through the
medium of Nature?
Inf. The admission would accord with my ideas,
but how does it with yours? For prophecy and
miracle infer a supernatural interference with Na
ture, do they not ?
Chr. By no means necessarily so : It matters not,
3»

58 MEDIA OF PROPHECY.
as I premised, whether God acts by or without na
ture. To put the proposition with logical accuracy,
" Whatever it pleases God to act materially by, that
becomes nature ;" in this sense God is ever summon
ing new existences into creation.
Inf. Not in this world.
Chr. According to the Christian faith, yes. Chris
tianity teaches that there is at this instant going on
a process of God in the creation, by purely arbitrary
means of his own, of new natures in us and the world
at large.
Inf. But not of new existences.
Chr. Yes, of new existences, not yet completed,
but commenced and still proceeding — the consum
mation of which is reserved, or passes on to a new
physical creation of heaven and earth to synchronize
with the manifestation of these new natures: they
are each to keep time and place with each other.
Whether God, therefore, in Palestine used physical
nature as it was, or created other means which thus
became nature, affects not the essence of the ques
tion. The fact is before us. How came it a fact ?
By the agency of nature ?
Inf. Well!
Chr. And Nature is, you say, the medium of God ;
then what Nature has done in Palestine, God Him
self has done through Nature. Is that clear ?
Inf. Proceed.
Chr. But precisely that which has been thus done
through nature, was, if not fifteen, at least, by New
man's own theory, eight centuries before the disper
sion of the Jewish nation pre-menaced and pre-par-

MEDIA OF PROPHETIC ACCOMPLISHMENT. 59
ticularized in spoken and written words. Now does
Nature, the inanimate medium of God, use speech
or words? Does it write or deliver the writing ?
Inf. No.
Chr. Then though it may act, it cannot, any more
than the sun, the moon, the wind, the ground, the
waters, the forest, or the cloud, tell us beforehand, in
speech or writing, what it will act ?
Inf. It cannot.
Chr. Here are certain effects produced in Pales
tine. Giant Nature j>roduces them ; still here also,
centuries before Nature has carried them out, are
these very effects definitely specified in words and
writing, as to take place in the event of a certain
line of conduct being pursued by the Jewish people
in this very land of Palestine. Did Nature write or
speak those words ?
Inf. How could it ?
Chr. Who did then ?
Inf. Men wrote and spoke them.
Chr. How came men to write and speak them?
Man, simply as man, possesses no insight into futu
rity. Nature has effected this change in Palestine.
I concede, you observe, your postulate here. How
came' it, fifteen centuries before, to be written and
spoken, that this was the very thing which Nature
should do, and do exceptionally as a " sign and a
wonder." Let Infidelity explain this. It requires
explanation, for Nature cannot speak or write ; man
cannot see centuries onward, much less calculate on
any possible exception in this or that country to the

60 SCRIPTURAL PROPHECY.
general laws of Nature, least of all from the excess
of verdure and fertility to " powder and dust."
Inf. Your question is a perplexing one.
Chr. Consider : man speaks and writes, does he not?
Inf. Yes.
Chr. Mere material nature, the nature by which
such changes have been effected in Palestine, neither
reads nor writes. From whom does man derive his
capacities ?
Inf. From God.
Chr. As he derives from God the capacity to
speak and write at all, it is possible that he may also
be caused of God to use that capacity in speaking
and writing thus and thus.
Inf. It is possible.
Chr. Nature being the medium of God, God can
always regulate and command it ?
Inf. Admitted.
Chr. Has nature consciousness?
Inf. Of course not.
Chr. Unconscious nature effects in one particular
country what man fifteen hundred years before had
predicted she would in that particular country,
exceptionally to all her laws, effect. He who always
regulates and commands nature is God. What is the
direct inference ?
Inf. I see your conclusion. God revealed ; man
spoke and wrote ; in due time, Nature, God's medium
of action, fulfils God's revelation so spoken and so
written. Chr. Can you explain, I do not say the theory but

NATURE AND PROPHECY. 61
the hard, substantial facts of this and many other
specific prophecies, in any other possibly rational
way ? Let us again revert to the prophecy itself.
Can you mention any nation which was a nation and
a race, both one and the other, then — be it in Moses
or Hezekiah's time — and is a nation and a race now, —
a space of at least two thousand five hundred years, —
as now scattered among all people, from one end of
the earth unto the other, yet as distinct among the
sations when thus scattered as they were when taken
out and selected from all nations and placed by them
selves in one land ? Supposing you never to have
heard of the existence of the Scriptures, or to have
read a word of prophecy, what name would instantly
rise to the tip of your tongue in replying to such a
question ?
Inf. The Jews.
Chr. Again. What nation, after being stormed in
all the strongholds successively of its own land, was
then cooped up and concentred in one city in a siege
the straitness of which compelled mothers to eat their
own children, by a nation whose emblem was the
Eagle, of a fierce countenance, regarding neither the
person of the old, nor showing favor to the young ?
Inf. You mean, of course, the Romans : but the
Romans conquered a hundred nations besides the
Jews. Chr. Not one in this way.
Inf. Carthage.
Chr. Rome in her wars with Carthage was an
Italian state, separated from Carthage by merely the
breadth of the Mediterranean ; Carthage was not a

62 ROME AND JUD2SA.
" land," but a commercial Venice. Carthage had no
strongholds throughout all her lands ; Carthage was
defended by mercenaries and not a race ; in brief, the
Phoenician race and people of Carthage have for two
thousand years been utterly extinct. So far from
being scattered among all nations, not a Carthaginian
pretending to identity of any description with those
who fell before Rome, could, if we instituted the
minutest search, be discovered from one end of the
earth to the other. If we examine the catalogue
of the Roman Provinces — Spain, Portugal, France,
Britain, the Rhine frontiers, the Cisalpine, the
Danubian States, Northern Africa, Anatolia, Egypt,
and the Euphratic Provinces, in the conquest or
national catastrophe of none of them do we find the
following distinctive " signs : "
A land of one race — A land studded with for
tresses of " high and fenced walls," manned by
that race, into which they had thrown themselves,
and in which they trusted, all of which are in suc
cession beleaguered and stormed by the enemy —
A siege of unparalleled, of the most appalling se
verity, of the whole race in one spot — A "plucking
off" of the race from the land — A depopulation
from being as " the stars in heaven for multitude," to
being " a few" — Ascattering of these few from one end
of the earth to the other — -Centuries of " a trembling
heart, of failing eyes, of sorrow of mind, of the rest
less foot, of being only oppressed and crushed alway."
Yet though " few," and " scattered " and " crushed
alway," never destroyed, or dying out, or amalga
mated with any of the nations among whom they are

ROME AND JUD^A. 63
scattered. But remaining always an astonishment,
a proverb, and a by-word, in every age and country
of their dispersion. No series of events in the history
of any other nation with whom Rome came into
collision bears even a remote parallel to the " signs "
here laid down as the destinies of the Jewish people
on their rejection of the Messiah. But applying to
no other race or nation whatever, they do most
strikingly apply to the Jews.
For the Jews were one race — Palestine, their land,
was the land of one race — Palestine under the
Romans, as under the Canaanites, was studded with
cities of " gates and high and fenced walls " — Into
these cities the race in their national rising against the
Roman supremacy threw themselves, " they trusted
in them " — One by one these cities were stormed with
a mercilessness that spared neither youth nor age.
The race fell back, as one body, into Jerusalem — The
Roman eagles followed, and Jerusalem became the
" carcass of the nation" — In the course of the siege,
each terrible detail of the prophetic denunciation
was amply and notoriously verified — Jerusalem was
stormed, and 1,100,000 of the race perished at one
blow. The race was " plucked out " from the land,
every individual of it being prohibited, under penalty
of death, from coming even in sight of their once
" holy and beautiful city." Do you admit the truth
of these historical statements ?
Inf. They are too well known to be contravened.
Chr. How many centuries have since elapsed ?
Inf. Eighteen.
Chr. Throughout these eighteen centuries is there

64 JUDICIAL PROPHECY  THE JEWS.
any race which has combined in itself and destinies
these " signs " or characteristics : 1. Few in num
ber. 2. Scattered from one end of the earth to the
other. 3. Never resting, or living in any one coun
try as their patria or home. 4. Oppressed and
crushed alway under " a plague of long continuance."
5. Being " an astonishment and a proverb among all
nations," climates, religions, and languages, Christian
and Heathen, without distinction ; alike among those
who know, and those who have never heard of the
Scriptures. Suppose me to ask this question of
ninety-nine out of a hundred people in any part of
the world, what would be the certain reply ?
Inf. I do not contend against patent facts — the
Jews. Chr. Suppose me again to ask, " Do any other
people besides the Jews unite these characteristics ?"
would one in a hundred find it possible to suggest
even the supposition of any other?
Inf. Proceed.
Chr. We have, then, in connection with the his
tory of a certain race a certain number of facts ex
tending over so many centuries. Fifteen, or, as
Newman avers, eight centuries before the starting
point of these facts, we have each of them, not
vaguely and generally, but definitely and specifically
written down as part of a great whole, — call it judg
ment, destiny, or what you please, — denounced as
certain to befall the Jewish race in the event of their
rejecting a Messiah calling himself by the "glorious
and fearful name of the Lord thy God." To the
Jewish race alone were these addressed ; given and

JUDICIAL PROPHECY  THE JEWS. 65
consigned as part of what the race itself have ever,
from the moment of their delivery, regarded as the
Oracles of God. Without Scripture or Prophecy the
whole world, Christian and Heathen alike, going by
the palpable, universal facts before their eyes, put
their finger on the Jews as the only race in which
such and such signs are realized and combined.
Without consulting the after facts of history, we, at
the same time, put our finger on certain writings
which, fifteen centuries before these facts commenced,
specify the facts, the signs, the contingency, and the
race. These writings name the Jews as the race in
whom certain " signs" were to be fulfilled. Three
thousand years after they are written the whole
world witnesses that in the Jews, and of all nations
the Jews only, these signs are so strangely and pro
minently fulfilled, that by them the Jew is distin
guished from any other nation of the world. The
" signs" predicted are literally the " signs" by which
the Jew is known to be of that race the whole world
over. The " signs" cannot be separated from the
Jew, nor the Jew from the " signs."
Inf. It is certainly very singular.
Chr. Now, did Nature predict all this in writing?
were these writings from Nature?
Inf. No.
Chr. Something or some being did predict them
thus in writing. Explain who or what.
Inf. It is not easy to explain such very strong
coincidences between present facts and these ancient
vaticinations. Chr. How! not explain a broad, outstanding,

66 JUDICIAL PROPHECY — THE JEWS.
pyramidic fact of history ? You, who insist that a
Christian should explain every thing from the high
est mystery to the humblest precept in his religion,
not able to explain a fact which confronts infidelity
and false philosophies — the philosophies that believe
Nature to be God— in every century of time and
every country of the globe! Not explain a Jew!
You can and do explain the Assyrian, the Egyptian,
the Greek, the Roman, the German, the Briton ;
why not explain the most striking, the most durable,
the most arresting of them all — the Jew? In Homer,
in Livy, in Gildas, in Bede, you find not one syllable
predictive of the destinies of the Greek, the Roman,
the Briton, or the Teuton, — all great and powerful
nations, — three thousand years after the date of their
compositions. But in these Scriptures, written three
thousand years ago, is described the history of the
Jews as they are before our eyes at this moment ; so
described in deep, unmistakable characteristics, that
it is easier by them to detect a Jew than it is by any
other signs to detect an individual of* any other race
in the world. What baffles infidelity here? Not
surely lack of materials. There is ancient, here is
modern Palestine ; there are the pre-dispersion writ
ings, here are the post-dispersion facts. Throw aside
the Scriptures altogether ; proceed on Greek, Roman
European authorities, by the world, by the popular,
the universal voice from England to Japan, and ex
plain the Jew. Why, for instance, are they a " prov
erb" in every one's mouth? Why, after eighteen
centuries, during which, according to the science of
the Malthusian Economy, they ought to have peopled

JUDICIAL PROPHECY  THE JEWS. 67
every land of their sojourning, are they still but " few"
in number? Why do they still remain " scattered?"
What cause, when union is strength, has prevented
them from uniting their scatterings? What has
barred them from Palestine, yet barring them, still
keeps them also " Jews ?" Why, for so many cen
turies, by Roman, by barbarian, by Christian, by
Islamite, by Pagan, have they been " oppressed and
crushed alway," and, being so, why different from
every oppressed nation, instead of, at times, attempt
ing to vindicate their exemption from the "wonderful
plague of long continuance," have they, since the
crucifixion, ever been, under Pagan, Christian, and
Islamite, the race of " the trembling heart ;" they
whose history, before " their rejection of the great
and glorious Name," teems with heroes, compared to
whom the warriors of Greece and Rome were children
in prowess and mercenaries in spirit? How is it
when, even now, in our own England, a few Jews
emerge from the mass, the mass itself remains a
"hissing and a scorn" unto the nations? Has Infidel
ity no explanation for this phenomenon which has
already lasted eighteen centuries ?
Inf. I have never met a satisfactory explanation
of all these facts: some, I think, may be accounted
for on political, others on reactionary grounds ; but
I admit much would yet remain beyond my present
power of solution.
Chr. Add, the only visible Being in their history
who ever presumed to appropriate to Himself " the
glorious and fearful Name of the Lord thy God," was
for that very reason crucified by them ; yet Him

68 JUDICIAL PROPHECY  THE JEWS.
they are compelled to see acknowledged by an ever-
widening Church of all peoples and languages as the
" only name given to man whereby he can be saved."
Wherever they wander — the Crucified still confronts
them ; in every nation where they appear, they are
doomed to look, in some aspect or other, " on Him
whom they pierced ;" and this very Crucifixion was
to be, as their writings declare, the cardinal point or
hinge on which, for good or evil, were to turn their
temporal and spiritual destinies as a nation. If you
questioned me why I could not be an Infidel, I would
point to the first Jew I met and say, " That man's
history makes it too hazardous."
Inf. I feel perplexed but not alarmed by my ina
bility to satisfy myself as to the causes which isolate
the Jews from all nations.
Chr. We Christians, on the other hand, feel that
our souls cannot afford to dispense with a decision in
this matter. Here is a Power which has absolutely
controlled both material and human nature — a land
and a race — for eighteen hundred years, in complete
accordance with certain Scriptures which this very
race have from the first constantly maintained to
have been delivered by this Power fifteen hundred
years previously to their legislator and Church. But
everywhere these Scriptures address themselves also
to us, and that with promises and menaces equal, at
least, in their solemn import to those addressed of old
to the Jews. Now, if I cannot explain the peculiar
history of Palestine and of the Jews otherwise than
by admitting the conclusion which that history logi
cally forces upon me, — the Divine inspiration of the

JUDICIAL PROPHECY  THE JEWS. 69
Pentateuch, — I should be doing violence to my judg
ment and intellect in remaining a Skeptic instead of
becoming a Christian. On the lowest grounds of
self-consideration I am not prepared, by refusing
credence to his Word, to enter into conflict with a
Being, if not of almighty, certainly of such power as
Nature at present cannot cope withal. Here is the
evidence of three thousand years that she cannot.
Had I no other case, therefore, than this, of the
written judicial sentence thus executed on the Jews,
submitted to my reason, I should feel it far too unsafe
to be an Infidel ; for here is irrefragable proof that
disobedience to the requisitions or revealed com
mands of this Power cannot be perpetrated with
impunity. But knowing this to be only one of very
many instances of the irresistibility of this Power, I
am compelled to infer the infidelity which ignores
its very existence to be in the highest degree irra
tional as well as dangerous. Observe also that in
the same page 1 Newman writes, " Of the prophecies
which concern various nations, some of them are
remarkably verified." This admission alone over
throws Infidelity in the gross. The power of proph
ecy, and the fact of many prophecies on a national
scale fulfilled being thus conceded, the Infidel aban
dons the principle, retaining only the profession of
Ifindelity. This is again irrational. I am thus, so
far as the exercise of Intellect is concerned, left no
other alternative than, even on the ground of the
Pentateuchal prophecies alone, to accept the Divine
original of both the Scriptures and the Christian
» Phases of Faith, p. 115.

70 PREOAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS.
faith. "The polemical weapons, therefore, forged
out of the Old Prophets" for the service of our
Christian Creed still remain, contrary to Newman's
assertion, armor too potent for infidelity to encounter
in the lists of right reason. In attempting it, Infi
delity, with regard to some prophecies, ceases to be
infidelity, and with regard to others, confesses it has
no solution to propose of facts it finds impossible to
deny. May we not be excused in deeming such In
fidelity Imbecility ?
But you may be more successful in your next ob
jection. Inf. I will leave the Pentateuch, then, and pro
ceed to the Psalms. The statement of Newman is,
"As to the Messianic prophecies, I began to be
pressed with the difficulty of proving against the
Jews that ' Messiah was to suffer.' The Psalms
generally adduced for this purpose can in no way
be fixed on Messiah."1 Now, the Saviour in whom
you believe is a Crucified Saviour, "Jesus Christ
and Him Crucified." The great emblem of your re
ligion is the instrument of his suffering — the Cross :
it surmounts your material churches, and is inscribed
in baptism on the brow of every member of your
spiritual Church : but this statement alleges that the
Psalms in no way indicate a suffering Messiah. If
this be correct, the connection between the Psalms
and the Crucified Saviour whom you worship must
be entirely imaginary ; they form, in fact, neither
part of your Scriptures, nor evidence of the truth of
your religion. 1 Phases of Faith, p. 113.

PRECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS. 71
Chr. Against Newman's assertion I place that
judgment of the Christian Church which regards the
whole Book of Psalms as one great Precal Prophecy
of the Messiah ; a Messiah both Suffering and Tri
umphant. I shall, I fear, weary you if I attempt to
read consecutively out of these spiritual songs of the
Church those passages which refer to Jesus Christ
in either his capacity as the great sacrifice for sin,
Himself made the curse for us, and, as such, bearing
the sins of the whole world in his own body, or as
the Triumphant Conqueror, by the consummation of
such sacrifice, of death, the grave, and hell.
Inf. They cannot, I think, from this statement of
Newman's, be so many as you anticipate.
Chr. I must beg your patience, then, while I cite
such of them as will enable your judgment to form
its own conclusion.
" Why do the heathen rage, and the people im
agine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set
themselves, and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord, and against his anointed." 1 " My
heart was glad and my glory rejoiced ; my flesh also
shall rest in hope. For why ? Thou shalt not leave
my soul in hell, neither shalt thou suffer thine holy
one to see corruption, thou shalt show me 'the path
of life : in thy presence is the fulness of joy, and
at thy right hand there is pleasure for evermore." 2
" Keep me as an apple of an eye. Hide me under the
shadow of thy wings, from the ungodly that trouble
me. Mine enemies compass me round about to take
away my soul. Defend my soul from the ungodly
1 Ps. ii. 2 Ps. xvi.

72 PEECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS.
which is a sword of thine ; from the men of thy hand
and from the evil world. I will behold thy presence
in righteousness : and when I wake up after thy like
ness I shall be satisfied with it."1 "They pierced my
hands and my feet ; I may tell all my bones : they
stand staring and looking upon me. They part my
garments among them : and cast lots upon my ves
ture. All the ends of the world shall remember
themselves and be turned unto the Lord; and all
the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Him.
All they that go down into the dust shall kneel
before him; and no man hath quickened his own
soul. My seed shall serve him : they shall be counted
unto the Lord for a generation. They shall come,
and the heavens shall declare his righteousness : unto
a people that shall be born, whom the Lord hath
made." 2 " Though I walk through the valley and
shadow of death, I will fear no evil : for Thou art
with me ; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou hast anointed my head with oil ; thy loving-
kindness and thy mercy shall follow me all the days
of my life : and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever."3 "Into thy hands I commend my spirit:
I am become like as a broken vessel. I have heard
the blasphemy of the multitude : and fear is on every
side, whilst they conspire together against me, and
take their counsel to take away my life. But my
hope hath been in thee, O God : I have said, Thou
art my God. Thou hast shown me marvellous great
kindness in a great city."4 "The Lord bringeth the
JPs. xvii. aPs. xxii. sPs. xxiii. 4Ps. xxxi.

PRECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS. 73
counsel of the heathen to naught : and maketh the
devices of the people to be of none effect, and casteth
out the counsels of princes. The counsel of the
Lord shall endure forever, and the thoughts of his
heart from generation to generation." "- " My soul shall
make her boast in the Lord : the humble shall hear
thereof, and be glad. Great are the troubles of the
righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of all.
He keepeth all his bones ; so that none of them is
broken." 2 " Plead thou my cause, O Lord, with them
that strive with me : say unto my soul, I am thy
salvation. Let them be as the dust before the
wind: and the angel of the Lord scattering them.
False witnesses did rise up : they laid to my charge
things that I knew not. They rewarded me evil for
good. They gaped upon me with their mouths ;
avenge thou my cause, my God, and my Lord.
Blessed be the Lord, who hath pleasure in the pros
perity of his servant."3 "I waited patiently for the
Lord : and he inclined unto me, and heard my call
ing. He brought me also out of the horrible pit, and
set my feet upon the rock. He hath put a new song
into my mouth : even a thanksgiving unto our God.
Great are the wondrous works which thou hast done.
Sacrifice and meat-offering, thou wouldest not : but
mine ears hast thou opened. Burnt-offerings, and
offerings for sin, hast thou not required : then said
I, Lo, I come. In the volume of thy book it is
written of me, that I should fulfil thy will, O God :
I am content to do it." 4 " All mine enemies whisper
1 Ps. xxxiii. " Ps. xxxiv. 3 Ps. xxxv. 4 Ps. xl.
4

74 PRECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS.
together against me : even against me do they ima
gine this evil. Let the sentence of guiltiness pro
ceed against him : and now that he lieth, let him
rise up no more. Yea, even mine own familiar
friend, whom I trusted : who did also eat of my
bread, hath laid great wait for me. But be thou
merciful unto me, O Lord : raise thou me up again,
and I shall reward them. Thou shalt set me before
thy face forever."1 "Like as the hart desireth the
water-brooks : so longeth my soul after Thee, O Lord.
My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living
God : when shall I come to appear before the presence
of God? My tears have been my meat day and
night : while they daily say unto me, Where is now
thy God ? My God, my soul is vexed within me :
all thy waves and storms are gone over me. I will
say unto the Lord of my strength, Why hast thou
forgotten me? My bones are smitten asunder as
with a sword : whilst my enemies that trouble me
cast me in the teeth. Why art thou so vexed, O my
soul: and why art thou so disquieted within me?
O put thy trust in God : for I will yet thank him,
which is the help of my countenance, and my God." 2
" Save me, O God, for thy name's sake, and deliver
me in thy strength. For strangers are risen up
against me : and tyrants, which have not God before
their eyes, seek after my soul."3 " Hear my prayer,
O Lord: and hide not thyself from my petition.
Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me : and
a horrible dread hath overwhelmed me. It is not
1 Ps. xii. ! Ps. xiii. s Ps. liv.

PRECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS. 75
an open enemy that hath done me this dishonor,
neither was it mine adversary that did magnify him
self against me : but it was even thou, my companion,
my guide, and mine own familiar friend. We took
sweet counsel together, and walked in the house of
God as friends. He laid his hands upon such as be
at peace with him, and he brake his covenant.
The words of his mouth were softer than butter,
having war in his heart : his words were smoother
than oil, and yet be they very swords." x " Be mer
ciful unto me, O God, for man goeth about to devour
me. They daily mistake my words : all that they
imagine is to do me evil : they hold all together and
keep themselves close, and mark my steps, when
they lie in wait for my soul. In God have I put my
trust, I will not fear what man can do unto me.
Thou hast delivered my soul from death, and my
feet from falling : that I may walk before God in
the light of the living." 2 " Be merciful unto me, 0
God, be merciful unto me, for my soul trusteth in
thee. My soul is among lions. I lie among the
children of men, that are set on fire : whose teeth
are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp
sword. I will give thanks unto thee, O Lord, among
the people : and I will sing unto thee among the
nations. For the greatness of thy mercy reacheth
unto the heavens: and thy truth unto the clouds."3
" Deliver me from mine enemies, O God : defend me
from them that rise up against me. O deliver me
from the wicked doers, and save me from the blood-
i Ps. Iv. s Ps. lvi. s Ps. lvii.

76 PRECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS.
thirsty men. For lo, they lie waiting for my soul :
slay them not, lest my people forget it : but scatter
them abroad among the people. I will sing of thy
power, for thou hast been my refuge and defence in
the day of my trouble."1 "Hear my prayer, O God,
give ear unto my prayer. Thou, O Lord, hast heard
my desires : and hast given an heritage to them that
fear thy name. Thou shalt grant the king a long
life : that his years may endure throughout all gener
ations. He shall dwell before God forever."2 "My
soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh also longeth after
thee : in a barren and dry land where no water is.
Under the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. My
soul hangeth on thee : thy right hand hath upholden
me. They that seek the hurt of my soul shall go
under the earth."3 " Save me, O God, for the waters
are come in, even unto my soul. They that hate me
without a cause are more than the hairs of my head :
they that are mine enemies, and would destroy me
guiltless, are mighty. For thy sake have I suffered
reproof: shame hath covered my face. I am become
a stranger unto my brethren : even an alien unto my
mother's children. For the zeal of thine house hath
even eaten me up : and the rebukes of them that re
buked thee have fallen upon me. Hear me, O Lord,
in the multitude of thy mercy: even in the truth of
thy salvation. Let not the water-flood drown me,
neither let the deep swallow me up : and let not the
pit shut her mouth upon me. Thy rebuke hath
broken my heart: I am full of heaviness: I looked
»Ps.lix. "Ps.lxi. sP6.1xiii.

PRECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS. 77
for some to have pity on me, but there was no man,
neither found I any to comfort me. They gave me
gall to eat : and when I was thirsty they gave me
vinegar to drink. Let the things that should have
been for their wealth be unto them an occasion for
falling. Let their eyes be blinded, that they see not :
and ever bow thou down their backs. Let their
habitation be void : and let no man dwell in their
tents, for they persecute him whom thou hast
smitten."1 "When I receive the congregation, I
shall judge according to right. The earth is weak
and all the inhabitants thereof : I bear up the pillars
of it. All the horns of the ungodly also will I break :
and the horns of the righteous shall be exalted."2
" Bow down thine ear, O Lord, and hear me. Preserve
thou my soul, for I am holy. Great is thy mercy to
wards me : thou hast delivered my soul from the
nethermost hell. Give thy strength unto thy servant,
and help the son of thy handmaid."3 " O Lord God
of my salvation, I have cried day and night unto
thee, for my soul is full of trouble : and my life
draweth nigh unto hell. Free among the dead, like
unto them that are wounded, and lie in the grave :
thou hast laid me in the. lowest pit : in a place of
darkness, and in the deep. Thine indignation lieth
hard upon me, and thou hast vexed me with all
thy storms. I am so fast in prison, that I cannot
get forth. Dost thou show wonders among the
dead; or shall the dead rise up again and praise
thee? Shall thy loving-kindness be showed in the
1 Ps. lxix. 2 Ps. lxxv. s Ps. lxxxvi.

78 PRECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS.
grave, or thy faithfulness in destruction ? Shall thy
wondrous works be known in the dark, and thy
righteousness in the land where all things are forgot ?
Unto thee, O Lord, have I cried, and early shall my
prayer come before thee."1 "Thou spakest some
times in visions to thy saints and saidst, I have laid
help upon one that is mighty, I have exalted one
chosen out of the people. I have found David my
servant ; with my holy oil have I anointed him.
My truth and my mercy shall be with him. I will
set his dominion also in the sea, and his right hand
in the floods. He shall call me, Thou art my father :
my God, and my strong salvation. And I will make
him, my first-born, higher than the kings of the
earth. His seed also will I make to endure forever,
and his throne as the day of heaven. But thou hast
abhorred and forsaken thine Anointed: thou hast
put out his glory, and cast his throne down to the
ground: the days of his youth hast thou shortened,
and covered his face with dishonor. Remember,
Lord, how I do bear in my bosom the rebukes of
many people : whilst thine enemies have blasphemed
thee and slandered the footsteps of thine Anointed."2
"Hear my prayer, O Lord: O hear me, and that
right soon. Mine enemies revile me all day long :
and they that are mad upon me are sworn together
against me. For I have eaten ashes as it were
bread : and mingled my drink with weeping, and that
because of thine indignation and wrath : for thou
hast taken me up, and cast me down. He brought
1 Ps. lxxxviii. a Ps. lxxxix.

PRECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS. 79
me down in my journey: and shortened my days.
Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation
of the earth : and the heavens are the work of thy
hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure.
Thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail."1
" Hold not thy tongue, 0 God of my praise : for the
mouth of the ungodly is open upon me : they com
passed me about with words of hatred, and fought
against me without a cause. For the love I had
unto them, lo, they take now my contrary part : but
I give myself unto prajrer. Thus have they rewarded
me evil for good, and hatred for my good- will. But
deal thou with me according to thy name. O de
liver me, for I am poor and helpless, and my heart
is wounded within me. I go hence like the shadow
that departeth, and am driven away as the grass
hopper. I became also a reproach unto them : they
that looked upon me shaked their heads. Help me,
O Lord my God : O save me according to thy mercy :
and they shall know, how that this is thy hand, and
that thou, Lord, hast done it. Though they curse, yet
bless thou." 2 " The Lord said unto my Lord : Sit
thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies
thy footstool. The Lord sware, and will not repent.
Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchis-
edec. The Lord upon thy right hand shall wound
even kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge
among the heathen. He shall drink of the brook in
the way : therefore shall he lift up the head."3 " The
Lord is on my side : I will not fear what man can do
i Ps. cii. 2 Ps. cix. s Ps. ex.

80 PRECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS.
unto me. All nations compassed me round, but in
the name of the Lord will I destroy them. The
Lord is my strength and my song, and is become
my salvation. Open me the gates of righteousness :
the righteous shall enter into it. The same stone
which the builders refused is become the head stone
of the corner. This is the Lord's doing, and it is
marvellous in our eyes. This is the day which the
Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad there
in."1 "I cried unto the Lord with my voice: yea,
even unto the Lord did I make my supplication.
When my spirit was in heaviness thou knewest my
path : in the way wherein I walked have they privily
laid a snare for me. I looked also upon my right
hand, and saw there was no man that would know
me. I had no place to flee unto, and no man cared
for my soul. Bring my soul out of prison, that I
may give thanks unto thy Name : which thing, if
thou wilt grant me, then shall the righteous resort
unto my company."2 "Hearken unto me for thy
truth and righteousness' sake. For the enemy hath
persecuted my soul : he hath smitten my life down
to the ground : he hath laid me in the darkness as
the men that have been long dead. O let me hear
thy loving-kindness betimes in the morning, for in
thee is my trust."3
The remaining Psalms are pasans of victory sung
by the Church to Christ triumphant after his passion.
" I will magnify thee, O Lord my King, and I will
praise thy name for ever and ever. Great is the
1 Ps. cxviii. 2 Ps. cxlii. 3 ps_ cxliii.

PRECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS. 81
Lord and marvellous, worthy to be praised, there is
no end of his greatness. One generation shall praise
thy works unto another, and declare thy power : the
memorial of thy abundant kindness shall be shown,
and men shall sing of thy righteousness. Thy king
dom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion
endureth through all ages. Thou sendest forth thy
commandment upon earth, and thy word runneth
very swiftly. O praise the Lord of heaven, praise
him in the height: Praise him, all ye angels of his!
Praise him, all ye host. O sing unto the Lord a new
song ; let the saints be joyful in glory, let them
rejoice in their beds. Praise him in his holiness.
Praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise
him in his noble acts. Praise him according to his
excellent greatness : let every thing that hath breath
praise the Lord."
Inf. Your statement I understand to be that all
these passages from one portion of the Scriptures
only — the Psalms — are prophetic of Christ in either
his suffering or glorified capacity.
Chr. Precisely. They are the cries, prayers, and
supplications to God, of Jesus Christ in his state of
humiliation and passion : of Jesus Christ in his hu
man capacity ; of the man Jesus Christ tried in all
things, and feeling all these trials as bitterly as we
ourselves, to his and our Father in heaven. They
are the precal prophecy of both the inward and out
ward sufferings of the Messiah.
Inf. But how is it that only a few comparatively
of these are in the Scriptures of the New Testament
quoted as applying to Christ ?

82 PRECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS.
Chr. Why should more be quoted? The writings
of the New Testament were addressed exclusively
to the Church ; that is, to persons already baptized
and instructed in the doctrines and discipline of the
faith of Christ. The New Testament was never
intended to communicate the great truths of the
Gospel for the first time to the persons to whom its
various parts were addressed, but, as -Saint Peter
observes of his own Epistles, to remind them of the
truths in which they had been already established.
Most, indeed, of the Epistles are written, not with
the intention of originally imparting the Gospel
doctrines, but of correcting local errors in this or that
Church, by bringing them briefly but decisively to
the test of that standard of the faith already at their
first preaching delivered by the Apostles, as they
themselves had received it from Christ, once for all
to the saints. The invariable method adopted by the
Apostles in dealing with false conceptions of Chris
tianity, is to recall the Church in which they pre
vailed to its original instruction, which appears to
have been, in every Church of Apostolic foundation,
uniformly one and the same. Allusions, therefore,
to doctrines universally taught, known, and accepted,
abound in the New Testament, though the doctrines
themselves are only explicitly declared, when some
error directly contravening them required them to be
so. But in most instances an allusion or reference
sufficed. And so with prophecy. The quotation
of one or two passages was enough to remind the
Church of the whole catena of prophecies with which
they were connected. " Unto the word of prophecy

PRECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS. 83
ye do well that ye take heed," x says St. Peter, speak
ing thus of this prophetical instruction communi
cated to, and received by, the Church in its aggre
gate and mass.
Inf. But how, again, is it, seeing these Psalms
were originally the productions of David, Solomon,
Asaph, and others, that you appropriate their ex
pression as if they were literally intended to be, and
were indeed, the language of Jesus Christ Himself
in his incarnate humiliation?
Chr. Every prophecy or type in the Scriptures
bears only in its secondary sense on the agent of its
action, or the medium of its delivery, be it Abel,
Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Da
vid, Solomon, Jonah, or any other representative of
Christ to the then Church. Christ Himself is always
its primary and permanent sense. So also with the
Church itself. Its types, symbols, and ritual on
earth are the mere secondaries or reflections of the
Church in heaven. The substances of the Jewish
Church were shadows of ours ; our substances, again,
are shadows of the future, yet at the same time the
original Church, in heaven — that Zion and kingdom
of God prepared for his redeemed before the founda
tions of the world. As the whole form, therefore, of
the Church on earth follows, not precedes, or only
precedes in reference to us, the form of the Church
in heaven, so Christ Himself, its Head, precedes in
his own charcter all the prophetic types and delinea
tions of that character, given through earthly repre-
1 2 Pet. i. 19.

84 PRECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS.
sentatives to mankind. As we look, therefore, through
nature up to nature's God, we look through the
Scriptures up to Christ as the sole object whom all
the Scriptures, and every thing in the Scriptures, in
its degree and kind, were pre-designed to present to
our souls. Whether, therefore, He is termed, in his
proper character, Jesus Christ, or in one of his many
typical characters, — Israel, David, the Angel of the
Covenant, the Rock, the Paschal Lamb, the Living
Fountain, — He alone it is to whom in substance we
look in every form and mode of the revelations of
the Scriptures. The persons or the things through
which such revelations are made to us, we consider
as mere veilings or unveilings of Him the Substance,
the Cause and End of their use and assumption.
Inf. This infers, of course, the pre-existence of
Christ ?
Chr. Certainly: the eternal Godhead of Christ.
Now, are these Psalms which we read expressive of
suffering or not ?
Inf. I had no idea of the intensity of suffering
which they do most forcibly express until I heard
them read consecutively.
Chr. Of inward or spiritual suffering they are to
my mind inexpressibly painful emanations and out
bursts. The character they portray is this, — a man
of constant devotions, of public and solitary com
munions with God, of absolute and limitless faith
and trust in God, and in God only ; ever in prayer,
in many agonies; betrayed by a familiar friend,
deserted by all, falsely accused, delivered to the
heathen, shamed, dishonored, mocked, blasphemed,

PRECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS. 85
crucified ; in his expiring moments given gall to eat
and vinegar to drink ; dead, interred, consigned to
darkness and the grave. Is this suffering ?
Inf. Who can doubt its being extreme suffering?
Chr. Is the description of such a person as this
contained in these Psalms? Do the Psalms them
selves supply us with the description of this char
acter ?
Inf. Proceed.
Chr. The Psalms of the Passion, then, are Prophe
cies of the most profound and grievous suffering.
Inf. But nevertheless they may apply to man
only, and not to Messiah, except as mere man, there
fore not to your Christ, who is both God and man.
Chr. These very prophecies declare of this very
same Sufferer that, after being thus buried, as one
long dead, laid in the lowest pit, in the nethermost
hell, in the place of darkness and in the deep, He
should not see corruption ; He should not be left in
hell ; He should lead captive the captivity of hell ;
He should ascend on high ; He should receive gifts
for men ; He should reign over the heathen ; the
nations of the living and the dead should alike wor
ship and bow down to Him ; He should sit on the
throne of God himself till every enemy of Himself
and kingdom were subdued unto Him ; that his seed
should be eternal, and prayer be ever daily made to
Him. Have you ever heard of more than one in
whom it has ever been pretended that these extra
ordinary facts of terrestrial suffering and celestial
aggrandizement have been verified?
Inf. No, I have not.

86 PRECAL PROPHECY  THE PSALMS.
Chr. Who is that one ?
Inf. The one whom you Christians affirm to be
and believe in as the Messiah. But the truth is,
these prophecies, contrary to Newman's assertion,
are so plain, that out of them alone a Messiah might
be originated ; they might themselves be the cause
of their own verifications.
Chr. We will presently examine the possibility of
your hypothesis. We in our Christian creed affirm,
that the series of sufferings which Jesus Christ un
derwent, and which terminated in his death and
burial, were literally the same with those predicted
to befall this great suffering Character in the Psalms ;
and in support of such affirmation we adduce per
fectly incontrovertible historic evidence, such as In
fidels themselves, up to the fact of the Burial, do not
dispute or impugn.
Inf. It is possible, supposing such evidence incon
trovertible, that Christ Himself so acted as to bring
his life and its final incidents into conformity with
these Messianic prophecies.
Chr. That is, I think, as you will find, a desperate
supposition. Let us first deal with Newman, who
asserts these Psalms possess no character of Messianic
Suffering at all. Can such assertion be admitted,
seeing that in both their Suffering and Triumphant
expressions they most clearly apply to one and the
same Person ; and if to the Messiah in his Triumph
ant, most certainly to the same Messiah in his Suffer
ing aspect?
Inf. If they apply to Messiah at all, they certainly
imply a Suffering Messiah. But, granting Jesus

PRECAL PROPHECY— THE PSALMS. 87
Christ to have fulfilled the " suffering " part of these
prophecies, that fulfilment alone will not, by your
own statement, constitute him the Messiah ; for the
triumph and the suffering must be realized by the
same person ; and unless the former be as amply
verified as the latter in his Person, then He is not the
Messiah. That, I think, is clear.
Chr. Quite ; and our faith is that in Jesus Christ
both were thus verified ; we therefore, after the article
of his burial and descent into hell, proceed to declare
in the Creed— the same Jesus Christ " the third day
rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended
into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the
Father. And he shall come again, with glory, to
judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom
shall have no end." Christ being man, might, you
suppose it possible, from enthusiasm, religious mono
mania, or some sublime disease of the mind, have set
Himself resolutely to fulfil the prophecies which in
dicated the successive steps in the concluding suffer
ings of the Messiah.
Inf. Tlie human mind is subject to the sublimest
as well as the most degrading diseases : under the in
fluence of such diseases death loses all its terrors ;
it assumes positive attractions. The noblest actions
also of ancient and modern patriots show us the
existence of a state of mind which, equally with such
diseases, spurns the fear of death. Whether Christ,
therefore, labored under a Messianic delusion in
reference to Himself, or whether he really was of
the highest order of intrepid and dauntless spirits,
or, being the latter, labored also under the former,

88 PRECAL PROPHECY  THE MESSIAH.
his fixed resolution to undergo a certain amount of
suffering, for a certain end, is rendered probable by
examples of similar determination constantly meet
ing us in the cases of enthusiasts, bigots, patriots,
fanatics, in both sacred and profane history.
Chr. We do not on the point of fact differ. Christ
did determine so to suffer, and for a certain end. We
pronounce nothing at present as to the cause of that
determination. But Infidelity must satisfactorily
explain how, with every wish and resolution to do
so, Jesus Christ possibly could by any devices or per
suasions of his own fulfil these many and very specific
prophecies of the sufferings of the Messiah. By
what power could He effect the convergence of all
in his own person? Your supposition infers that
He, Himself, by some inscrutable means, induced
Judas Iscariot to betray Him, Peter to deny Him,
the Apostles to desert Him, the priesthood to arrest
and consign Him to Pilate ; Pilate to scourge, crown,
and condemn Him ; the multitudes to insist on his
sentence being that of a slave, and a " very outcast
of men " — Crucifixion ; the two malefactors to be
crucified with Him, the soldiers to cast lots on his
vesture, the high priests and elders to mock and
blaspheme Him on the cross, the people to curse and
shake their heads at Him in his dying agonies ; the
centurion, after death, to- pierce his side with a spear ;
the guard not to break one of his bones ; Pilate again
to grant his body to Joseph, and Joseph to bury it
in the grave of the rich. Each and all of these cir
cumstances, and many others I have not enumerated
equally fulfilled, were to be realized according to

PRECAL PROPHECY  THE MESSIAH 89
the Prophets in the Passion of the Messiah. Did
Christ, being, as Infidelity holds, a mere man, per
suade or compel each of these many contrary parties,
Romans, Jews, High Priests, Apostles — individuals
and nations — no two of them sympathizing or hold
ing aught in common with the others, to take upon
itself, in the very order the prophecies prescribed, to
do unto Him the very act, and none other, which
according to the same prophecies was in his Passion
to be done to the Messiah ? If He could do all this, do
you still persist in regarding Him as nothing more
than man ? You assign Him, first, the entire mental
command of all the Messianic prophecies ; and,
secondly, a power by which He concentrates, through
the most extraordinary coalition of conflicting and
antipathetic parties, the fulfilment of them all upon
his own person — that person being during the comple
tion of some of the most essential suspended in either
helpless agony or absolutely dead upon the cross.
Inf. I am reduced, certainly, to a dilemma.
Chr. And granting, for a moment, the correctness
of your supposition, He that knew so minutely and
thoroughly each prophecy that bore upon the Passion,
must as thoroughly have known each also that bore
upon the triumph of the Messiah. Unless after ful
filling the former on the cross and in the grave, He
could also out of the grave fulfil the latter, of what
possible avail would the minutest realization of the
former be ? The greatest of the many tests of the
Messiahship were not to precede, but to follow, the
death of the Messiah. If Christ were man only, He
knew the Messianic prophecies were such as, however

90 PRECAL PROPHECY — THE MESSIAH.
astonishingly coincident with them his whole life had
been, put it totally out of his power to carry on the
deception of being the Messiah in death. The resur
rection from death, the ascension, the enthronement,
the commission to judge the world, the sending forth
of the Gospel, the consignation of the paternal power,
the pouring forth of the Spirit, were declared by
prophecy to be integral proofs of the Messiahship,
but how could the least of these be given by a dead
man in the grave ?
Inf. The most insignificant of them could not be
given by a mere man, living or dead.
Chr. But further. Had Christ thus, according to
the minutest predictions of Scripture, both suffered
and triumphed, yet even then there would be a mass
of prophecy which his life before his betrayal must
as completely have harmonized with, as with other
prophecies did his passion, death, and resurrection
after his betrayal. The Messiahship before birth,
after birth, in life, in death, after death, is walled in
by Eternal Prophecies which render its usurpation or
assumption by any earthly power, intellect, or con
spiracy, a total impossibility. If Christ had not been
born of a Virgin, at Bethlehem, of the race of Abra
ham, of the tribe of Judah, of the family of David,
in that very era during the standing of the second
temple, — if He had not been a worker of signs, mar
vels, and miracles, in the midst of Israel, — if, in fact, a
thousand prophecies appropriated to the Messiah had
not already met and been verified in his person, pre
vious to his Crucifixion, — neither would the Jews have
cared for any pretensions of his to the Messiahship,

PRECAL PROPHECY- — THE MESSIAH. 91
nor would the crucifixion and its results, though in
every point consistent with the other prophecies,
have gone an inch to establish his title to it ; that
title would have been already invalidated by some
notorious prophetic defect in the facts or events of
his previous life. Unless Jesus Christ were the
Messiah, the Messiah is not yet come ; in this propo
sition, Christians, Jews, and Infidels would, I think,
agree. Inf. Yes, perforce : for who, for these thousand
years and more past, has ever advanced the shadow
of a claim to it?
Chr. Suppose, then, you start a Messiah now.
Inf. Explain yourself.
Chr. Not only the Scriptures promise, but Jews,
Christians, and Islamites, without exception, believe
in the advent — past, present, or future — of the Mes
siah. If the advent be not past, it must be yet to
come. Now I will challenge you to bring forward
in the nineteenth century any imaginable claimant
to the Messiahship whose pretension to it the prophe
cies of Scripture will not at once baffle and explode,
whose access to it they will not render unapproach
able, whose assumption of it, for even a brief period,
will not, with every one who knows the Scriptures,
be a sheer absurdity.
Inf. That may easily be, for the Messiah of the
Scriptures was to be born at a certain point of time
which is long past, in a certain condition of the Jew
ish nation which has long since disappeared, in a
certain moral infancy of the heathen world beyond
Judaea, which it has long since outgrown. These

92 PRECAL PROPHECY  THE MESSIAH.
requisitions would alone make the assumption of
modern Messiahship an impossibility.
Chr. Ah! these would form only a few of the
barriers, tests, and crucibles, which a pseudo-Messiah
would have to confront in the prophetic Scriptures.
If all mankind conspired together, we should not be
able to get six of the Messianic prophecies of Scrip
ture, apparently the easiest and the lightest, to meet
together and be fulfilled in any one individual in the
whole world. It is not in the compass of human
power and ingenuity to do it. On the other hand,
Christianity, with its millions of intellects, holds all
of them — Infidelity admits the majority of them —
to have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. In Him, from
whom in heaven all these oracles of God proceeded,
they are on earth and in heaven again united and
consummated. Inf. I may admit the fulfilment of the prophecies
of Messianic suffering by Jesus Christ, but the fulfil
ment of the triumphant prophecies by Him, or any
one else, I entirely deny. That Christ rose from the
dead, with all that follows in your creed, I do not
believe. The circumstances of his death, though very
deplorable, and presenting a most singular counter
part of the death predicted in the Jewish Scriptures
of the Messiah, are still quite in accordance with the
manners, mode of punishment, processes of execution,
social, judicial, and political facts of the people, the
empire, the period in which they occurred. But
when you take me from earth to heaven, when you
call upon me to believe that this man so crucified
and buried, now sits and lives forever in the power

PROPHECY AND HISTORY. 93
of God at God's right hand, I have a right to de
mand the evidence on which so extraordinary a
statement proceeds. The death, with most of its
circumstances, tallies with history ; but the resurrec
tion and its consequences, as asserted by you, con
tradict all history.
Chr. Let us first see what History itself at pres
ent is. Who is there now, as these prophecies pre
dict, higher, by their own confession, than " the kings
of the earth ?" Who is it whom the whole civilized
world "worships?" To whom is it that prayer is
daily made and praise daily ascribed? Who has
become the Light of those nations who were an
ciently Gentiles — Greece, Italy, Russia, Spain, Ger
many, France, ourselves, the Americas? Whose
also are now becoming the "utmost parts of the
earth" — Polynesia, Australia, New Zealand, the isles
of the Pacific ? Before whose Spirit and whose reli
gion are the vast idolatries of India and China tot
tering to their fall ? Whose commandment, whose
Gospel is it that is now " running very swiftly upon
earth ?" You cannot deny that, be it the result of
truth or superstition, of the power of God or the craft
of man, the fact is unquestionable ; Jesus Christ the
Crucified is the person so adored, praised, and prayed
to. He is acknowledged as God, and his religion
accepted as from God by a seed of nations tenfold,
perhaps, more in number than the whole population
of the world was at the date of his Crucifixion. Yet
you say History contradicts the Resurrection ! Here
is the history of the world in epitome since the cru
cifixion ; and what is it but the mere fulfilment of

94 prophecy and history.
those things which these prophecies had of old an
nounced as the inevitable consequences of this very
Resurrection of the Messiah ? What was then Pro
phecy is now History : that is the sole difference.
Inf. The Resurrection itself is an exception to all
our human experience : men once dead do not rise
again from the dead.
Chr. You touch not the point at issue. He whom
the nations of Christendom now worship as their
God and Saviour is the very same Person who, being,
in minute accordance with the prophecies, crucified,
was, according to the same prophecies, to rise again,
and his resurrection to be followed by the very
events which since then have constituted, on the
largest scale, the history of the world, and now sur
round us on every side. Those events you admit :
the prophecies which in express terms predict such
events are there in your hands : predicting them as
infallibly to follow the resurrection of the crucified
Messiah. They have followed ; the Crucified is glo
ried in by Christendom as its King, its Saviour, its
Everlasting Life ! Yet you say, " of his Resurrec
tion you require evidence !" All history since the
crucifixion is the evidence of the resurrection also
of Christ. If not, let us hear how you account for
this one fact among hundreds. How is it that
Jesus Christ is thus the object of the worship and
prayers of Christendom eighteen centuries after his
Crucifixion ?
Inf. Has not Gibbon explained it ?
Chr. No ; nor touched on its explanation. Had
the reasons he assigns for the progress of Chris-

PROPHECY AND HISTORY. 95
tianity during the first three centuries been at all to
the purpose in accounting for the existence itself of
Christianity, or even of the first Christian, which
they utterly fail to do, there are fifteen centuries
since then of a still increasing worship of Jesus
Christ to be accounted for. Here are the prophecies
that He, the Crucified, should be the worship of
many nations, and finally of the world. Here is
Christendom the verification of those prophecies.
My question is, By what Power have they been veri
fied ? by what Power has Scriptural prophecy become
modern history ? Is it by that of a dead man in the
grave ?
Inf. The fact that the same Person who was once
crucified, is now universally adored as God, is not by
any one to be denied. Jesus Christ, I admit, is
prayed to as being one God with the Father, co-
eternal and co-omnipotent, by the numerous millions
of orthodox Christendom through the four quarters
of the globe. That fact requires an explanation on
behalf of Infidelity which, before our discussion ter
minates, I will attempt to supply ; but what staggers
me now is, that these prophecies should, so many
thousand years ago, predict that such would be the
fact. I do not see my way here.
Chr. Cast aside the Scriptures entirely ; proceed
on only what you see with your own senses — Christ
Jesus everywhere worshipped as God; trace Him
back to his tomb, as dead as the stone itself; let
Him remain so ; let Him never rise ; let Him be
mere man ; let his body, like any other man's, see
corruption ; let not the faithfulness of God be in any

96 PROPHECY AND HISTORY.
sense shown in its destruction, or the loving-kind
ness of God in his grave ; let Him be what the in
fidel would fain have Him to be, and let the resur
rection be a delusion. How does all this hypothesis
help you in any degree to solve the hard fact of the
universal worship of this Christ? Does it not involve
you in far more perplexing difficulties than any
which our faith proposes to your acceptance. For
see, the fact by itself baffles you ; the prophecies by
themselves baffle you : neither the fact nor the pro
phecies can be ignored ; the one is before all men's
eyes, the others are in all men's hands. The con
nection between them, again, by whatever Power
established, cannot be controverted, yet cannot be
admitted, without conceding that the same power
which has established the fact inspired also the pro
phecies. I must beg the intellect of Infidelity to
extricate itself from the position in which " the more
and more mouldering prop of prophecy," as Newman
calls it, here fixes it.
Inf. None of them may, after all, as Newman
suggests, in reality apply to Jesus Christ.
Chr. We had, I thought, very effectually settled that
question in the Crucifixion and its incidents — in his
whole life and character preceding the Crucifixion. But
what if they do not ? Dissolve the connection ; Jesus
Christ Himself, his character, his vast spiritual king
dom, the power his very name exercises over count
less souls is a greater difficulty to you without, than
He is with, prophecy. Infidelity desires to supersede
the Church as " the Teacher of the nations." I come
to Infidelity; I request it, without alluding to the

PROPHECY AND HISTORY. 97
Scriptures or prophecy, to teach me " who and what
He whom the nations worship is." It can teach me
nothing ; it is itself inexpressibly at a loss to suggest
who He is. If it says " God," it becomes Christian ;
if it says "man only," his kingdom, power, and
glory, even on this earth, are in an instant seen, and
almost admitted to be, irreconcilable with mere man
hood. If it denies such power, the world itself,
from east to west, lifts up its voice to proclaim it ;
and if it did not, multitudes profess themselves ready
to sacrifice the world to prove it. Thus Infidelity,
being darkness itself as to the great spiritual power
which exercises supremacy in the souls of men, has
nothing of its own to communicate in explanation of
the fact of that power. If I proceed to say, " Here
are very ancient Scriptures in which I find all these
modern facts laid down as to happen in certain times
and order; how come these ancient Scriptures to
know any thing, much less the very facts themselves
of modern times?" — Infidelity, again, except at the
expense of ceasing to be Infidelity, has no rational
explanation at its command. I proceed, lastly, to
compare the facts Infidelity cannot deny with the
Scriptures it cannot ignore. There exists, I find,
perfect harmony between them ; and this harmony
constitutes only part of the strength of that kingdom
it dreams of subverting and succeeding. All re
search and investigation lead me thus from Infidel
ity, as utterly unable to teach one positive truth, to
Christianity, which, teaching me a vast system of
positive truths, places also the Scriptures in my
hands, saying, " these things are not of to-day nor
5

98 PROPHECY AND HISTORY.
yesterday, they were written of old in the Scriptures,
and they are fulfilled according to the Scriptures be
cause the Scriptures are of God." Here is reason,
here is consistency, here is an explanation in accord
ance with all my conceptions of the power and wis
dom of God, of the kingdom and the Scriptures of
Christ. I find in it that which accounts for all which
my intellect is capable of comprehending in the mat
ter : my intellect therefore compels me to be a Chris
tian : it cannot, and it will not, when such facts as
these tower up before it between heaven and earth,
remain content with the Infidelity which has only
two phrases in its vocabulary, "I don't know," or,
"I don't believe." You observe that I give you
full permission to dismiss all discussion about the
faith, if you can without it satisfactorily solve the
present facts of Christianity. But this permission
only complicates your embarrassments. Christ with
the Scriptures is hard to be solved, but Christ with
out the Scriptures is not to be solved at all by Infi
delity. He is the same great Fact, but a deeper and
more awful mystery than ever.
Inf. I demur to accepting the Resurrection itself
as a fact.
Chr. And the non-acceptance of it redoubles the
difficulty you experience in explaining the events
subsequent to the Resurrection. But let us, accord
ing to our rule, examine it both as a fact and a pro
phecy, a prophecy of the Spirit of Christ in the
Scriptures, and an act of Christ Himself in person.
" Sir," said the Sanhedrim to Pilate, " we remember
that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three

THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY. 99
days I will rise again."1 This prophecy was a public
challenge by Jesus Christ to the world, to death, to
Satan, to hell, sufficient of itself to clench the whole
question of his Messiahship and Godhead. No test
more wholly to the point could be wished for by the
Jewish or Infidel world. It was a defiance delivered
by one person to the whole created universe to keep
Him when crucified, dead, and buried, more than
three days in the grave. Has any similar challenge
been given from the beginning of the world to this
day ? Why did Christ alone give it — give it before
that very passover in which He knew and announced
that He should be crucified — give it to Jews, Romans,
the princes, and the people alike — so give it that there
was neither Jew nor Roman in Jerusalem who could
not on the third day walk to the sepulchre and con
vince himself whether the dead body of the- great
Prophet of Israel was there or not ? Well might St.
Paul, I think, declare that Christ triumphed " openly :"
for could there be a more open " show " of challenge,
battle, victory, total and overwhelming conquest in
the act of death itself over death and corruption?
And you, as a scholar, know the extreme jealousy
with which the Roman government regarded the
slightest approximation to such a Messianic provoca
tion as this ; it would mark and at once kill the man
who made it ; it did so, not only individually, but it up
rooted the nation itself for subsequently crediting such
an assertion as a ground for action. Thus in the case
of our Saviour ; the Roman guard was stationed ; the
1 Matt, xxvii. 13.

100 THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY.
stone sealed with the government seal ; the sepulchre
itself was new ; no corpse but that of Christ had
ever been deposited therein ; by day the eastern sun,
by night the full moon of the paschal festival shed a
flood of light on the tomb, on the garden, on the
mount, on the Roman watch; the Jewish people,
with its priesthood and Sanhedrim, formed a more
extended conclave of eyes jealously fixed on every
motion of a leaf on that high and all-exposed ascent.
They had to keep that dead body for three days only
in that sealed and guarded tomb. They had only to
show it the fourth day to Jerusalem, and, lo ! the
Crucified, who made Himself equal with God, was an
impostor; their own great king was yet to come;
their consciences were not only absolved from blood-
guiltiness, but the blasphemer had justly and right
eously perished. Only for three days ! on the third
day He must rise. If He rose the first day, the second
day, or any other day than the very day announced
by the Scriptures and Himself, He would be a mystery
indeed, but not the Messiah, not the Christ of God.
Their pride, nationality, bigotry, conscience, were all
fearfully and vigilantly armed to keep in self-defence
that dead body still dead for three days in the very
centre of assembled Israel, and in the sight of con
gregated Jerusalem. The third day came, and with
it Christ and the Resurrection ; the prophecy had
been as a fire of expectation kindled by Christ Him
self in every heart ; the fulfilment of it was indeed
the earthquake that shook and still shakes the
world : it was the commencement of the dissolution
of Judah, and of the great gathering of the Gentiles.

THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY. 101
Inf. Newman does not grapple, as I could wish,
with the Resurrection.
Chr. Will you grapple with it ?
Inf. It is so astounding a statement that a man
scarcely knows how to begin to grapple with it.
Chr. The Jews were more practical; they did
grapple with both the prophecy and the fact. They
had a dead body in their absolute power ; a body
ten times dead ; lacerated, flayed, nailed through,
spirit-killed, heart-pierced ; never had death so com
plete a victim in his prison-house ; over it was the
sepulchre of the rock ; over the sepulchre, the seal ;
over the seal, the Roman discipline ; and over the
Roman discipline, the priestly jealousy of the San
hedrim. This was grappling practically with the
question of the Resurrection. Theirs was no theory,
no closet hypothesis as to possibility or impossibility.
Christ had fixed a day beyond which no power in
heaven or earth could detain Him in the grave. If
they could keep Him beyond that time, they were
safe ; if not, all things told them " the vineyard
would for ever pass away from them." They had
graver and more vital reasons for preventing, than
any modern Infidel has for doubting, the Resurrec
tion. What more than they did, could all London
do, to prevent the resurrection of a dead body buried
in St. James's or the Green Park ?
Inf. If I stationed a regiment to guard a dead
body in a stone sepulchre from rising again, all
London would certainly deem me insane ; but if I
stationed it to guard against its exhumation and re
moval for sinister purposes by the fanatic followers

102 THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY.
of the deceased, they would acknowledge the pre
caution necessary and judicious.
Chr. And certain to be effective. On the third
day the tomb is found open, the ponderous stone not
to be moved lightly nor by few hands is seen rolled
off, the seal is broken, and the body has disappeared.
What would London say to that ?
Inf. The precautions were insufficient and inef
fective. Chr. " The disciples came by night and stole him
away, while the soldiers slept ?"
Inf. Just so.
Chr. Yet precautions more efficient could not
have been suggested or executed : if any such could,
specify them.
Inf. If the dead was by some inexplicable fatal
ity, some solitary exception to all the laws of nature,
doomed to rise the third day to life again, a Roman
army of twelve legions could not have prevented it.
Tens of thousands would in such eventuality have
been as inefficient as a single cohort. If the object
was only to guard against any clandestine attempt
on the part of the Apostles, and a few women, no
formidable force was required to resist or give the
alarm against such assailants ; the attempt, in fact,
itself would have been the confession and detec
tion of the whole imposture. I do not, therefore,
see what stronger or more judicious precautions
could, under the circumstances of the case, have
been taken.
Chr. Nevertheless, the disciples, you think, did
succeed in coming and stealing Him ?

THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY. 103
Inf. It must have been so, how else could the
body have disappeared ?
Chr. One of the infinite dilemmas of Infidelity.
How was it possible for the disciples, unobserved, at
such a time, such a place, in such an excited state
of the whole population of Jerusalem, through people,
priests, and soldiers, every zealot for the law, every
witness of the Crucifixion on the qui vive for the
" third day," to get at the tomb — roll off the stone —
and through guards and ten thousand vigilant eyes,
carry off the dead body ? On the other hand, if they
did not " steal" Him, how possibly could the body
have disappeared? It was worth their law, their
temple, their priesthood, their whole vineyard and
inheritance to the ruling body of Jerusalem. Why,
if stolen, was it not — being more precious to them
than its weight in gold — attempted to be recovered ?
Why were not the whole number of the Apostles
immediately summoned before the Sanhedrim, and
examined on the subject? Could they regain pos
session of it, though thus unaccountably escaped
their hands, it would convince every religious Jew
of the utter falsehood of the pretensions of the cruci
fied Nazarene. They neither could do that, nor dare
they attempt to substitute another corpse for it to
the people ; the face, the person, every lineament of
the " man of sorrows" were too familiar to the nation,
and that nation was now assembled in Jerusalem.
Moreover had they selected one crucified, with pierced
hands and feet, where would have been the lacera
tions of the scourge, the impalement of the crown of
thorns, the heart spear-lanced, and the unbroken

104 THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY.
bones : the very " signs" of prophecy and Messiah-
ship, their own ruthless infatuation had caused to be
added to a thousand preceding ones? What the
Jews, with the most potent inducements of interest
and religion, of their whole policy being at stake,
did yet not do, would of itself be to me a guarantee
of the fact of the Resurrection. Whoever heard that
a whole nation should first lose a dead body publicly
crucified, publicly interred, publicly guarded, and
having lost it, should then find it impossible to dis
cover a single trace of what had become of it, as a
dead body ? The thing has no parallel. The Jews
did nothing, because they could do nothing, to dis
prove the Resurrection. No movement could they
have made which would not have rendered the fact
more notorious, dangerous, and destructive, to its
gainsayers. But let us suppose the Apostles did
steal the body, they must have done something with
it, what did they do ?
Inf. What could they do ? they could not keep a
body which had already been three days in the tomb.
Chr. Scarcely.
Inf. They buried it then.
Chr. Where, how, and when ?
Inf. Anywhere — any way they could — as secretly
as they could.
Chr. To what end, and for what purpose ? They
stole it, you suppose, at the risk of their lives in the
full light of the paschal moon, from such an emi
nence as Calvary, from the vigilance of the strictest
military discipline the world has ever known, out
of the honorable tomb of the rich man, Joseph of

THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY. 105
Arimathea, himself, like themselves, a disciple, to
bury it in some other place, anywhere, in any man
ner, as clandestinely and as dishonorably as they
could. Do you believe this of the Blessed Virgin, of
St. Peter, St. John, Mary Magdalene, and the rest
of the disciples ? Are you not asking me to believe
a statement at least quite as wonderful as the Resur
rection, yet, unlike the Resurrection, advancing not
a single reason to challenge my assent to its moral
and physical improbabilities.
Inf. I am no believer in the Resurrection of Jesus
Christ, but it would be disingenuous not to confess
that all the efforts I have read to disprove the fact
itself appear to me to be failures. The Sanhedrim
and the Priesthood made the best they could of the
fact that, in spite of the precautionary measures of
the Roman Government and their own, the body of
the Crucified had disappeared.
Chr. " Why do the heathen so furiously rage to
gether, and why do the people imagine a vain thing ?
The kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers take
counsel together against the Lord and against his
Anointed. Let us break their bands asunder, and
cast away their cords from us. He that dwelleth in
heaven shall laugh them to scorn ; the Lord shall
have them in derision."1 Is there aught in this
prophecy, think you, descriptive of the circumstances
preceding and accompanying the Resurrection ? Was
there no "derision in heaven" when the "counsel"
was taken, the stone sealed, the guard appointed and
set ? No " scorn " at this league of earth and hell, of
1 Ps. ii.
5*

106 THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY.
man and Satan, to keep the " Lord of Life " in the
power of death ?
Inf. Beyond the fact of disappearance, I cannot
persuade myself to go. Yet, how it could disappear,
why it should disappear ; why the Apostles, if they
could, should wish to possess themselves of a dead
body, which, by remaining dead, convicted them of
credulity, and their Master of the darkest imposi
tion; how, above all, they should become so sud
denly changed, in diametrically the opposite way to
which the detection and consciousness of such im
position would have changed them ; how they came
to adhere, to the end of their lives, to the statement,
that for days they had, with their own senses, seen,
felt, handled, eaten with, and conversed with " Jesus
Christ raised to life from the dead," identified to them
as such by moral, mental, physical proofs, are con
siderations which present as serious difficulties as the
Resurrection itself. I scarcely know here what to
believe, what not to believe.
Chr. Meanwhile, on the other side, the Scriptures
present you with prophecy on prophecy, predictive
of the Resurrection and its results from that time
to this, and to the end of the world. Annul proph
ecy, the fact of the Resurrection remains, as you
confess, never disproved ; annul both prophecy and
the Resurrection, the religious, and, with it indis
solubly wedded, the secular history of the last
eighteen centuries, still confronts the perplexed " In
tellect " of Infidelity. Thus, the further your " In
tellect " severs itself from Christianity, the deeper it
plunges into confusion worse confounded.

PARABOLICAL PROPHECY. 107
But let us dispatch this subject of prophecy, for
we have others of no less importance to discuss.
Inf. I will proceed then to another objection in
connection with it. "The prophecies of the New
Testament," states Newman,1 " are not many." Now,
one would imagine that the Messiah would have de
livered many prophecies in his own person.
Chr. And so He did. Newman's objection in
this, as in previous instances, has no foundation.
Nearly half the number of parables, for instance,
delivered by our Blessed Lord, are prophecies — para
bolic prophecies.
Inf. How is that to be proved?
Chr. Let us take one for illustration ; this — about
the briefest — of the Drag-net.2 " The kingdom of
heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea,
and gathered of every kind."
Inf. But this is a mere parable.
Chr. A parabolic prophecy.
Inf- I do not perceive it.
Chr. Because, instead of putting yourself back at
the time-point of its delivery, looking forward to
the strange things it predicts, you put yourself in
a. d. 1854, in the midst of these things themselves
long fulfilled, and therefore familiarized to your
mind. Take any part of the Christian Church — the
Anglican Church, for example — was it in England at
the time our Lord spoke this parable ?
Inf. No.
Chr. Did Britain offer itself to the Christian re
ligion ?
i Phases of Faith, page 115. 5 Matt. xiii. 47.

108 parabolical prophecy.
Inf. No.
Chr. Nor manufacture it at home.
Inf. No.
Chr. Something was "cast over" Britain?
Inf. Admitted.
Chr. By the agency of men ?
Inf. Clearly.
Chr. And Britain became "gathered" into the
Church? Inf. Just so.
Chr. Have all the Christians in Britain, since its
conversion to the faith, been "good?" Has the
Church included none whom we must not honestly
confess to have shamed not only Christianity, but
Humanity itself?
Inf. Truly it has. Your great reformer of religion,
Henry VIH., about the worst among them.
Chr. Is every member, or every listener in our
churches at present really a "saint" — really "good?"
Inf. With a safe conscience as to not being guilty
of uncharitableness, I answer, No.
Chr. Part are " bad," then — with a little of the
faith, hope, and charity of a Christian in them.
Yet they are in the Church — truly members of the
Church ; they remain in the Church ; they come
voluntarily to the service, preaching, and ordinances
of the Church. If any attempt were made to cut
them off from the Church, their anger and resent
ment would evince itself by the adoption of very
cogent measures against the aggressor. The Church
thus literally gathers of every kind of character —
yet it is the Kingdom of Heaven.

PARABOLICAL PROPHECY. 109
Ine. I understand.
Chr. Is it not so also in France, Spain, Italy, in
every country professing the faith of this " kingdom ?"
Inf. No doubt.
Chr. And always has been. Characters the least
in unison with the characteristics of this kingdom
are not only gathered into it, but, as a general rule,
are the most jealous of any interference with their
right — material or spiritual — of title and possession
therein. How, think you, would a mailed Crusader,
dripping with Saracen gore, have replied to your
allegation " that he was no Christian ?"
Inf. Probably he would, in all sincerity, have
cleaved my skull with his battle-axe.
Chr. And Henry VIII., had* you denounced him
as a frightful wen on the Church of Christ ?
Inf. He would have chained me between a Papist
and a Protestant, and burned the three of us to
gether in Smithfield.
Chr. And Charles IX. of France, had you requested
him to judge himself by the Nine Benedictions of
Christianity ?
Inf. I should have added another victim to the
night of St. Bartholomew.
Chr. And Cromwell, streaming with his country's
blood, professing he slew thousands of his fellow-
subjects in England, and his tens of thousands in
Ireland, in the name of the Lord — could you have
brought him side by side with our Lord and Sis
warfare ? What think you he would have done to
you for drawing the attention of the nation to the
contrast ?

110 PARABOLICAL PROPHECY.
Inf. Hanged me for a malignant.
Chr. Are these, and such like, the characters
whom, d priori; we should imagine a kingdom openly
heralding itself as the " kingdom of heaven," would
or could gather in among its subjects and citizens?
Inf. Not exactly.
Chr. Yet further. How came such characters to
permit themselves for a moment to be "gathered in,"
and being so, to make it their chief pride to be, not
only fish in the Gospel net, but the very champions
of the net itself in the sea ? Devise a kingdom of
heaven for mankind. Before a single disciple under
stands its principles and constitution, place yourself
on a rock from which a sweeping net, searching
every hollow and recess within its circle at the bot
tom of the sea, is cast by fishermen. Proclaim, "My
kingdom, like this net, will gather the bad as well as
the good throughout the world, and yet it will be the
kingdom of God." Would you say this, or rather
would not such a comparison be the last which hu
man prudence and probability would dictate to your
judgment? For, you would argue, either such a
kingdom can never be the kingdom of heaven, or,
being such, it must of necessity exclude the " bad."
The bad themselves will never desire to be gath
ered into its fold. Nevertheless, just as our Sa
viour prophesied, so it has come to pass. His
Church gathers, as you see, of every kind ; it sweeps
the alley and the gallows, as well as the palace and
the bench. All descriptions of character profess
that they are " gathered" into it. Is not that the
fact?

PARABOLICAL PROPHECY. Ill
Inf. Certainly.
Chr. Was it a fact when the parable was deliv
ered? Inf. How could it be? for the net was not cast
from the rock.
Chr. The parable, then, is a prophecy. The
Church in this parish, this kingdom, in the world,
is that prophecy fulfilled. Was not Christ, then, in
this, and many similar parables, the Prophet of the
future ? The prophecy was directly opposed to all
the ideas of his own nation and age, as well as to
the apparent tendency of human nature and the
heavenly designation of his own religion.
Inf. He was a Prophet, at any rate, of Intuition.
Chr. Further, men like Henry VIII., Charles IX.,
Philip IL, Calvin, Cromwell, John Knox — zealous,
or gloomy, or fanatic, or morose, or tyrannous char
acters, — have tried to make the Church somewhat
else than what Christ prophesied it was to be. With
what effect?— the destruction, so far as they could
effect it, of its heavenly-mindedness — of its being
the kingdom of heaven. How came Christ alone to
lay it down that to gather, and not reject "the bad"
in this world, is that quality whereby his religion is
the kingdom of heaven ? Was that also by " In
tuition ?" Can you suggest any other Intuitionist who
has said, " My kingdom is the kingdom of heaven ;
gather, therefore, into it the bad ?"
Inf. It must have astounded Jews and heathen
alike ; for such an expression appears to involve
positive contradiction.
Chr. So the Reformers of Christ — if I may with-

112 PARABOLICAL PROPHECY.
out profanity say so — have always thought. They
have always taken upon them to alter the form
which Christ Himself has selected for the vessel of
his salvation — a gatherer-in of the good and bad
indifferently. They, on the contrary, must make it
a caster-off of the bad — they must purge and purify
it of all such as, according to their own ideas, are
the bad. But men will not be so "purged" and
" purified." The world has, in this sense, always had
a truer view of the Church than either those who
would confine it to " the godly," after their own defi
nition of " the godly," or those who secede from it
because it is composed of " good and bad." The
attempt to form a Church into which none but
" saints," the pious, or the godly, shall be admitted,
violates the very character and duties which Himself
has assigned to his Church — to gather in the lost;
to have mercy, and not sacrifice; to do good to
all; and to leave the judgment as to who are really
good and really bad to Himself. But read the next
verse. Inf. " Which, when it was fulLthey drew to shore,
and sat down and gathered the good into vessels,
and cast the bad away. So shall it be at the end of
the world. The angels shall come forth, and sever
the wicked from among the just."
Chr. The first part of the prophecy — the gather
ing in of all kinds — we ourselves see in the fulness
of action ; do you think the second part, the severing,
not by men but by angels, not now but at the end
of the world, will be equally verified ?
Inf. A pregnant question.

PARABOLICAL PROPHECY. 113
Chr. Is not the " separation" more in accordance,
according to human reasoning, with the kingdom of
heaven, than the "gathering?" The gathering is
admitted — what say you to the "severing?"
Inf. It is possible.
Chr. If you reject it, you will, Reason being arbi-
tress, have admitted the less, and rejected the greater
probability. Men, under Christ, gather now the
" good and bad" into the Church. Angels, under
Christ, at the end of the world, will sever the good
from the bad. Is this hard for Reason to believe ?
Inf. In this way many of the parables may be
certainly ranked among the more prominent proph
ecies. Chr. Compare them with the progress and state of
Christ's Church, and you will find them prophecies of
the exactest kind, opening to view centuries of future
events. Some, as this of the net, carried on beyond
the end of the world, even to the judgment day. Is
not that Prophecy, in the simplest words indeed, but
on the most stupendous scale? We do not know
how to read Christ, unless we have learnt that the
weight of eternity lies upon every one of his words.
As certainly as we now see the "gathering," we
shall hereafter see the " severing."
We have now gone through instances of oral, vis
ual, precal, and parabolical prophecies. Scores of
others, equally clear and pointed, might be enumer
ated. But before we conclude this portion of our dis
cussion, may I ask what your notion of Prophecy is ?
Inf. Simply a prediction.

114 PROPHECY AND PREDICTION.
Chr. Without supernatural communication ?
Inf. Why — no.
Chr. Simple prediction does not define Prophecy.
Can you name one prophet disconnected with the
Church of Christ, in either its ancient or present
aspect ?
Inf. Do you mean one that, by supernatural influ
ence, made known beforehand the events of futurity ?
Chr. Yes.
Inf. Seneca; he prophesied of the discovery of
America. Chr. By inspiration ?
Inf. If I grant that, I concede the whole princi
ple of inspiration in all its phases.
Chr. That is for your consideration.
Inf. He predicted, but not by inspiration.
Chr. He was no prophet then ?
Inf. But prediction is as wonderful as prophecy.
Chr. Ah ! you too, the Infidel, like the Jew, would
make the " miraculum" the test ; must you too, like
Lord Herbert of Cherbury, have your " sign ?"
Inf. But if a simple human prediction be as mi
raculous as an inspired prophecy, whence can Isaiah
claim advantage over Seneca ?
Chr. No analogy exists between them. Did the
Atlantic Ocean, the West Indies, and America, exist
in Seneca's time ?
Inf. They did ; what then ?
Chr. It is not the future existence then of some
thing which in his own time had no existence which
he predicts, but simply that certain lands which then
existed would at a future time be discovered. It is

NATURE OF PROPHECY. 115
not a creation, but a discovery, that he foretells, a
discovery of facts suspected long before to have ex
istence. For thus writes Strabo : — " In the hemi
sphere between the shores of the west of Europe, and
of the east of Asia, many other inhabited continents of
land may exist." 1 Contrast with this any one of the
many prophecies of Isaiah relative to our Lord : this
for instance : — " Behold my servant, whom I uphold ;
my elect, in whom my soul delighteth ; I will put my
spirit upon him ; he shall bring forth Judgment to
the Gentiles. I the Lord have called him in right
eousness, and I will hold thine hand, and will keep
thee, and give thee for a covenant to the people, for
a light to the Gentiles. Behold, the former things are
come to pass, and new things do I declare : before
they spring forth I tell you of them." When this
prophecy was delivered Jesus Christ was not born ;
the Jews were the only people professing to be in
covenant with God ; the heathen had no conception
of even the meaning of the words " covenant with
God." The Jews had no conception of a Saviour
who was to be a " light to the Gentiles." Neither
Jews nor Gentiles had any conception of such a
character as " the Delight of the soul of God, who
would not break a bruised reed nor quench the
smoking flax : who would bring the blind to salva
tion by a way they knew not ; who would lead them
in paths they had not known ; who would make
darkness light, and crooked things straight before
them." Jesus Christ was born 712 years after this
prophecy was spoken, 2566 years have therefore
1 Strabo. lib. i. p. 65.

116 NATURE OF PROPHECY.
elapsed since its delivery, but what was then incredi
ble and unintelligible Prophecy has since, through
a succession of political and spiritual revolutions,
become the normal state of the civilized world. The
then heathen nations " orbis terrarum," have ceased
to be heathen ; they have ceased to be so in one
especial way : the faith they have embraced is one
strictly of covenant with God in Jesus Christ. The
question here is not as to the abstract truth or false
hood of Christianity, but here are Christ and Chris
tianity, false or true, prophesied by Isaiah as to be
accepted by the heathen hereafter as their light,
their covenant, and their salvation. He speaks of
things having then no existence in even the imagi
nations of Jews or heathens as certain to be called into
future existence by the power of the Almighty. He
announces, " homine judice," present non-existences,
present incredibilities, present impossibilities, as,
" Deo vindice," certain to form the future state of
the religious and intellectual world. Can we rank
Strabo's assertion, or Seneca's prediction, in the same
category with such a prophecy as this? Try to
allege some other non-Scriptural prophet. Why
not bring forward Mohammed, who is, if I may judge
from this work of Foxton's on your table, a great
favorite at present with the "representative-men"
school. Inf. But he never delivered a prophecy in the sense
we are now discussing, nor indeed in any other sense
of which I am aware.
Chr. Nevertheless all Mohammedans declare their
faith to be " that there is one God, and Mohammed is

MOHAMMED  TEST OF MISSION. 117
the prophet of God." Neologists, Pantheists, Deists,
Atheists, appear as much inclined to believe in him
as in Jesus Christ, only they are sadly perplexed for
a single moral or intellectual reason for such faith,
and they dare not profess admiration for him in his
real character as the founder of a system of animal
licentiousness and brutal force for the religion of
man. Now nearly 4600 years elapsed between the
creation of the world and the birth of Mohammed ;
during that time the Mohammedans do not pretend
there exists a single prophecy as to his birth, life,
character, or death. He himself most prudently dis
claimed all pretensions to miracles or prophecy, for,
unlike his modern panegyrists, he knew better than
to imagine it easy to impose a miracle upon masses
of men in the perfect possession of their senses.
Inf. Perhaps so. By "prophet" the Islamites
evidently mean not an inspired predictor of futurity,
but one who has received his commission from God.
A man may receive such a commission without
having included in it the powers of prophecy and
miracles. Chr. As the clergy of the Church, for instance,
receive theirs.
Inf. They do not pretend to it in the sense in
which Mohammed claimed it.
Chr. Certainly not. All they assume is to be
ministers of Him who had received such a Divine
commission for our salvation, and proved the reality
of it by signs, wonders, marvels, and prophecies
utterly above all power, short of God's, to perform
or enunciate. But supposing the claim to divine

118 MOHAMMED  TEST OF MISSION.
authority in the original source of mission, Christ's
or Mohammed's, to be admitted in the entire absence
of such credentials from the Supreme Being, I
see not what prevents you or me, or any man,
woman, or child, in the streets, from asserting a
divine commission for himself to religionize the
world according to his own ideas, and for any pur
pose he pleases.
Inf. But Jesus Christ Himself did not lay such
great stress Himself on his miracles.
Chr. You err, I think : He laid so great stress that
He explicitly declares the Jews would not have
sinned in rejecting Him, except for these miracles.
" If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.
I have a greater witness than that of John ; the
same works that I do bear witness of me that the
Father hath sent me. If I had not done among
them the works that never man did, they would not
have sin; now they have no cloak for their sin."
When a Mormonite therefore comes to a clergyman,
as they have come to me, preferring the claim of
Joseph Smith to be a new Saviour, the clergyman
may justly say, " I am the minister of Jesus Christ,
who proved Himself to be the Son of God by doing
among men the works that God alone can do : He
has ever since continued to exercise the same power
by perpetuating and extending his salvation to the
ends of the earth. What greater works, to supersede
Him whose mission I bear, and whose servant I am,
has Joseph Smith shown before the world ?" Would
not such be a fair challenge ?
Inf. I think it would.

MOHAMMED  TEST OF MISSION. 119
Chr. And if fair to Joseph Smith, surely fair to
Mohammed, surely fair to every one claiming to su
persede the authority of Jesus Christ over the souls
of men.
Inf. But did not Christ Himself supersede Moses ?
Chr. Does He anywhere say so- — -does He not
everywhere declare the very reverse, that he came
to fulfil, not supersede, Moses and the prophets ? Is
not one of his titles, the Alpha, He that was from
the beginning. Moses was his witness, every prophet
his herald, yet for all this He states the Jews would
have been justified in rejecting Him unless He had
in the midst of them done the works of that omnipo
tence which had commissioned Him. Now why did
Mohammed shrink from that test ?
Inf. Because miracles do not, as Newman ex
presses it, produce " moral conviction."
Chr. And yon really suppose Mohammed to have
thought as Newman does on this subject, that he
abstained from working miracles because they would
not on certain characters produce conversion of life,
which is, I infer, what Newman means by " moral
conviction." Inf. That would be supposing too much. He per
formed none simply because he could perform none.
Chr. Clearly so ; yet one single miracle would, in
such a cause as his, have been invaluable for his
purposes. For the same reason he never risked a
prophecy with reference to himself; a few months or
a few years, perhaps a few days, would have exposed
him for what he truly was, — a false and most perni
cious impostor. But multitudes of Scriptural prophe-

120 MISSION AND MIRACLES.
cies bearing directly on Christ are not only in Him,
and Him alone, fulfilled, — -but, as in the instance we
have have examined, He put it, by prophecies of his
own as to the time, days, manner, and circumstances
of his death and Resurrection, in the power of his
own followers, as well as the Jews and Romans, to
test the truth of his mission, and pronounce Him an
impostor or the Messiah in his own lifetime, on the
spot itself of his death. He put it in the power of
everybody there and then, by prophecies bearing on
his own person, to prove his mission whether it was
from God or not. He puts it in our power of after
centuries by other prophecies bearing on his mystic
person here, — his Church, — to prove it by other tests
which his followers and enemies could not then apply.
Mohammedanism then does not pretend to either
miracles or prophecy, — does Buddhism, Brahminism,
or any other religion in the world ?
Inf. You do not mean to assert that prophecy is
entirely limited to Christianity ?
Chr. Certainly. Infidels have fallen into the habit
of speaking of this and that element of Christianity,
as if they were elements also of every religion on
the surface of the globe. You know prophecy to
have preceded Christianity. Christianity is the
European religion, the religion of your country ;
all religions are in your opinion much the same, and
if prophecy be a part of Christianity, it must be, you
infer, part also of every other religion. Such is the
process you call " intellectual induction." Well,
name the religion, ancient or modern, except Chris
tianity, which advances the faintest claim to the

MISSION AND MIRACLES. 121
Divine evidence of prophecy, of successions of
prophets, of prophecies from the creation to the
consummation of the world ?
Inf. The challenge, I apprehend, is new.
Chr. As old as Isaiah. " Produce your cause, saith
the Lord ; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the
King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth and show
us what shall happen : let them show the former
things, what they be, that we may consider them,
and know the latter end of them ; or declare as things
to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter.
Who hath declared from the beginning, that we may
know? and before, that we may say, He is righteous?
yea, there is none that showeth, yea, there is none
that declareth. They are all vanity ; their works are
nothing."1 It was unanswerable then: can you
answer it now? From the whole non-Scriptural
annals of mankind supply me with one single written
prediction delivered and known one hundred years
before its realization ?
Inf. You thus affirm no prophecies to have ever
existed among mankind except such as are recorded
in Scripture.
Chr. Yes ; but I do not assert that the knowledge
of them was in all cases derived from the Scriptures.
The deeply seated presentiments in the minds of
certain nations as to their times and destinies, which,
more than any external circumstances, formed their
character, were the prophecies of God written, as his
law was, on their consciences, without hand. In no
other way can, for example, the prophetic spirit of
i Isaiah xii.
6

122 MESSIANIC PSALMS.
the Roman people of old as to their national destinies
be satisfactorily solved. How far back such proph
ecies went — by what channels they were connected
with the Primal teachings of God to Adam, and with
the oral traditions of the Antediluvian Church — what
coloring they assumed from the various religions
through which they passed, are inquiries not within
the scope of our present investigation. My statement
is, that, except as heralding the religion of Christ,
we have no record of prophecy as an element in any
other religion whatever. This great mark of God
is utterly wanting in each and all religions except
Christianity. What we have in lieu of it in other
religions are attempts at certain make-shifts for it,
oracles, soothsayings, auguries, divinations, palmistry,
haruspications, or direct efforts to open channels of
communication with Satan and the powers of evil.
But none has ever put forth a title to one written,
recorded prophecy.
Inf. But I will observe again that you may have
so drawn up your Creed, as to fit into it these multi
fold prophecies of the Scriptures. Pre-acquainted
with the predictions, you may have invented a Messiah
with life, incidents, and death to correspond in detail
with them. Your Messiah would be cited to prove the
truth of the prophecies, and your prophecies would be
cited to prove the Messiahship of your Christ. The
possibility of such a scheme you will, I suppose, admit.
Chr. Your supposition entirely overthrows New
man's statement, "that the Psalms can in no way
be fixed on Messiah ;" if they cannot, how could the
Psalms or the other Scriptures have originated the idea

MESSIANIC PSALMS. 123
of a Messiah? This question, however, lies between
Newman and you : we as Christians do not meddle
with it. Either the prophecies of the Old Testa
ment are sufficient to have formed in men's minds a
strong, clear, broad outline of the future Messiah, or
they are not. If they are, then Newman and the
Infidels who aver they " can in no way be fixed on
Messiah" are clearly in error. Now that they are
sufficient is proved by the fact that all the nations
to whom such prophecies are known concur in fix
ing them on the Messiah. If, on the other hand,
they are not sufficient, how came such facts to be so
concentrated in the life, death,' and resurrection of a
certain man, as to induce whole nations to affirm
that these ancient writings are positively nothing
less than representations in various forms of such
life and death ? How came the life and death of
Jesus Christ to be such as to open up the Scriptures
in an entirely new, yet as these nations believe, cor
respondent and harmonious sense from their com
mencement to their end ? And how came they
again with Him to cease and determine ?
Inf. The difficulty is plain. Abolish Christ,the Scrip
tures, be they prophetical or not, are a cipher without
a key. Abolish prophecy, the life of Christ as a fact
believed in by half the world, Christian and Moham
medan alike, becomes a greater, not a less perplexity.
Chr. Infidelity would solve it, as Newman does,
by ignoring the existence of Christ ; by doing which
he subverts his previous position of the non-Messianic
character of the Scriptures. If Christ never existed,
the whole Christian world has nevertheless, for

124 MESSIANIC PSALMS.
eighteen centuries, built up their faith on a Mes
siah — Christ or not — seen and found by them in the
Scriptures. To affirm in the face of such a fact that
the Scriptures are not thoroughly, and to their core,
Messianic, would be to permit a few Infidels to deny
what the world by its universal act on this very
point, has for centuries witnessed and verified. If
they are not Messianic to Newman, they ever have
been, and still are, to the whole mind of Christen
dom. The world has formed and put together a
Messiah out of the Scriptures. The Messiah, so
built, has certain features of power and character
universally assigned Him— suffering and sorrow on
earth being a principal trait in all the delineations.
This could not be, if the Scriptures were not, to the
common-sense and reading of mankind, Messianic in
the highest degree. Certain Jews in Palestine, be
fore modern Christendom commenced, drew precisely
the same picture of theirs, as modern Christendom
does of its Messiah, from the same Scriptures. If
Luke drew an imaginary Messiah, the imaginary one
we draw from the same source, corresponds to his in
every respect. If we both derive these images from
Scripture, then there is something in the whole tenor
of Scripture impressive of one and the same idea
of the Messiah on both the Jewish and European-
mind ; and that in periods of civilization differing
in all things, but this idea, from each other. The
existence of Christ can thus only be derived at the
cost of exalting to a higher degree than Christen
dom itself has ever done the Messianic character
of the Scriptures, for from this reasoning it would

the '0 Aoyog, or ltfe-word of god. 125
result that they testified to Christ to such a degree
that the world did not require a real Christ to sub
stantiate their faith in such plenitude of testimony.
This, indeed, is the only way Volney, an Infidel
of less erudition but greater genius than Newman,
can account for the universality of the recognition
of the Messiah. "All the world, pervaded by these
and other ancient writings, expected Him; some
said they had seen Him: forthwith all the world
believed them ; the acquiescence was as profound as
the expectation had been universal." Observe how
one Infidel upsets the other.
Inf. I side here rather with Volney than Newman.
Chr. The contradictory theories of Infidels on
their own theme of Infidelity, would form an in
structive volume.
Inf. You have not, however, introduced, as I ex
pected, the Omniscience of God to account for the
fulfilment of Prophecy.
Chr. Omniscience must always to us be an ab
straction. I do not build any truth on abstractions
of the Deity. To me God is the personal God : He
is Jesus Christ.
Inf. Christians, I know, call him The " Word and
Power of God." The " Word of God," applied to a
living person, is a very strange expression.
Chr. Any " word " whatever is above inanimate
or material nature, above mere animal nature. A
" word " is not only something identically and in
separably one with reason, mind, spirit ; but it con
stitutes also the power of the expression and im
pression upon others. Our present words in refer-

126 the '0 Aoyoc, or life-word of god.
ence to our thoughts and their expression are a very
faint, unsubstantial shadowing forth of what Christ is
with reference to the almighty mind and its expres
sion. His relationship to the Father in this respect
is the original — we are only a human similitude of it.
The Greek term, 'O Aoyoc tov Qeov means not only
the Word of God, but the Mind also, of which that
Word is the expression and the power. That Word
has come to us who are now its ruined and broken
similitudes in embodied form — in Jesus Christ. He
alone, therefore, is to us the Word, the Mind, and the
Expression of God. Except in and through Him we
know nothing of God except as a vacant abstraction.
Inf. Do you mean that the 'O Aoyoc existed as
such from eternity, in and with God, before it assumed
Incarnation, as Jesus Christ, in this world ?
Chr. Yes. "The 'O Aoyoc was made flesh, and dwelt
among us." 1 The Incarnation of the '0 Aoyoc as Jesus
Christ, took place eighteen centuries ago. The ex
istence of the 'O Aoyog as God, and with God, pre
cedes creation : precedes all time : is from eternity.
Inf. I understand now the immense significance
your Church attaches to the term, "The Word of
God," as applied to Jesus Christ. She thereby up
holds Him as the Very God of Very God.
Chr. She holds Him to be, as the Scriptures say,
To nXrjpufia rr/g deornrog aufj-ariKug — the Plenitude
of the Deity in bodily form. To other intelligences
the '0 Aoyoc may be Deity, otherwise than owfiariicug :
the expressions of the Deity, by and through the 'O
Aoyoc of God, may be infinite in number and aspects
1 John i. 14.

THE '0 Aoyoc, OR LDJE-WORD OF GOD. 127
throughout the varied extent of the universe. But
with that we human beings have nothing to do.
To us He has come, and is apprehensible in Jesus
Christ only. His oneness with the Child of the
Virgin Mother is that Incarnation of Deity — both
God and man — which we acknowledge Jesus Christ
to have been, and still in heaven at this moment to
remain. Such as that Incarnation is now in heaven
we have faith that we too shall become. Other in
telligences from other realms in the universe may
in heaven be glorified in that form which it pleases
the 'O Aoyoc to take upon Him in appearing among
them : there may thus again be infinite forms of
beauty and glory besides that which we of the race
of Adam shall enjoy among the new creations of
the 'O Aoyoc in heaven. With that again we have
nothing to do. Our form of glory will be that of the
glorified God-man, Jesus Christ. And in this Jesus
Christ alone comes God to us now : in Him alone
does He veil Himself: in Him alone does He unveil
Himself to us : in Him alone does He permit us to
see, feel, embrace, and dwell with Him. As in man
only is there " soul " in this world, so in Jesus Christ
only is there " God " in this world — whatever our
souls possess of God passes to us through Him.
Inf. You believe the 'O Aoyoc to be the medium
of the action of the Supreme Being upon the whole
universe — by its Incarnation as Jesus Christ, Jesus
Christ became the Mediator between this world also
and God. He was the union of the '0 Aoyoc with
manhood. According to this view, Jesus Christ
must of necessity be God.

128 THE 'O AoyOC, OR LIFE-WORD OF GOD.
Chr. Yes. The 'O Aoyoc being God, his Incarna
tion, by whatever name we call it, must be God.
The only question, therefore, for faith is, was Jesus
Christ the Incarnation of the 'O Aoyoc? I am obliged,
by the deficiency of our English language, which
uses " word " as something distinct from " reason,
thought, or spirit," to go back to the Greek, but
henceforth you will understand me to use the expres
sion " Word of God " in the full Greek, not the mu
tilated English sense.
Inf. Ah! then you conclude our English not in
itself to be capable of the expression of Christianity ?
Chr. The Saxon is utterly incapable of its ex
pression. English is more Latin than Saxon, but
when it desires to be precise and scientific, it imme
diately incorporates itself with the Greek. It pleased
God to reveal his Gospel to us in Greek. Every
scholar knows Greek to be the first of languages —
to be that especial language which, above all others,
defines the object by the word. We, in our English
translation, utterly lose the Divine sense of the ex
pression " '0 Aoyoc." To a Greek it would instantly
convey the sense of every thing intellectual, mental,
spiritual in God, appealing to all the same faculties
in ourselves. The very expression was the introduc
tion of a new supremacy. To us the fulness of that
expression is lost.
Inf. But you do not identify the correct knowledge
of revelation with Greek and Latin.
Chr. All civilization hitherto has proceeded en
tirely in those two languages. If "The Times"
newspaper attempted to-morrow to write a leading

the 'O AoyoCj or life-word of god. 129
article in mere Anglo-Saxon, it could not do it : it
would discover that it was attempting to use sand
for steel, the forms of barbarians to express the su
periorities of a higher necessity. The test of mental
civilization in an individual, or in a nation, consists
in the use of one or other of those two languages for
the expression of thought. Immediately we ascend
above those animal necessities, which may be equally
well expressed in Saxon, Hindostanee, Malay, Che
rokee, or any savage tongue, we are violently flung
back upon some dialect of that language in which
the New Testament is written. Advocating, there
fore, the translation of the Gospel into every tongue,
I yet affirm the true understanding of that Gospel
must be found in the tongue in which it pleased God
to deliver it ; nay more, that we shall never really
civilize the world, till through such a translation
we have brought every nation into either a Greek
or a Latin form of thought-expression. This is
no theory ; it is broad, plain fact. Language is
civilization ; all civilization, humanly speaking, runs
into one of the sister dialects of Greece or Rome.
I find Christianity also revealed in that language : I
am compelled to infer that, by this very fact, God has
established a certain indissolubility between civili
zation and Christianity.
Inf. But we English do not speak Latin.
Chr. We certainly speak more Latin than we do any
other language. Take up any book now published :
the language is three-fourths Latin or Latinized : for
still higher accuracy or science, we go to Greek.
Take up Milton, Shakspeare, Macaulay, Hume —
6°

130 THE 'O Aoyoc, OR LIFE-JVORD OF GOD.
whatever the sentiments may be, the medium of
communication is a branch of that language which
God selected as the expression of his Gospel; and
beyond it we find ourselves utterly inefficient to rise.
Will you invent now a new word for a spiritual or
even physical sensation ?
Inf. How — I can invent plenty of words.
Chr. No. Certain sounds you might attempt to
impose on the world as words, as certain compositions
are attempted to be imposed on the world as music
— but no word defining any other than an animal
want can you find, use, or impose, unless you derive
it from what we usually call classical sources — He
brew, Greek, or Latin. A new word is a new idea :
to comprehend a new generic idea demands a new
faculty ; a new faculty can be given by God only :
when a new language, therefore, with its new ideas,
overspreads the globe, I know that such an effect can
be produced by God only.
Inf. I really do not see that language is so won
derful a thing.
Chr. Pray what is a " word ?" You speak to me ;
I understand you : you speak to Westminster Palace ;
it is stone, magnificent stone, but neither hears nor
answers ; neither does the sun, the moon, or universe.
Address yourself in words — the outpouring of your
soul — to all creation ; all creation flows on insensible
as the river at your feet. But say one " word" to
your little daughter in your arms — lo ! how she re
sponds, laughs, loves, and delights in your confidence,
your address, your very notices of her : she is capable

INORGANIC NATURE. 131
of language, the universe is not. You have in your
arms a nobler creature than all that universe, which
can neither feel, hear, nor respond.
Inf. A little child more wonderful than the whole
material universe !
Chr. You know it is so : matter is nothing, the
soul is every thing; of the soul, language is and
must be the expression. Compare the Pyramids,
St. Peter's Cathedral, the world, the order and ad
justment of the material universe, which cannot re
spond to one spiritual impulse within you, to the
little child which instantly responds to your own
heart, life, and love ; which says " my father" to you,
and " our Father which art in heaven" to God. Is
there any comparison between this child and the
whole of what you Infidels deify as God — senseless,
unconscious, wordless clay and stone nature ? Can
all nature speak one " word ?" has it one affection ?
would it feel if you and all mankind perished most
wretchedly to-morrow? No, it does not; a little
child, an infant, has that in it which proves it to
be of a higher architecture than all the material
universe. Inf. A child, beyond all controversy, is a mystery ;
he may become a Robespierre or a Newton ; a Vol
taire or a Wilberforce ; and there is something in
him for which perhaps the whole material world is
created. Chr. The material world cannot, I think, " suffer ?"
Inf. Suffer, feel sense of pain ? — of course not.
Chr. Then the very sense of " suffering" infers a

132 JESUS CHRIST  THE LDJE-W0RD OF GOD.
certain superiority over senselessness. But neither
can it utter one syllable of language, it cannot
speak ?
Inf. No.
Chr. All inanimate creation, all the nature which
Infidels worship as God, cannot do that which your
little child on your bosom, can, and from very in
stinct does do— turn to you, to your love, speak and
confide in you — and you in the same love, by a
thousand ways it cannot understand, express in a
thousand different phrases of language your identity
of heart and soul with it. Who meets you in your
child? Inf. Ah! I see — nature, physical nature, cannot
speak. Chr. Your child does " speak," uses " words,"
your heart responds to them : you are in communi
cation with all its lovely and heart-absorbing devel
opments. Christ comes in and teaches this child the
great truth in its nature ; teaches its soul to believe,
" I have a father in heaven as well as on earth ; I
am the child — far above insensible nature — of the
God and Creator of nature." Would you oppose
such teaching?
Inf. Does Christ so come ?
Chr. Drop theory, does He not ? How does Christ
come as a fact to the infants of this kingdom? By
the sacraments of his Church, and those sacraments
present Him as the 'O Aoyoc of God. Unless He is
so, God does not receive them at all. He being God,
it is God who receives them. Christendom has thus
for centuries received Jesus Christ as verily and in

to

JESUS CHRIST  THE LIFE- WORD OF GOD. 133
deed the 'O Aoyoc of God, communicating Himself
to us both in baptism and the eucharist. The child
is therefore thus, what the material universe in all
its grandeur cannot be, of God — the recipient of the
'O Aoyoc.
Inf. You do not then admit communion with God
in any other way than through Jesus Christ?
Chr. I am not permitted to.
Inf. Not permitted to ! How so ?
Chr. Can you imagine it possible for any created
being to have the power of approaching or knowing
God in any other way or form than that in which it
pleases God Himself to be approached? The Al
mighty may, for aught I know, have, through the
boundless works of his infinitude, millions of aspects
in which through the 'O Aoyoc He reveals Himself to
other intelligences. To us He reveals Himself in one
only : that one is Christ. He alone is to us XapaKrrjp
T7?c Trrooraoeug Beov : in Him only, therefore, is it
possible for me to know or be in communion with
God. If I seek for God out of Christ, I am seeking
Him where I am not permitted to.
Inf. I as an Infidel seek Him in Nature.
Chr. Is material nature susceptible of intelligence
— above all, of the intelligence of God — of the 'O
Aoyoc of God ? Can it understand your words, heart,
or mind, much less that of the Almighty ? Has it
sense, reason, or language either to receive or to com
municate God or mind?
Inf. Certainly not.
Chr. How then can you find in nature what na
ture itself is incapable of receiving or expressing?

134 JESUS CHRIST  THE LIFE- WORD OF GOD.
Yon may deduce this or that conclusion from the
study of nature ; so may I, so may any one ; but
these deductions are nothing after all but those of
our own individual minds ; nature herself emits
neither voice nor language ; she can say nothing
about herself, far less a word about God. Being
without mind, reason, or soul, I cannot see how
nature can possibly express herself in any way to
you about mind, reason, or soul, infinitely less of the
mind, reason, and spirit of God.
Inf. Granted ; but nature, dead, dumb, and sense
less herself, is nevertheless such a creation as enables
my mind, without any revelation, to form a true idea
of the God of nature.
Chr. We shall see that presently ; suffice it now
to observe, such an idea is at the best yours only. I
may draw from the same nature a diametrically dif
ferent idea of God ; others may draw theirs different
from, and condemnatory of both ; thus, as was the
case with the pre-Christian philosophers of Greece
and Asia, nature is open to infinite interpretations of
God, no God, Gods, multiplicity of Gods, every thing
God, nothing God. I would request you to make a
list of all the variations in Christendom in the in
terpretations of the Scripture, or the Church ; I
would then contrast these variations with the "ideas
of God " derived from nature as contained, for
instance, in Stanley's History of Philosophy ; the
former would be unity itself compared with the
countless contradictions, all equally derived from or
imputed to nature in the latter. Your "nature"
has thus been searched, was for four thousand years

JESUS CHRIST  THE LTFE-WORD OF GOD. 135
searched by men of high and acute intellect for God
and religion — the result was, each investigator drew
from it conclusions contradictory of the rest. We,
on the other hand, point to all Christendom, not to
philosophers only, but to the masses as one body
united in one common conclusion of Creed derived
from the Church and the Scriptures. Nature mean
while being perfectly passive and inert, neither could
nor ever has expressed herself to these philosophers
of old, nor to any Infidel of modern times. The
term " nature" is therefore, in this sense,«your own
impression only of things derived from certain pres
ent visibilities : it is you who say so and so — nature
herself says nothing. When we, on the contrary,
affirm the Scriptures say thus and thus, we put those
Scriptures before your eyes ; you read it thus and
thus written ; be these Scriptures true or false, you
are obliged to admit both the writing and its plain
unmistakable meaning. When you Infidels adduce
nature, we require that nature to speak as plainly to
us as these Scriptures do to you ; but, lo ! she is per
fectly dumb, or speaks directly the contrary to us of
what you affirm she speaks to you.
Inf. But I understand you to go beyond this re
jection of the material universe as capable of being
to us the 'O Aoyoc of God, and to state that you
desire to know nothing of God, except so far as He
has veiled or unveiled Himself in Jesus Christ, " the
Word." Chr. God is everywhere, I know that ; but in
what XapaicTwp I know not. I am not to know.
Everywhere I see his power and energizing, but 1

136 JESUS CHRIST— THE LIFE-WORD OF GOD.
do not everywhere see his mercy or his love , I see,
on the contrary, very awful things — " terrors" — to
be co-extensive with the action of his power. If I
attempt to behold him unveiled in any way, but in
Him who has become to us " the way, the truth,
and the life of God," I know not in which of these
aspects of terror I should meet Him. But of this I
should be sure, that meeting Him thus in the way of
Infidelity and disobedience, it would be the death
and not the life of the soul.
Inf. And for this reason you decline to build
arguments on the abstract attributes of God, such as
his omniscience ?
Chr. They are terms of infinity not definable to,
nor graspable by, my nature. God, I know, must
be omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, — but what
omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence are, I know
not. No finite faculty can know. How, therefore,
can I reason with terms the meaning of which
transcends both your. nature and mine, human na
ture altogether.
Inf. Does not the fact of prophecy proceed on the
ground of the prescience of God ?
Chr. Time is no element in God. " Pre," or "be
fore," cannot in any way apply to Him as Deity. To
creatures, the subjects of time, is it alone in strict
ness applicable. God knows all things " before" not
relatively to Himself, but to us.
Inf. Be it so. Such and such things were to
come to pass; God foreseeing them — relatively to
us — so revealed them beforehand ; they came to
pass : by which act we establish, in the ordinary ac-

JESUS CHRIST  THE LIFE-WORD OF GOD. 137
ceptation of the terms, his prescience and omniscience.
Is it not so ?
Chr. I cannot accept your statement in its present
form. Inf. But we are compelled to use terms of time in
speaking of Deity.
Chr. Certainly, and terms of sense. But you
cannot, I think, reason upon such terms upon the
abstract attributes of Deity. In relativities between
the Deity and man we must use terms of sense,
space, and time, — man is not capable of other notions
or conceptions than such as are represented in or
by these Formatives of thought. But in reasoning on
the Deity Himself, apart from the relativities of
man and creation, all such terms being on the face
of them inapplicable, must be rejected.
Inf. Then, in fact, these terms not being appli
cable to the Deity as Deity, and we not being capable
of any ideas but what are represented by such terms,
we cannot reason about pure Deity itself at all.
Chr. We cannot. " Who by searching can find out
God ?" And this impossibility puts the axe summarily
to the root of all Deism.
Inf. How applied ?
Chr. How can you, being capable of any other
ideas than such as space, time, and the senses re
present and convey, form any idea whatever of the
Being to whom these originals of all your ideas do
not and cannot in any mode apply? The Deity
therefore of "Deism" must necessarily always be
not a mere abstraction from all sense only, but
one incapable of being represented to, as he is in

138 JESUS CHRIST  THE LIFE-WORD OF GOD.
truth of being conceived by the human mind at
all. Inf. I am sometimes impressed with that convic
tion myself.
Chr. Creation cannot supply us with any true
symbol of the pure Deity ; therefore God has solemnly
commanded us never to presume either to take or to
make any thing in heaven or earth as a " likeness of
him." The " Nature" which Infidelity magnifies, so
far from being God, is not itself in its vast univer
sality in any way, kind, or degree, capable of supply
ing us with even " any likeness or true symbol of
the supreme Deity." He is as utterly different from
nature, from all the works of his hands, as the can
vas is from the mind of the painter, or the stone is
from the soul of the architect. Apart from Chris
tianity men can have no definite or sensible idea,
apart from Christ no sensible representative, of God.
All other attempted ideas evaporate on being grasped
at by the mind in vacuum and nothingness ; they
remind one of the Druidic tenet that the " Hollow"
of the heavens itself was God — the older form of the
Greek Dios, and the Roman Coelum with its Diespi-
ter or Jupiter. Would your Infidelity return to this
primaeval worship of nature ?
Inf. But the prescience of God is at any rate
demonstrated by the truthfulness of prophecy.
Chr. Do you mean that God sees what will befall
long before, relatively to man, it does befall?
Inf. Thus I mean — God, foreseeing what is here
after to happen, reveals it to certain men, who there-

JESUS CHRIST  THE LIFE-WORD OF GOD. 139
upon speak it or commit it to writing : so spoken or
written it is called " Prophecy ;" this Prophecy,
being the revelation ages before of events which, in
the time assigned, really come to pass, is evidence
of the prescience of God. So, at least, most of
your modern writers on Christianity affirm and
inculcate. Chr. You are very earnest about this abstraction
of Omniscience.
Inf. Do not you concur in their view ?
Chr. They may be right ; but it is not my view,
nor, I think, the teaching of the Scriptures.
Inf. In what respect do you demur? Certain
things are to come to pass : so far, clear. God in His
Word foretells men that they are to come to pass ;
as He foretells, it so befalls ; — does not that prove
the foreknowledge of God as to future events ?
Chr. All this logic is, to my mind, wrong, because
anti-Scriptural. Inf. Give your own view, then.
Chr. The Word of God states that certain events
shall come to pass : because the Word so states,
therefore these events are certain to come to pass.
The Word is the cause of the events it presignifies.
Inf. The views are radically opposed.
Chr. Quite so. Your view makes " the Word "
simply declarative ; mine makes it causal and effective
also of what it declares. Your statement would
stand thus — "Because all these things were to be
done, the Scriptures of the Prophets revealed them
beforehand." Mine — "All these things were done

140 MATERIAL FATALISM CONSIDERED.
that the Scriptures of the Prophets might be fulfilled."
And this latter is actually the way in which the
Scriptures themselves deliver this statement.
Inf. I had a cogent argument prepared upon the
modern Omniscience view.
Chr. I suspected as much. Material Fatalism in
men and things ?
Inf. Exactly.
Chr. And Prophecy merely the pre-announce-
ment of fatalities which, prophesied or not, were to
happen with or without the Word ?
Inf. Truly so.
Chr. And God, the mere revealer of the fatalities
He could neither avert nor prevent — the Nuntius,
the heathen Mercury, to man of some force or power
above himself called Fate or Destiny ? The Greek
mythology revived of Jupiter and the Parcae ?
Inf. And my argument would have been, I con
ceive, irrefutable. The admission by you of Pre
science in this modern sense, would have destroyed
the Omnipotence of God. If God foresees truly, that
which He foresees must, of irrevocable necessity,
happen : that very necessity destroys all power on
his part of preventing or controlling the future —
therefore his omnipotence.
Chr. And it is on such gross misconception as
this of God, that Infidels conclude that God is not a
Being to be prayed to by men. He is a God, they
think, whose power is overruled by some chain of
necessities or fatalities, some series of natural causes,
which, in despite of Him, must and will hold on their
course and law. Or if not this, He is a God who

MATERIAL FATALISM CONSIDERED. 141
ages ago has parted with his omnipotence ; was at
one time, but for some reason or other has long
ceased to be, the Almighty. Something is above
Him ; and that something " hears not prayer."
Inf. Well, such is one of our theories.
Chr. Certainly, if Material Nature be that some
thing, it cannot, as we observed, do what those little
children playing on the lawn do — " hear :" it can
neither " hear" prayer nor any thing else. But do
you hold such a thing as that to be above God?
" He that made the ear, shall He Himself not hear ?
He that made the eye, shall He not see ?" Matter
itself neither sees nor hears ; how then can it have
made the ear and the eye, the hearing and the
seeing in those children? Your argument, there
fore, comes out thus : " Material Nature, the series
of causes and effect, is superior to God ; but this
little child is evidently superior to all material na
ture, and therefore superior also to God." Is this
"Intellect?" Inf. There may be other causes besides those con
nected with material nature, which render prayer an
absurdity. Chr. State them.
Inf. To do so is beyond my knowledge ; but this
is clear, that if all nature be a series of unalterable
causes and effects, no prayer can in the slightest de
gree produce a change in that series.
Chr. That is Material Fatalism, is it not?
Inf. Yes. You must, if such theory be true, ad
mit that to pray to it to change its course, is as ridic
ulous as to pray to the sun not to set, the light not

142 MATERIAL FATALISM CONSIDERED.
to shine, the night not to come, to man and beast
not to die.
Chr. Perfectly so — quite as ridiculous. You, on
the other hand, must admit that whether prayer be
an absurdity or not, depends entirely on the truth or
falsehood of this material fatalism being the Omnipo
tent God.
Inf. Why, yes, I think I must.
Chr. If this Power be one grade above insensible
matter, it must at least have the faculty which even
a brute possesses — that of hearing — it must be able
at least to " hear." Must it not ?
Inf. If it be aught above inert matter, I suppose
it must. Chr. If it can hear a prayer, is it able to grant it?
Inf. Certainly not — how could it without changing
the whole unchangeable series of causes and effects?
Chr. Not being able to " grant" even one prayer,
what becomes of its omnipotence ? Is this the thing
which, if not able to " hear," is lower than the brutes,
if able to hear and not to grant, is more helpless
than the brutes — for even a sheep will give its milk
to the dumb beseechingness of the lamb — the great
Power that, according to Infidelity, overrides and
controls God ? By your own reason, whatever it be, it
is, at the best, as helpless as a stone in the air, which
must come down to the earth: it can neither change
aught in its own motion, nor effect the slightest
change for good or evil in others. Why, Caliban is
an Apollo of grace and energy to such a monstrous
chimera as this God of Infidelity.
Inf. But if I admit that, whatever it be, it can

MATERIAL FATALISM CONSIDERED. 143
hear and grant, I entirely give up my position that
prayer is an absurdity. If it be a power which can
hear and grant, it may grant prayer and supplica
tion ; and if so, then also it may choose to make
prayer and supplication to it, the very reason and
condition why it pleases to do thus and thus. Prayer
to it would thus be what you Christians hold it to
be, of all services the most reasonable, as well as the
most profitable, which can be rendered to God. If
I make, therefore, even the first admission — that this
Power can " hear" — I am dragged on by my own
concessions to be at last a Christian, taking a Chris
tian view of individual and national prayer.
Chr. Yes — your reason obliges you, against your
will, to be herein a Christian.
Inf. But if, on the contrary, I answer the first
question, "can it hear?" in the negative, I must
hold that this Power which does not permit God to
grant prayers, is itself something inferior in organi
zation to an ox or dog — which will never do.
Chr. Not until the gods of Egypt, — cats, calves,
and crocodiles,— are to be the worship of England :
for even these, you see, have senses superior to your
" series of causes" Deity. Reconstruct Infidelity in
any form you please, that form has already been
encountered and ground into dust by Christianity ;
but this form of matter-worship is the lowest idolatry
history records. Bring together the material universe
— the sun, the moon, the stellar worlds — if worlds
they be — the planets, the earth, clothe them in their
aggregate with all their laws and properties in vest
ures of golden light, describe them in the fullest

144 MATERIAL FATALISM CONSIDERED.
and most gorgeous diction, surround them with the
most glowing and brilliant coruscations of poetry,
what in plain fact are they but such stuff as we
every instant tread under foot, or use as subservient
to the basest physical necessities of life ? What is
there nobler in a lump of dirt the size of our earth
more than there is in that small lump yonder in your
gardener's hand? Or in a collection of material
light as vast as the sun more than in a taper ? Or
does magnitude alone, be it that of earth, air, fire,
or water, constitute the idol of this kind of Infidel
ity? Ancient philosophy, which did worship the
" Anima or Mens Mundi," the spirit which, as many
thought, animated and was the vital power of the
"moles" or material universe, recoiled from such
senseless idolatry as the adoration of the " moles" it
self; nevertheless this is the gross clay of which
modern Infidelity would manufacture an image as
gross as its material — without senses, feelings, affec
tions, speech, reason, or soul, and place it as Fate or
Destiny above the will and government of God. I
grant to pray to such a thing as this would be the
same as to kneel to and supplicate the stock of yon
der tree. The poor heathen of old worshipped a
part, modern Infidelity would worship the whole of
this material world. I see not in what you differ,
except in this, that he reduced his worship to bodily,
while you confine it to intellectual, practice ; but in
both the cases the worship is literally that of the
most despicable element in creation — inert matter.
Inf. We, as modern infidels, surely differ from
those old stock-idolaters.

MATERIAL FATALISM CONSIDERED. 145
Chr. I do not see that you do a whit in the prin
ciple of your worship. The heathen selected some
material object in nature — stone, wood, metal ; he
fashioned this into his idol: the idol was as its
material — it could neither hear, see, feel, move,
think, nor speak; yet this mass of brute matter,
shaped by his own hands, the heathen set up, treated,
and worshipped as God. Infidelity goes even further
— for it would, by its own acknowledgment, put
something above God which is, in every respect, the
counterpart of this stone idol — something that can
not " hear " a single prayer, or respond to the throb
bing of a single heart among the millions of man
kind. Wherein, then, is the difference?
Inf. I never analyzed Infidelity by such a light as
you are now applying to it.
Chr. Whatever your " Order of Nature " may
mean, it must be something either living or dead,
having or not having life. If it has no life, if it be
merely the action of inorganic matter on matter,
or the mere properties of matter in operation,
such as gravitation, to suppose it in any sense God,
much more above God, must infer mental idolatry
of the same gross principle as that of the heathen.
If it has life, it can — unless it be of the lowest order
of life — " hear," and thus again you come to a start
ing-point which will inevitably conduct you to
Christianity and Prayer. And as for " intellect " in
this question — here is your Infidelity trying to per
suade " the intellect " of man to regard as above
God something that cannot do what every father in
the world does to his child — hear its voice in prayer :
7

146 MATERIAL FATALISM CONSDDERED.
you would reduce " intellect " to the worship of such
" matter " as this !
Inf. But there yet remains immense difficulty
connected with this question of Prayer.
Chr. What is it?
Inf. If all things were from the first settled and
ordained by Infinite Wisdom, such Infinite Wisdom
would never, at the entreaty of such creatures as we
are, alter aught in the scheme and succession of pre-
established harmonies which it has thus decreed—
and thus again we do not escape Fatalism. If there
be such Fatality, such " an Order of Nature," result
ing from either the properties of Nature itself, or
imposed by a Power above nature and its properties,
in either case it is clearly useless to pray ; for this
Fatality or Order must extend to the minutest as
well as the most extensive operations and concerns
of life and existence. Whether, therefore, the Su
preme Power be vested in a dead or living cause of
Fatality, the utter inutility of prayer — and with
prayer, of all worship and devotion whatever — is
demonstrated. How does Christianity solve such a
knot as this — how can it reconcile its belief in the
power of prayer to affect God, with its belief also
that the whole series of causes and effects have been
already immutably settled by the infinite wisdom of
God? Chr. We think our Faith in perfect harmony
throughout with itself and Reason in this matter. We
utterly reject all such infidel terms as Fatality, Des
tiny, Order of Causes, as would in the remotest de
gree imply that God is not now — at this very moment,

THE WORD OF GOD  THE ONLY FATE. 147
as He was from the beginning, and ever will be — ab
solutely and supremely Almighty. We deny all
the principles and ideas intended to be conveyed by
the above and similar terms : such denial forms a per
petual protest in the mouth of the Christian Church.
The first article of our creed is, " that we believe in
God the Father Almighty:" now as ever Almighty.
Our Gloria in the Lord's Prayer is, " Thine is the
kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and
ever." These and hundreds of like expressions of
faith intimate that we utterly cast from us the no
tion that there is any destiny, fatality, necessity, but
God Himself. He has never parted, never will part
— to speak in human language — with his omnipo
tence over all things visible and invisible, matter
and spirit, nature and grace, to any such mere phan
tasms and unrealities as Infidels create and name
from the forge and coinage of their own brains.
Christianity and Infidelity are on this point antipodes
in time and eternity to each other. Time, as we
said, cannot be applied to the Deity ; there are no
such measures of mortal flux as " past" and " fu
ture" in Him. All these theories, therefore, of
Fatality arid Immutability and Necessary Series,
which proceed on the basis of "Time" as an element
of God Himself, are to be rejected as false aud alto
gether repugnant to all true ideas of God. To Him
there is nothing necessary ; to creation He Himself
is the only necessity. The whole order of nature is
at His mercy : He has changed and destroyed it be
fore : He will change and destroy it again : the uni
verse can no more resist any action whatever of his

148 THE WORD OF GOD  THE ONLY FATE.
will, than the paper I now burn can this action of
mine by which I burn it. He might, if He so pleased,
abolish and cause creation to return to its original
nothingness to-morrow. He will abolish it, as it
now exists, and by the same omnipotence create it
in an entirely unprecedented and more glorious form.
And in all this there is no such thing as Time or
Fatality to Him : from everlasting to everlasting He
is alone " I AM" — The Almighty.
Inf. Supposing Him to be all this, why or how is
it that He should be affected by human prayers?
Why should He interfere with his own established
order of causes and effects ?
Chr. Rather, how know you that of this " order,"
prayer itself is not as great a law imposed on the soul
as gravitation is on matter ?
Inf. How know I?
Chr. Infidelity speaks of " causes and effects ;"
what these are it knows not ; but it observes certain
causes, apparently the most insignificant, produce
certain effects the most extensive and momentous;
both are in explicit language the subjects of the
prophecies of Scriptures. All the " effects" of Chris
tianity, — vast as they are politically and spiritually, —
follow from one " cause," the Crucifixion. No other
" series of causes and effects" is so plainly palpable.
In the operation of this series, prayer, public and
private, has always been a chief function ; neverthe
less, in total contradiction to your own theory, you
cannot admit it to be a "cause" sure to produce
certain " effects."
Inf But the order of the universe must yet be

THE WORD OF GOD  THE ONLY FATE. 149
something not changeable or to be affected by
prayer. Chr. Prayer to God is the order of the spiritual
universe. For a soul not to pray to God is the same
as for an atom not to gravitate to its centre. But
let us consider it from another point of observation
in your theory. Christianity is the " effect" of a cer
tain cause, — "the crucifixion of Christ," — is it not?
Inf. It is so.
Chr. We have, then, a series, the links of which
from one cause extend through eighteen successive
centuries of effects. We know of no series in men
tal, spiritual, or social history either so clear or im
portant as this of the progression of Christianity.
Inf. And your inference.
Chr. If " the series of cause and effects" consti
tute God, or a Destiny which controls God, Christi
anity itself, as far as we have data to proceed upon, is
in this world the principal part of such series ; and
consequently prayer, a principal part of Christianity,
must be part also of that supreme order and law
which constitutes God and rules the universe. For
you cannot separate prayer from Christianity, nor
Christianity from " the causes and effects" of eigh
teen, more correctly, fifty centuries in the history of
our race and world. Thus without any reference to
God you are compelled by your own theory of Infidel
materialism to admit the fact of " prayer" as part of
that law of causes and effects which you would substi
tute for God — as the thing to which the universe bows
and obeys. And this too, mark you, as of necessity :
the universe has no alternative in your theory but a

150 THE WORD OF GOD  THE ONLY FATE.
passive submission of itself to that " series of causes
and effects" of which in the strongest, longest, and
most indissoluble series we know, prayer is the
greatest cause of the greatest effects. Christianity
teaches the state of prayer to be the right state of a
creature towards its Creator ; the effects of it remain
entirely within God's hands, but Infidelity by the
above theory renders its effects over the material
universe itself absolutely irresistible. An infidel
ought surely to be always " praying," always pro
ducing marvellous " effects" by this cause. Why
does he not ?
Inf. Because he knows such effects would not in
evitably follow.
Chr. Then what becomes of your theory of the
immutable series of causes and effects apart from
God ? It clearly has no existence : apart from God,
cause and effect do not and cannot exist ; of Him
only is it that cause is cause, or effect, effect ; and
again at his will or word cause ceases to be cause,
and effect, effect. Of the truth of this doctrine we
hold the miracles of our Lord to be incontestable
evidence. To Him all causes and effects, material
or immaterial, became just what He pleased. At
traction, gravitation, life, death, production, ceased
or acted at his pleasure.
Inf. And we who are Infidels hold such suspen
sion, destruction, or superseding of nature and its
laws, of matter and its properties, impossible.
Chr. And we Christians hold such not to be only
possible, but the antagonistic idea to be subversive of
all true conceptions of Deity. Nature and matter

THE WORD OF GOD  THE ONLY FATE. 151
have no other law whatever than the will of their
Creator. Christ did what He pleased with them,
does so still, and ever will so do by the mere word of
his power.
Inf. And you believe God often overrules nature
in answer to prayer.
Chr. I cannot comprehend what you mean by
" overruling" that which, having no sense, conscious
ness, or volition of its own, can neither be rule or law
to itself. Here is a stone ; you take it up and cast
it into the river. Is the " nature" of that stone over
ruled by your action ?
Inf. Its nature is to be purely passive in the
action. Che. And if you burnt it to powder it would be
just as passive. So is it with all material nature,
the whole universe, under the power of God. But
this power being, not like yours, limited, but infinite,
extends itself over every form, phase, law, quality,
and property equally, as over all the material itself
of nature and the universe. And of this Infinite
Power the volition alone is creation or annihilation.
But equally in yours as in his hands, the mere matter
itself has no volition of its own, and therefore cannot
be " overruled."
Inf. Well, then, let us change the phraseology.
Does the volition of God in answer to prayer so act
upon nature as to cause it to bring about the state,
event, or emotion prayed for ?
Chr. According to our Christian faith, constantly.
And we think such faith most reasonable. Is it not
the object of every civilized man, whatever his pro-

152 NATURE AND THE WORLD.
fession, trade, or art may be, to make nature and all
its resources subservient to the use, welfare, and hap
piness of man ? ¦
Inf. Certainly.
Chr. Christians believe nature to have been for
this very purpose created of God. Subdue the earth,
subdue all matter, subdue all nature, was his first
command. Civilization is thus the handmaid of God
over nature. When we pray to God He may answer
us according to his pleasure, either by dispensing
with nature, or through the medium and operation of
nature. Nature, acting according to his volition,
would be only fulfilling the original design of her
creation. We in praying should be only applying
ourselves to obtain from God the happiness for which
we were at first designed by Him, and of which nature
was designed to be the material medium : so far
from being forced, " overruled," interfered with, sus
pended, nature would be doing the very thing and
none other than what she was created to do. To ns
Christians, believing this view of the respective prov
inces of God, man, and material nature to be the
only true and rational one, prayer is in the most per
fect accord with nature and its whole plan, with the
ineradicable instincts of the soul, with the love and
omnipotence of God.
Inf. And you suppose that God has often thus
made the operations of nature for good or bad in the
land, dependent on the public prayers and worship of
its people.
Chr. It appears to me most reasonable that it
should be so. Nature was made for man, man for

THE LAWS OF NATURE AND PRAYER. 153
God. No further was nature intended to serve man
than as man is the servant of God. If man with
draws himself from that service, God withdraws the
blessings of nature from him, which appears to me
most just. Thus prayer is the fulfilment, the neglect
of prayer the violation, of the whole design and
system of nature. Our right connection with nature
as our material minister cannot be preserved except
by preserving also our right connection with God as
his spiritual ministers. The golden chain which
binds us in love to God being riven, the iron chain
wherewith we bind nature breaks beneath us or drags
us to the earth captives to our slave.
Inf. Then you do not allow, on this question, the
accuracy of such terms as " violation of natural
laws," " suspension of ordinary powers ?"
Chr. No : for nature has no other law or power
than the alone will of God ; and it appears to me a
self-evident absurdity to think of nature in any other
light than of being dependent, from moment to
moment, for its very existence, much more for its
properties and qualities, on God. Infidelity concedes
that the First Cause — if it be aught above brute
matter— must be able at least to do what millions of
its creatures do, " hear" and grant prayer. It must
grant them either through the medium and agency
of nature, or not. If it be through the agency, con
trol, and direction of natural means, nature is only
made to work out the original design of her Creator.
If prayer be granted, but not through nature, then
you must admit the principle, also, of the whole
supernatural system of Christianity.

154 THE LAWS OF NATURE AND PRAYER.
Inf. You, if I understand aright, maintain both.
Chr. Yes. I hold that the Supreme Being grants
us the object of our prayers, according to his pleas-
sure, by either natural, preternatural, or supernat
ural means. Prayer, being the law of the soul, brings
both us back to our original position towards God,
and nature to her original position towards us. The
physical happiness and exaltation of a nation appear
thus to me indissolubly connected with its moral or
immoral, its religious or irreligious, character. And
I contend that all the facts of history support this
view. I am not speaking of prayer, be it observed,
as a thing separate from, but as a co-operant of
duty. The cholera, for instance, menaces us with a
visitation. Certain sanitary duties must be under
taken and discharged. But to proceed to discharge
and rely upon them, without any acknowledgment of
that Supreme Being by whose will alone means are
means, and duties duties, seems to me the acme of
unreasoning folly. It would be great folly to pray
only, leaving the duties undischarged ; but it is
greater folly to go to work as if the means were
themselves God — absolutely and infallibly effective
of success, by some innate potency in themselves
independent of God. It would be great folly, again,
when God has already placed the-means of removing
evil in our power, to have recourse, time after time,
to prayer against the recurrence of that very evil,
the means of removing which He has already placed
at our disposal. The object of such prayer would, in
such cases, have been already granted— and that
through the agency of natural means in our own

the laws of nature and prayer. 155
hands. Nature, in these and similar instances which
abound in history, is the talent which God has al
ready given into our hands, but which those very
hands wilfully and slothfully bury in the ground —
then immediately after are stretched out again to
heaven, to ask for more talent, which, if granted,
would in such spirit meet the same fate. I am not
speaking of prayer thus abused into a substitute for
work, duty, or knowledge. What I affirm is, that
these works or duties have no virtue, or power of
success in them, beyond so far as it is the pleasure
of God to attach it to them. And that if the ac
knowledgment, by prayer and public worship, of
this truth be withdrawn by a nation, God forthwith,
in innumerable instances, withdraws all virtue from
the means. They cease to be means, because we
have ceased from Him by whose pleasure alone they
are means.
Inf. God thus regulates nature towards man, as
man regulates himself towards Him.
Chr. On a national scale, yes. For nations, as
such, cannot be judged in the next world; they must
be, therefore, and always are, judged in this world.
The individuals, on the contrary, of which nations
are composed, are not judged in this world ; their
judgment takes place in the next. On the good
and evil individually, God causes the same sun to
shine, and the same blessings of nature to flow in
this world. On the good and evil collectively, or as
States, He acts in this world, either in their national
capacity, surrounding and endowing them with na
tional blessings, or uprooting them as a nation, and

156 THE laws of nature and prayer.
making their land "perpetual desolation." Thus
the judgment of God on the Jews, as a nation, lies
upon them in this world. His judgment upon them
individually, for salvation or perdition, does not lie
upon them in this world, but is reserved for Jesus
Christ in the next. Similarly with us. God deals,
and will deal, with Britain as a nation in this world,
accordingly as, in her national collectiveness, she reg
ulates her life and conduct towards Him ; but Britons,
individually, will be judged hereafter, not now.
Inf. In this view you render it impossible for an
Infidel to be a good subject or citizen. For a "na
tion" being composed, as you observe, of individu
als, the national prosperity must depend on the right
observance, by each individual, of his religious obli
gations towards God.
Chr. Certainly : for which reason there lies a re
sponsibility on every individual in the nation to see
that the nation or state, of which he is a subject,
does discharge, as a state or a nation, its duties to
wards God. I consider thus an Infidel Englishman,
who neither has conscience himself, nor cares that
the State should have conscience, towards God, to be
the worst possible enemy to the temporal prosperity
and welfare of England. He cannot, it is true, bring
down a spiritual judgment on one soul individually,
but he does all he can to bring down temporal judg
ment on England nationally — for as a nation God
deals with her now, in time, not in eternity. I regard,
therefore, the man who neglects the religious ordi
nances of common prayer and public worship, as not
only a pernicious member of society in the abstract,

THE LAWS OF NATURE AND PRAYER. 157
but to the extent of his individual influence and
power a positive enemy and cause of adversity to
his own country and countrymen. In his degree
and sphere he sets an example which would, if uni
versally followed, produce — and that by processes
perfectly natural — dissolution, ignominy, and ruin on
the land and its people.
Inf. You must concede that such an entire subor
dination of nature to spiritual ends is not to be easily
believed. Chr. No : I cannot concede it — -on the contrary,
my reason cannot conceive why nature should have
been created at all, or why her existence should be
continued for a day, except for the sake, and in
subservience to spiritual and sensitive Intelligences.
The universe of Material Nature has no consciousness
of its own existence, has it ?
Inf. No.
Chr. Nor of any properties, motions, or realities
in itself or its elements ?
Inf. Certainly not.
Chr. It is clear, then, it was not created for itself.
The idea, indeed, that matter was systematized, and
put into its present forms and order, merely to roll,
and roll, and roll by gravitation and repulsion in one
eternal unconscious monotony of time and motion,
carries its own refutation with it. We may as well
imagine the rock, the grass, or the river to have been
created for the sake of their own material unconscious
selves. That a thing which cannot feel should be
created for its own sake, infers, to my mind, strong
absurdity. Yet Infidels talk and write as if there

158 THE LAWS OF NATURE AND PRAYER.
really was some vast consciousness of order and
sense of regularity in these inert masses themselves :
as if the sun, the earth, the atmosphere were
animated by a living principle of conscience, which
rendered the slightest deviation from their course of
duty not for a moment to be tolerated as a possi
bility in nature. And they have invented, and per
sist in using, a certain set of words and phrases,
intended to impress the mind with a belief that
man — spiritual, intelligent, immortal man — is a mere
slave and dependent on what they call the " laws "
of this dead stuff : that he is made for it, not it for
him : and that to ascertain what these " laws " are,
is the highest knowledge of which he is capable. I,
for my part, hold that if only one single soul, capa
ble of that which all material nature is not capable
of — enjoying and suffering — existed in the world,
the continuance, the wreck, or reconstruction of all
nature would, in right season, depend on how far it
did or did not subscribe and contribute to the neces
sities or desires of that one soul. What is all this
senseless nature, that it should be put into compari
son or competition with the nature of even one sensi
tive being ? If a dog were the only sensitive being
in the world, it would be most rational that the non-
sensitive world should have been so ordered as to be
in all things conducive to his being and well-being.
Now this nature was created to be more entirely
the plastic slave of man as inert, matter, than the
dog or any other creature, to be his animal slave —
yet Infidelity magnifies it, and certain properties in
it termed its laws, — the laws of a lump of earth, or a

FOLLY OF MATERIALISM. 159
current of wind, or a blaze of fire ! — into an immu
table sovereignty over the destinies of sense, intelli
gence, and soul.
Inf. Man, however, cannot alter these " laws " or
properties, tendencies, and effects of the material
universe. Chr.. No : for the universe, with its matter and
properties, is not his, but God's. But he can, as you
know, direct and control them to an almost indefinite
extent ; but what he does and is doing more and
more every day as he progresses in peace, science,
and civilization — does for his own comfort, for pay,
for money, for speculation, — does in steam, in fire,
in every element from electricity to iron, — is, accord
ing to Infidelity, quite out of the power of God to
do in any way for him. Man may direct the light
ning, but God cannot — may produce abundant har
vests, but God cannot : man can give or destroy life
in tens of thousands, but God cannot
Inf. But man does all this by and through nature.
Chr. And cannot God ? Does man " violate," or
only discover and apply to his own purposes, the
powers of nature herein ? Cannot God also thus
use nature for his purposes towards man ? On the
very lowest supposition this power must be conceded :
and with it again you concede the reasonableness of
prayer by man to the God of nature. Let me ask
you this question : Which is more dear to you, your
children or the furniture of your house ? Is the fur
niture for the family, or the family for the furniture ?
But all the arguments of Infidelity about nature and
man proceed on the gross assumption that the sense-

160 FOLLY OF MATERIALISM.
less furniture of the senseless house is something
both more powerful in itself, and more precious in
the sight of God, than the happiness and souls of his
own immortal children. For the sake of your chil
dren you would alter this and that in your house at
your pleasure : in doing so, you would never dream
that you were " violating " any immutable series of
causes and effects in your furniture — nor would you
be ; you would only be treating matter as matter, as
God made it to be treated — as He Himself, by his
word or will, treats all the universe of matter and its
properties. The good of the least of your little chil
dren would be sufficient to induce you to change the
whole material arrangement of your nursery, your
garden, your grounds. But God, exclaims your Infi
delity, cannot thus consult the good or the happiness
of his children, though they draw near to Him with
full and earnest hearts on bended knees ; and why
not? Because something or other in the senseless
inert matter of the universe — -the furniture of his
house — prevents Him from doing for his children
what the same matter cannot prevent any mortal
father in his own house from doing for his children.
My judgment revolts from such "intellectual Infi
delity," as no sooner expressed than self-condemned.
One human being is more dear to God than all the
universe of unconscious material nature ; the prayer
of even one such is never unheard; whether gra
ciously granted, or graciously and in mercy denied,
or how granted, naturally or supernaturally, is God's
province, not the supplicants. The act of prayer
itself is of all others the most truly natural and

FOLLY OF MATERIALISM. 161
rational in which a human being can be engaged
towards the great First Cause and Sovereign Dis
poser of the Universe. Among other blessings at
tendant on it, it disperses from the soul all the im
pious nonsense and folly connected with such systems
of material fatalism as we have been discussing.
Inf. Well, then, I now revert to prophecy again ;
and it appears to me that on these very principles
which you enunciate, Prophecy and Fatalism are
identical. Unless there be a predestined order of
events, or a system of fatalities, how can there be
prophecy, which is in fact the prediction of that
which is " fated" to happen ? How can you separate
one from the other ?
Chr. We have already, I think, rejected all fatality
or necessity as proceeding from matter. Now what
is the origin of the expression " fate ?" " Quod fatur
Deus." " That which God speaks." The " Fata,"
therefore, according to the sense of the old world,
were nothing else than what it pleased God to speak
— the " Words" of God. Infidelity in the existence
of God corrupted that sense, and absurdly connected
" Fate" or " the Word" with material nature, which
is totally incapable of one " word" or sensible sound.
Now if we bring back " Fate" to its original accepta
tion of " the Word of God," then we should agree that
whatever this Word or Fate of God has spoken or
decreed, must happen. This is the only " fate" Chris
tianity acknowledges, and it is you see the only
" fate" also of which through language we can form
any positive idea. To us, through Christ, the word
of God is the only fate ; now how came the heathen

162

FOLLY OF MATERIALISM.

world to call the power thus indicated by the same
name as we do " the Word ?" They either reasoned
such power up to this source themselves, or it is the
definition of such power which the great community
of the human heart and mind itself suggests, or all
heathenism whatever, — being the corruption of that
faith which " was from the beginning," — retained of
necessity in ordinances, beliefs, names, more or less of
the truths of that faith, — among others, that that
power which causes all things to come to pass is the
" Fate or Word of God." Any one of these supposi
tions condemns the irrationality of Infidelity, and
confirms the verity of Christianity. The simple ex
pression "Fate," "the Word," implies a power of
which material nature is not capable. Thus the terms
themselves which Infidelity would pervert to its own
purposes prove, on examination, destructive to its
very foundations. It desires to aggrandize material
nature under the aspect of " Fate," but " Fate" when
applied to spurns such connection, and proclaims
itself the power and expression of something quite
distinct from, and supreme over matter.
Inf. I understand then your position with ref
erence to prophecy to be this, — the Word itself is
the cause why the things it predicts come to pass.
Chr. Yes.
Inf. The word of prophecy being once gone forth,
all things thenceforth and for that reason — because it
is "the Word" — are made by the living Word Him
self, Jesus Christ, so to work together as to fulfil
and verify it.
Chr. Such is my view. The Word is the cause of

THE LIFK-W0KD  THE POWER OF GOD. 163
the events, the power by which such events are
caused ; not any " fatality" in events the cause of
the Word itself, or of the Word being revealed.
Inf. Let us see. Christ suffered death by Cruci
fixion. Was He to be by any " fatality" in events,
crucified, and the word of prophecy therefore given ;
or " the Word" once gone forth that Crucifixion was
to be the mode of his death, therefore He was cruci
fied ? You hold the latter view ?
Chr. I do.
Inf. Then you do hold that whatever this " Word"
has gone forth upon is what I mean by " Fate" — an
event which must come to pass — only with you it is
God, and proceeds from God only : the expression
itself implying a power of which physical or material
nature is itself entirely incapable. You make " Fate"
solely that will of God which by its own Spirit ex
presses, and by its own power fulfils itself; the ex
pression or prophecy and the verification being thus
of necessity, as being both operated by one God, in
perfect accordance with each other.
Chr. Exactly so.
Inf. I admit the consistency of this view, but see!
it holds within it still a certain species of fatalism.
Chr. Provided you admit " Fate" to be nothing
else than the will of God in operation, I do not see
how it can be otherwise.
Inf. True. As thus — what the Word of God has
once expressed, God himself has no power to change ;
the Word of God binds God Himself to its fulfilment.
Chr. Admitted ; the Word of God is, I repeat, the
only "must be" we Christians hold: beyond or ex-

164 THE LIFE-WORD  THE POWER OF GOD.
traneous to it we repudiate all and every " must be"
with God or in creation.
Inf. What ! the omnipotence of God is bound to
his Word !
Che. Yes, is one with his Word. And so far as all
things created are concerned, his Word is not only the
expression but the co-instantaneous action of his
omnipotence. " Let there be light," that was " the
word :" with the word there was light ; that was om
nipotence, but the word and the omnipotence being
one went forth as one. " I will, be thou whole ;"
that was the word, with the word the effect is co-
instantaneous ; wholeness is created. " This is my
body ; this is my blood ;" that is the word : the Word,
being omnipotence, effects itself: the bread co-in-
stantaneously with the Word becomes, by the omnip
otence of the Word, that which the Word expresses
it to be; Christ is thus, as the Scriptures declare
Him to be, both the Word and — as being the Word
— the Power also of God.
Inf. But Christianity herein methinks assumes the
province of philosophy, and very profound philoso
phy too.
Chr. Certainly, as we believe, the only true phi
losophy. Philosophy, as you are well aware, is not
wisdom, but the love and appreciation of wisdom; to
us Jesus Christ, the Word and the Power, is also the
Wisdom of God. To love and appreciate Him is, as
St. Paul expresses it, " wisdom in the highest," the
best and purest philosophy of which the human in
tellect is capable. Now that the action of the power
of God is simultaneous with his word is, I think,

THE LIFE-WORD  THE POWER OF GOD. 165
clear to reason. How did God at first, for instance,
create matter? It was not, as we may say, with
hands. Inf. Of course not.
Chr. Nor yet by, or with, material agencies, for
He could not act with matter, when as yet there was
no matter to act with.
Inf. Equally plain.
Chr. We are driven back upon something then
entirely in God Himself as the first cause of matter.
Whatever it be, its coming forth from God, its first
action, could only take place by the will of God
Himself. That which did thus come forth of God,
very God of very God, being both the will and power
of God to create all things out of nothing, Chris
tianity terms " the Word " or 'O Aoyoc of God, which
Word, Incarnate, is Jesus Christ. By this " Word "
alone, " whose goings forth," as Micah states, " are
from everlasting" — were matter, the universe, all
things whatever created.
Inf. But is this an inference from Scripture, or
plain Scripture itself?
Chr. Plain Scripture itself — plainer than the in
ference — but the expressions of Scripture are become
so familiarized, that to draw attention to the plain
meaning and sense of Scripture we are often obliged
to put their sense before people as nearly as we can
in other terms. The philosophy, as you call it, which
alone to my mind solves the origin of creation is ex
pressed in the plainest possible terms by St. John.
" In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. The same was in

166 THE LIFE-WORD  THE POWER OF GOD.
the beginning with God. All things were made by
him ; and without him was nothing made that was
made. And the Word was made flesh."1 Now
unless matter made itself, this statement of its
origin and creation is, I will venture to affirm, the
only one approving itself to right reason which has
ever been presented to the world. God, not creating
by material hands of his own, nor by material
agencies, matter not yet existing, it follows that
creation must have been effected by the " Word " of
God : it equally follows that the Word itself being
thus the creative power, creation itself must of
necessity be simultaneous with the Word. Now our
Christian faith is that Jesus Christ is this incarnate
Word of God ; and such faith we thus confess in the
Nicene Creed, " I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only-Begotten Son of God, Begotten of his
Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light,
Very God of very God, Begotten not made — By
whom all things were made."
Inf. I well know with what a high hand the
Church has always carried the absolute divinity of
its Founder, on which point I shall presently deliver
my sentiments. I confess, however, that there is
much greater depth as well as sublimity in what I will
persist in terming the "philosophy" of Christianity
and the Scriptures, than I was at all prepared to
combat. But how does the fact of Christ being the
Power as well as Word of God bear on our present
subject of prophecy ?
Chr. The Word being also the power of God is the
1 John i.

THE LIFE-WORD  THE POWER OF GOD. 167
cause in all things, prophecy included, of its own ful
filment. The Scripture is the written expression of
the Life- Word, Jesus Christ. Every prophecy thus
written, being thus part of the Word itself which is
God, carries with it its own creative power. The
subject of it must under the power of the Word as
necessarily come into existence, as under the power
of the same Word matter itself, the light, the sun, the
earth, man came out of the dust or out of nothing into
existence. Every thing therefore on which this Word
has gone forth must come to pass ; for to this Word,
the power of God, both being one, is indissolubly
bound. All other things whatever on which the Word
has not gone forth remain as from the beginning at
the absolute disposal of God to change, modify, or
annihilate at his pleasure. The Scriptures thus con
tain to us the revelations of those things on which
the 'O Aoyoc of God has gone forth. These cannot be
in one iota changed by God Himself till " all be ful
filled," for, as St. Paul expresses it, it is impossible for
God to deny Himself; and this Himself the '0 Aoyoc
is. The will of God cannot be contrary to itself, nor
to the expression of itself as the " Word." So far,
therefore, as the Word has spoken, there is " Fate :"
the Scriptures are the revelations of this "Fate."
As out of "Christ" there is no "fate," or word of
God, so out of the Scriptures can there exist no reve
lation or science of fate whatever. For on all things
else the " fate " or word of God has not, as far as we
know, gone forth ; on these things it has. And these
therefore are those things which, out of this world
and the next, out of time and eternity, must be veri-

168 CHRIST  THE ONLY FATE OF MAN.
fied by the truth, and substantiated by the omnipo
tence of God. And in them all, and their fulfilment,
there is no element of time to Christ as the 'O Aoyoc :
for time, as we said, is no element of God ; but there
is the element of time in them to the man Jesus who
by the incarnation of the 'O Aoyoc became the Christ
or the God anointed : to us also who are in our
bodies the extension of Jesus, as the incarnation
of the '0 Aoyoc, and in our sanctified souls of the 'O
Aoyoc in Jesus, time is an element. With reference
to ourselves, therefore, we use the terms " predesti
nation," " foretold," "prophecy," and such like : with
reference to God we reject them as inapplicable to a
Being in whom neither creation, nor matter, nor any
form, property, or quality of matter has, or can have,
part or inherency.
Inf. This statement, which makes Jesus Christ
the only " fate," " destiny," or " necessity" to man,
utterly explodes the idea of any inherent power in
material nature to produce events in future ; it re
moves man, as a spiritual being, entirely beyond the
powers or chances of any thing below God.
Chr. It does so. And moreover, while Infidelity
cannot give us the remotest idea of what it means
by its " fate," or its " predestined order of causes,"
or what such order, with reference to man as an
intelligent and spiritual being, will be in ten or
twenty years, Christianity places the written Book
of true "fate" to the very moment, and beyond it,
of the consummation of this present order of nature
in the hands of every believer. And in so doing,
enables him to place himself at once by faith in

CHRIST— THE ONLY FATE OF NATURE. 169
entire harmony of life and soul with the purposes of
God : such " Fate" becomes to him merely the " or
der" of his own salvation, and of the restoration of
all things in Christ : with such order he rejoicingly
works : by obeying Him from whom it proceeds he
commands futurity itself: for knowing what such
futurity will be " by the Word," " by the Word"
also which calls, incorporates, and engraces him with
itself, he is already exalted above all its evil, and
spiritualized for all its good. Christ, the Christian's
" Fate," revealed to him, becomes his salvation : if in
the " order of events" issuing from Christ the Word,
there is in futurity such a " Fate" as hell, he, by
becoming one with Christ, forever escapes it: if
such a " Fate" as Heaven, he forever gains it. The
revelation, then, of Christ,, places, in one sense, every
man's "Fate" in his own power. Every man is
called to be one with Him by the Word : every man
by such Word, effective of itself, is made capable of
coming and of being made one with Christ : every
man has it put into his own power to be, if he please,
in Christ, the Word, the will, and the power of God, as
to himself — the master of his own fate, and the arbi
ter of his soul's destinies. Here the reason of reve
lation and of prophecy, the truth of God's ever-present
power upon man, and yet the freedom of man's will
by the same power of God, in the matter of his own
salvation and perdition, are practically in every man,
in every hour of every day, reconciled and combined.
Inf. I deduce from this statement that you believe
the whole world to be moving at this moment by the
word of prophecy.

170 CHRIST  THE ONLY FATE OF NATURE.
Chr. By every word that has proceeded out of the
mouth of God.
Inf. And you admit no other " Fate," or " fatal
ism ?"
Chr. None.
Inf. Nor any, as of necessity, series of causes and
effects, as existing out of the Word.
Chr. How is it possible if, as we said, by the
Word only things are created and do subsist, any
one cause or effect, let alone any series, should, " ex
cept by the Word," come into existence at all ?
Inf. And this Word, which called present Nature
into existence, having also declared that it shall cease
to exist, its destruction is as certain as its existence
— both being bound up in the same " Word."
Chr. Yes.
Inf. Whatever also that " Word" has gone forth
upon, to that the whole Deity is committed — Nature
itself being so regulated as in all things to subserve
"the Word." Now this, I apprehend, is what we
call " Supernaturalism," is it not ?
Chr. As you please : I will not answer for names ;
but Nature itself is, next to Christianity, the most
supernatural thing I know.
Inf. Nature supernatural ! What a paradox.
Chr. Not at all, I conceive. Whatever owes its
origin to something above Nature, must be super
natural. Nature owes its origin, not to itself, but to
something prior to and greater than itself: it is
therefore itself one vast confederation of the evi
dences of supernaturalism. Not a single opera
tion is there in Nature which was not originally

THE LIFE-WORD  THE CREATIVE POWER. 171
called into action by a power above and preceding
Nature. The difference is that Nature is the tran
sient, Christianity the permanent, form of super
naturalism. Nature as it is will dissolve in the
Church of God as it will be — God, who is above the
Church, and above all Nature now, will still be for
ever above the two in one then. Nature thus, as it
began in the "going forth," so it will end in the
"Word" of God fulfilled.
Inf. One of Newman's most formidable objections
hinges, it appears to me, upon the epithet the " Word
of God." Here is his statement : 1
" One of the most decisive testimonies to the Old
Testament which the New contains is in John x. 35,
where I hardly know how to allow myself to charac
terize the reasoning ; the case stands thus. The
82d Psalm rebukes unjust governors, and at length
says to them, ' I have said, Ye are gods ; and all of
you are children of the Most High. But ye shall die
like men, and fall like one of the princes.' In other
words, ' Though we are apt to think of rulers as if
they were superhuman, yet they shall meet the lot
of common men.' Well : how is this applied in
John ? Jesus has been accused of blasphemy for
saying that ' He and his Father are one.' And in
reply He quotes the verse, 'I have said, Ye are
gods,' as his sufficient justification for calling Him
self the Son of God: 'for the Scriptures cannot be
broken.' I dreaded to precipitate myself into shock
ing unbelief if I followed out the thoughts that
this suggested." 2
1 Phases of Faith, p. 76. ' Ibid. p. 61.

172 THE LIFE- WORD  THE CREATIVE POWER.
Thus far Newman. I understand him to imply
that Christ, being accused of blasphemy for calling
Himself in a sole peculiar sense " One with God,"
prevaricated from his real meaning by quoting a
verse from Scripture, in which He knew the title
" God " to be applied in quite a different sense to
princes and rulers. He used the term " One with
God " at first in one sense — meaning that He Him
self was very God : and so the Jews understood him,
and charging Him at once with blasphemy in thus
making "Himself God," took up stones to stone
Him to death — whereupon Christ, shrinking from
this death by lapidation, defends the term He had
used by quoting to them a verse in their own Scrip
tures in which it occurs — but occurs in quite another
sense to that in which He had applied it to himself.
If this view be correct, was not Christ here guilty of
prevarication ?
Chr. The view is altogether erroneous, and New
man here, as in other portions of his writings, by no
means shows that knowledge of Scripture for which
he has hitherto received credit. Let us examine the
narrative of the facts themselves in St. John. Jesus
Christ, at the Feast of the Dedication, was walking
in Solomon's Porch in the Temple at Jerusalem.
The Jews surround and accost Him, "How long dost
thou make us to doubt ? If thou be the Christ, tell
us plainly." Jesus does tell them plainly, " I and
my Father are one." They menace Him with instant
death for blasphemy, " because He, being man, made
Himself equal with God." Jesus, referring them to
their own Scriptures in which God Himself had called

THE LIFE-WORD  THE CREATIVE POWER. 173
those to whom "the Word of God" came — God's
" children of the Most High," demands if they dare
say of Him, " the Living Word of God Himself thus
come," sent and sanctified by the Father, a blas
phemer, because He calls Himself the Son of God?
And He immediately, with greater emphasis and
authority, repeats the "blasphemy" — "Know and
believe that the Father is in me and I in Him."
Whereupon the Jews again attempted to seize Him,
" but He escaped out of their hands."
The question asked was, " Art thou the Christ ?"
Jesus tells them plainly, in the Scriptures, He is :
they charge Him with blasphemy; He answers
" God calls those to whom the Christ — the Word— is
sent, children of God." Christ Himself, therefore, the
sending of whom " makes them the children of God,"
must be God ; for how could they become the chil
dren of God, if the "sent" whom they received
was not Himself God, one with the Father ? I am
that Christ — that " sent" of the Father — the Messiah
— one therefore with the Father: the Father is in
me, and I in Him.
I see nothing here but the straightest action, the
highest courage, the most unanswerable argument.
Christians are now the children of God ; what makes
them such ? The Christ — the Word sent. He who
being received makes us by such reception of Him
self children of God, must needs Himself be God.
If He is not, then are not we the children of God,
and the Scriptures, which calls us such in Him, are
"broken" — which to the- Jew of old, and to us now,
is simply an impossibility, and Christ was speaking

174 THE LIFE-WORD  THE CREATIVE POWER.
to the Jews in the very same language and to the
same purpose as He now speaks with to us.
Inf. Newman certainly does not seem to have
made himself master of his data in this case. The
reasoning and conduct of Christ herein appear
straightforwardness and intrepidity themselves.
Chr. Newman has abandoned Orthodoxy. He
has probably ceased to see Christ in the Scriptures
at all : he could see nothing of Christ, perhaps, in
the Psalm itself. 1 " Arise, O God, judge the earth :
for thou shalt inherit all nations." Nor would he
admit that when we are made members of Christ,
we of necessity become children of God, because
Christ, of whom we are part, is God. To us, however,
in the Church, the Psalm, its quotation by Christ,
and the irrefragable proof it supplies to us of His
Godhead, are so in unison with the whole doctrine of
the Church, and its interpretation of the Scriptures,
that we never could have made Newman's construc
tion out of it, or read the narrative in St. John as he
seems to have done.
Inf. I advance to another very serious charge
against the morality of your Scriptures. In page 91
of " Phases of Faith" Newman writes, " Hosea was
divinely ordered to go and unite himself to an im
pure woman. Could I possibly think that God
ordered me to do so if I heard a voice in the air com
manding it ? Should I not rather disbelieve my hear
ing than disown my moral perceptions ? It must be
morally right to believe moral rather than sensible
perceptions. No outward impressions on the eye or
1 Ps. lxxxii.

THE LTFE-W0RD — THE CREATIVE POWER. 175
ear can be so valid an assurance to me of God's will
as my inward judgment.
Chr. Surely your Infidel has here turned into a
downright Roman Catholic, has he not?
Inf. How so ?
Chr. Is not the principle which he here lays down
— that the senses are no judges in the things of the
soul — the very principle in his brother's religion on
which the whole system of Transubstantiation is
founded ? Read it thus — " Should I not rather dis
believe my hearing than disown my spiritual percep
tions ? It must be spiritually right to believe spirit
ual rather than sensible perceptions. No outward
impression on the eye or ear, can be so valid an assu
rance to me of God's will as my spiritual judgment."
His brother would add, " that such spiritual judgment
— such spiritual perception was borne out and sanc
tioned by the express letter of Scripture, 'This is my
body — this is my blood.'" But this religion, which
thus sacrifices the senses to internal intuitions,
moral or spiritual, is that very faith of which Francis
Newman has thus expressed himself: "For the
peculiarities of Romanism I feel nothing, and I can
pretend nothing but contempt, hatred, disgust, and
horror — a system of falsehood, fraud, unscrupulous
and unrelenting ambition."1 Yet he here adopts as
his own, the strongest, perhaps, of all the "pecu
liarities" of Romanism. " No outward impression
on the senses can be so valid an assurance to us of
God's will, as something inward — be that something
faith, spiritual or moral perception, or whatever we
1 " Phases of Faith," p. 72.

176 SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE JEWS.
may choose to term it, and to believe this ' inward
judgment,' rather than sensible perceptions must be
right." Newman, in his zeal against an imaginary
instance of false morality in the Scriptures, not only
precipitates himself into the very system of fraud and
falsehood for which he expresses — and I doubt not
very sincerely — such disgust and horror, but abso
lutely commits his whole "inward judgment" to the
principle on which such system is constructed. But
this, however, is only one of the many acts of intel
lectual suicide constantly perpetrated by Infidelity.
Let us proceed to examine this new charge which
will, I dare say, evaporate as the previous ones into
thin air, at the touch of the spear of scrutiny. The
passage to which Newman alludes is not, I presume,
that in the first chapter of Hosea — for that commands
marriage — but that in the third chapter.
"Then said the Lord unto me, Go yet, love a wom
an beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, accord
ing to the love of the Lord toward the children of
Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of
wine. So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of
silver, and for an homer of barley, and an half homer
of barley. And I said unto her, thou shalt abide
for me many days : thou shalt not play the harlot,
and thou shalt not be for another man : so will I
also be for thee. For the children of Israel shall
abide many days without a king, and without a
prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image,
and without an ephod, and without teraphim. Af
terwards shall the children of Israel return and seek
the Lord their God, and David their king, and shall

SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE JEWS. 177
fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days." '
Not a word is there here of " a voice in the air," nor
of " being united to an impure woman." Hosea is
commanded to purchase a woman beloved by " a
friend," yet who for temporal seduction had forsaken
her " friend," and attached herself to many lovers.
Thus purchased on the covenant that she is hence
forth to give up these lovers, to abandon her evil
courses, and to consider herself the property of her
purchaser alone — but between the purchaser and
her there was to be no further communication. She
was to abide " for him," waiting for him many days.
The typing of this prophetic action almost explains
itself — it describes the spiritual or religious state in
which the Jews, as a people, were to remain between
the Crucifixion of Christ and their final conversion
in' " the latter days " to Christianity. The Friend of
whom Israel was beloved, and whom she deserted,
was God : her many lovers were her numerous
idolatries. Hosea represented Christ. Christ has
purchased Israel, as He has the Christian Church,
for Himself. But unlike His spouse, the Christian
Church, He has not so purchased Israel as to be
come yet her husband. Israel is to wait "many
days " for that union : in " the latter days " it will
take place. Israel shall then return to her " Friend "
the Lord their God, and to David their king. Mean
time as in their temporal, so in their spiritual state,
they are to remain " a sign " among the nations —
utterly weaned from their former idolatries, prevented
from falling into any image-idolatries resembling the
1 Hosea iii.

178 SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE JEWS.
former, yet not Christians ; and furthermore without
king, or prince, or sacrifice, utterly incapacitated to
carry out or observe the ritual of their own defunct,
because fulfilled, Leviticus. And the prophecy is
now, and has been for centuries, most precisely
verified. The Jews at this day have neither king,
prince, nor sacrifice in their religion : the priesthood
of the ephod has long since disappeared ; all distinc
tion between tribe and tribe, between Levi and the
lay tribes, has long been lost ; Jerusalem continues
" trodden down of the Gentiles ;" its Temple has passed
away in fire and ashes, and the site is occupied by a
Gentile mosque. Israel has been " abiding these
many days" for some one : she herself acknowledges
it : she has ceased to " play the harlot :" neither is
she for any other man — any other religion than Him
and His for whom she is " abiding." Neither idola
trous nor Christian, physically, nationally, and geo
graphically disabled from observing the ceremonial
law they profess, the Jews are in this, as in other
respects, an exception to the whole world. Newman
is here once more very unfortunate in missing the
point of the whole prophetic action. Had Hosea
united himself to the woman he purchased, the act
would have conveyed a meaning directly the reverse
of what the purchase, without such union, was de
signed and admirably calculated to convey to the
people of Israel. But now, as the prophetic drama
declared, so has it come to pass — Israel is entirely
redeemed from her old, and preserved from new
idolatries ; but her Redeemer has not yet become her
husband. When the times of the Gentiles shall have

SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE JEWS. 179
been fulfilled, then shall both Jerusalem cease to be
trodden down, Israel shall seek the Lord their God,
and with the Gentile shall be one fold under one
Shepherd — David their King — Christ both the root
and branch of Jesse.
Inf. And this too, I suppose, is one of those
Church or orthodox expositions of prophecy to which
Newman would demur.
Chr. He must then demur to the broad facts of
the religious state of the Jews at this moment ; but
all the world, literate and illiterate, know the Jews
have in these days no king, no prince, no temple, no
sacrifice, no ephod ; they know also they do not
worship images or teraphim of any description, and
also that they are not of the Christian Church. All
this is the very explanation Hosea himself, 760 years
before the temple, and with the temple the capability
of observing the temple ritual, was destroyed, de
livered of the prophetic act he had been commanded
to perform ; the explanation is not modern, it is not
ours, it is Hosea's own of his own act. All the Church
does in the matter is to look round the world where-
ever the Jews are scattered, and then declare what
neither Church nor Infidel can help confessing to be
the truth, that the spiritual state of the Jews in
these latter days is emphatically that which Hosea
in his explanation of this act predicted it should be.
If Newman insists that eighteen centuries are not
" many days," — or that the Jews have a king and
prince of their own, — or that they are lapsed back into
their old image-idolatries, — the world, having all the
modern facts of the case before their eyes, and the

180 SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE JEWS.
very words of Hosea in their hands, can itself, with
the greatest facility, judge between Newman and the
Scriptures he assails, between the Church and In
fidelity. My reason goes with the Church and the
Scriptures because facts go with them. I cannot
possibly deny that such and such a prophecy is in
Hosea : nor that he himself explained it in the
plainest words ; nor that the most accurate descrip
tion of the present religious state of the Jews to
whom it by name refers, is conveyed by the very
words so written in Hosea. The question here is one
quite as much of our senses as of intellect. The
evidence of my senses convinces me of certain facts ;
the evidence of my eyesight convinces me of certain
words in Scripture ; it requires only common honesty
to decide on the agreement or non-agreement of the
words with the facts. The facts do agree to a tittle
with the words: I conclude the Scriptures must be
inspired, and my intellect sanctions the conclusion as
the only rational one right reason can adopt.
Inf. I will pass rapidly over the remaining objec
tions. In p. 93, " Phases of Faith," the old argument on
the extermination of the Canaanites is thus restated
by Newman. " Besides all this the command of
slaughter to the Jew is not directed against the seven
nations of Canaan only as modern theologians often
erroneously assert. It is a universal permission of
avaricious massacre and subjugation of ' the cities
which are very far off from thee, which are not of
the cities of these nations.' 'n
Chr. This is a misstatement of Newman's, as a
1 Deut. xx. 15.

EXTIRPATION OF THE CANAANITES. 181
reference to Deuteronomy xx. 15 will immediately
demonstrate. "When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight
against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall
be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto
thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found
therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall
serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee,
but will make war against thee, then thou shalt be
siege it : and when the Lord thy God hath delivered
it into thy hands, thou shalt smite every male there
of with the edge of the sword : but the women, and
the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the
city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto
thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine ene
mies, which the Lord thy- God hath given thee. Thus
shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far
off from thee, which are not of the cities of these
nations. But of the cities of these people, which the
Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou
shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: but thou
shalt utterly destroy them, the Hittites, and the
Amorites, and Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the
Hivites, and the Jebusites ; as the Lord thy God
hath commanded thee : that they teach you not to
do after all their abominations which they have done
unto their gods ; so should ye sin against the Lord
your God."
Inf. I intend presently to discuss whether such a
command as this could possibly emanate from a just
and merciful God.
Chr. Very well ; but now let us confine ourselves

182 EXTIRPATION OF THE CANAANITES.
to one point at a time. Newman's ignorance of the
letter of the Scriptures is here very striking. A
most marked distinction is drawn between the cities
of the seven nations, or of the inheritance enumerated
and specified with scrupulous exactitude here and
elsewhere to the people of Israel, and the cities of the
nations afar off: the latter are in every case to receive
a formal overture of peace. If accepted, they are to
become tributaries ; if rejected, yet under no circum
stances are the women or the little ones to be put to
the sword, — a course which was mercy itself com
pared to the usual practices of oriental conquerors
in those times. But of the cities of the seven na
tions, " thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth,
thou shalt utterly destroy them." Is not the distinc
tion as marked as language can impress it ?
Inf. An error clearly of Newman's in the quota
tion of Scriptures.
Chr. Newman, in his " Phases of Faith," comes
before the public assigning certain reasons for his
apostacy from Christianity. An inquiry into these
reasons leads to the detection that some of them —
and these not the least depended upon by the writer
for his justification in so very serious a proceeding —
are based upon palpable misquotations or miscon
ceptions of the Scriptures which he impugns. In
another man we should pronounce it gross ignorance
of his subject; what shall we say it is in him? His
apostacy, on the face of it, is partly the result of, to
say the least, inaccurate consultation, imperfect
knowledge of the Book whose authority he would
overthrow.

THE SENSES AND INSIGHT. 183
Inf. Every one is liable to such mistakes.
Chr. Every one is ; but a scholar and an able contro
versialist like Newman, writing expressly against the
Scriptures, should not, though liable, be guilty of such
mistakes about the Scriptures. He asserts a certain
command as contained in the Scriptures to be uni
versal ; reference instantly shows it not to be universal,
but to be most carefully and jealously limited — but
meantime nine in ten of his readers do not refer to
the Scriptures, but take Newman's representation of
them on trust, and just in proportion as they do this
is their faith in the Scriptures shaken. Liability is
surely, in so grave a cause, a poor excuse for the com
mission of error.
Inf. You do not impute it as wilful.
Chr. No ; but when discovered it recoils most
damagingly on the whole reasoning process by which
such apostacy was brought about.
Inf. Well, here- is another positive assertion of his
on another subject, — " As Christianity in its origin
was preached to the poor, so it was to the inward
senses that its first preachers appealed as the supreme
arbiters in the whole religious question."1
Chr. Another reckless proposition. Christ was
the author and first preacher of Christianity : let us
refer to St. Matthewxi. 1-5.
" It came to pass when Jesus had made an end of
commanding his twelve disciples, he departed thence
to teach and to preach in their cities. Now when
John had heard in the prison the works of Christ,
1 Phases of Faith, p. 95.

.184 THE SENSES AND INSIGHT.
he sent two of his disciples, and said unto Him, Art
thou He that should come, or do we look for another ?
Jesus answered and said, Go and show John again
those things which ye do hear and see. The blind
receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers
are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised
up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them."
Is this appeal of " works," of what persons see and
hear, to the inward or to the outward senses ?
Inf. Christ, it is evident, here makes the bodily
senses of the whole multitude the arbiters of the
reality of His miracles. But what did the Apostles
subsequently ?
Chr. The Apostles themselves were " eye-witnesses
from the beginning." l " That which was from the
beginning, which we have heard, which we have
seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and
our hands have handled, of the Word of life ; that
which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you,
that ye also may have fellowship with us."2
Here are the " outward," not the " inward" senses
appealed to by St. John, as well as by our Saviour, in
confirmation of the Gospel. St. Peter, again, was,
after the descent of the Holy Ghost at Whitsuntide,
the first who appealed by preaching to the Jews,
and he bases his address on the.evidence of the Jews'
own senses as to the works of Christ. " Ye men of
Israel, hear these words : Jesus of Nazareth, a man
approved of God among you, by miracles, and
wonders, and signs, which God did by Him in the
midst of you, as ye yourselves also know. This Jesus
1 Luke i. 2 1 John i. 1, 3.

SELF-SUSTAINING POWER OF CHRISTIANITY. 185
hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses."1
Judge yourself then as to the correctness of this alle
gation of Newman's, " that the first preachers of
Christianity appealed to the inward senses as the
supreme arbiters of the whole religious question."
Inf. I go on to another proposition of Newman,
which I mention, because I am not aware that any
one before him has ventured to make it. "This
religion, Christianity, cannot pretend to self-sustain
ing power."2
Chr. How comes it then to be the religion of so
great a portion of the world, — Europe, the Americas,
Australasia, and a gradually increasing part of Asia?
At one time there was but one Christian, — Christ
Himself, — on the earth, and He was crucified. Sup
posing, as Infidelity asserts, that He remains dead
and powerless, his religion has certainly never ceased
to increase the force and extent of its sway. All
historians admit that it has managed to fight its own
battles rather too effectively to please the mere
secular sovereignties, among which it reigns as a
spiritual empire. It has taken possession of every
shrine and temple in Europe ; it has annihilated the
superstitions and idolatries of Antiquity ; and so far
from exhibiting any symptom of decline, it continues
to add people after people, nation after nation, to the
long catalogue of its conquests. " They have turned
the world upside down" was said of St. Paul, and its
other champions in the first century of its propaga
tion. "This is the victory that overcometh the
world," declares St. John, " even our faith." It enu
1 Acts ii. 22, 32. 2 Phases of Faith, p. 98.

186 WOMANHOOD AND CHRISTIANITY.
merates " whole armies of martyrs ;" it points to sub
jects whose multitudes exceed the census of any em
pire that ever existed ; it reckons among its most
devoted adherents the men that own no earthly fear,
and in some form or other, — Rome, Puritanism, Hu-
gnenotism, Crusadism — it is ever falling upon and
shattering temporal states to fragments.
Inf. In this assertion of Newman's I cannot con
cur. Christianity has proved itself to be a terribly
subversive, as well as self-sustaining and progressive
power. It is, in fact, ridiculous to affirm that a reli
gion which has augmented its votaries from twelve
men to hundreds of millions, and its territories from
" one upper chamber" to the dominion of half the
globe, is not a self-sustaining power.
Chr. The facts, as usual, are stubbornly unfavor
able and hostile to Infidelity.
Inf. He may be more felicitous in his next state
ment. " We are told that Christianity is the deci
sive influence which has raised womankind. This
does not appear to be true. The old Roman matron
was relatively to her husband morally as high as in
modern Italy. In point of fact, Christian doctrine,
as propounded by Paul, is not at all so honorable to
woman as that which German soundness of heart
has established. Paul does not encourage a man to
desire a mutual soul intimately to share griefs and
joys, one on whom the confiding heart can repose,
whose smile shall reward and soften toil, whose
voice shall beguile sorrow."1
1 Phases of Faith, p. 102.

WOMANHOOD AND CHRISTIANITY. 187
Chr. Well, as to the Roman matron, Newman ap
pends in a foot-note : — " It is not to the purpose to
urge the political minority of the Roman wife. This
was a mere inference from the high power of the
head of the household. The father had right of
death over his son, and, as the lawyers stated the
case, the wife was on the level of one of the children."1
The Roman husband had absolute power of life and
death over his wife ; the Christian husband has noth
ing of the kind, and with every deference to New
man's domestic ideas on this subject, the great ma
jority of women will, I think, consider such a change
as being very much and decisively to the purpose of
" raising" womanhood to an equality with manhood
in social rights and privileges. But let us see what
St. Paul really says : — •
" Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also
loved the Church, and gave himself for it. So ought
men to love their wives, as their own bodies. He
that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man
ever yet hated his own flesh ; but nourisheth and
cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church. For we
are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his
bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father
and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and
they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery :
but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.
Nevertheless let every one so love his wife even as
himself : and the wife see that she reverence her
husband."2 ' Phases of Faith, p. 102. » Ephes. v. 25, 28-33.

188 WOMANHOOD AND CHRISTIANITY.
If the devotion of a husband's love towards his
wife can be carried higher than St. Paul here en
joins, or on higher motives, the language for its
expression remains to be discovered. It is as in
finitely superior to any which that native land of
Infidelity and obscurity — Germany and Germanism
¦ — has ever penned, as the Christian mother and
maiden are superior to the old Roman slave-wife, —
for she was nothing higher, — or to the sanguinary
viragos of old, or the sentimental heroines of modern
Germany. Infidelity could never suggest so sublime
and yet chivalrous a reason for conjugal affection as
this of Christianity : " Husbands, give honor unto
the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being
heirs together of the grace of life."1 This unites
love and holiness in the marriage garland of immor
tality ; that single verse is to my mind worth all the
books that Infidel intellect ever composed. The
study of all its authors will never bring so much
pure, genuine happiness to the domestic hearth, as
the sanctifying this one brief precept of the Chris
tian faith. Woman is indebted for her restoration
to Christ. Where Christ is not known, woman is
still a beast of burden or the degraded slave of pas
sion ; it is only in Him and by Him that she can re
cover her original equality with man. I consider
the man who speaks against Christianity, however
specious or poetic his diction and sentiments about
" love and confiding hearts" may be, a traitor to the
best interests of womanhood. Proceed.
1 1 Pet. iii. 7.

CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY. 189
Inf. The rights, avers Newman, of men and nations
are wholly ignored in the New Testament, but the
authority of slave-owners and of kings is very dis
tinctly recorded for solemn religious sanction.1
Chr. Ah! most people think very differently on
this point from Newman. " Proprium est Ecclesiae
Caesares odisse." The Popes and the Western Church
have not signalized themselves by any remarkable
submissiveness to kings.
Inf. Nor, unless when it suited her purpose, has
your own Anglo- Catholic Church ; for she unkinged
a certain James IL, and disinherited his lineage, in
spite of her passive obedience, homilies, and theory.
Chr. And what was Cromwell's text-book against
kings ? Was it not the Scriptures ?
Inf. Nevertheless you do not answer Newman's
political objection, that the rights of man and nations
are wholly ignored in the New Testament.
Chr. I do not, simply because I do not know what
Newman means by the rights of man and of nations.
Had he particularized them, we could bring him at
once, as in our other instances, to Scripture.
Inf. He specifies by implication one right.
Chr. What is it?
Inf. The right of a man not to be forced into
slavery. He affirms such a right to be ignored in
the New Testament.
Chr. Then he utterly misrepresents the New Tes
tament. St. Paul shall answer him.
"Knowing this, that the law is not made for a
» Phases of Faith, p. 112.

190 CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY.
righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient,
for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and pro
fane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of
mothers, for manslayers, for whoremongers, for de-
filers of themselves with mankind, for men-stealers,
for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any
other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, ac
cording to the glorious Gospel of the blessed God." x
Traders in slaves, for such the original term avdpa-
¦trodiorai means, are, you observe, classed by St. Paul
with the most infamous criminals. Timothy is
charged to denounce man-stealing in the Church as
a high sin against the Law and Gospel of the glo
rious God. Mrs. Beecher Stowe could not, I think,
vindicate the " right of man " from slavery in sterner
language than St. Paul did at the first preaching of
Christianity. Inf. But why was this denunciation against slavery
so long overlooked ?
Chr. For the same reason why other denunciations
of Scripture against other sins are overlooked, wil
fully overlooked by men, because the denunciation
militated against their temporal interests. Obedience
involved the sacrifice of that interest.
Inf. But was not this strong prohibition of slavery
an addition of Paul's to the Gospel ?
Chr. St. Paul never made any addition whatever
to the Gospel. He constantly professes to deliver
nothing of his own ; nothing but what he and the
other Apostles had received from Christ. And thus
1 1 Tim. i. 9.

CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY. 191
in this charge to Timothy, according to what is slave-
dealing a sin ? "According to tne glorious Gospel
of the blessed God which was committed to my
trust." In that trust St. Paul was "faithful," and
this fidelity he claims as, by the grace of God, his
only merit. "I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who
hath enabled me." To denounce many of the crimes
specified in the above passage, slave-dealing in
cluded, in the midst of a Pagan world wholly aban
doned to them, required greater physical and moral
courage in St. Paul than modern times have yet
been permitted to see exemplified in the person of
Newman or any other word-ardent abolitionist. Yet
Newman has the strange audacity to assert, " that it
is in vain to deny that the most grasping of slave
owners asks nothing more of abolitionists than that
they would all adopt Paul's creed !"
Inf. Newman does not appear to have studied the
Scriptures in their integrity, or he would not, I
think, hazard statements so easily disproved. Here
occurs another assertion of his : x " Lastly, it is a
lamentable fact that not only do superstitions about
witches, ghosts, devils, and diabolical miracles, de
rive a strong support from the Bible — (and in fact
have been exploded by nothing but the advance of
physical philosophy) — but what is far worse, the
Bible alone has nowhere sufficed to establish an en
lightened religious toleration."
Chr. The Bible reveals to us the existence of im
material powers, of a world of disembodied spirits,
'Phases of Faith, p. 112.

192 CHRISTIANITY AND SPIRITUAL MALADIES.
capable of influencing and acting upon the world of
embodied spirits. This revelation is in complete
analogy with the rest of nature. All physical na
ture is permeated by invisible forces ; our own bodies
are acted upon for life or death by such invisible
agencies as heat, light, air, electricity, which are in
fact the dynastic powers that pervade organized and
unorganized matter alike. In the same way our
souls are subject to the invisible influences of the
disembodied spiritual world. Not only in this uni
verse is matter acted upon by matter, but mind is
acted upon by mind, spirit by spirit, intellect by in
tellect, as between man and man, so also between
man and the immaterial Intelligences. So far is the
connection between such sentient existences "ex
ploded," that all modern discoveries tend to confirm
the operation behind the visibilities of matter of
powers invisible and distinct from matter.
Inf. A person may, I think, hold such opinions in
the abstract, without being chargeable with super
stition. Chr. Now in a book which, like the Scriptures,
treats of the state of man before the redemption of his
soul from the power of Satan by Christ, illustrations
of the nature and extent of that power might be ex
pected to be given, and indeed to abound.
Inf. I concede that there must have been great
truthfulness of mind in the Evangelists in thus re
cording the existence, in full operation, of a fright
ful system of diabolical possession in man. The facts
they state could scarcely be invented, still less in any
age be mistaken for ordinary bodily maladies. It is

CHRISTIANITY AND SPIRITUAL MALADIES. 193
one of the pious frauds of your Bible commentators
to endeavor to explain them into epilepsies, catalep
sies, and similar well-known disorders — with what
effect? I throw the commentary down, exclaiming,
" This man thinks, the Bible here tells a falsehood ;
but he thinks, also, it will never do to let the world
think so too — so he perverts the Scripture into its
direct contrary" — as if the motive were not trans
parent to the Infidel ! I am not a universal Infidel,
and in my judgment the Scriptures in this instance,
considered in a philosophical light, supply us with
valuable facts illustrative of a certain state of the
human mind, which is, perhaps, though under modi
fied aspects, as prevalent now as ever it was in the
world. Chr. Infidels are most inconsistent beings. It is
difficult to argue on the line with them. One mo
ment you take your stand on " science, philosophy,
the march of intellect, and the nineteenth century" —
the next, on the ruins of superstitions, in Newman's
language, exploded by the advance of this very
philosophy. Inf. But consider, it is extraordinary what very
little real knowledge there is in the world ! We are
as ignorant now as the forest savages, of the real
nature of existences ! What is gravitation, what is
sensation, what is thought, what is the principle of
life and permanency ? — what, above all, is truth ?
Chr. Is your Infidelity extending itself, or does
this language mean that, without reflecting upon the
fact, all knowledge reduces itself to you to a prin
ciple not unlike " faith ?" Conviction in the existence
9

194 CHRISTIANITY AND SPIRITUAL MALADEES.
of things you feel and know to be, but cannot yet
clearly see nor define.
Inf. What profound ignorance in our scientific men
these " spirit manifestations," so rampant of late in
the two most advanced " physical philosophy" coun
tries in the world, have exposed ? Absurd and silly
as most of them are, yet others present difficulties
of solution not to be denied, which science, however,
attempts to evade by denying — and herein science is
notoriously dishonest. I am inclined to suspect that,
so far from such " superstitions" being exploded by
philosophy, philosophy is in danger — unless it fairly
confronts them — of being " exploded" by the super
stitions. Thus it is we attempt impossibilities in
seeking to know what truly constitutes knowledge.
The greater part of that which passes for it is mere
organized verbiage ; analyzed, it leaves nothing but
a sense of sound to fill the mind.
Chr. Well, as Newman does not particularize any
especial instance of " diabolical miracle" by which
we could test the truth or consistency of his ideas
on the subject, we must pass on to objections with
which we can specifically deal.
Inf. I shall adduce but one more from Newman's
writings. Others of a deeper nature than any I find
brought forward in his works, and more destructive,
I think, of the pretensions of Christianity, will re
main to be discussed in my own name. Even on the
validity of this last objection of his, he and Martineau
the Socinian differ.
Chr. Newman and Martineau, immediately they
differ from the Creeds of Christianity, proceed to

195
differ from themselves. Newman first disbelieves all
dogma, that is, all positive truth expressed in clear
propositions, then he progresses to disbelieve the
Church, which holds the truth in such forms, then to
reject the Old Testament, anon the New, and finally
terminates "progress" by disbelieving Jesus Christ
Himself, pronouncing, " that in consistency of moral
goodness, Jesus fell far below vast numbers of his
unhonored disciples."1
Inf. My allusion applies to that assertion.
Chr. In these different steps of Infidelity, Marti
neau keeps time and pace with Newman till the last;
there he unlinks his arm and quits him. Martineau
" believes in Jesus Christ, not as very God, nor as
the Saviour, but as the absolute moral image of
man — the moral Head of the human race." Where
upon Newman aptly retorts, "What, my Socinian
friend, do you mean by -Jesus?' You, with me,
reject the Canon of the Old and New Testament, the
Creeds, and all authority in the Church ; you, with
me, disbelieve the greater portion of the statements
in these Scriptures about '- Jesus ;' your ideal of
' Jesus ' is derived from that small quantum of the
New Testament, which, out of the whole canon, it
pleases you not to repudiate : what quantum is that ?
No one but yourself knows. I say it in deep se
riousness, not sarcastically — publish an expurgated
Gospel : for, in truth, I do not know how much of
what I have now adduced from the Gospel as fact,
you will admit to be fact." 2 Newman cannot accept
1 Phases of Faith, p. 164. a Ibid., p. 163.

196 "progressions" of INFIDELITY.
Jesus in any authoritative capacity whatever. Marti
neau accepts as the moral model of humanity a cer
tain Jesus, which, however, is not the Jesus of the
canonical Scriptures, nor of the Catholic Church, but
of just so much of these Scriptures and Creeds as he
chooses not to reject. Publish therefore, reiterates
Newman, an expurgated Gospel — then I shall be
able to judge whether your ideal Jesus is or is not
a moral model. If Martineau did so, Newman most
probably would intimate that he had not "pro
gressed" out of the Church, the Creeds, the canonical
Scriptures, the faith in a Divine Jesus, to accept
Martineau's Socinianism as his Church and creed,
his " expurgated" Testament as his Gospel, or his
mutilated ideal as his moral model. What, in fact,
would such concession be but submission to Mar
tineau himself as Creed, Scripture, moral idea, and
Church in one individual ? It would form a most
humiliating terminus to the series of Newman's
" progresses," that he should have disbelieved all
things only to believe in Martineau alone at last.
Inf. But dogmas appear to me very objectionable
— religious dogmas especially.
Chr. So are laws — criminal laws especially — held
by some to be highly objectionable. But why should
a truth clearly and positively expressed, be more
objectionable than the same truth negatively ex
pressed or obscurely implied ? Is it not indispensable
that legal enactments against crime should be plainly
and intelligibly worded ?
Inf. But disbelief in a dogma is not a crime.
Chr. Not in your opinion ; but in the opinion of

OF INFIDELITY. 197
the Church, certain disbeliefs are regarded as crimes
against God — sins. Acting on that opinion, she is
right in wording her enactments against such sins in
the clearest possible language. The question is not,
here, "Is her opinion right or wrong?" — but, her
opinion being such, Is she not bound to state it in
positive, unmistakable language? Then, as to im
posing such a dogma upon any one's mind, does not
the law of England impose its dogmas on every Eng
lishman's mind ? Does not every Englishman make
his peculiar pride to consist in obedience to the civil
law ? — nevertheless he would impugn the honesty or
ability of the legislature, if the law were not posi
tively and dogmatically expressed. If the law did
not "dogmatize" on theft, fraud, murder, felony,
treason, no judge could expound the law, nor any
jury find a verdict according to law. We cannot be
Englishmen unless we accept and obey the law of
England ; that law is definitely contained and posi
tively expressed in the civil and criminal code. We
cannot be Churchmen unless we accept and act upon
the dogmas of the faith of the Church ; these dogmas
are laid down in their positive form in the Three
Creeds. There is, surely, no shadow of spiritual tyr
anny exhibited in this necessary exercise of the
Church's jurisdiction. If any justification were need
ed of the jealousy with which the Church guards
these bulwarks of the faith, it is amply supplied by
the experience of all ages. All her children who re
main within them, remain within the faith, within
the Scriptures, within Jesus Christ. They have ever
proved the defences of salvation to her fold. For the

198 "progressions" of infidelity.
sake of the souls in that fold, as well as from the sense
of her duty to her Lord, she stands by both the ne
cessity and the value of having the orthodox dogmata
of the faith impressed, in the most positive language,
on the minds of her members. She, as the teacher,
is bound to such perspicuity ; they, as the taught,
have a right to demand it at her hands.
Inf. But of what real use are these Creeds ? — they
convert none to Christianity.
Chr. They keep people in Christianity. That is
their use — and a very high use too. What was the
first step in Newman's apostacy? Rejection of the
Creeds. The last ? Rejection of our Saviour. What
has the soul of either Newman or Martineau now to
rest upon? Absolutely nothing intelligible or ex
pressible to others. And what is the difference,
either in faith or science, between this sheer vacuum
of all truth and the profoundest ignorance of every
truth ? Yet this emptying forth of one sacred verity
after another, till all being discharged, the soul re
mains a hollow desolation, Newman characterizes as
"progress" — steadfast adherence to the faith once
for all delivered to the Church, he terms "bigotry."
Inf. But he nevertheless retains one strong dogma.
In p. 173 (Phases of Faith), he enunciates it thus: —
" The great doctrine on which all practical religion
depends is the sympathy of God with the perfection
of individual man ;" — this is the Final Phase in his
changes of faith, and contains in truth a noble sen
timent. Chr. It does so — but is it Newman's ?
Inf. Whose else?

practical incapacity of infidelity. 199
Chr. His who said, " Love your enemies, bless
them that curse you, do good to them that hate you,
pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute
you. Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in
heaven is perfect."1
These are the words of Jesus Christ, of whom New
man writes, " It is possible the Gospel narrative is
unjust to His memory. So far from being the picture
of perfection, it sometimes seems to me the picture
of a conscious and wilful impostor. His general char
acter is too high for this, and I therefore make de
ductions from the account. Still I do not see how
the present narrative could have grown up if he had
been really simple and straightforward, and not
perverted by his essentially false position."2 Yet
from this Jesus Christ, thus spoken of, Newman does
not hesitate to plagiarize " the great doctrine "
on which all practical religion depends, and into
which all his own phases of faith resolve themselves
as a final rest. Christ constantly taught this doc
trine ; He, through life and in death, exemplified
it : He loved his enemies, He blessed them that
cursed Him, He did good to them that hated Him,
He prayed for them which despitefully used Him
and persecuted Him — He was perfect, as his Father
in heaven. Christians believe that God has so
deeply sympathized with man, that in Jesus Christ
He became both our Saviour from sin, and our per-
fecter for a more glorious existence. Newman accepts
the doctrine as the foundation of practical religion :
1 Matt. v. 44, 48. 2 Phases of Faith, p. 154.

200 PRACTICAL INCAPACITY OF INFIDELITY.
of Him who first taught it, and has alone in this
world fully practised it, he declares that " He taught
fanatical precepts, and advanced weak and foolish
arguments ;" — adding, with a complacency evidently
unconscious of the labyrinth of contradictions in
whieh he has involved himself, — " a new dispensa
tion is wanted to retrieve the lost reputation of
piety."1 1 ' Quis tarn contrarius sibi ?' '
Inf. I observe such contradictions. He adopts as
the one doctrine, par excellence in practice, one out
of the many doctrines taught by Christ. He asserts
it has already, for the last three thousand years, pro
duced bands of countless saints, yet affirms " a new
dispensation is wanted." His premises confute his
inference. The doctrine he confesses has satisfied
prophets, apostles, martyrs ; there plainly, therefore,
can be no need of a new dispensation.
Chr. But there is great need to guard that dis
pensation of Jesus Christ, which has confessedly
produced such results, from being superseded by, or
exchanged for any " new" dispensation, which may,
on very slight examination, prove like Newman's last
phase of faith, to be nothing more than a concealed
plagiarism of one of the rudimentary teachings of
Christ. Does this barrenness of invention again ex
hibit any intellect in infidelity ? The last " phase"
of its most talented advocate results in his being
compelled, against his whole will and mind, to return
whence he started, and immediately practical reli-
¦ Phases of Faith, p. 167.

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 201
gion is desiderated to sit down as a helpless child,
and write out as " his own great doctrine," at the
feet of Christ, one of the first elementary precepts the
lips of Christ taught his disciples and the world. He
knows not where to go, except to him in whom he
yet professes to have no faith. You will do wisely,
I think, after such avowal of intellectual sterility, to
look to other quarters than Newman for aid in your
onslaught on Christianity and its founder. You can
not reasonably expect much from him who, in his
first "practical" difficulty, falls back on the very
religion he attacks.
Inf. Martineau, however, is, I understand, a Uni
tarian. Now I have always thought that if I became
a Christian at all, I should become a Unitarian.
Chr. All Christians hold to the unity or oneness
of God, all are therefore Unitarians.
Inf. One of that denomination, I mean, as opposed
to Trinitarianism.
Chr. Precisely ; who make the unity of the God
head a contradiction to the Trinity of the Persons,
instead of, as the Church does, identifying the Trinity
as one in the Unity, and the Unity as indivisible in
the Trinity. The Church condemns the notion of
such Unitarians, as implying a fracture in the Unity
of the Godhead. They divide the substance or
hypostasis of God, and then pronounce one-third
part alone of that substance to be God. This is the
same process as if a man, dividing the sun into three
parts, insisted on one of these parts being the sun.
Man is a unity of soul, mind, and body ; divide these
into three parts, is anyone of them by itself" man?"
9*

202 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM.
Thus, then, Unitarians, by some strange hallucina
tion, attempt to divide the indivisible, and would
have us worship — were such a thing possible — the
third part of God for God.
Inf. But this is not the view entertained by them
selves of their tenets. They hold God to be one.
Chr. No doubt of it. So do all Christians ; so do
the Mohammedans ; so do the Jews ; so did philo
sophic Greece. In this sense all these religions are
Unitarian. Inf. But the Church holds that in this unity is a
Trinity of Persons, the Godhead of these three
Persons in the Trinity constituting the Unity of God.
Chr. True ; a perfect, indivisible, co-eternal unity
or oneness, the only " true" oneness that does exist ;
all others so called being but unsubstantial reflec
tions of it.
Inf. Unitarians believe such Trinity of Persons to
have no existence whatever in the Unity.
Chr. For which reason the Church refusing them,
as mutilators of the Unity the name of Unitarians,
terms them after one of their most notorious doctors,
Socinus. Some call them Anti-Trinitarians, though
this name Jews, Islamites, and heathens, share
equally with them. So difficult is it to define in
what doctrinal respects, on this point, the one is
distinguished from the other.
Inf. Let them share it, let such difficulty ensue.
Between the Orthodox Church and these Unitarians,
the difference in doctrine is deep and impassable —
is it not?
Chr. Certainly.

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 203
Inf. According to their own definition of Unity,
they maintain the unity, and reject a Trinity, in the
Godhead. Chr. Well?
Inf. Then, to my mind, their view is both more
simple, and more philosophic than that of the Or
thodox Church. The nations you named all hold
God to be a Unity : the Church alone holds a Trin
ity in such Unity. Numbers and philosophy are
against you.
Chr. No ; the Church outnumbers these nations,
but in a question of this kind numbers do not enter ;
and as for philosophy, our proposition is, that be it
philosophy or not, it is not Christianity.
Inf. You do not, then, admit a Socinian to be a
Christian ?
Chr. A Christian is one who has faith in Jesus
Christ as God incarnate ; a Socinian denies Him to
be God at all : a Socinian, therefore, cannot with
truth or propriety be called a Christian.
Inf. Nor in that sense do I think I could be a
Christian. Socinianism presents to my judgment
the right philosophic view of Christ and Christian
ity. A Socinian, therefore, it is possible I may be
come, but not a Christian, one who believes that
God became incarnate in Jesus Christ.
Chr. You would then become a Socinian for this
reason — because you regard the view in which So
cinianism considers Christ the true philosophic view
of Him.
Inf. Yes.
Chr. This view rejects and negatives Christ as God.

204 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM.
Inf. It does : it considers Him a very pure, holy,
and sublime character : the ideal of good, religious,
spiritual manhood ; the best of men, the most per
fect model of manhood which has ever existed, still
man only, not God.
Chr. And you admit such view to be diametri
cally opposed to that of the Church Orthodox and
Catholic ?
Inf. I do.
Chr. And if a Christian be one whose faith rests
on Jesus Christ as being the Incarnation of God,
you, thus denying such incarnation, would not claim
to be a Christian ?
Inf. I would not : I only claim to take the correct
philosophic view of Christ.
Chr. According then to this definition, the Uni
tarian or Socinian is not a Christian : he is the phi
losopher who takes not the Christian, but, neverthe
less, in his judgment the true view of the person of
Christ. Am I right ?
Inf. Quite.
Chr. The question for decision, then, is this : — Is
the Socinian view really philosophic or not ? If, in
stead of being in any sense consistency or philoso
phy, it proves, on inquiry, to be a mass of contra
dictory propositions, you would, of course, reject its
whole system as irrational and untenable. Let us
then, examine it. The fundamental tenet of Socin
ianism is, " Jesus Christ is not God, but He was the
best and holiest of men."
Inf. Pause a moment. Can you by any stretch
of faith believe that the Almighty God ever could

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 205
become man? That any man, at any time whatever,
was, or is, also Almighty God ?
Chr. What! you a Pantheist, and ask such a
question ? You who hold every part of nature to be
part also of God, part consequently of omnipotence,
to doubt whether " the best and holiest of men" can
be, in reference to God, what nature even in her
lowest types is — a materialism of Deity ! We hold
but one incarnation of God — -that one, Christ ; you
hold millions — those millions, nature — yet object one
to us. On your own theory, what can be Nature
itself so much as the Incarnation ?
Inf. Pass that by at present. I will recur to that
point afterwards. Permit me now to argue, not as a
Pantheist, but a Unitarian.
Chr. Be it so. I first observe, then, that I might
here turn with deadly effect against you, your own
argument of numbers. The whole religion of the
East, from the earliest eras, and for the last eighteen
centuries of the West also, has been, and is now,
based on this all but universal faith in the incarna
tion or incarnations of Deity. Heathenism, Buddhism,
Brahminism, believe in many, Christianity in one
sole incarnation, Christ Jesus. This fact alone dis
poses of the possibility of such faith. Y'our question
should rather be, " Is any faith real but that which
is grounded on such incarnation? Is any faith true
but that which accepts the one true incarnation in
Christ?" Inf. I cannot accept it.
Chr. Are you all matter ?
Inf. No.

206 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM.
Chr. Something which is not matter, lives and
acts within you, is "incarnate" within you, is different
from, yet is one with, your body. You yourself are
thus the fact of a spirit incarnate ; which fact, never
theless, being yourself, yourself cannot accept. Is this
part of the same precious philosophy ? If you cannot
believe that which your own reason and senses prove
to you of yourself, it would be preposterous to expect
you to believe any proposition whatever of any thing
not yourself.
Inf. But the incarnation of a spirit is different in
degree from the incarnation of God in Christ.
Chr. It is, however, the essence of the principle
at which you stumble, the incarnation of immortal
spirit in mortal matter.
Inf. I stumble at the idea of God Himself, the
Author of all spirit and all matter, becoming in
carnate in one of His own creatures.
Chr. God has in one sense been such an incarna
tion from the beginning ; the soul incarnate in man
is an emanation of God at his creation.
Inf. An emanation of God, but not God Himself,
as you say Christ. — God incarnate — was.
Chr. True ; therein lies the distinction. Our
souls incarnate were the creation of God. God in
carnate in Christ was and is the Uncreated Himself.
We are incarnations of created spirits ; Christ was
the incarnation of the All-creating Eternal Spirit
Himself. Inf. It is to me an incomprehensibility.
Chr. A mystery may be entirely incomprehensible,
and yet perfectly true ; and a thousand hard, obvious

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 207
facts may be adduced in proof of its truth. You
cannot comprehend the incarnation of spirit in man ;
thousands of such incarnate spirits accost your
senses, exchange with you thoughts, emotions,
counsels,— experiences of which matter by itself is
neither capable nor cognizant. Each of these thou
sands is a mystery, and yet a truth confronting you
face to face every day of your life. Every day you
meet as a fact, what, as a mystery, you find utterly
incomprehensible and inexplicable.
Inf. But I still persist that the incarnation of God
Himself, as Jesus Christ, must be rejected as incredi
ble by philosophy.
Chr. The belief in the Incarnation is as far above
a certain kind of philosophy as the soul of Newton
was above his apple. It is the faith, which, rising
from the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, pierces
through the very heavens to the throne of its Divine
Object, Author, and Finisher, and from the creation
it has been, in either its true or some corrupt form, the
faith of the human race. Christianity teaches such
universal faith to have received its realization in the
incarnation of God in Christ. Socinianism repre
sents Christ as merely a good man, and, ignoring the
radical truth at the base of all religions, affirms such
representation to be sound philosophy. Let us
analyze its claim to this assumption ; let us inquire
whether, upon the Socinian view of Christ as man
only, He was a good man or not.
Inf. You go beyond me now. Do you assert that
Christ was not a good man?
Chr. I mean that Christ, if he were merely what

208 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM.
the Socinians maintain — man only — could not be " a
good man." Their theory destroys itself. He could
not, were He man only, speak, act, and promise as
He did and yet be a good man, far less the ideal of
human goodness. If He were not God as well as
man, His character assumes a very different aspect
indeed from that of " goodness."
Inf. You, at any rate, argue boldly, and to the
point. Chr. Christianity should always do so. Let us
take our Lord's own words — a few instances will
suffice : we could quote fifty illustrations of the same
kind, but the force of the argument needs no addi
tion. Inf. But you must not quote, as Scripture, any
portion of your canon which the Socinians reject as
Scripture. Chr. I have no intention of doing so, though if we
rejected what they do, we should consider ourselves
indirectly rejecting all Scripture, from beginning to
end. They cut out every verse which refers to
Christ in His Divine nature, on which rule every
book in the Scriptures should be cut out ; for every
book, every chapter, is instinct with the Divinity of
the Messiah. Suppose you took a knife, and deny
ing the existence of life in a certain animal, pro
ceeded to amputate successively every limb or
member which most vividly displayed the action of
life; and the mutilated body still exhibiting symptoms
of vitality, you finally dispatched the trunk also,
and then exclaimed, " I told you there was no life in
that animal !" Much in this way, to my mind, the

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 209
Socinians treat the Bible : wherever they can they
cut out its life, which is Christ. Isaiah, St. John,
St. Paul, St. Peter, being got rid of, the same life
yet palpitates in Moses, Jeremiah, St. Matthew, St.
James : as long as they leave one joint of a finger of
that divine hand unmutilated, it will remain vitally
expressive of the Godhead of Him by whose Spirit
the whole Scriptures were animated and inspired.
Socinianism, therefore, in a critical sense, is merely
mutilation of the Scriptures ; but I am dealing with
it as a system of pretentious, but unsound philosophy.
I will cite such evidence only as the Socinians
themselves allow to be Scripture ; not even the
apostles' words, but the words of Christ Himself.
" Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren,
or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children,
or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an
hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life."1
" The High Priest asked him, and said unto him,
Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed ? And
Jesus said, I am : and ye shall see the Son of man
sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in
the clouds of heaven."2
" When the Son of man shall come in his glory,
and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit
upon the throne of his glory : and before him shall
be gathered all nations ; and he shall separate them
one from the other. And these shall go away into
everlasting punishment : but the righteous into life
eternal." 3
» Matt. xix. 29. a Mark xiv. 61.
sMatt. xxv. 81, 32,46.

210 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM.
"All things are delivered unto me by the Father:
and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father ; nei
ther knoweth any man the Father but the Son, and
he to whom the Son will reveal Him." x
" Ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake :
but he that endureth unto the end shall be saved.
" I am come to set a man at variance against his
father, and the daughter against her mother, and the
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. He that
loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy
of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more
than me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his
life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my
sake, shall find it."2
"All power is given unto me in heaven and in
earth. Lo ! I am with you alway, even unto the end
of the world."3
" Preach the Gospel to every creature. He that
believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but he that
believeth not shall be damned. "4
Here are a certain number of assertions relative to
Himself made by Jesus Christ. He affirms of Him
self that He is Almighty — that all power is given
unto Him in heaven and earth. Is this that He
affirms of Himself true or false ? If true, He is more
than man, and Socinianism is false ? If false, He can
not be a " good man," and Socinianism is again on
that proposition false.
He affirms that He will give everlasting life to
such as sacrifice their temporal interests for His
1 Matt. xi. 27. « Matt. x. 22, 33, 37, 39.
» Matt, xxviii. 20. * Matt. xvi. 15, 16.

CHISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 211
name's sake. It is no exaggeration to say, that
since He has thus spoke, countless numbers have, in
reliance on these and similar promises, sacrificed
themselves and the world for His sake — men and
women admitted by the world itself to be good,
earnest, high-principled characters. Have such been
deceived or not by Christ ? Can He give such .a
thing as " everlasting life ?" If He can, He is nrare
than man ; if He cannot, He has beguiled and be
trayed tens of thousands of the gentlest, noblest, and
most confiding natures the world has produced, and
cannot, therefore, be a good man. In either view
Socinianism is untenable.
He affirms that He will sit on the throne of his
glory, as the Christ, the Son of the Blessed : that He
will assemble all nations : that He will distinguish
between the righteous and the wicked : that He will
condemn the latter to everlasting punishment, and
reward the former with everlasting life. Can mere
man do this? Can one man — being man only —
adjudge, and that forever, all mankind to heaven or
hell ? Will any philosophy admit this ? Is Socin
ianism philosophy when it assumes it ? But if Christ
judges not as man only, but as God also, what again
becomes of Socinianism ? On either supposition its
system falls to fragments.
He asserts that, in comparison with devotion to
wards Him, the most sacred human affections must
be immolated and abandoned : He states that this
principle will introduce " variance" into every family :
that for acting upon it his followers will be hated of
all men : yet every one that endures to the end shall

212 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM.
be saved. Take any man : put these words into his
mouth : supposing him to be man only, could you
say a character avowing this principle of the domestic
sword, and proclaiming beforehand the inevitable
results of the operation of such a principle between
parents and children, brothers and sisters, was a
" good man" — the " holiest of men ?" Would it be
sense, reason, or philosophy for any mere human
being, on a par with ourselves, to use this language
towards our finest and most sacred affections; to
command, when He was in question, this universal
disruption of natural ties — and that on the strength
of a promise which nothing short of omnipotence
can realize — that the loss of life in the discharge of
such obedience would insure its eternal duration in
heaven ?
He asserts that he is everywhere present wher
ever the Gospel is preached to any creature : that
of all the human beings to whom it is preached,
such as believe and are baptized shall be saved, and
such as believe not shall be damned. Can mere man
be omnipresent, or is this all a deception and a de
lusion ? Can mere man, of his own manhood, pre
scribe the conditions of salvation, or inflict damna
tion at pleasure on the whole of his own race ? If
not, and if Christ were man only, what opinion must
we, from these words, form of his character? By
these, and a multitude of other proofs which I rev
erentially abstain from adding, it is, I think, clear
that Jesus Christ was either more than man, or, if
man only, He could not truly be termed a "good
man," the ideal of human goodness and holiness.

CHKISTIANIIY AND SOCINIANISM. 213
Consider it in any way you please, Socinianism con
futes its own pretensions. It is neither Scripture nor
reason, neither philosophy nor Christianity.
Inf. But do you consider Jesus Christ responsi
ble — as it were — for all the effects of His words,
from His death to the present moment ?
Chr. Take up the Scriptures; read them with
ordinary attention : judge if Christ spoke a single
sentence but what carries on the face of it His inten
tion that it should make an indelible impression on
every one who heard it, or to whom it should be
made known. He puts the weight of eternity upon
every word He speaks. " Heaven and earth shall
pass away, but my Word shall not pass away." He
is, therefore, in your phrase, responsible, not for what
this or that sect may have perverted His meaning into,
but for the plain, direct meaning His words them
selves convey, which He designed them to convey,
which with the most expressive solemnity He assures
us will be verified, and to the least iota substantiated
by the action of omnipotence. It seems to me that
we only then, for the first time, discover the infinite
gravity of words, as what they ought to be — the
pure expression of pure truth — when we first hear
Christ speak. Think you that He who declared, " by
thy words shalt thou be judged, by thy words shalt
thou be condemned — Verily I say unto you, that
for every idle word which men shall speak, they
shall give an account at the day of judgment," was
one Himself to speak unadvisedly with His lips on
subjects which are universally felt to be the most
awful that can affect the heart and soul of man ? He

214 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM.
intended every word He spoke to be weighed by
every one of us, for life or death. "Whosoever
heareth those sayings of mine and doeth them, I
will liken to a wise man ; whosoever doeth them not,
I will liken him to a foolish man."
Inf. Then, for all the sufferings of good men — as
we call them — undergone in this world purely for
the sake of Christ, you hold Christ Plimself on His
own words responsible.
Chr. He Himself claims such responsibility ; He
states that He Himself must be the cause and the
motive of all such sacrifices and sufferings : His
whole religion, in this respect, is comprehended in
one phrase, " For my sake." " In that ye do it, ye
do it unto me." He promises nothing certain in this
world but the cross ; the crown He defers to another
existence. Is such a crown of everlasting life at His
absolute disposal or not ?
Inf. The Socinian would say, " No." Everlasting
life can be the gift of God only. If Christ has such
gift at command, He must of necessity be God.
Chr. Everywhere throughout the Scriptures He
alleges it to be entirely in His hands. He promises
it everywhere to the righteous as His gift. Is the
redemption of that promise within His power or
not? Multitudes of earnest men have sacrificed all
earthly prospects upon the faith of that promise.
Has Christ practised a deception upon them or not ?
Inf. That question goes to the root of the matter.
Chr. It does. It shows Socinianism in its real
light. If it be beyond the power of Christ to verify
such promise, then is He the most cruel of all im-

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCTNIANISM. 215
postors, and the noblest-hearted of mankind have
been His dupes and victims. He is the reverse of a
good or holy man. If, on the other hand, the re
demption of this promise be, as He affirms, and as
Christians believe, absolutely in His power, — if He
Himself be this eternal life, and can communicate
Himself to whomsoever He pleases, — then is He not
man only, but infinitely greater in nature and power
than man. Thus again, on the largest scale, Socini
anism not only confutes, but reverses its own theory
of the person and character of Christ. Denying
Him as God, it must upon its own premises deny
Him also as " a good or holy man," for it holds Him
up as a mere man leading thousands to misery and
martyrdom on the faith of promises which no mere
man can perform. In what character of Christ, then,
does Socinianism end ? . Is it not that of an unparal
leled false prophet and deceiver of souls, and yet it
styles itself "Philosophic Christianity!"
Inf. But whatever the inference may be, it is un
deniably true that Jesus Christ has induced countless
numbers to voluntarily undergo the severest priva
tions and pains in sole dependence on His promise of
eternal happiness in heaven. Will they be deceived
or not?
Chr. That, as you observe, is the question which
Socinianism has to answer, and yet remain Socini
anism, yet continue to maintain that He is both
mere man, and the holiest and best of men. Our
lips refuse to express, even on supposition, what, if
the Socinian tenet were true, the conduct of Christ
must be confessed to have been. But if these

216 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM.
promises are more certain to be redeemed than our
senses are at this moment certain of the existence of
heaven and earth, and if their redemption can only
be effected by omnipotence in the Redeemer Himself,
then Jesus Christ is more than man. Socinianism is,
in its whole conception of Him, as self-contradictory
as it is blind to the true nature of the religion and
kingdom which He has revealed.
Inf. But the Socinian may say that Christ deceived
others, being Himself deceived. Good men may, as
to abstract doctrines, unwittingly deceive others, yet
be in their lives models pf morality and personal
goodness. Chr. Christ nowhere glances at the possibility of
His being deceived. He constantly affirms that what
He teaches man is that which He Himself had seen
and heard in heaven : that He testifies of realities in
the midst of which He had Himself reigned as God.
There was nothing abstract or separate from Himself
in His doctrines ; they were simply to Him facts of
Himself, the revelation of which, as the knowledge
of the true God, and His kingdom of everlasting life,
He came down in His incarnate state to communicate
to mankind.
Inf. Rejecting then Socinianism as inconsistent
with itself, as neither religion nor reason, though I
inclined to believe it united both in an easy form, I
again fall back on Infidelity. You concede Christ
has caused an incalculable amount of individual
suffering in the world ; He Himself calls every one
to the Cross ; the best men as it were respond to the
call ; they live suffering, they die suffering. Now if

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 217
the crown of heaven, if eternal life with God be a
deception —
Chr. Well, what then ?
Inf. Certainly Christ was not a good or holy man.
Chr. That was not what you were about to say ;
you intended, I think, to express some much stronger
sentiment. Inf. I did.
Chr. What prevented you ?
Inf. I cannot explain. But I mean that any be
ing, who, knowing such promise to be deceptive, and
foreseeing also the consequences of practising such
deception, through unborn generations, upon the
souls of the most sensitive and amiable of mankind,
nevertheless shrunk not from carrying it out at the
cost of His own crucifixion —
Chr. Finish.
Inf. He would, in any view, be an awful being.
Chr. You fear to state, in plain language, the con
clusion from such premises. The Jews had no such
fear. They beheld Christ exercising uncontrollable
power over nature ; they felt His spiritual power
over their own souls : they listened to doctrines
which it needed no philosophy to tell them could be
exemplified only by human nature everywhere-; —
their own and the heathen alike, — sustaining the
cross of shame and suffering. They did not say that
He was mere man. They asked Him who and what
He was, and whose authority He bore and represented.
He told them He was God as well as man, — the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, — the I AM of eternity,
— the future Judge of the universe; For that they
10

218 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM.
crucified Him, because, as they truly said, " He made
himself equal with God." But they never regarded
Him as mere man ; their decision was direct and to
the purpose, there could be no middle supposition.
If the being who stood among them, and whose
presence they felt was beginning to shake the whole
world, was not God, He was the Prince of darkness ;
if He was not heaven, He was hell. The Scriptures
record the reasoning and deduction of the Jews with
out any modification of their language. On their
own premises, the reasoning of the Jews was correct.
We thus come to the tremendous precipice to which
logical Infidelity and Unitarianism thrust their pro
fessors, a few steps after their rejection of the God
head of Christ.
Inf. Can there be no medium between these two
extremes ? Must Christ be received as God, or re
nounced as the Power of darkness ?
Chr. If Christ be a deceiver of souls, most cer
tainly He is not a human one ; if neither divine, nor
human, what remains it that He is ? Here are a
host of facts connected with Christ, His mission and
character, which immediately He is confessed in the
truth of his nature, " God of the substance of his
Father, begotten before all worlds, man of the sub
stance of his mother born in the world," present us
with their own solution. Christ being God, these
facts could not be otherwise. Reject Him as God,
the mystery of Christ, so far from being solved, be
comes such as no earthly knowledge can explain, no
philosophy confront, no heart of man reflect upon
without horror and trembling. No other view than

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 219
that delivered to and by the Church explains the
mystery of Christ. Philosophy or Unitarianism,
when it wanders from the Church, finds itself, im
mediately upon its own principles, brought into the
presence of a Being it shrinks from naming ; it re
coils from the mingled fire and thick darkness of
its own chaos ; it shudders at the infernal potency,
the omnipotence of cruelty and evil, into which its
"intellect" is every moment on the point of changing
that "God over all, blessed forever." If you abandon
Infidelity, you will not, I conclude, attempt to seek
your rest in that most hopeless of all compromises
between truth and falsehood — Socinianism.
Inf. Do Christians themselves understand the full
purport of the words they use concerning Christ as
God? Chr. It is entirely their own fault if they do not.
No terms are too clear or forcible for the Scriptures
themselves to use in bringing us to a right under
standing of what Christ was and is. If we desired,
with all our command of modern languages and
science, to define God, could we do it more expressly
or energetically than in such terms as these : " By
him were all things created that are in heaven, and
that are in earth, visible and invisible ; all things
were created by him and for him : he is before all
things, and by him all things consist."1
Ine. Is that language applied to Christ ?
Chr. Expressly to Him who has made peace by
the blood of the Cross. 1 Coloss. i. 16, 17.

220' CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM.
Inf. And you, as an orthodox Christian, do not
shrink from maintaining that unless a man believes
Christ, on His being preached to him as the object
of faith, to be this eternal God incarnate, he must be
damned ?
Chr. Whosoever, on having Christ thus proposed
to him, " as very God of very God," rejects Him
as such, will be most assuredly damned. If Christ
be God, and being God has for our salvation become
" Jesus Christ crucified," how, in common-sense, can
there be any other salvation accorded of God than in
Him ? What else but perdition can be the result of
deliberately rejecting God in Christ crucified for us?
Consider the " sham" to which the contrary opinion
reduces Christianity.
Inf. Ah ! I see that.
Chr. And as an Infidel consistently wish it true.
You wish it to be a safe procedure to reject Chris
tianity, and if the crucified Saviour were not also
your God — the God that made you, soul, mind, and
body — you see it might possibly be a safe procedure.
But if he be indeed your God, it strikes you instinc
tively that the rejection of your God, crucified to save
you from the loathsomeness of sin, must be damna
tion. It cannot be otherwise. It is not sin, or any
taint or act of sin, that now need damn any man
whatever ; for the pardon and expiation of such the
atonement of God is provided, but for the rejection
of that atonement, " sin" is not the right word ; it is
something ten thousand times — if such can be —
worse than sin ; it involves in the act itself the
whole body, guilt, consummation, and final penalty

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH  ITS OETHODOX SENSE. 221
of sin, and doing so must in itself be damnation. It
is not sin, but the rejection of Christ as God incar
nate, crucified to save us from sin, that now damns a
man. Inf. But it is not with such faith as this that your
pulpits resound. " Justification by faith," not " faith
in Christ crucified as the eternal God," appears to
me the watchword of at least a large party in your
Church. They put forward a feeling instead of a
fact as the ground of man's justification. Faith as a
feeling or faculty exists in every individual — heathen
or Christian. The Turk has faith, but it is in Mo
hammed ; the Tartar has faith, but in the Dalai-La
ma ; the Negro has faith, but in his fetish, which is
perhaps a serpent ; when I hear, therefore, faith in
sisted on as the sine qua non of salvation, the preacher
appears to me to be beating the air ; he is insisting
on the necessity of the existence of a feeling which
does already exist in every human being. All have
faith, but in what is a man to have faith ? What is
to be the objective being or fact of his faith ? The
Mohammedan faith has for its objective fact, the
divine mission of Mohammed. His faith is often
much more zealous, fervent, and self-impressive than
that of a Christian ; but the objective fact being
false, — no fact at all, — the faith itself is also false —
faith in a lie. So with other superstitions. Faith in
a fallacy is superstition. When therefore an evan
gelical Christian harps to me continually on his one
solitary string of "justification by faith," I demand
what faith, faith in what specific external fact ? Or
is it justification by the mere feeling or faculty of

222 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH  ITS ORTHODOX SENSE.
faith itself? Then are the Mohammedan and the
Idolater equally justified with the Christian, for all
have faith in the abstract, and if faith as a feeling
justifies them, all are equally justified. Why then
should I be a Christian rather 'than a Mohammedan ?
But you hold that it is not the mere feeling or fac
ulty of faith, but the truth of the objective matter
of faith, which constitutes the sine qua non of jus
tification. Chr. Yes.
Inf. Let me clearly understand. I have faith in
Mohammed as a divinely-commissioned prophet.
That faith being faith in a lie, is of no use, is vain.
Chr. Is most pernicious.
Inf. I have faith in Jesus Christ as a divinely-
commissioned prophet, but not as God. That faith,
being faith in only part of the fact, is a suppressio
veri, and of no salvatory efficacy.
Chr. None ; the verum so suppressed is the very
essential of the whole fact which makes faith in it
the faith of salvation ; that verum so suppressed is
the grand truth which makes the faith holding it for
its objective fact the true faith. All faiths in any
other fact than this are, in reference to any salvatory
virtue on the human soul, delusive and vain.
Inf. Then the evangelical party have inflicted
great damage on Christianity, by substituting the
universal human feeling of faith for the objective
Being and fact of the only true faith — a God-Saviour
crucified. Chr. I will not affirm so. The old Evangelicals
took their stand in the midst of a Socinian and

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH  ITS ORTHODOX SENSE. 223-
earthly-minded generation on the Divine truths and
doctrines of revelation. Imitators and mere parti
sans, — always "servile pecus," — have copied their
phraseology, and have thus imposed upon themselves
and the world as Evangelicals.
Inf. But however servile, is not their maxim, that
"justification by faith" is the test of a falling or
standing Church, historically correct?
Chr. The maxim was Luther's. What has become
of the Lutheran churches on the Continent? They
are either extinct or lapsed into congregations of
Infidels. In the Lutheran sense not only is not the
maxim true, but every sect that has held it in such
sense has either disappeared, or apostatized to Infi
delity or Socinianism.
Inf. Does not your own Church hold the doctrine
of justification by faith only?
Chr. In a very different sense from the Lutheran
or the pseudo-evangelical acceptation. In the second
part of the Homily of Salvation, our Church explains
her meaning : " The true understanding of this doc
trine, that we be justified freely by faith without
works, or that we be justified in Christ only, is, that
we must trust only in God's mercy, and that sacrifice
which our High Priest and Saviour, Christ Jesus, the
Son of Cod, once offered for us upon the cross, to
obtain thereby God's grace and remission as well
of our original sin in baptism, as of all actual sin
committed by us after our baptism, if we 1ruly repent
and turn unfeignedly to Him again." The Lutherans
lay the whole stress on "faith only" as an abstract
faculty, — our Church on faith in no abstract sense

224 ABSTRACT FAITH VALUELESS.
whatever, but in Jesus Christ only as the Son of God,
offered for us upon the cross.
Inf. The difference is great and striking. But yet
the Lutheran view is much the more comfortable of
the two.
Chr. Perhaps so.
Inf. And the more liberal.
Chr. How so?
Inf. It makes the attainment of salvation more
inclusive, co-extensive with the existence of the
abstract feeling of faith in man ; whereas you limit
such attainment to one exercise and appropriation of
that feeling ; with you it must cease to be abstract,
and none can be saved but such as receive Jesus
Christ as the Incarnation of the eternal God for the
sole object of their faith. Am I correct?
Chr. Every man, possessing faith as an internal
power, has by its right exercise the possibility of
salvation in his own hands. Salvation is thus pos
sible to all : but they alone attain it who attach
their faith to its proper object in the true character
of that object. The same principle regulates the
application of all other human faculties.
Inf. Observe then what a much more awful thing
Christianity is made by you than it is by the
Lutherans, or the Abstractionists, who teach that
faith in Christ, without defining what Christ is, is
sufficient to save.
Chr. Very true.
Inf. I am on an equality with man, and if Christ
be man only, with Christ. Supposing His Crucifixion
as man only to be an atonement, the effects are

FAITH IN THE GODHEAD OF CHRIST. 225
divided among so many countless millions of souls,
that my individual obligation to Him is reduced to
an infinitesimal minimum. But if He be God, God
has already made me what I am : He has, as it were,
come upon me previously in my whole being : so
that what Christ does for me as God in salvation is
that which, as God, He has already previously done
for me in creation. I thus come with my whole be
ing, not in an infinitesimal proportion of it, into col
lision with Him.
Chr. Soundly argued.
Inf. But, as an Infidel, I do not, if there be a God,
desire to come thus into either contact or collision
with Him. Now God, as He is in the universe, says
nothing whatever to me. He leaves me entirely to
my own nature, as he leaves the horse, the ox, the
tiger, to theirs. I abuse that nature just as I please,
to this or that gratification of mind or body ; I at
last fall asleep, become insensible as the clay, and
return to nothing; there is the end of nature and
myself to me. But you bring in a God who speaks
to me — who addresses Himself to me individually ;
a Word of God, which Word is itself also the creative
and regenerative or sustaining power — which Word
once did, and perhaps still does, create nature out of
nothing. And He proffers to create my nature anew.
But I am content with my nature : it satisfies me ; I
only wish its pleasures would last forever ; I only de
sire to be ever young, ever rich, ever healthy, ever
free, and that in such a world as the present. What
can be more reasonable ? But you present me, not
10a

226 FAITH IN THE GODHEAD OF CHRIST.
a mere man suffering, for whom would so common
a matter as that affect ? But the God who created
me, crucified for me. Why ! what is there in me, or
my nature, which calls for any other but at the best
a silent God? why a speaking God? why, above all,
God in Christ crucified ? An Infidel is much happier
than a Christian. An Infidel sins, as you would
term it, and by sinning probably shortens his life by
a few years ; what then ? He has surely the right of
doing what he pleases with himself. Nature pays its
own penalty. What more should its Creator exact,
what more is He entitled to ? The Infidel is buried,
feels nothing, turns to earth and grows corn for the
next generation. In all this there is nothing to fear,
— a man knows the worst, dust, unconsciousness, in
sensibility. Children play on your grave ; what are
they to you, or you to them, or to any other being in
creation ? what necessity is there yon should be any
thing ? you are nothing. Is this Infidelity ? No. It
is taking nature and all things else as they really are,
and being satisfied to take them as such. Infidelity
is simply — realities ; religion, simply — imagination.
A hero resolves, " I will do a great act or die ; death
is merely insensibility, and this is the worst that can
befall me. Well, I have exhausted all the ' sensibil
ities' which yield me the slightest pleasure, their loss
will be trivial, and nothing more is death — which,
therefore, is not to be compared to my gain, if this
act succeeds." But Christianity utterly destroys such
a spirit as this. A believer cannot argue in this way,
he becomes a coward ; death is only a transition to
him, — after it come God, judgment, eternity. What

CHRIST AND INFIDELITY. 227
makes him a coward, but as Shakspeare says, " his
conscience?" What is conscience but every man's
own measure of knowledge ? What, in nine out of
ten cases, is a man's knowledge but what he is
taught ? Christianity seizes on every child and
teaches it ; the teaching becomes knowledge, knowl
edge conscience, and conscience the man. Now to
be really great, a man must burst these fetters : the
original meaning of the word " religion" itself, is
" the bond, or that which holds a man back ;" such
bond once broken, the emancipated man goes free :
he must be his own God, gospel, and church. How
else, among the subtle but steel-strong meshes your
religion weaves around our earliest prepossessions, can
man attain independency of thought or action ? Any
religion at all is shackles and slavery.
Chr. I listen — and presently will reply.
Inf. You cannot deny that religion, especially if
driven into us when infants, fetters the whole future
man. Not one in ten thousand ever liberates himself
from his child-religion. It is associated with memories
of their mother, their little brothers and sisters, their
days of innocence, some good clergyman, holidays,
and festivals; their first sensations, blessings over
their nightly pillow with kissee and prayers, trem
blings of their early hearts at catechisings, confirma
tion, first communions, and, if they have a clever
priest to deal with, first confessions. They are turned
out of this paradise into the world, and are roughly
handled; they handle as roughly in return; they
become for years thorough worldlings. Then ensues
the reaction, and, as Solomon says, when they are

228 CHRIST AND infidelity.
old, perhaps long before, they go right back into the
way of their child- training : in it they educate their
own children ; they make a sacred conscience of it ;
if they would, they cannot think otherwise ; to their
death they remain their own childhood in religion.
And if a person of liberal opinions argue with them
on the folly of hereditary faith, he is ever after pro
scribed the family, and denounced as every thing im
pious and dangerous. See, then, the tyranny which
Christianity exercises over a man's own conscience,
over all other people's consciences, between my con
science and theirs ; over this life, over the imagi
nations of the next life — over childhood, over matu
rity, over age. How can you, therefore, uphold such
a system ? Parts of it, I grant, may be well defended
— but, as a whole, it is indefensible. Now, as you
admit the whole strength of your religion to consist
in the supposed fact that " Jesus Christ is God as well
as man," it follows that whatever else I may believe
Him to be — " the best of men," the holiest of saints —
does not suffice : I must accept him as that tremendous
Omnipotence, the portal of whose works human phi
losophy has scarcely yet entered — as the First Cause,
so almighty that its volition alone is creation, is that
which turns nothing into being. This volition is
the 'O Aoyoc, Jesus Christ, the Word and Will of the
Eternal. I must believe, accept, and confess Him as
this, or my whole nature is out of harmony with the
truth and order of God. I am, as stated, like a
mote attempting rebellion against the universal law
of gravitation. The revelation, " the Word " addressed
to me convulses my nature : it stirs something within

CHRIST AND INFIDELITY. 229
me of the existence of which I was not before aware ;
it is like wakening a sleeping child from his bed. I
do not know what that something is. It may be
part of God : it may be my own fancy : it may be the
devil. But when I have once heard that there is a
future judgment, a hell, and that there is salvation
from such hell in an Incarnate God, and that Jesus
Christ is that God, the revolution in my being is half
effected. Time, sickness, desertion, helplessness,
hopelessness, will complete the subjugation. If you
can once thus persuade me that Jesus Christ is the
God who created, and now controls nature, you have
me committed to the whole supernatural system of
Christianity, with its priesthood as the ministry, and
its services, ordinances, sacraments, as the ritual and
channels of Christ.
Chr. How came — according to your ideas — the
Incarnation of God in Christ to be the cardinal cre-
dendum of Christianity ?
Inf. I account for it thus : I consider the apostles
the first intellects in spiritual conspiracy and manly
fortitude that have ever existed.
Chr. Some people think and talk of them as sim
ple fishermen of Galilee.
Inf. They did nothing as fishermen ; whatever they
did, mentally or spiritually, they did as apostles. I
despise the people who talk of them as fishermen
— poor fishermen — humble fishermen of Galilee. It
is a false way of speaking of them — they ceased
to be fishermen before they were ordained by Christ
to be apostles. They first left all — their secular
occupation included — to follow Christ : not before

230 CHRIST AND INFIDELITY.
they had thus left all were they even received as
disciples, much less commissioned with the aposto-
late and priesthood of Christ. And so the orthodox
Church, following them, as they professed to follow
Christ, will not now permit any priest or minister of
hers to engage himself in any secular trade, calling,
or business. This is part of that profound traditionary
policy which she has derived from the Twelve. The
Roman Catholic Church carries it out to such ex
tremes as to reject every candidate for her priesthood
who refuses to vow perpetual celibacy. Your own
Church carries it out so far as to bind every candi
date for her ministry to perpetual abstinence from
any professed worldly business. The difference be
tween you is one of degree only, not of principle —
both of you derive it from the policy of the Apos-
tolate. Fishermen, indeed ! Saul, in his time, was
a greater emperor than Nero — so in the East was
Peter. The truth is, the apostles were originally
military fanatics of the deepest and most crimson
grain, impregnated to their hearts' core with the
fierce spirit which habitually made Galilee the
focus of all the religious insurrections against the
Gentile dominion of Rome. They represent them
selves as constantly inciting Jesus Christ to raise
the standard of David, and proclaim the kingdom
of Israel against the world in arms. And for this
reason they are so punctilious in giving us a double
genealogy of their leader, as uniting in his own per
son the double claims of law and of birth, to the
rights and prerogatives of the house and lineage
of David. It was in a military capacity they were

THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 231
prepared to follow Christ as a military Messiah ; they
left the same spirit behind them among their coun
trymen in Galilee : it was Galilee that forty years
afterwards rose against Rome, drew in the whole
nation to rise with it, gave the rebellion its chiefs,
and with all the mad dauntlessness of enthusiastic
bigotry, fought the battle through till not one tribe
was left of their race in Palestine, nor one stone upon
another in Jerusalem. The apostles were men ex
actly of the same stamp ; but their leader, Christ,
was one who opened vaster and nobler views of am
bition to them than the political command of a little
oriental kingdom. He knew, however deeply fanati
cism had blinded their perceptions, that the physical
empire of Rome could not be overthrown by any
force the East could at that period bring into the field
against it. Any pretensions, therefore, which He
might advance to a military Messiahship would, He
perceived — even if accepted by the Jewish nation —
be instantly tested and exposed by the summary
defeat of Himself and his undisciplined followers.
He elected, therefore, to be a spiritual Messiah — to
revolutionize the intellectual and religious, instead
of the political world. His superior strength of mind,
and the extraordinary moral intrepidity which He
possessed, completely brought round the apostles to
His own views and designs. He fell, as He antici
pated, the first martyr to His own cause ; but He left
surviving a band of men, each of them fully capable
of supplying his place, and executing with the most
unflinching courage the instructions for the founda
tion of this mighty spiritual empire, antagonistic to

232 THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY.
all physical force or bodily violence, which He had
bequeathed to them. They too, like Him, made up
their minds to death in the cause : death came, but
before it came they had firmly established such an
empire, which they termed the Church, or the Gath
ering unto Christ — Ecclesia — in the very centre, and
in every province of the old military domination
which had so long swayed the earth. I thus, in the
character of the apostles, sometimes seem to find the
origin and success of Christianity explained. At
other times I am more inclined to believe, with
Strauss, that Jesus Christ never existed ; that He
is simply a myth, imagined and elaborated by
the apostles for their own purposes of spiritual su
premacy. Chr. Yes. Infidelity is a very Proteus as to what
it does and does not believe about Christ.
Inf. Be it so. I am an Infidel in the faith which
the apostles taught, but I am an almost abject ad
mirer of the apostles themselves.
Chr. Very singular again — that you should ad
mire men to whose words you attach no credence or
respect. Inf. I admire the nerve and mental power with
which, against enormous odds, they dared and
achieved success. I can, therefore, go with a safe
conscience to church on St. Peter's day. He was a
hero : I venerate him as such, but I believe scarcely
a sentence of what I hear in the church as attributed
to St. Peter. The system they originated and taught
was a pure illusion : Saul and Peter knew it to be
so; but they also knew it to be just the illusion
which human nature thirsted and craved after. They

THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 233
idealized a suffering God, and in a suffering world
the invention was hailed with a holy enthusiasm.
One took the East ; the other the West : both on the
understanding that they were to meet at Rome, and
by their deaths consignate and sanctify an eternal
empire of persuasion and faith to mankind. The
other apostles were subordinate to these two master
minds, but each and all possessed stainless honor
towards each other, and invincible determination in
the promotion of their common object. The parti
tion of the inhabited world among themselves was
effected at Jerusalem ; each took possession of his
own ; each could appeal to the other in defence and
corroboration of the same principles : all supported
and stood by each other's pretensions. Peter, a few
days before his crucifixion at Rome, is heedful to
write to the whole Oriental Church about " his be
loved brother Paul ;" and Paul, in return, in writing to
the Hebrews, more especially under Peter's suprem
acy, is equally heedful in reminding them "to obey
them that have the rule over them, and to submit
themselves." I revere such iron consistency of pur
pose, and unparalleled spirit in the founders of your
Church. They overthrew the old Pagan world — and
on this fact alone they must have been men of the
first calibre in intellect and resolution.
Chr. And you believe they effected all this by
their own power of mind alone?
Inf. Yes. Why not ? Great minds do effect mir
acles, and revolutionize the feelings and convictions
of nations. They despised death. They saw com
mon gladiators do so — half the Roman emperors
also died violent deaths ; why should they, the spir-

234 THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY.
itual emperors, care to be exempt from it? Had
they betrayed any shrinking from it, what became
of their glorious theory of the life after death, of
eternal joys and immortal crowns, with the Lord
of life and death, in the painless and sinless heav
ens? For them not to have welcomed death, was
death to their spiritual supremacy over the souls
of their subjects. When I reflect on the number
of temples erected and dedicated in every civ
ilized country to the honor of these men, I am
lost in amazement. Not one temple is there at
this moment in all Europe dedicated to the gods of
antiquity — not one to such conquerors as Alexander,
Csesar, Trajan, the Antonines ; but there are, prob
ably, in Christendom ten thousand temples conse
crated and called after the names of each of these
apostles — one hundred thousand, perhaps, to the
whole Apostolate.
Chr. The Apostolate of a Christ who has never
existed ! Really, the miracles Infidelity proposes to
our belief far transcend those of Christianity.
Inf. The more I consider this one fact, the higher
rises my opinion of that intellect of the Twelve
which laid the foundations of a spiritual empire
resulting in this marvellous aggrandizement of the
memory of its founders. A spiritual empire to which
a hundred thousand temples pay daily the homage of
matter in its highest forms of artistic beauty ! Com
pared to any one of these apostles, Mohammed display
ed no insight whatever into futurity. Mohammed
anism vanishes before civilization and pure woman
hood. The apostles guarded their religion against

THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 235
all hostile contingencies of this kind. They so de
vised it as to conciliate and to win over all future
generations of women — the virtuous by its sanctity,
the fallen by its mercy. They took care not to com
mit it to this or that system of science, philosophy, or
political government, but so drew it up that it should
still and forever seem to be above and in advance of
them all. And, as you observe, many millions really
believe and venture their salvation — which is much
more than any temporal interest — on the truth of
the system these apostles had the mind to poetize,
and the courage successfully to propose as a new con
science to mankind. But of all their engines, this
doctrine, that the Jesus Christ they preached was
God Incarnate, was the most powerful in its opera
tions on the souls of men. Many councils were held
before that was brought out in its present form.
Chr. Well ; and how came they to adhere so in
flexibly to it — never in the least degree to modify or
permit, in any of the Churches they founded, any
modification of it by others ?
Inf. How came they? The reason is evident.
Unless Christ was God, what right had they to
preach at all ? If Christ were mere man, what better
was He than any other man, so far as authority to
issue spiritual commission went? What authorita
tive commission to the soul of men could be issued,
except from the Creator and Lord of the soul ? If
Christ was not that Lord, this commission convicted
itself of invalidity. As man merely, He was a cru
cified rebel. The nature of any commission, spiritual
or secular, from such a character, would not have

236 THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY.
been admitted by the most ignorant Jew or heathen.
The apostles were fully aware that, neither in
themselves, nor yet in Christ, as mere man, could
they have any such power as this. They there
fore constituted themselves "ambassadors." From
whom? From God. But Jupiter Tonans, God in
thunder and force, had never touched suffering
humanity ; it must be from God in suffering. What
suffering so acute, so ignominious, so recoiled from
in shame and horror by all antiquity, as crucifixion ?
God Crucified became their authority. They came
as ambassadors from a crucified God: far more —
crucified in order to be the Saviour of sufferers. To
such an appeal human nature succumbed. It only
hardened and marbled itself against a force or ven
geance God ; but against God suffering its own worst
pains and deprivations, to save it from an eternity
of like pain and joylessness, it had no resistance to
offer : the marble melted into tears ; it preferred
worshipping the Cross to any throne in heaven or
earth beside ; for the cross was itself; Christ on the
cross was its own suffering deified. All this was
foreseen by the apostles. They knew the fatal defect
which existed in all the religions of their time —
especially in all the heathen mythologies. They
invented a better mythology, and to give it a human
heart, they concentrated all its teachings and appeals
into Jesus Christ, as the God-sympathizer with all
suffering. Under Him they foresaw they themselves,
His ambassadors, would inevitably become the Dii
Minores of Christendom — of the new religious future.
They are so become: and perhaps may remain so

THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 237
for another two thousand years. I affirm that such
historical celebrities as Caesar, Charlemagne, Napo
leon, are only the empty bubbles of an hour when
contrasted with such dynastic permanencies, such
spiritual potentates, as the twelve " men of Galilee."
Looking at the effects they have produced, we must
pronounce their College a thing altogether unique in
the world ; nothing in history resembles it or them.
And as long as human nature remains what it is,
they also will probably remain the kings and priests
of soul. Are you surprised at this view of the apos
tolical founders of your Church ?
Chr. Not at all — it is quite consistent with the
hero-worship of modern Infidelity.
Inf. In what respect ?
Chr. In making "success" the test of heroism.
You think the apostles consciously preached false
hood, but because the falsehood has met with un
paralleled " success," you admire them as " unparal
leled heroes" — quite unique — things by themselves
in the world.
Inf. I am speaking of their intellectual power.
Chr. To which Moloch you appear, to me, to sac
rifice all claims on their part to moral integrity.
Inf. Let me proceed. I account, in the second
place, for this doctrine of the Incarnation being
made the basis of Christianity, because no other
doctrine is so well adapted to form the crown of that
system of adulation of human nature, which in real
ity Christianity is. Do I now surprise you ?
Chr. In no degree. It is only a new view of
Christianity, and new views of Christianity are in

238 THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY.
these days as common as printing-presses. But I
shall be obliged to you to explain yourself further.
Inf. It flatters me to be told that I have some
thing within me immortal ; that this " immortal" par
ticle is part of the Deity, and ought to be as pure
as He ; that, polluted or unpolluted, death may affect
its condition, but not its existence ; that if it does
not live forever with God, its origin, it still will with
Satan, its seducer. Thus even life with Satan is life
forever : that is better than annihilation or nothing
ness. All this Christianity delivers ; and what is it
all but the most superb but delicate flattery of human
nature ? When I am told it, I am disposed to be
lieve it. My being in any way immortal exalts my
view of myself. Presently I begin to see death in
quite another light. Without Christianity I might
— as I stated — try to become a hero ; but supposing
I succeeded in being so, it would only be, after a
few years, a dead hero. With Christianity I, in one
sense, die — in another, I conquer death. A hero can
destroy life : so can a beast, a shark, a tiger, a nail, a
drop of poison — the vilest thing in nature has such
hero-power as this ; but a Christian destroys death.
By becoming a Christian I am above all death-power
in earth, heaven, or hell — for I become part of Him
who is Life itself. What is all heroism in its results,
compared to this completeness of a victory the effects
of which are co-infinite with eternity? Less than
nothing. As long as God lives, I, being part of
Him, must live also. As the sun gathers light unto
itself, so He has, through Christ, gathered me unto
Himself. No dream of poetry ever matched such a

THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 239
vision of immortality as Christianity thus presents
to the eye of faith. But it is all an illusion : the
vanity of human nature accepts the illusion as the
most gratifying, the most intoxicating incense ever
offered at its shrine — and thus Christianity is the
adulation of man.
Chr. If these statements of Christianity were true,
then I presume you would, with us, admit it to be
not the adulation but the exaltation of human nature.
It is the truth or falsehood of these doctrines which,
in their application, constitutes the difference be
tween adulation and exaltation.
Inf. Very true — and being, as I think, false, I
apply to Christianity the term of systematic adula
tion. Seriously, do you believe me immortal?
Chr. What do you believe yourself?
Inf. I rarely think about it at all. I feel myself
indifferent to immortality. I am more attached to
my estate, my family, my horses, my pleasures, my
political interests, than to any consideration of self-
eternity. I do not wish for immortality. And yet I
do not withhold the confession that the same Chris
tianity which flatters my vanity, terrifies my soul.
If I thought God spoke to me individually, I know
not what I should do. But the supposition is mon
strous. Suppose He did create nature: He leaves
it, once made, to its own laws and properties : so He
leaves us, once made, to the laws of our own nature.
Not so, your Christianity exclaims : God no more
leaves you, once created, to yourself, than you, a
father, leave your child, once born, to itself. Thus
you trouble me — whatever inorganic nature may be

240 THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY.
supposed to suggest, sensitive nature favors your
comparison. " And God — Jesus Christ — is the Fa
ther of that soul within you which will not permit you
to abandon to itself, in utter hopelessness, the child
of your love. What you feel towards your child, God
feels towards you — only you are more helpless to
wards heaven, your true home, than your little babe is
towards this world, its temporary home." So far your
faith is a species of profound courtiership towards
the aristocratical weakness innate in man. But you
proceed further, so as to change this aspect of kind
ness into one of terror — the very depth of the humil
iation of Christ infuses strange sensations of awe
and fear into the soul. Who condescends ? Christ,
the 'O Aoyoc Himself, — the King of Angels, the
Lord of Hosts, the Majesty of Heaven, the Fulness
of Infinity, the Everlasting Father, the Disposer of
the Destinies of Eternity ! And to whom ? To me.
If I believed Him such, I would prostrate myself as
the threshold for His feet: my lowest submission
would, in reality, be my highest elevation. Thus
the apostles reasoned. Christ, once acknowledged as
Creator, must be acknowledged also as the re-Creator.
He that made the soul, can regenerate it : He that
made the mind can purify, refine, enlarge, ennoble
it : He that gave life to the dust, can give the body,
so made out of the dust, everlasting life. What rea
soning can be more natural, more apt to take with
the mass of mankind? The propositions seem so
rational that it requires no small effort to refuse
assent to them. To Jesus Christ, therefore, thus
held forth as God, the application of the word

THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 241
"impossible" would be sheer nonsense. Thus, also,
they evolved the principle of prayer. Is your heart
wicked? Have you passions you cannot yourself
subdue? Have you a conscience uncleansed and
self-accusing? Are you dead to heavenly -minded-
ness ? Have you a desire, but no power for holiness?
Pray to Christ : resign your soul to Him : confess to
Him the consciousness of your wants and deficiencies :
He is God, and can do all things : He is your Saviour,
and will do all things for your salvation from sin, and
your perfection to holiness. Granting the premises,
what logic can be clearer or firmer than this ? Each
link still follows the last as a chain of pure reason.
When God, in Christ, comes to me as a sufferer for
my sake, what can be denied Him ? When I, a suf
ferer, go to God my Saviour, what will He deny me ?
Genuine, unfeigned faith in this cardinal credendum
— the Divinity of the crucified Saviour — carries with
it, and works out all the rest of Christianity by its
own power. Hence the apostles made it the "rock"
of the faith : hence, though a man were moral, kind,
generous, self-denying, pious, a Paul in the law, a
Peter in the rigor of the circumcision, all short of
the acceptance of this tenet, was cast aside, rejected,
spurned. The point was, " Do you, in your heart,
believe, and will you, before the world, confess that
Jesus Christ, who suffered for you on the shameful
cross, was the Son of the living God ?" And from
this point your orthodox Catholic Church has never
shrunk or receded. People began to palter and say,
" I believe Jesus Christ was the Son of God, in a
certain sense." Forthwith the Church of the apos-
11

242 THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY.
ties, full of their spirit, and possessed of their hered
itary mind, instantly intensified her creed — " God
of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, be
gotten, not made, by whom all things were made."
What strength of action ! what decision ! what con
tempt of conciliation ! what an uplifting of the ban
ner ! what a true appreciation of the impregnability
of their spiritual position ! I admire, with all my
soul, the stern, unyielding, obdurate orthodoxy that
has thus for eighteen centuries battled with and con
quered reason, science, philosophy, kings, nations,
governments. You may well call it "Apostolical"
— for orthodoxy breathes the very heart-breath of
the apostles. Not a verse is there in their Epistles
to the Church which does not glow with the fire of
orthodoxy. " If there come any unto you, and bring
not this doctrine, receive him not into your houses,
neither bid him God speed." I am intellectual : I
bow down to intellectual superiority — to nothing
else. Apostolical orthodoxy is the most astounding
triumph of far-seeing intellect over nature, mankind,
coarse reasoning, and coarser violence, that the world
has witnessed ; but then " The lie — the lie of it,
Horatio." Chr. You admit that if Christ be God, Infidelity
is not only the blackest sin of the soul against God,
but is necessarily perdition.
Inf. Yes.
Chr. If Christ be not God, to what power do. you
attribute the success of Christianity ?
Inf. To apostolic intellect.
Che. Then what becomes of Infidel "intellect,"

THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 243
which has thus everywhere succumbed to apostolic
intellect ?
Inf. The apostles themselves were infidels. Do
you not understand ?
Chr. Pardon me — it is difficult. The apostles
infidels !
Inf. Decidedly. An Infidel, in listening to their
Scriptures, is often so perplexed as to how far he
believes or disbelieves, that he retires upon this sup
position as the readiest solution which presents itself.
He hears one verse, and exclaims, " What an absurd
ity!" He hears another, and cries, "How very
true ! The very feeling I experience." He prefers,
therefore, dealing en masse with the whole subject
of the apostles and their Scriptures. He accepts the
apostles as the clearest-minded impostors of any age
or time. He repudiates the Scriptures, considering
them the record agreed upon among themselves to
be passed off upon the external world. Their ratio
cination was — •" Intellect will contemn the Scriptures,
but it will bow down to the living confederacy of the
Church. Simplicity will not understand the Church,
but it will think it understands the Scriptures and
will confide reverentially in them. The Church,
therefore, for intellect — the Scriptures for honest
and ignorant faith."
Chr. But surely such a system as your vision thus
conjures up from the realms of nonentity is long
since defunct.
Inf. Not so. The Pope of Rome has, I believe,
at this day in his possession at the Vatican, the
scheme of Peter and Paul for the subjugation of

244 THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY.
both the intellect and principle of the world. Has
not the Czar the scheme of another Peter for the
conquest of the West, by the union of force and
policy ? Observe how the Papacy has carried the
scheme out in the kingdoms which acknowledge its
sway. See how your own Church has been pervaded
by the same spirit. In despite of your sham humil
ity and toleration, if the Divinity of. your founder be
in the remotest degree called into question, such
men as Clarke, Priestley, Newman, are ipso facto
expelled and excommunicated. If Hoadly touches
this " apple of your eye," — though Hoadly be a
Hanoverian bishop, — lo ! your lower House of Convo
cation will endure no trifling on this vital point from
crown or bishop. It draws up articles of impeach
ment, and shows itself prepared to engage king,
parliament, or people on this apostolical position.
For which reason it has never since been permitted
to transact ecclesiastical business. Thus the State
of England thoroughly appreciates and guards against
the development in action of your faith in Christ
Jesus as God. This faith, once settled in you — not
pretended, but forming the honest conviction of your
conscience — -you of the nineteenth century become,
under its operation, as fanatic and insane as the
mediaeval knights and Templars, who gave up land
and life for the defence of the Holy Sepulchre. Am
I not correct, then, in affirming that the apostles, in
inventing the Divinity of Jesus Christ, forged the
most invincible and burning bond that has ever
chained or fired the human heart ?
Chr. You desire to transfer the cause of the

THE APOSTOLIC FArTH AND INFIDELITY. 245
success of Christianity, in its temporal and spiritual
aspects, from the Divinity of Christ to the intellect-
ualism of the apostles. I do not deny the massive
intellect of the apostles. To speak of them as if
they performed a single spiritual or authoritative
act in their abandoned capacity of fishermen, is a
ludicrous error. As apostles, commissioned with the
gospel and power of Christ, not as fishermen, they
overcame the heathen world. But as for the human
heart, was that the objective matter the apostles
worked upon ?
Inf. Yes.
Chr. By adulation?
Inf. Yes ; a superb, a Divine adulation.
Chr. " Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts,
murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness,
blasphemies." x The works of the flesh are manifest,
which are these : " Adultery, fornication, uncleanness,
lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance,
emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings,
murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like : of
the which I tell you before, as I have also told you
in times past, that they which do such things shall
not inherit the kingdom of God."2 Are these state
ments of Christ and St. Paul very flattering, think
you, to the human heart ? Your Infidelity can cer
tainly, in this charge, claim the merit of novelty.
Inf. But surely to affirm that I am an immortal
soul is flattery.
Chr. What ! flattery if it be a truth ?
Inf. But it is not a truth, it is a sublime delusion ;
1 Matt. xv. 19. ' Gal. v. 19-21.

246 THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY.
and as the whole system of Christianity rests objec
tively on the presumed fact of this immortality of the
soul, Christianity itself is equally a delusion. We
have here again one of these statements of your faith
which, from the very magnitude of their audacity, con
found the nerve of philosophy. Every day we see
men buried and crumbling to dust. What avails it ?
Every day Christianity, over the very dead dust it
treads upon, sounds the same eternal defiance to our
senses, " I am the resurrection and the life, whosoever
believeth in me shall never die." And mankind per
mit their senses to be conquered ; they give in help
lessly : they pluck out their very eyes and give them
to Christ. Of what use is it for reason, science, philos
ophy, to attempt to instruct or enlighten such crea
tures, such a race as this ? Every effort is confronted
and baffled by this never-ceasing monotone of the
Church. Deliver them from Rome, they fall into your
power ; rescue them from you, they are captured by
Dissent. You complain of want of " faith" in people.
Why the amount and crass solidity of "faith" in Eng
land, on the Continent, in the world, is greater than it
is well possible to conceive. Land at Calais, travel
on a thousand miles direct to Gibraltar or Sicily,
through the countries of the faith of Rome. What
they do not believe may be expressed more briefly
than what they do believe, such is the vast length,
depth, and breadth of this faith, from the infallibility
of the Pope to the canonization of Germaine Cousin,
the last goddess of the Roman Olympian Calendar.
Return to our own country. You may, in many
provincial towns, walk through the streets between

THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 247
the hours of eleven and one on the Sunday, and fail
to meet a human being in them. Where are they ?
In the churches and chapels, going through a worship
entirely of "Faith." The believing powers of man
kind are unfathomable and inexhaustible. Rome will
never be able to invent what they will be found in
capable of believing. The experiment has been tried,
and she knows she is far from having yet sounded
the bottom of the faith-capacity in man. Prot
estants aver that if they could once bring them
selves to believe transubstantiation, they could easi
ly accept all the other dogmas of Rome. I, an
Infidel, aver that if I could once believe the im
mortality of the soul, I could accept all the dogmas
of all the sects of Christianity without further de
murrer. If I could once swallow the camel, why
should I pause at the gnat ? Men die in millions :
not one of these millions ever return. My senses
prove as clearly to me the non-immortality of man,
as the senses of Protestants prove to them the non-
transubstantiation of the elements. But of what
use are the senses against your faith ? Roman
Catholic and Protestant alike absolutely annul their
evidence. A Roman Catholic would deem it a sin of
the deepest dye to believe his senses thai bread was
bread, and wine wine, against the faith of His Church :
a Protestant would deem it as great a sin to believe
his senses that dust is dust, death death, mortality
mortality, against the faith of his Church or see!'.
The difference here also, as in other respec's to
which we have referred, is really only one of degrees
of faith ; the Protestant as truly, though not to the

248 THE SOUL  ITS IMMORTALITY.
same extent, ignores his own senses as the Roman
Catholic does. Persuade me to believe against my
senses, against the senses of all mankind, which tes
tify to man's entire mortality — body and spirit — that
he is immortal, and I should consider all other doc
trines of Rome or England as so many small gnats
following after the camel. But you undertake to
prove this immortality of the soul.
Chr. By no means.
Inf. But you firmly believe it ?
Chr. Certainly. If I could prove or demonstrate
it mathematically, it would be an article of science,
not of faith. Christianity is not mathematics, but a
faith : it is a thing between God and the soul, not
between man's mind and matter.
Inf. It ought to be founded on as clear and true
propositions as mathematics are.
Chr. Why so it is, and on much truer proposi
tions. Compared to Christianity the whole science
of mathematics is a system of logical illusions, hav
ing no further existence than the mind imagines for
them. Inf. This is a stranger assertion than any I have
yet heard, — Christianity truer than mathematics !
Chr. The whole science of mathematics rests on
its definition of a " point." And that definition is
an immaterial nonentity which nowhere exists in
nature. And the whole science built upon it is as
its foundation, the logical but baseless fabric of the
mental vision. Conceded its postulates and axioms,
you cannot withhold your consent from the infer
ences the mind evolves from them. But of these

THE SOUL  ITS IMMORTALITY. 249
the axioms have only a mental existence, and the
postulates are impossible of proof. Mathematics, in
fact, are of all the arts and sciences, poetry not ex
cluded, the most merely mental and visionary. It
is the science of logical sequences from imaginary
premises. Yon, like other advocates of mathematics
who quote them in an antagonistic spirit to Chris
tianity, confound the certainty of the mental deduc
tions from the premises with the supposed certainty
of the premises themselves ; whereas, the premises,
so far from having certainty of existence, have no
existence at all ; for where will you find existent
in matter or nature the mathematical line, " length
without breadth?" The whole science is a pure
mental conception, having no external existence.
And if you judge it by the facts of external existences,
it is a pure illusion — a lie, as Carlyle would call it —
from beginning to end. And yet you would compare
this visionary logic of points and lines, which have no
existence in nature, with Christianity, that science of
the soul, founded on the greatest of all existences,
God, — and proved to be the truth of God by more
external as well as internal evidences than any
man's mind can at one time command and contain.
Mathematics constitute a valuable mental exercise,
but it would be less irrational to compare fencing
with health, than such an exercise with the life of
the soul. But meanwhile, what is that soul that has
thus power to evolve ont of itself this and many other
systems of erudition and science ?
Inf. Evolves out of itself ?
Chr. Certainly ; for you will not, I suppose, deny

250 THE SOUL  ITS IMMORTALITY.
that the soul in man precedes knowledge of all kinds
in man ; the whole science of logic was in the soul of
Aristotle before that soul evolved and worked it out
in external order and typing. The soul is the source
and origin of all sciences. Supposing them to
morrow obliterated from the records of the world,
one soul surviving would contain the germ of the re
generation of all of them. The soul has in itself the
power of receiving the truth-impressions of the whole
universe. The truth-impressions of the material
world we call science ; the truth-impressions of the
higher or spiritual world we call Christianity. The
great blunder committed by Infidelity is, that ac
knowledging the lesser, it is blind to the greater
order of facts. It acknowledges mathematics, but is
blind to the soul in which alone mathematics exist ;
it acknowledges nature, but is blind to the God in
whom alone nature exists.
Inf. But to predicate immortality of man is to ask
belief in an idea controverted and falsified by the
mortality of every man that dies.
Chr. How so ? How long is it since Adam lived
in the flesh ?
Inf. About five thousand eight hundred years.
Chr. The life of Adam still lives in you ; it has
never yet died ; nay, more, it not only lives, but it
has propagated itself, life of life, in about eight hun
dred millions of present souls in the world. Here is
a multifold duration of fifty-eight centuries for the
principle of life in man.
Inf. But that is not immortality.
Chr. True: still less is it mortality. Every in-

THE SOUL  ITS IMMORTALITY. 251
dividual in this chain is clearly a partaker of that
which, even in this world, so far as facts yield
evidence, possesses the power of imperishable per
petuity. Inf. Well, this imperishable power enters a cer
tain individual organization, animates it for seventy
years; the organization dissolves into its primitive
elements ; with that dissolution the individuality
also dissolves : the power which animated it mingles
again with its own imperishable source, the pervad
ing Soul of the universe.
Chr. Is that Power which thus animates the hu
man material organization above the effects of its
dissolution, or not? Does it die with the dissolution
of its form ?
Inf. Ah ! but that is an awful mystery which none
but Omnipotence itself can know; I am speaking of
the immortality of the individuality of man. Man
is body as well as this soul ; if the soul-principle be
immortal, that will not make man, as man, immortal.
The body is the bubble on the ocean ; the soul is the
light of heaven within that bubble : the bubble bursts
and subsides into the ocean ; ihe light within by the
very fact of that bursting is released and again
united with the Universal Light — call it God or aught
you please. That Universal Light, and the Light with
in the bubble as part of it, may be immortal, but the
union of that individual bubble with that individual
portion of the universal light is not immortal. Now
you, in your Creed, hold the immortality of the in
dividual man, " I believe in the resurrection of the
body and the life everlasting." You hold, in fact,

252 THE SOUL  ITS IMMORTALITY.
the individual identity of man to be eternal, leaving,
as far as I understand your religion, the restoration
of this identity to God. So that the immortality you
teach is not simply an immortality of the soul-prin
ciple, but of the individual man himself in his present
unity of that soul-principle with an incarnate body.
How can you ask me to believe in the immortality
of that union which thousands of instances prove
every day to be mortal ?
Chr. You appear to grant the existence of an im
perishable principle in man ; but its material in-
strumentalism once dissolved, you deny it can ever
re-animate the same resuscitated instrumentalism
again. The soul may be immortal, but its immor
tality does not necessarily imply the immortality of
that union of itself with body which we call man.
Inf. Just so. The Soul in man being a particle
of the Soul of the Universe, may, as you observe, hold
latent in itself the knowledge of the whole universe.
All the science which accrues to it in its present
bodily media of the senses may be received by it —
however novel to the senses themselves — as only
reminiscences of its past self. The novelties of the
soul may be merely in the senses : when they are
exhausted, the same soul departs to animate other
existences, or it returns to the great body of soul
which vivifies creation. To itself nothing is new.
In man all knowledge appears to be nothing more
than the evolution of the soul into its own pure origi
nal state : this effected, it casts off its skin, and re
joins the Parental Soul of the Universe.
, Chr. But this statement of yours is not Infidel-

THE SOUL  ITS IMMORTALITY. 253
ity — it is that near approach to Christianity which,
from the great Greek philosopher, we call Platonism :
and Platonism in this respect is " not far" from the
truths of the kingdom of God. Do you deny the
immortality of the soul itself?
Inf. Infinite difficulties embarrass that question.
Something in man evidently is eternally restless with
in him. The peasant is not satisfied with attaining
his farm, nor Alexander with attaining the world.
Something does exist in man which matter cannot
satisfy — all the conquest of matter by it is merely
fuel to be consumed in a quenchless and insatiable
flame. Then the men who listen to this God within
themselves are the great characters of time and his
tory. Something, again, outside of the soul appears
to consider it its child, and, on the soul despising
all matter, and casting itself back from this tempo
rary exile and incarnation into its bosom, to impart
its own omnipotence of power to it. I do not, there
fore, well see how I can deny immortality to some
principle in man. Thus the very oldest man is
always looking forward ; the centenarian will talk of
what he will do next year. Your clergy din into
our ears our insensibility to our own mortality. I
stated, every grave refutes the idea of man himself
being immortal : yet when I see every man returning
from that grave, and verily in his heart saying
" Amen" to the words of the Church, " Whosoever
believeth in me never dies," I am confronted by a
greater fact in the soul of man than I meet in the
grave. The soul of man is insensible to mortality :
it does not appear to consider the mortality of the

254 THE SOUL  ITS IMMORTALITY.
body to concern itself at all, and when Jesus Christ
comes to it, saying, " I am the Life Eternal," it receives
it as a matter-of-course truth ; Christ is the enun
ciation of itself. The contempt which many nations
have felt a pride in manifesting for death never could
have existed, except in the consciousness of possess
ing a deathless principle in themselves. Now the
founder of your religion elicited and evolved this
principle to a degree unparalleled before His time.
Being an intellectual Infidel, I yet see many points
in the character of Jesus Christ, which mere intel-
lectualists have never had the courage to exemplify
in their own career and actions. The man who pro
claimed, " The hairs of your head are numbered," —
" Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without my
Father's will," opened a view never before imagined
of what I may designate the minute, the microscopic
omnipotence of God. But when he preached, " Fear
not them which can destroy the body, but after that
have no more that they can do ;" and consistently
with His own preaching gave His body, without
fear, to the cross, I at once perceive that it is not
the doctrine only, but the profound faith of the man
in His own doctrine — His exemplifying the faith of
His own soul by offering Himself, His own body, in
evidence of His own sincerity in that faith,- — which
convulsed, first the Jewish, then the heathen reli
gions. I will not permit you, therefore, to quote
the sublime character and acts of Christ, as a verifi
cation for the truth of His doctrines. No man ever
so much despised the conventionalities of His time :
no man so dared to identify Himself with the outcasts
of society : no man seemed to have His oracle of

THE SOUL  ITS IMMORTALITY. 255
action so completely within Himself: no man to look
forward with a steadier eye to the Cross as the issue
of His career. I admit all this. If, with Newman,
I deprecated Plis moral, I feel it could only be to
exalt His political character. In this man, therefore,
there clearly existed some principle which enabled
Him to feel Himself above mortality. What was
that ? You affirm Him to be God as well as man.
In that case both the soul of man and the self-
eternity of Deity were united in His person. But
then comes also the consideration, what is that in
man which God Himself underwent such humiliation
to redeem ? Thus from Christ we are driven back
to the consideration of something in man for which
Christ averred He sacrificed Himself as Christ — His
own union of God and matter. I am thus involved
in inextricable perplexities — for this sacrifice of the
mere body by this man, Christ, has been responded
to for His sake by thousands of others : something
in them exists, similar to what existed in Him — and
that I conclude to be the consciousness of deathless-
ness. So far I might, perhaps, not disagree with
Christianity ; but when you proceed to assert the
doctrine of deathless individuality, and, as necessa
rily connected with it, the doctrine also of individual
responsibility, I become again a complete and con
firmed Infidel. I will grant you the abstract truth
of the immortality of the soul, provided you grant
me the non-responsibility of the individual man. I
will be content to admit the soul-principle in man to
be immortal, if yon will admit the identity of man —
as soul and body — not to be immortal !
Chr. I perfectly understand you. You h-re no

256 INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY OF MAN 
objection to Christianity merely as a philosophy, but
you have the strongest objection to it reduced to ac
tion as a reality. The immortality of the soul is a
grand doctrine : but the individual responsibility of
the soul to God, — ah ! that is a frightful superstition !
that you can never admit ! That is Christianity. Is
it not so ?
Inf. Yes ; it is so.
Chr. The immortality of the soul would not, in
fact, trouble you at all. The individuality of that
immortality implies also the probability — nay, almost
the certainty of future judgment. You here see
how far beyond Platonism Christianity goes. Pla
tonism stops just short of the point where the im
mortality of the soul becomes a practical bearing
upon man : Christianity takes it up at that point,
proclaims that immortality to be an indivisible iden
tity, and presents it before the throne of God for
judgment. Inf. And you go still further. The tenement now
inhabited by the soul will, according to your Creed,
be reorganized from the dust ; with it the soul will
be clothed upon again — such union will reconstitute
the identity of the man, and this union, this identity
will never again be dissolved. Thus you teach, not
the immortality of the soul only, but of man in his
individual identity of soul and body united. This is
the nature of the life everlasting as defined by Chris
tianity. You carry me thus, not in one part only, but
in my whole, — "I," or "Ego," the indivisible self, —
to render an account of my actions to God. It is
not the souls of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob only,

ITS IMMORTALITY. 257
which are in the kingdom of heaven, but Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob themselves. It is not the soul of
Christ which sits at the right hand of God, but the
full identity of Christ Himself. The apostles, in this
way, by making individual identity eternal, riveted
a nail in the human soul of each individual, which,
once driven home in early life, no power of philoso
phy or science can ever afterwards stir or extract.
This doctrine, once admitted, that of amenability to
God and judgment necessarily followed. Now with
Platonism, or the philosophy which, teaching the im
mortality of the soul, rejects, or stops short of the
immortality of the man-self, I have nothing to anti
cipate or apprehend hereafter. Let my soul be
immortal, — it is a sublime doctrine : if that alone be
immortal, then the " I," the " self," the identity, the
man I now am, once dissolved, cannot be reidentified
— consequently " I," as the man-self, can never be
judged. This is an easy, consolatory philosophy,
leaving us to do much as we please, without fear of
future consequences. Yours is the very reverse : it
disturbs and agitates a man's whole being, for it
makes that whole being in its self-identity an immor
tal responsibility. Thus I again arrive at the vast
superiority of the Apostolic over the Platonic intel
lect. Plato dreamed an Utopia which never could
exist for his kingdom : the apostles have founded a
Church, existent everywhere in despite of all the
facts of mortality and sense, for their kingdom. But
I do not, for all their success, believe their dogmas.
I admire and appreciate their intellect, but I repu
diate their faith. Why not, with the philosophy of

258 INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY OF MAN 
Plato, be satisfied with the immortality of the soul
alone ?
Chr. We do not even proceed, as to the fact of the
immortality of the soul, upon the same ground with
philosophy. Supposing, for instance, the soul not
previously to be immortal, we should still hold that
the Word of Christ, addressed to and received by it,
would then and thereby make it immortal. Sup
posing it to have no immortality in itself, it has
immortality in Christ. God is not the God of the
dead, but of the living. " The gift of God is eternal
life, through Jesus Christ our Lord," — these and
similar emanations of the living Word to our souls,
render, in our judgments, all philosophic discussion
about the immortality of the soul unnecessary and
superfluous. If the soul be immortal, what at first
made it so ? The Word of God. Herein Christ, we
have that very Word, both announcing and giving
immortality to the soul. If philosophy could dem
onstrate the fact of its immortality, that immortal
ity could only have originated, and must be traced
back to the power of the very same Word, the
assurance of whom on the subject we have already
revealed and pledged to us in the Scriptures. That
Word is infinitely more satisfactory to us, than any in
ductions or imaginations of our own, which we might
be pleased to dignify with the title of philosophy.
I do not, therefore, trouble myself as to whether my
soul is by nature mortal or immortal. The Scrip
tures everywhere, expressly or inferentially, teach
its immortality. If they did not do so, if it had not
pleased God to have at first created it immortal, it

ITS IMMORTALITY. 259
pleases Him now to give it immortaLty. Practi
cally to me, as a believer in Christ, the question
either way resolves itself into the same issue. By
the power of the Word, either at my creation or my
regeneration, I am an immortal soul. The question
may not so resolve itself to a non-believer, or to one
who has never received the power of the Word of
God. They may be, I am not, personally interested
in the native immortality of the soul.
Inf. But, according to your Creed, the soul, or
rather the identity of the wicked, is as eternal as
that of the righteous.
Chr. Certainly ; but were it not so, the fact would
in no way affect my own immortality as received
from the Word of God. Let them be mortal to
whom the Word has not come, or who have rejected
the Word ; I, to whom it has come, and by whom it
has been received, am immortal. The negation of
immortality in them in no way annuls its reality as
the gift of God in Christ to me. If it pleases God
to make a distinction between us, it is no more than
an extension of the distinction He has in many ante
cedent, though inferior respects, already made be
tween man and man, between man and the beasts.
My salvation is secured. It is for the infidel and
the wicked to reflect whether the nature of the soul
itself already renders it an impossibility or not for it
to escape coming, some time or other, face to face
with God. If it be by nature immortal, it must,
some time or other in the cycles of eternity, have to
do with God — with the Word of God. Why, then, not
cast itself now upon Him as Christ, its refuge and its

260 THE SOUL  ITS IMMORTALITY.
Saviour ? Seeing it must some time or other come
to God, wherefore not now, when God calls it — calls
it in loving-kindness and mercy ?
Inf. But mark ! Christ comes to me ; I reject
Him. If my soul were not before immortal, His
coming perhaps gives it immortality, only it is an
immortality for pain and evil. Before He came,
temporal penalties sufficed for the degree of sin com
mitted; the man, therefore, himself was, perhaps,
mortal, not an immortality. But now God in Christ
has come, the sin of rejecting Him can only be ad
equately punished by adding the curse of immortal
ity to the sinning soul, — in other words, all other
sins than the rejection of Christ have only temporal
penalties, as in the old law, attached to them. But
the rejection of Christ Himself, being as we observed
something different in its very kind and nature from
all sin as mere infractions of law, has an eternal
penalty attached to it. His very coming, therefore,
to the wicked, may create and leave upon them that
capability of eternal sufferance which did not before
exist. Breaking God's law is clearly a venial offence
compared with rejecting God Himself: the one, God
can and does readily forgive; the other seems to
bring upon itself an eternizing of its own evil, for in
rejecting God we reject also all that God alone can
do for us. The coming of the living Word upon the
soul, therefore, would, according to one view of your
religion, be of itself creative to it of immortality ;
but whether that immortality so created would be
one of misery or bliss, would depend entirely on the
soul's acceptance or non-acceptance of Him as the

CHRISTIANITY AND SYSTEMS OF PHILOSOPHY. 261
Son of the living God. Thus your faith is wholly
independent of the question of the native immor
tality of the soul. Christ carries with Him, to whom
soever He comes, immortality ; no soul to whom He
comes has the option of remaining mortal, supposing
it to be so by nature : all the option it has is an im
mortality in heaven or hell ; this, I conceive, is what
Paul meant in stating the Gospel to be either life to
life, or death to death. Observe the profoundness
of the Apostolic sagacity here again : they say noth
ing to this or that school of philosophy about the
native immortality of the soul ; they do not trouble
themselves about it; if immortal, and believed so,
well and good ; half their work of conversion is al
ready effected. If not immortal, they will make it
so ; the only Being by whom it could be, originally
or now, immortal, is made to come by them in His
Power upon it ; that mortality of the soul on which
an Infidel might throw himself, and defy eternity, is,
by this act of Christ, made to him an impossibility ;
his strongest fortress becomes his dungeon; that
whereby he trusted to escape God, becomes, by this
Word of Power, the very thing that delivers him up
for eternal j udgment to God. It is no wonder the
mass of mankind cannot compete with a system con
structed at all points with such extraordinary sub
tlety and prevision as this. It foresees and guards
against every weakness of which philosophy was
ever guilty, yet it commits itself to no philosophy
whatever ; it speaks of it in terms of scorn and con
tempt ; it presumes to have within itself, independent
of all nature and all philosophy, a power to change

262 CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIARCHAL FAITH 
at its touch the corruption of the grave into the in-
consumability of hell — the perishableness of man into
the glory and immortality of God. The very vast-
ness of its claims cows and overpowers all ordinary
minds ; the wonderful forethought which presided
over its birth and constitution, renders it most diffi
cult to advance any objections against it with such
effect as to liberate such minds from the fear and
thraldom it imposes upon them. It persuades them
that its Head, Jesus Christ, has power at pleasure to
change mortality into immortality, and immortality
into heaven or hell. Men say, " Possibly it is true —
possibly ; at any rate, 'tis best to be on the safe
side ;" so they become Christians. The wisdom of the
Church in thus never relaxing her faith in Christ as
God, is virtually justified by all such characters be
coming her children, by the very success of the system
of which the Divinity of Christ is both the foundation
and the keystone. But you affirmed the Scriptures
everywhere expressly or inferentially teach the im
mortality of the soul ; is the correctness of your as
sertion so certain in regard to the Old Testament ?
Chr. Permit me to read in reply the following pas
sage on the subject.
" In what sense did Adam understand the prom
ise of restoration in the woman's seed, or what
sense had it at all, except on the pre-understood
fact of the immortality of his own and his chil
dren's souls ? What consolation to a creature
merely mortal would the assurance convey that, after
he had ceased to exist, the serpent's power would
be destroyed, and only the body of man suffer the

THEIR IDENTITY. 263
consequences of sin ? If the body were the whole of
man, such a promise would be valueless both in future
to Adam, and after his departure in prcesenti to his
sons ; for in such case, to Adam there would be no
future, and to his sons as to Himself the ' bruising
of the heel,' the extinction of the body, would be
total extinction. In what sense, again, could the
Patriarchs understand the promises connected with a
futurity, except on the same pre-understanding of
their own existence in futurity ? Otherwise, of what
advantage would the verification of God's promise be
to them personally, or what present consolation and
support could their faith with reference to its future
realization afford? Did Balaam, again, fully under
stand the meaning of the parable put into his mouth
by the Almighty ? Was he conscious of the literal
truth of the words, ' I shall see him, but not now ; I
shall behold him, but not nigh ?' Either he did, and
therefore like ourselves knew the immortality of the
soul ; or the Scriptures are a series of truths, intel
ligible each in its own appointed time, not absolutely
at once, but in the period and with the circumstances
previously appointed of God. Both may be true.
Could Job, again, except under the same conviction
of immortality, assert, ' In my flesh shall I see God ;
whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall be
hold, and not another ?' The Psalms and the proph
ets abound with express declarations of the eternal
existence of the ' inward man.' In captivity Daniel
could not have received such a plain declaration as
the following, without knowing, as we do, the soul's
immortality : ' Many of them that sleep in the dust

264 CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIARCHAL FAITH 
of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life,
and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And
they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the
firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness
as the stars for ever and ever.' ' Go thou thy way
till the end be : for thou shalt rest and stand in thy
lot at the end of the days.' There are again innu
merable passages, dispersed through the Old Testa
ment, inexplicable, except as addressed to persons as
well assured of their own immortality as they were
of the existence of God. What signification can be
attached to such prophecies as this, similar ones to
which occur in almost every chapter of the evan
gelical prophets: 'Rejoice greatly, O daughter of
Zion ; shout, 0 daughter of Jerusalem ; behold thy
king cometh unto thee : he is just and having salva
tion. As for thee also (addressing the king), I have
sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit where is no
water,' — except on the pre-acknowledgment of the
soul's immortality ? Two consequences follow : the
first, that this immortality, being the basis on which
God acted on the souls of men under the law and the
prophets, was placed in its full and true light by our
blessed Lord; He alone is our Immortality in the
sense in which God gave the promises to the Fathers.
As He existed before the foundations of the world,
so in Him existed the soul's immortality, restored
to its original state of union with God. That the
patriarchs knew the fact of their immortality, and
constantly anticipated a return from the world of
their fall to the first home of the soul, is, as St.
Paul shows, clear from their faith and lives, neither

THETR IDENTITY. 265
of which, except on this, ground, admit of explana
tion. It is quite consistent with this conviction
that they should remain ignorant of the definite
nature of that immortality, of the very way of their
restoration, of the exact fulfilment by which the
Almighty would again open to them the gates of
heaven. They believed God upon the fact itself;
that belief being implicit, a belief also in God's own
appointed way of salvation was the righteousness of
faith in Christ which became to them salvation. By
this faith they were justified. The promise was ex
plicit ; the mode of its realization God reserved to
Himself; into this mode the fathers inquired not,
' for who by searching can find out God ?' They lived
and died in full faith that they should see the day of
salvation, leaving, in the same full faith, the way
and the means to the truth and omnipotence of God.
Our Lord tells us such was Abraham's faith, ' Your
father rejoiced that he should see my day: and he
has seen it, and is glad.' I do not affirm that the
fact of their redemption being definite to the fathers
of the patriarchal and legal Church, its manner in
definite, that this indefiniteness was not gradually
so taken away by the Almighty before the advent
of His Son that the scheme itself of salvation was
revealed to the Church, and the circumstances of our
Saviour's personal Incarnation and life ' in the flesh'
shadowed forth in strong outlines. Admitting this,
still its recognition or understanding was no neces
sary part of the saving faith of the patriarchs : they
might remain willingly in the dark as to God's
means, provided they were in the light as to God's
12

266 CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIARCHAL FAITH 
promise and intention ; the on was theirs, the nug was
God's. Christianity, therefore, labors under no
necessity to demonstrate that the patriarchs and
prophets understood the particulars of the mode of
their redemption by a future Saviour ; it is sufficient
to prove them ' partakers of the same faith with our
selves,' if it is plainly shown that belief in such a re
demption, involving in it a necessary pre-understand
ing of the immortality of the soul, constituted their
creed of action and the ground of their acceptance
with God. The second admission is this, — that so far
as the mode of atonement was concerned, the very
people themselves to whom the Scriptures were
delivered, remained, with the Scriptures in their
hands, ignorant as the Gentiles themselves, until the
atonement itself was effected. To the Jews the
Scriptures never did, and at this moment do not,
explain themselves among them ; the Scriptures
were daily read and sabbatically expounded, but in
the very point for which all Scripture was inspired —
the Incarnation of the Son of God— they were to the
Jew a blank, as much a vacancy as nature is to
sightless eyes. The question between the Jew and the
Christian is yet, in a mental sense, ' Which under
stands the Scripture aright ?' If the Scripture is
self-explanatory, how come the Jews to persist now
as ever in an interpretation spiritually and de facto
of the Messianic kingdom repugnant to the interpre
tation received among Christians ? The apostles,
speaking of the time before the descent of the Holy
Ghost, frequently admit that they understood not
the Scriptures : neither before his conversion could

THEIR IDENTITY. 267
St. Paul have understood them, for he persecuted
Him through whom they were given on conscientious
principles. What then? The Scriptures were not
understood before the Incarnation of our Saviour;
His teaching constituted the revelation of the Scrip
tures ; the fulfilment of God's promise became de
finitively its explanation. The children of Abra
ham's faith receive, the children of Abraham's loins
reject, the Scriptures : for it is all one whether a man
reject the Scriptures in themselves or in their true
acceptation. Can any reverence for the Scriptures
exceed that of the Jews for them ? Can any igno
rance of what those Scriptures really mean exceed
theirs ? The deduction is this, — that the Scriptures
being one in their own truth and intelligibility, are
not one, nor were ever intended to be one, as far as
regards being completely understood, or forming a
subjective integrity of intellect in the minds of those
receiving them ; they open as the seasons of God re
quire them to open to men's minds ; they are co
ordinates with His purposes: Christianity is in the
Old Testament : the Jews under the Old Testament
neither saw nor acknowledged it, though the ' Israel
of God' among them were even then Christians in
deed in faith and works ; they looked to and acted
upon the promises ; but neither did these, though
prophets and kings in the ancient Church, see in the
Scriptures what we see. It was not the purpose of
God they should ; doubtless they see them now : in
paradise they understand them and rejoice, but then
they were to remain under Moses the servant, and
not immediately under Christ the Son. Adam un-

268 CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIARCHAL FAITH 
derstood no more of his restoration to come than
what God then and there revealed ; as the times of
God proceeded so the revelations of God opened to,
and were delivered to the times, constantly withal
with greater clearness defining the future redemp
tion, until the fulness of the times and the Scriptures
were united in the Incarnation. Whatever, there
fore, the amount of knowledge possessed by the
patriarchs and prophets ' of the things pertaining to
the kingdom of heaven' might have been, their faith,
so far as God required it, was right and saving faith ;
wherefore, as the Church of England declares, they
are not to be heard which feign that the old fathers
did look only for transitory promises. Our knowl
edge of Scripture is to be fulfilled in God's own
times ; we err as much by affectation of knowledge
as by feebleness of faith : what in real knowledge
of spiritual truths the Church militant is now to the
Church in the desert, the Church triumphant will
be to the Church militant. Compared to the former
we are in light ; compared to the Church in heaven
we are still in the ' shadows of things to come :' we
see only in part, we know only in part. If the
Jews had attempted to penetrate or to explain the
means by which the Almighty miraculously gov
erned them and their fathers, could they by any
possibility have succeeded ? Do they now, rejecting
Christ, succeed with any other than their own race
in assigning meaning or purpose to the ordinances of
their divinely-given religion ? Did Abraham under
stand the real meaning of circumcision? or his chil
dren of those hosts of significant types, each of which

THEIR IDENTITY. 269
to us is as plainly indicative of the God-man as the
sun's reflection in water is of the very sun in heaven ?
or to sum up all, how, before the prophecies were
accomplished by omnipotent acts, could any human
mind, Jew or Gentile, explain such words as ' a
virgin shall conceive and bear a child ;' or, ' for us
a child is born ;' and this child ' The Mighty God,
the Everlasting Father ;' or, 'Awake, O sword, against
my shepherd, against the man that is my fellow,
saith the Lord of hosts ;' or continuous passages of
Isaiah, in which, to human knowledge and human
ideas of the possible and impossible, the contradic
tions seemed as flat and palpable as words designed
ly could represent them ? Even as to the temporal
effects of the advent of Christ, the Holy Spirit de
clared such things as at the time of their delivery
seemed totally irreconcilable with each other and
themselves, for example: — 'Thus saith the Lord, the
Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom
man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to
a servant of rulers, Kings shall see and arise, princes
also shall worship. I will lift up my hand to the
Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people : and
they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy
daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. And
kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens
thy nursing mothers : they shall bow down to thee
with their face towards the earth, and lick up the
dust of thy feet !' To the Church of that time these
prophecies were both above and against what ap
peared the surest reason, for how could a virgin con
ceive ? How could a child now first born into the

270 CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIARCHAL FAITH —
world be The Mighty God, the everlasting Father?
How could there be any fellow or equal to God? and
yet more, how could ' the equal with God' suffer
death ? or how could He whom man despiseth, and
the nation abhorreth, be at the same time One whom
the kings and princes of the world should worship,
and to whom the Gentiles should bring their sons
and their daughters ? These things were confessedly
contradictions and impossibilities to the reason of
man. Did God require the Church to understand,
or only to believe them ? Only to believe. We now
see that such belief was the highest reason : these
contradictions and impossibilities have, in the Incar
nation of God in Christ, received the simplest pos
sible solution. The mystery of the fact remains, but
the solution by this one fact of what before were
mysteries both irreconcilable with each other and
with human reason, teaches us the folly of bringing
any one of God's revealed truths to the test of possi
bility by our present state of knowledge or criterion
of powers. ' Has God revealed it thus ?' is the ter
minus of our present right of inquiry. If the answer
be ' Yes,' our firm faith in such revelation will cer
tainly in the end prove the only true wisdom. The
whole Bible, indeed, in one sense, consists of revela
tions as much above reason as reason can conceive :
as much against apparent reason as the immobility
of the sun is apparently against the evidence of the
senses. The Catholic Church, like the Jewish Church,
but in a more heavenly and spiritual degree, is sub
jected by the Almighty to the same trial by faith ;
but instead of the thousand mysteries significant of,

THEIR IDENTITY. 271
and only explicable by, the Incarnation of God in
Christ ' which should come,' her mysteries are
founded upon the fact of the Incarnation accom
plished, and are only so far mysteries as that In
carnation itself is ; yet they are mysteries of the
highest faith. Who, more than the Jew of old un
derstood the then declaration of God to His Church,
can now understand the equally plain declarations
of God to the Church after the Incarnation ? God
is incarnate in our bodies, in our spirits, in His
Church. How can it be? God reveals that it is
so : the Scriptures have indeed been written for us
in vain if we believe them not. God the Father,
the Son, the Spirit, comes to us in baptism, abides
on us in the Eucharist, unites Himself with our
soul, and yet the Holy Spirit intercedes from with
in our soul, the Saviour presents, and the Father
receives that intercession in heaven. How can
these things be ? ' Believe them and thou shalt
be saved.' I see bread and wine on the table of the
Lord : they are consecrated ; they become verily and
indeed to the faithful — as our own sinful bodies do
after the consecration in baptism — the body and
blood of Jesus Christ our Lord. How can that be,
seeing they appear still bread and wine ? I know
not more than I know how God was made flesh, how
the dust was made man, or how man shall hereafter
be ' the partaker of the divine nature.' God has so
declared, I so believe, and I doubt not my belief is
the highest reason. There is a judgment to come, in
which God will judge the world by the man Jesus
Christ whom He hath appointed. How can that be

272 CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIARCHAL FAITH.
when he was despised, crucified, and rejected of
men? I know not more than I know how, or by
what mysterious power, He has become ' the light of
the Gentiles, and the ends of the earth bow down to
Him.' There is a resurrection of the body and a life
everlasting. How can these things be, seeing the
body becomes dust, and organic life dies with it ? I
know not more than how the first man became life, or
how that life has been propagated for five thousand
years, or how the Spirit of God creates out of nothing,
or recreates a soul from its fall. How these things
are is very plain to God. That they are as He has
declared them to be, I should be either infatuated by
sin, or blinded by Satan, not to believe. As He was
in the Church of old, till He was revealed in Christ,
past finding out, so in the Catholic mysteries of
Christianity does He, in a more heavenly way, hide
Himself until ' the restitution of all things, when we
shall know even as we are known.' Meanwhile,
like the Father of the faithful, we live by faith, not
by vision, having this certainty within ourselves
that every article of our faith will, in God's good
time, be found an everlasting verity. Between the
patriarchs and ourselves the degrees of faith are
various, but the faith itself is one, as the recompense
of the reward is one. ' Many shall come from the
east and the west, from the north and the south,
and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and
Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.' "'
Inf. In fact, it would make little difference whether
1 Verities of the Church. 8vo. Kivingtons.

DEATH  WHAT IS IT? 273
the immortality of the soul pervaded the old dis
pensation or not ; it is one of the fundamental tenets
of Christianity, and to be a Christian, a man must
accept it with all its consequences. Let us view the
doctrine from another position. You attribute such
a soul, without exception or discrimination, to every
human being.
Chr. Certainly.
Inf. No matter where, when, or how ; from parents
of the most eminent or the most infamous character,
under what sanctities or what orgies the human
being is conceived and born, such a soul is its " Ego"
within — it can neither die, nor be less than this
" Ego" forever.
Chr. And what then ?
Inf. By this creed death is a misnomer — to man
it does not exist. No man ever has died ; none
ever will die ; none can die. Death, so called, is a
transition, not a destruction. Man no more dies
than the sun ceases to be, because at one hour it
flames in the East, at another in the meridian South;
because it now glares red and portentous in the
atmosphere of the pestilence, now beams with lus
trous purity in the heavens of serenity and health.
The medium and locality are changed, but it is still
the sun.
Chr. Continue.
Inf. I say the doctrine which such a metaphor
illustrates cannot be true: human nature itself re
futes it. Who can believe such nameless wretches
as he sees, for instance, in the alleys of manufactur
ing towns, withered, haggard, black with grime and
12*

274 THE LIFE-WORD OF GOD
dirt, woofs, living woofs of filth and drunkenness, to
be immortal souls ?
Chr. By your own comparison one might believe
it. Their bodies would be the atmosphere of the pes
tilence round a benighted orb of light, the soul. Let
us go to an extreme instance : let us take an hered
itary savage of the lowest grade, and put him by
the side of Alexander, of Homer, of Fenelon, of
Pearson, of Shakspeare : his soul is as immortal as
theirs : neither can die. It is undeveloped, it scarcely
glitters : nevertheless the minutest and most form
less particle of diamond dust is not less diamond
than the Koh-i-noor. The Zoolu savage is not less
an immortality than Milton ; only in him the death
less principle is deeply earthed where the light of
God has not yet flashed upon it : but let that light
flash, the soul of the savage will respond to its
action with as true, if not as brilliant scintillations,
as the soul of* a Milton. Again, I will put this
savage by the side of the Belvidere Apollo. What
object can to the senses present a contrast more in
favor of the statue against the human being? From
the former we recoil, from the latter we drink in an
intoxicating stream of artistic inspiration ; from the
former we avert our glance with pity and disgust,
on the latter we could gaze with conscious rapture
till the fountains of light and the faculties of admi
ration were alike exhausted. Nevertheless there is
that within the savage which is not within the
Apollo ; there is that within the savage capable of
making him the sculptor of a thousand Apollos, and
of treading them when made, as nothing better than

IS THE SOUL-LIFE OF MAN. 275
the work of his own hands, beneath his feet. He
possesses, however dormant or torpified, a soul —
therefore soul-sensitiveness to impressions and pas
sions produced by higher agencies than matter. Now
in attempting the elevation of this savage to Chris
tianity, we proceed on this Article of our Faith that
he, equally with any pope, bishop, or king, possesses
a soul, possesses soul-sensitiveness to the things of
God and the Spirit. On testing our faith, we find it
true : he does possess a soul, he shows himself sen
sitive to God. Did he not, we might as well essay
the conversion of the marble Apollo or a Brahmin
bull. Inf. But such sensitiveness is so feeble, that its
pulsations can scarcely be detected.
Chr. Be it so. It may be quite a dead soul, with
no pulsations at all ; as dead in its tenement of flesh,
as the body is in the leaden cerements of the grave.
It is still a soul, though dead : the Word of God
passes and speaks to it : it receives life : it breathes :
it rises from the tomb of corruption and sin : it
stands erect in a new world of light and glorious
creations : its eyes are opened to God and to heaven :
the new life of the Word bounds in its veins, and the
assurance of eternity glows in the brow of the second
Adam from the dust — the savage has become a Chris
tian. Inf. But this is a miracle.
Chr. True. The perpetual miracle of the Church :
without such she never yet converted a soul to Christ
— every Christian sustained, or heathen evangelized,
is a standing miracle. Within that soul, so dead,

276 GOD  THE HOLY GHOST.
there must descend a Presence from God, as real as
the light of the sun within the walls of a room, the
image of a father in the pupil of the eye of the child
before the child can see its father, — as real as the
arm of Christ raising the damsel of Jairus from her
bed. This Presence can only be God Himself : for
it is everywhere wherever the soul of man turns to
God : it is ubiquitous : it is the promised Presence of
Christ with His Church, and every soul converted
is a demonstration that such Presence is a living
Power and an endless fact. Without it the Church
would long ago have perished from the face of the
earth. Inf. You thus cite every convert as both evidence
of the existence of a soul in man responsive to God,
and of the perpetual Presence of Christ with the
Church in bringing such soul to God. Behold again
another result of apostolical sagacity — their system
sweeps the New Zealander and the Caffre, as well as
the Platonist and the Stoic, within its uet. No
human being escapes its meshes : every human being
converted it builds as a fresh living stone into its
bulwarks and defences ; autocrat and serf it chal
lenges as equally its mission, and, like the enchant
resses of Tasso and Spenser, it gathers the most
antagonistic natures, the lion and the lamb, the bear
and the ox, the babe and the cockatrice to play at
its feet. I thus candidly admit the catholicity of
the apostolic genius : it fathomed the naked barba
rian in the wild as successfully as the jewelled empress
on her throne : it hit upon that feeling in human
nature which, in the desert or court, equally re-

GOD — THE HOLY GHOST. 277
sponded to the universal hand which touched its
chord — the hope of eternity, the satisfaction of an
immortal pride.
Let us proceed to another topic intimately con
nected with this last article of my Infidelity. I
mean Inspiration. You hold, it appears to me,
Christianity in man to be a perpetual inspiration ?
Chr. Christ in a Christian is a perpetual inspira
tion. Christ is both body and spirit : to be a Chris
tian we must not only be of His body the Church,
but His Spirit also must in that body work in us as
life works in the members of a man : sending blood
to its veins, vitality to its flesh, sensibility to its
nerves, motion and action to its very bone and sinew.
Inf. And this Spirit of Christ you term " the Holy
Ghost," its operation you term inspiration. It in
spired the prophets of old in knowledge : it inspires
you in grace : it sanctifies all the elect of God : it
is diametrically opposed to the Evil Spirit : it is the
Lord and Giver of life: one with God, one with
Christ. Now I cannot believe in the existence of
either this Holy Spirit, or of its contrary Evil Spirit
— nor, of course, in any operation of either on the
human mind or soul.
Chr. Let us examine if such disbelief is consistent
with facts and reason or not. You find, I presume, in
your own mind, contrary and repugnant inclinations.
Of two contraries, both cannot be right. For in
stance, you swear : one principle of your mind causes
such swearing to be a relief to anger, ill-temper,
acerbity ; another principle causes you to feel certain
compunctions at prostituting — if there be such a

278 GOD  THE HOLY GHOST.
thing as holiness — the most holy of names to a mo
mentary ebullition of human frailty or fury.
Inf. Proceed.
Chr. Or again. You have fifty pounds to spare.
One principle induces you to expend it in considerate
charity : in saving some distressed family from desti
tution, aiding some struggling young man to secure
an independency in the world, or educating a few poor
and destitute children. The other principle bids you
lavish it entirely on yourself. " Indulge genio," eat,
drink, enjoy yourself; gratify your personal vanity,
your own ease, your own passions. What are others
to you? Consult only your own pleasures. These
are contrary inclinations.
Inf. Confessedly.
Chr. Which is the good, which is the evil inclina
tion ?
Inf. Neither of them absolutely ; it depends on
circumstances, sometimes one, sometimes the other.
Charity is good, self-indulgence is good : carried to
extremes both may be evil — both self-ruinous.
Chr. Not so. Good can never become evil, nor
evil good. The goodness of God is ceaseless, exces
sive, and in this world indiscriminate — is it therefore
evil? Inf. That cannot be.
Chr. True charity, then, — the charity impelled by
love and guided by judgment, — can never be at one
time good, at another time evil. False charity — of
which I am not speaking — can never be good. We
are speaking of true charity as the contrary to selfish
indulgence. You confess to its emotions ; you con-

GOD — THE HOLY GHOST. 279
fess, where the option existed of relieving with this
fifty pounds an orphan family, or of spending it on
a midnight orgy, you would feel the former to be
good, the latter to be evil. Whence derived you
that feeling ? How did it originate ?
Inf. Who can say ? It is part of my nature, of
my instincts.
Chr. Emotion, then, towards good, consciousness
of satisfying some right principles within us when
we are doing good in preference to doing evil is, you
say, part of our nature.
Inf. Certainly ; of every rightly-constituted na
ture. Chr. We agree ; — of every rightly-constituted na
ture. How human nature is or can be thus rightly
constituted we do not now discuss ; on that point we
should probably differ. Thus far we concur, that
an inclination to goodness and good acts is part of
every man's nature, as it ought to be. How came
it to be part ?
Inf. How !
Chr. You do not assert man to be self-created ?
Inf. I do not go so far as that.
Chr. Something else, then, must have created it
in him. This something we term God. God, then,
created emotion towards good, and the sensation of
pleasure in doing good as part of our right nature.
This feeling is God's creation within us.
Inf. I comprehend.
Chr. When we do good, and feel delight in doing
it, our nature is then right; it is as God created it.
The creation of such a feeling, such a right nature is

280 GOD — THE HOLY GHOST.
not ours; for as you admit, man made not himself:
it is altogether God's. You confess also to the ex
istence of this feeling in every individual without
exception whose nature is as it ought to be. It all,
and in all cases, originates with God.
We have thus, then, the fact that cannot be con
troverted, of a divine action of God in the soul of
man, throughout his race, from the creation to the
present time. By what one term shall we designate
such divine action? Is it not necessarily Inspira
tion? Inf. Call it such if it sufficiently express the
thing itself.
Chr. You thus acknowledge an inspiration of God
in every man's soul since the creation — in your own
soul. You have felt it urging you to good. You
grant that, as man created not himself, it must be in
common with the rest of your right nature, a crea
tion of God's.
Inf. I anticipate your inference.
Chr. Now, if any emotions be rightly called holy,
emotions towards goodness must surely be such. The
Supreme Being who created such emotions must, for
the same reason, be a holy Being, — be, in the strict
est sense, the Author and Finisher of all goodness
and all holiness. You thus admit the inspiration in
the soul of man to be that of the Supreme Being as
essentially a holy God. Now God is a Spirit ; that
which so inspires us is God the Holy Spirit, as we
state in the Creed, " the Holy Ghost, one God with
the Father and the Son." You confess such inspi
ration in every man impressed with the desire of, or

GOD  THE HOLY GHOST. 281
feeling pleasure in doing good ; yet, directly you put
on the character, not of a man, but of an Infidel, you
exclaim, " I do not believe in such inspiration, nor
yet in God as the Good and Holy Spirit." What
more does Christianity here do than enunciate a
divine fact between God and man as old as creation,
and as broad as the heart of the human race ?
Inf. But this, I opine, is not the sense in which
Christians commonly understand the terms " Inspi
ration, the Holy Ghost." They mean, I think, to
express by them something quite distinct from the
God of creation and nature ; something not in ac
cordance with, but separate from, the original Cause
of our existence, acting in some incomprehensible
way, and producing an equally incomprehensible
effect in the mind called " Grace."
Chr. I see you have looked at a great Christian
doctrine through an heretical medium which distorts
God into parts, and represents the Holy Spirit as a
subordinate and partially independent Deity. You
then suppose such distortion the orthodox faith, and
argue against it as such. No proceeding is more
common. Inf. But the orthodox doctrine of Grace itself in
fers a supernatural interference with our natural
passions and propensities. The system is built on
Grace versus Nature : whatever opposes this opera
tion of the Holy Ghost, proceeding, as it does, from,
and being one with God, it condemns as sin. Now
certain passions are inherent in our nature ; they
were therefore clearly intended by the Creator of
that nature to be brought out into action.'

282 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS.
Chr. I will grant you more. Not a single passion
or affection exists in man's nature which was not
only intended to be used, but the not using or de
veloping of which is not a criminal negligence.
Inf. That is a very liberal idea ; but Christianity
condemns these natural passions as sinful.
Chr. Where?
Inf. Everywhere throughout its revelation.
Chr. Specify. We do not in this discussion admit
general assertions on either side. We deal with the
special facts of Christianity and Infidelity.
Inf. Do you not admit my statement to be true ?
Chr. Not as you intend and put it. Your state
ment is, " Christianity condemns the natural passions
of man as in themselves sinful," which I entirely
deny. Modify the statement thus, — " Christianity
condemns the abuse of every natural passion in man
as sinful," and I concur. There is a right and a
wrong use in every thing. In us, with reference to
God, the wrong use constitutes what we call sin. Of
this fundamental distinction between good and evil
few have ever made any question ; the great diffi
culty in the science of ethics in its application to
particular instances, is to know what is the right,
what is the wrong use of external and internal
powers. All things to us are as their uses are, good
or evil. Here is a drop of prussic acid ; the evil or
the good of it is not in itself, but in its use ; it may
be used by a poisoner or by a physician. The former
being away from its right use, we call abuse. So
with our own powers. The tongue may pray or
swear ; the hand may work or murder ; the mind be

CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS. 283
a temple of God, or a smithy of the devil ; every mem
ber an agent of sin, or an instrument of righteous
ness. Similarly also with our acquisitions. Knowl
edge is power, but it may be divine power or satanic
power, health or poison. Riches may be a blessing
or a curse to ourselves and society. Station and rank
the greatest levers to immorality, or the strongest
bulwarks of religion and modesty. Thus with every
addition we make to ourselves, our means, our powers,
we incur an additional responsibility for good or evil.
The perversion of any of these means — in themselves
quite neutral things — to evil, constitutes, with refer
ence to God, sin ; with reference to society, crime.
Which of these two, — the right use or the abuse, the
evil or good of a thing, — we choose, depends on a
man's own volition or will. Jesus Christ proffers to
give us two things which by nature we have not —
the will to choose right, and the power to act upon
that choice. But Christianity no more pronounces
any passion or faculty of man to be itself sinful, than
it does gold, iron, marble, minerals, herbs, or any
power in nature to be in itself sinful. But as science
teaches the real use of the latter, so does Christianity
teach and regulate the use of the former. What
sheer ignorance or barbarism is to the latter, Infi
delity, in my judgment, is to the former.
Inf. But what you term " abuse," I probably think
and term "use."
Chr. Very likely. But as to the passions them
selves, they are God's creations in man ; and as
science reveals to us the right use of God's creations
in nature, so Christianity reveals to us the right use

284 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS.
of His creations, these passions included, within our
selves. They are themselves good, and designed for
good. So far, it appears, we agree.
Inf. All Christians do not; for some call and
believe the utter mortification of all their natural
passions, Sanctity.
Chr. One topic at a time. Leaving this and that
Christian alone, where does Christianity itself con
demn the passions as in themselves sinful ?
Inf. Revenge is a natural passion — it condemns
revenge as sinful.
Chr. Immediately you allege a specific instance,
we can deal with it. In one sense revenge is natural
to man, for it yields pleasure to that nature as it
now is.
Inf. Precisely. The Latins called pleasure " vo-
luptas," because it consists in doing just what we
will ; we, too, for the same reason, call it pleasure,
because it consists in doing what we please — and re
venge certainly gratifies our nature.
Chr. But that nature is a fallen one.
Inf. Nonsense. This is the way you Christians
argue. You lay down certain postulates, and then
proceed to reason upon them as if we too, who are
not Christians, accepted such postulates for facts.
Chr. Not so. We do accept as facts certain pos
tulates : our acceptance of them constitutes us Chris
tians ; your non-acceptance of them constitutes you
Infidels. With our fellow-Christians we reason upon
these postulates as upon a common foundation — but
not with Infidels.
Inf. Do you not state man's present nature to be

CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS. 285
a fallen one ; and is not that one of the postulates of
your system ?
Chr. I do. And the taking such a fact for granted
is also one of our postulates ; but I do not here ad
vance it as such, but merely as a statement of mine
against a statement of yours. I say, " Our nature is
now fallen: revenge is the passion of a fallen na
ture." You say, " Our nature is not fallen : revenge,
being one of its passions, may be legitimately in
dulged." Is that fairly stated ?
Inf. Fairly.
Chr. Were you a Christian, this precept of Scrip
ture would settle the question, " Revenge not your
selves : Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, saith
the Lord." Not being a Christian, you hold its
opposite. Thus, " Revenge yourselves : vengeance
is every man's own right : he himself ought to repay
his enemy." Tlie difference then is, Christianity
asserts revenge to be the depravation of a certain
passion in man — which depravation is the result of
a fall in man's whole nature, the passions included.
Infidelity asserts revenge to be the pure original
passion itself, and therefore rightly indulged. If
Christianity admitted your premise, it would also
your inference. It holds a contrary premise, and by
consequence a contrary inference. Now Christianity
expressly states every passion of man, as his nature
came originally from God, to be good. " God saw all
that He had made, and, behold, it was very good."
Inf. I observe your point.
> Gen. i. 31.

286 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS.
Chr. Christianity lays down this premise, "Re
venge is the depravation of a certain good or useful
passion :" Infidelity this, " Revenge is no deprava
tion, but the good, unf alien passion itself." The
question then is, Which of these premises is true,
Christianity or yours ?
Inf. Who or what is to decide?
Chr. We shall clear the ground for decision very
easily. Christianity differs from you as to what
constitutes the use or abuse of our natural instincts.
Let us see in this instance of revenge, whether facts
bear you or Christianity out as right. One man
insults another : the insulted party waits his oppor
tunity, broods over his wrong, meets his enemy, and
murders him. This is revenge. The forms of it —
vendettas, assassinations, massacres, clan and family
feuds, hereditary enmities, individual duels — are infi
nite. The man of honor shoots his man : the Caffre or
the Red Indian spears every man, woman, and child
in his enemy's household or village. This is nature.
I admit it, and doubtless the Red Indian finds the
successful indulgence of such revenge one of the high
est pleasures of that nature. But I assert it to be a
fallen nature : such a nature in full action makes a
fallen world. Civilized society could not keep togeth
er for one twelvemonth, were only this one passion of
revenge permitted uncontrolled license of action.
Inf. But I do not mean the revenge of Corsicans,
of ancient feudatories, of Caffres, or Red Indians.
Chr. Why not? Their nature is as much nature
as yours — to judge by their passions, much stronger
nature. Their right to give full indulgence to its

CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS. 287
instincts according to their ideas, is as indisputable
as yours to give full indulgence to your instincts ac
cording to your ideas.
Inf. You must not put the civilized infidel on a
par with such characters as these — -they are savages.
Chr. They are pure, simple, unsophisticated hu-
. man nature, not in the least tainted with " the super
stition" of Christianity, but holding, like yourself,
revenge to be a noble, sublime, and genuine virtue.
From such revenge, in its coarse nudity, why do
you recoil ? Why do you shudder at Cain imbrued
in a brother's blood ?
Inf. Ah ! such revenge is entirely unnatural.
Chr. That is now man's nature which man's na
ture now does. In this light, idolatry, perjury, sub
ornation, lying, deceitfulness, dishonoring of parents,
theft, piracy, detraction, fraud, violence, rapacity,
sensuality, are de facto human nature. The whole
history of man is the history of such a nature as
this. Here we do not need faith : the proofs are
within the province of the mind and the senses. The
evidence that such is human nature is supplied us by
the civil and criminal codes of every nation on the
earth. The nation having no such code is known,
by the fact of such deficiency itself, to be nothing
else than a tribe of savages or barbarians.
Inf. As you name these passions they are un
doubtedly evil, but I will not admit you name them
correctly. Chr. Does not the law of England define a thou
sand actions under one or other of these categories ?
The law of every land does so, is compelled by the

288 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS.
stern facts of human nature to do so. The legal
definition of each crime may not in all ages and
nations be the same, but human nature is a nature of
robbery or murder according to your as well as my
definition of these two crimes. Ask any sane person
if the act of Courvoisier upon the life of Lord Wil
liam Russel did not involve " murder." He, like the-
jury, would reply in the affirmative. Ask another
person upon the same evidence the same question.
Suppose, admitting the fact, he yet denied it to be
murder, what opinion would you form of his nature
and character ? Would you trust him with the safety
of a finger of your body ?
Inf. Of a verity, no.
Chr. You would reason, " If this man holds that
cutting his master's throat at midnight be not mur
der, he will most probably, on the first opportunity
which presents itself of theft or plunder, cut my
throat at night." And the world would regard such
reasoning as very solid.
Inf. And I too.
Chr. A man's real opinions or faith underlie all
his actions. To deny then that there can be such a
crime as murder, would per se evince extreme de
pravity in the denier.
Inf. It would.
Chr. Human nature denying it, would convict
itself of such depravity. We have therefore on either
ground, first, whether human nature commits a
murder ; or, secondly, committing a treacherous,
malevolent, and sanguinary deed, denies it to be
murder, proof visible and tangible of evil existing in

CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS. 289
that nature. We might apply the same course of
reasoning to every other vice and crime, and their
respective definitions. Now how came such evil
there first ?
Inf. It is in the nature.
Chr. How came it in the nature ? Are you not
now in a dilemma ? If it was not so at first, and yet
is so now, you admit a fall, and so far become a
Christian. If it was so at first, what becomes of
your proposition that every such instinct of man's
nature, being as you hold original, is good ? Either
this evil is now in man's nature individually, or it
is in him as the nature of the oak is in the acorn,
generically. Inf. Not the latter : all men are not murderers.
Chr. Certainly not ; nor in a murder is the cata
logue of crimes exhausted : the former, then ?
Inf. Well.
Chr. The nature of a murderer then is, even on
this admission, so far an evil nature. That evil you
say is born with him, is in him individually. If we
write down the enumeration of all the vices, deficien
cies, crimes, and evil dispositions, is there any person
living not subject to one or the other of them ? I ask
not a rigid definition of them : throw the weights
into the balance of laxity and mercy : exempt each
individual from as many as you possibly can ; will
you pronounce, after all allowances, one spotless
from ail in heart and life ?
Inf. Impossible, every one has his flaws and faults.
Chr. See, then, how constantly you admit in your
own language truths which you refuse to believe in
13

290 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS.
the language of Christianity. Here you admit the
whole doctrine of original sin. In many other points,
I am convinced, if we reasoned inductively from facts
a posteriori, you would concede as perfectly true, the
doctrines which Christianity lays down, a priori, as
matters of faith. Well then, every one has his faults,
— confessedly faults. Every one of all mankind
makes up human nature ; human nature is then
more or less infected with evil. Not each individual
in the same way, the same degree, but all in some
degree and some way positively evil. Whether we
argue then from the individual to the genus, or from
the genus to the individual, the result is the same ;
the existence of both individual and generic evil in
human nature. The question then recurs, "How
came it there originally ?" The fact is as undeniable
as it is painful : which is right reason, by ignoring it
to bring down on ourselves and society all the dis
astrous consequences of voluntary blindness, or by
confronting it, do the best we can to lessen and eradi
cate it ?
Inf. I cannot gainsay that much evil exists in
human nature ; the origin of the evil there or else
where who knows ?
Chr. We concur as to the fact ; as to the origin of
the fact you have no knowledge.
Inf. Nor Christians either.
Chr. We do not pretend to it. We deal with the
fact itself: its origin falls within the province of
faith, not knowledge. Our faith is, " that it was not
so at the beginning." Human nature is not now
what God created it ; there is evil in it now ; God

CHRISTIANITY  AND THE FALL. 291
cannot in any creature be the author of evil ; it is
therefore a fallen nature, lapsed for the worse from
God and its original creation. This postulate of
faith we do not prove, but accept as the under-fact
of the truth we both admit. On such truth recipro
cally admitted we do reason with you ; on the under-
fact we do not. We affirm it as an article of the
Christian faith : we believe it on the Word of God :
on that Word we do not reason ; we accept it as
coming directly from the Creator of all reason :
by such acceptance we pronounce it more purely and
authoritatively truth than any deduction of our own
reason could possibly be : for to us the Word of God
is, as we said, the reason of God. And what is the
reason of a creature — especially of a fallen creature
— compared to that of its Creator ?
Inf. In recognizing the existence of evil we con
cur ; in accounting for it we differ.
Chr. More accurately, I think, Infidelity cannot
account for a fact which it feels itself compelled to
admit : upon which all human as well as divine laws
and restrictions proceed : which once ignored, society
perishes. Our faith gives us the origin of it from a
source more reliable than all the inferences of human
knowledge ; in mere knowledge, therefore, we are on
a par : where knowledge fails, you stop ; we walk
further with a safer guide than knowledge. Faith
indeed is a much firmer principle than knowledge :
for the end of knowledge of every kind is faith. But
observe how much of Christianity you have hereby
conceded, the depravity of man's nature and all its
logical inferences ; the fallen passions of man Chris-

292 MONOGAMY AND POLYGAMY.
tianity condemns ; so does every sound code of human
law: such condemnation is not superstition, but a
thing inseparable from both legislation and religion.
These passions are depravations ; to style them
" natural" is as a fact correct : because they are so
human nature stands itself condemned as evil; to
affirm because they are natural they are not sinful
or injurious, is to advance a proposition which will
not bear a moment's investigation.
Inf. Well, then, leaving the general qnestion, I will
moot a special moral objection included in it upon
this very Word of Revelation itself. It is not in
every instance consistent with itself. Here at any
rate I can specify.
Chr. Do so.
Inf. At one period it tolerates, at another it pro
hibits polygamy. That is adultery in a Christian
which was none in a Jew. Those who in the Old
Testament — Abraham, Jacob, David — are called
saints, would now in England, where the New Testa
ment forms the basis of the law, be tried, convicted,
and transported for an offence which, under the old
dispensation, was none whatever. Is not this incon
sistency of a gross kind, being on one of the gravest
points of social and domestic morality ?
Che. Christianity, you say, condemns Polygamy.
Inf. Yes ; I also say Judaism permitted Polyg
amy. Christianity and Judaism are in your view
the former and the latter phases of one and the same
religion ; these two phases by contradicting one an
other on an important moral point prove one, at least,
not to be divine. According to Judaism David was

MONOGAMY AND POLYGAMY. 293
not the less a saint for keeping a royal seraglio ; ac
cording to Christianity he was an adulterer.
Chr. Where does Christianity term David an
adulterer for keeping a royal seraglio ?
Inf. He would, I mean, be now branded as such,
if he lived under the dispensation of Christianity.
Chr. That is quite a different thing.
Inf. No ; not so far as morality is in question.
What is wrong now, was wrong then ; what was not
wrong then, cannot be wrong now. Time — to trans
fer one of your maxims — is no element in the moral
right and wrong of things. Theft, lying, murder,
were as wrong in the antediluvians as they are in us.
So also was polygamy in its own nature as wrong in
the patriarchs and prophets as it would now be in
any of us. Yet Judaism did not condemn it ; Chris
tianity does condemn it. Select which of these
phases of religion you please as Divine, the other
ceases to be Divine, and in such cessation destroys
also the Divinity of the other.
Chr. How would Christianity, by such cessation,
destroy the Divine authority of Judaism?
Inf. Because Christianity is the only thing which
puts any sense or meaning into Judaism. Without
Christianity as its development Judaism for the last
eighteen hundred years is dead and formless dust.
Suppose Christianity false, nothing of Judaism is
fulfilled. The times specified by Judaism for the
fulfilment of its futurities is irretrievably past. Ju
daism itself would thus be a proven falsehood.
Chr. By this argument the truth of Judaism de
pends on the truth of Christianity ?

294 MONOGAMY AND POLYGAMY.
Inf. Certainly ; do you deny it ?
Chr. No ; I fully admit it. I am only surprised
at your advancing it.
Inf. Because it fixes you on the question of polyg
amy in a complete dilemma. Choose which you
will, your choice in its fair inference destroys the
Divine authority of both religions. My argument
here is, I think, unanswerable.
Chr. Do you wish it to be so ? Do you wish both
Judaism and Christianity to turn out detected impo
sitions ?
Inf. I wish all things which are true. If they are
not true, let both, come what may, be detected and
rejected. Chr. The whole of Christianity ?
Inf. No, not the whole, for parts of it are perfect
in their beauty. Every one believes something of
Christianity. Chr. Would you then reject that part of it which
prohibits bigamy and polygamy ?
Inf. Decidedly not. No philosopher, I conceive,
will defend or justify polygamy. I, on this point,
utterly condemn Judaism, and deny its Divine ori
gin or power of dispensation. I hold in this entirely
with Christianity against Judaism.
Chr. Yet you would destroy Christianity upon a
suppositive difference with Judaism, in which you
yourself wholly coincide with Christianity. Strange
actions Infidelity commits you to against yourself
and your most philosophic convictions ! The whole
religion of civilization, with its vast amount of ad
mitted good, is to be abolished by a philosopher,

MONOGAMY AND POLYGAMY. 295
because, condemning a practice which he also con
demns, he thinks such condemnation condemnatory
also, by a reflective process from Judaism, of its own
Divinity ! What a curious confusion of motives !
Inf. Be it so ; what has it to do with the argu
ment? Chr. Very much, in the judgment of practical
men. As an anti-polygamist you are a Christian, a
practical man would therefore call upon you to sup
port Christianity. " No," you reply, " that is the very
reason, the unanswerable reason why I must abolish
Christianity." Now practical men have a right to
expect that if you go about to abolish Christianity,
you must take up your ground of assault where you
entirely disagree, not entirely agree with its precepts.
If as a Mormonite maintaining the rightfulness of
polygamy you advocated the abolition of Christianity,
which forbids it as a sin, there would be, and there
would appear some consistency in your argument.
But an anti-polygamist working to overthrow Chris
tianity, because it also condemns polygamy, would,
to non-philosophers, be an unintelligible contradic
tion. They would instantly demand, " Why from
that very point in which you profess yourself a
Christian do you impugn Christianity ?"
Inf. Suppose, then, such argument not to be ex
actly appropriate from my lips as an anti-polyga
mist ; suppose it to proceed as you say from a Mor
monite. How do you refute it ?
Chr. I am arguing with an Infidel, not a Mor
monite. I am an Anglican Churchman, you are an
Infidel. Let us keep to what we really are, and not

296 MONOGAMY AND POL Y GAMY.
assume other people's parts and characters. A Mor
monite takes different ground from you. He asserts
polygamy to be either unabolished by Christianity,
or to be a privilege granted by the Lord to His pecu
liar saints in these latter days, themselves. What
ever Mormonism be, depravity, ignorance, or kna
very, it is not Infidelity.
Inf. It strikes me, however, that the argument
would, in another person's mouth — a Turk's, for in
stance — be irrefutable. Are you judicious in avoid
ing it ?
Chr. It is not my intention to do so. I thus far
only desired to show in what a contradictory character
Infidelity stands forth to the world as a reformer or
a subverter of Christianity. It could not answer the
first simple question put to it by any head of a
family. Let us now grapple with the objection itself.
Christianity and Judaism, you aver, in the matter of
polygamy contradict each other ; both, therefore,
cannot be of Divine authority. No matter which is
false ; if one is, both are. This is, I think, the pith
of your argument.
Inf. It is.
Chr. First, then, I concede that if Judaism be a
false religion, Christianity is so also — and if Chris
tianity be false, Judaism is so also.
Inf. You concede also that Christianity prohibits
polygamy. Chr. It does.
Inf. And that Judaism did not condemn it?
Chr. It did not.
Inf. Which was wrong ?

MONOGAMY AND POLYGAMY. 297
Chr. Neither.
Inf. Prove how, of two contradictories, one is not
wrong. Chr. Where is the contradiction between polyga
my and monogamy ? In what does it consist ?
Inf. Why, in every point.
Chr. Specify.
Inf. In the very fact of two wives, which is in
itself a contradiction.
Chr. According to your Deity, Nature ?
Inf. I think so.
Chr. Nature then can, it seems, when it suits
philosophy, be in perfect accord with Christianity.
But here I believe you wrest nature somewhat to
your own preconceptions, or rather to your uncon
scious reception of the teachings of Christianity.
What does " polygamy" in itself mean ?
Inf. It means marriage with many wives at one
time. Chr. And bigamy ?
Inf. With two wives.
Chr. And monogamy ?
Inf. With one wife at one time.
Chr. In each and every case, then, it is marriage.
What constitutes marriage ?
Inf. A sacred vow of fidelity mutually plighted
to each other by the respective parties.
Chr. What makes it " sacred ?"
Inf. Its attestation by some holy rite before God.
Chr. Is no other union than that which God Him
self witnesses and consecrates, matrimony or mar
riage ? 13a

298 MONOGAMY AND POLYGAMY.
Inf. I should say not — it may be an union of some
kind, but not marriage.
Chr. What say you then to our poor-house and
registrar " unions," — to mere civil unions, — are they
marriages at all?
Inf. They are civil contracts, civilly binding —
nothing more — they were not, I infer, intended to be
more than civilly binding on either party.
Chr. Who made these civil contracts binding ?
Inf. The State.
Chr. Had it right and power to do so ?
Inf. Power it had, or it could not have done it.
A civil right of making them civilly binding it also
had. Chr. Had the State the same right of making a
contract between one man and two, or three, or ten
women, as binding as it has already made this con
tract between one man and one woman ?
Inf. The State?
Chr. Yes — the State, simply as the State, Pagan,
Infidel, or Mohammedan.
Inf. Yes — any State, simply as the State, has the
right of making a union between one man and one
hundred women as civilly binding as between one
man and one woman. Most States — the Christian
excepted — do so.
Chr. Was polygamy a civil bond among the Jews ?
Inf. If I answer " yes," you will demand, " What
had it then to do with their religion any more than
our civil union-house contracts have to do with the
Church of Christ among us ?"
Che. Perhaps I should.

MONOGAMY AND POLYGAMY. 299
Inf. I will confine myself to the statement that
whether it was only civil, or something more than
civil, it was not condemned as sinful in itself by their
religion. Chr. I have admitted as much. So far, then, as
the civil power is in question, the Jewish civil polity
had the same right as any other in ancient or
modern nations, to legalize polygamy. Now enters
the religion of the argument. Polygamy, as we
saw, infers marriage, and therefore sacred vows in
contradistinction to mere civil engagements. When
the man pledges the same sacred vows to ten instead
of one, is that act an extension of or a contradiction
to marriage?
Inf. Your proposition is, that the extension of
. sacred vows was as valid between one man and any
number of women among the Jews, as the limitation
of sacred vows to one man and one woman is among
Christians. Circumstances create the social, as Di
vine commands constitute the only moral, difference
between the single and plural species of marriage.
Chr. I am replying to your objection affirming
that, in the matter of polygamy, a contradiction
exists between Judaism and Christianity. The word
contradiction is a misnomer. Limitation and exten
sion are, in this case, the proper terms to be applied.
The sacred vows which Jacob plighted to Rachel
were the same as he plighted to Leah : the hand
maidens of Leah and Rachel were inclusions, and so
understood, within the same sanctities. Had Jacob
trespassed beyond this circle, he would have been an
adulterer: within it he was none. The same rea-

300 LIMITATION AND EXPANSION.
soiling applies to the instances of David, Solomon,
and others, with whom the marriage-tie consisted in
the obligation of sacred vows between many women
and one man : with us it is between one woman and
one man. The change forms a limitation or concen
tration, but no contradiction — and the difference here
between Judaism and Christianity resolves itself into
that readjustment, which every one concedes, of one
and the same law : under certain circumstances ex
panding, under others contracting, its operations.
Inf. Supply me with an illustration of your prin
ciple. Chr. Circumcision, as a covenant- sacrament, was
a limitation to the Jewish people. Baptism is an
extension of the same sacrament to all nations.
The paschal sacrifice was a limitation within Pales
tine : the Eucharist is its extension over the whole
world. The Temple of God's name and presence was
a limitation within Jerusalem : its extension in the
form of Christian Churches pervades all countries.
The peculiar people were a limitation between the
Mediterranean and the Euphrates : their spiritual
extension embraces all nations, peoples, and races.
On the other hand, as every previously-limited
blessing became thus in Christ a catholic extension,
so the moral purities became proportionably con
tracted or intensified. Judaism forbade adultery.
Christianity forbids its source — in the volition or
spirit. Judaism forbade divorce without a legal
document of divorce. Christianity forbids it alto
gether, except for adultery. Judaism forbade false
swearing : Christianity forbids swearing itself. Ju-

LIMITATION AND EXPANSION OF LAW. 301
daism forbade excessive retaliation : Christianity for
bids retaliation altogether. Judaism forbade hating
a neighbor : Christianity forbids any man to be
hated. These precepts are all limitations of previ
ous extensions. The extension of the marriage state
was in the same way limited or contracted by our
Lord to what it had originally been in the begin
ning — in Paradise. The restitution of the Paradise
law exacted correspondent Paradise purity of soul.
Christians live under this code of the Restoration,
and so far from seeing any contradiction between
the expansion and limitation of the same law, we
regard the Gospel as that expansion to which the
law, by its very limitation, was provisional.
Inf. Polygamy now, then, is a sin.
Chr. Certainly.
Inf. Everywhere?
Chr. Everywhere — for every precept of Christ is
Catholic, everywhere obligatory.
Inf. Nevertheless it seems that our British State,
which permits something worse than polygamy — ¦
unions of man and woman without any recognition
whatever of God in the matter — punishes bigamy as
a transportable offence. How is that ?
Chr. The State, not the Church, is responsible for
the absurdities and inconsistencies of State legisla
tion. I should heartily pity the woman who formed
an alliance with any man on State principles, which,
if adopted by the people of England, would inevit
ably reduce our whole female population to a more
godless condition than even that of the Moham
medan women — quod Di avertant !

302 LAW OF LIMITATION AND EXPANSION.
Inf. Still it strikes me that any variation in moral
principle must be tantamount to a contradiction or a
violation. Chr. Is a provisional government a contradiction
to the government which it precedes as provisional?
Inf. No.
Chr. The Jews married two or ten wives ?
Inf. Yes.
Chr. Christians marry one?
Inf. Yes.
Chr. In Heaven " they neither marry nor are
given in marriage." Marriage does not exist in
Heaven. Judaism was provisional to Christianity,
Christianity is provisional to Heaven — Heaven is
the state originally designed for man. As the wheel
of the Church revolves from the depths of the fall
to the heights of Heaven again, its spokes may be
many — the Adamic, Noahic, the patriarchal, the
legal, the prophetic — but its axle is one, Christ, and
all these successions move round Him upward to
the same point from which the fall took place. In
that Heaven the true marriage — here symbolized by
holy wedlock and its children, to symbolize which
marriage was the first sacrament ordained of God
between Christ and his Church, — will fulfil and
supersede its types on earth.
Inf. You speak, I observe, as if we were going
back to Heaven, and as if we were now seeking
things again which we once lost, and which are
waiting our recovery of them.
Chr. Yes. The things we lost are those we are
seeking to recover — innocence, happiness, angelic

HEAVEN  THE ANTERIOR STATE. 303
communion, Heaven, God. They have never moved :
it is we who have moved from the fold and gone
astray ; where they ever were they still are ; we are
not where we were ; our whole struggle is to return
where God at first placed us : that being once effect
ed in Christ, the second Adam, all the rest which
God designed for Adam in his original position, will
follow as of course — -immortality, happiness, the eter
nity of the Divine union. The Heaven I regain is
the Heaven I lost: the Heaven before me is that
far behind from which I fell. It is one Heav
en, and all the types of its things in the Church
refer to its existence before as well as after the
world. We are driven by sin and the sword of
judgment from the western gate of Paradise: we
wander on and on, pilgrims from it, ever remember
ing it, always looking back towards it. When our
steps are farthest from it, at its very antipodes,
Christ baptizes us — in Christ we continue walking,
till, having compassed the round of this world of
time, we come back again to the opposite and eastern
gate, where Christ, and not the sword, is : there by
Him received, and again paradised, we re-enter upon
the possessions we ourselves had by sin lost, and by
just judgment had been disinherited from. Thus we
consider all law, Divine and human, in this world to
be merely provisional : it is a substitute for the time
being for that Love which is the only law of Heaven ;
merely a substitute, nothing more : now indispensa
ble, hereafter incapable of existence, swallowed up,
like all things else, in the victory of Christ and Love.
The sacrament of the Eucharist thus, for instance,

304 ALL LAW PROVISIONAL TO HEAVEN.
lifts us above the law of present things, into that
only law of the Church which prevailed before, and
will prevail after all things, present and provisional,
have passed away. As the children of God, this
love is the only law we can live in : as inheritors of
heaven, it is the only feeling the soul can rightly
exist in : as members of each other, it is the only
affection which the soul can rightly feel towards
other Christians. The altar-unity of Christ being
broken in the Church on earth, it thereby ceases to
be the reflection of the Church that from everlasting
was, and from everlasting will be, in Heaven : they
that break that unity of love on earth, must of ne
cessity fail of that Church in Heaven, which ever
has been, and ever will be, and never can be any
thing else than this very unity of love which they
violate. Of this same love between Christ and the
soul of the Church, holy matrimony is the sacra
mental symbol : its sanctity consists, not merely in
itself, as the present law of God to us, but in that
which it symbolizes as the law eternal of God — the
love and union of Christ with the soul, and of the
soul with Christ. The realization of this, which will
take place in Heaven, will constitute that perfect
union of the immortal soul with its only source of
happiness, its only object of love, which marriage is
now given us of God in our present state sacrament-
ally to represent, and ever remind us of. The sym
bol expires where the reality is — in Heaven. For
this cause also right-minded Christians have in all
ages guarded with extreme jealousy the sacramental
revelations of the Church: what they show to the

MAN NOT AN ISOLATION. 305
senses is of nature and of time, but what they sym
bolize to the soul is of God and eternity.
Inf. You thus will not permit man to be an isola
tion in any respect.
Chr. No : is Nature an isolation from God ? Is
any part of nature or its laws an isolation from any
other part ? Are nations, hearts, minds, knowledges,
isolations from each other? Is it possible, then, for
the soul to be isolated and disconnected from its
Creator, or from the laws of its own eternity ?
Inf. But that Creator, and that eternity, I must
observe, are represented to us by the sacraments and
Scriptures of the Church in such a light as to compel
me to withhold my assent from the claims of the
Church to a Divine origin. Now Nature is my God :
the laws of Nature are to me the only revelation of
God. But when I read in your Scriptures that God
commanded the Israelites to exterminate — not all
nations, as Newman asserts — but even the Canaan
ites, I affirm them to falsify the character of God.
From such a deity, if my soul cannot, yet it would
gladly be isolated. Such a merciless command
never could have issued from a merciful God.
Chr. Your reasoning is, God is merciful : this
command is merciless, therefore not from God.
Inf. Exactly.
Chr. Whence, in the first place, do you derive
your evidence that God is merciful ?
Inf. Your own Scriptures everywhere affirm it.
Chr. The same Scriptures represent him also as
a God of justice, and the extermination of the Ca
naanites as an act of justice. If justice and mercy

306 THE LAWS OF GOD AND OF NATURE IDENTICAL.
were irreconcilable qualities, such as could not co
exist in the same Being, some appearance of weight
might attach to your objection. At present I see
none. A sovereign power in one case pardons ; the
same sovereign power, in another case, permits jus
tice to take its course. What exercise, of sovereignty,
under any constitution, is of more frequent occur
rence ? Because the Crown, in many instances, en
forces the law of death against capital criminals, does
it follow that the Queen herself is a merciless being ?
or that, with reference to the welfare of all classes in
her dominions, such enforcement is contrary to the
soundest principles of mercy ? What individuals are
to her civilly, nations are to God — for, as we said,
nations must receive judgment in this world. Mur
derers are hanged ; is the Queen herself a murderess,
because, under her, the law hangs the murderer? or
does the Crown forfeit its characteristic of mercy,
because she refuses to extend its exercise towards
the vilest and most dangerous criminals ? Common-
sense dictates, no. Justice and mercy are attributes,
the several actions of which may exist in perfect
harmony in the same person. The extirpation of
the Canaanites is an example of the justice of the
Almighty upon a criminal nation, which no more
impugns His mercy, than the execution of a hard
ened and blood-stained assassin would militate
against the clemency of an earthly king. If you
adduce the Scriptures as your authority for God
being merciful, you must admit them also as author
ity for God being really and truly just. The de
struction of the Canaanites was an act of simple

GOD IN SCRIPTURE AND IN NATURE. 307
justice, under the law against national sins : instead
of falsifying, it is in perfect keeping with every idea
of the Almighty as a just and holy God. Against
the vindication of such law by any powers or instru
ments the Almighty is pleased to select, not a word
can be said which would not disqualify every human
government from vindicating its own laws, by the
hands of such executioners as it pleased to appoint
— axemen, soldiers, hangmen — on the head of law
less and abandoned desperadoes. The utmost which
can be objected is, " God might have displaj'ed His
mercy on the Canaanites :" well, He did so for four
hundred years — a longer time, I think, than any
other nation in the records of history, has been per
mitted to remain utterly corrupt and demoralized,
without being also denationalized and destroyed.
His mercy found no response. He then proceeded
to judgment, and exterminated them by the hands
of His executioners the Jews. His right to do so is
not questioned, but you assert that an entire over
looking of the national vice and turpitude would be
more in unison with your idea of the character of God.
It may be with yours, but not with ours. Justice,
not mercy, is certainly the first element of all govern
ment, of all public and private morality. It would,
therefore, on the contrary, appear to me very sus
picious if the records of Divine government supplied
us with no examples of justice without mercy, as it
does of innumerable instances of justice superseded
by mercy.
Inf. There is, nevertheless, something extremely
harrowing in the supposition of a whole nation swept

308 GOD IN SCRIPTURE AND LN NATURE.
off by Divine injunction ; the heart refuses to assign
such a command to God.
Chr. Because your heart, though professing itself
not a Christian, has been moulded under the general
impressions of that faith which presents the Almighty
to us as the God — not of justice, but of Infinite
Mercy in Christ. Such impression is correct. But,
if you can, try to separate God from Christ ; then
give your reasons for the impression that God is
Mercy, not Justice.
Inf. I derive it from Nature itself — the beauty of
creation, the revolution of the seasons, the faculties
of mind and body, the sense of enjoyment, the appe
tite for so many various pursuits of happiness, the
pleasures emanating from the very consciousness of
existence and health — all, and many more, being such
reasons as are insisted upon in your pulpits as proofs
of the goodness and loving mercy of God.
Chr. Which amount to this — that, whatever of
good or of happiness we in our present state experi
ence, we are indebted for its existence and enjoyment
to God, as the Author of our being in this state.
That is evident. Are you, upon the same ground,
indebted to Him for whatever of pain, misfortune,
and evil affects you in the same state ?
Inf. What say you yourself?
Chr. I, being a Christian, know that nothing
which comes to me in Christ from God can be aught
else than good. But outside of Christ, what say you,
as an Infidel, on the natural argument? If Nature
tells you that He is the Author of your good, as you

GOD IN SCRIPTURE AND IN NATURE. 309
define good, does she tell you that He is also the
Author of your evil, as you define evil ; for on the
truth of these definitions the whole question really
revolves ? If she does not, she does not oppose the
voice of revelation. If she does, then which pre
ponderates — the evil or the good, the misery or the
happiness? on that preponderance depends the moral
character of your deity according to Nature, or what
you deem Nature.
Inf. But that question constitutes the profoundest
investigation of philosophy.
Chr. Why should it, if Nature be plain on the
point ? But Nature is, if possible, more than Scrip
ture, the crux philosophorum. When called upon to
interpret it, they are much in the position of Bel-
shazzar's astrologers with regard to the writing on the
wall ; the wall is plain enough, but the writing there
on is not — it is inexplicable. You, as an Infidel, hold
neither man nor nature to be fallen : yet you state
nature itself proves to you this goodness and mercy
of God. Where, I demand, are these attributes,
when He, being almighty as well as good, permits
such a vast amount of bodily pain and mental
misery to descend upon, and from generation to gen
eration afflict, creatures not sinful or fallen ? Is that
justice, much less goodness ? Observe the conclu
sion, with reference to God, to which your denial of
the sinful nature of man immediately conducts your
natural argument. If you hold man's sinlessness,
man's misery compels you to infer God neither good
nor just — therefore no God at all.

310 GOD IN SCRIPTURE AND IN NATURE.
Inf. There is an immense deal of misery of every
kind, social, individual, corporeal, spiritual, in this
world of ours.
Chr. Does any thing in man deserve or engender
it ? If not, what say you of God who permits it — is
that goodness ?
Inf. Frankly, no.
Chr. You absolve man, then, at the expense of
God, or rather by utterly destroying any conception
of a God. Is this the result of your argument of
Nature? Does it not sound, at the best, superla
tively unnatural and unreasonable? — the creature
righteous, yet a sufferer ; the Creator evil, in fact, a
heartless tyrant towards his own creature. This, I
apprehend, is the reverse of the induction intended :
you prove by nature God not merciful, but worse
than merciless.
Inf. You wish me to concede the fallen nature of
man. Chr. You see the direct consequence of denying
it, it will not permit you to advance another step in
your philosophy, except by binding you to maintain
that greatest of absurdities, that the creature is more
righteous than the Creator — man more sinless than
the Almighty. It leaves you without even the no
tion of a God. Satan himself comes nearer than any
senseless heathen idol to the idea at which you thus
arrive. You do not intend this frightful inference ;
but what shall we think of the "intellect" of such
Infidelity? Admit man's nature to be one of sin;
grant misery in some form or other to be the in
evitable development and seeding of sin ; call this

GOD IN SCRIPTURE AND IN NATURE. 311
seeding the law against sin — such law is just ; nature
and man himself, in all the laws he himself enacts,
testify to its justice ; God who decreed such connection
between sin and misery comes then before us in
no new character, but simply as not interfering
between such laws and their operation on man. In
Christ He does interfere ; but that is mercy. Prayer
will cause Him to interfere, and ever show this
mercy. The Christian, therefore, believes all the
good he enjoys to be the gift of God ; but more, he
knows all the misery he suffers to be, as its seed, in
sin ; this suffering he considers just, because sin is
disobedience to that law of God which is holy, just,
and good. ' For mercy he looks to God from another
point and in another character than that of his first
or natural birth. Now I do not say, " Believe this ;"
I only say, this theory is consistent with itself and
in harmony with all its parts ; all things under it
seem to fall at once into their right places ; it ac
counts for men and the world as they are ; it forces
us to feel that we are governed by a sovereign who
has never tolerated wickedness with impunity : that
our own sinfulness has not been incurred without a
present and a fearful penalty upon our souls and
bodies ; our very suffering proves the sceptre over us
to be of unfaltering and unswerving righteousness.
That very righteousness again being pledged to us,
and our salvation in Christ becomes to us as equally
unfaltering a guarantee for the mercy, as out of
Christ, it is seen and acknowledged to be, of the
justice of God. The assurance of the righteousness
of God in His justice is made to us the confirmation

312 GOD IN SCRIPTURE AND IN NATURE.
of His righteousness in the truth of His mercy.
Thus the more holy we believe God, the surer also
we believe His love to us in Christ. If we suffer for
sin justly as men, as justly shall such suffering cease
forever in us as members of Christ. But what
superstructure of any philosophy at all can you in
this matter erect on the basis of Infidelity ? Some
such process of reasoning as you have attempted led
the Manichseans in old times to conclude Satan him
self to be God : some such leads the modern Hin
doos to worship idols with the imputed properties of
Satan. Why ? they first deified themselves as sinless ;
but reasoned they, " We suffer a thousand evils : being
sinless we suffer unjustly and unmeritedly ; he who in
flicts, permits, or connives at our miseries, must be a
being delighting himself in the pains of others — the
evil one. Nevertheless we are manifestly in his
power, we are at his mercy ; we must propitiate, we
must worship him ; sinless and innocent as we are,
we must adore this cruel and evil being." This
terrible error rose from the false premise, that man is
not a fallen nature. Acknowledging no sin in them
selves, men knew not in what light to regard the
Supreme Power which thus permitted sinlessness to
be a perpetual sufferer. The same inferences lay
latent in the whole system of Pelagianism, which has
partly for this reason undergone severer denuncia
tions than many forms of less obnoxious heathenism
itself from the councils of the Church. This species of
Infidelity thus ends, not in simply disbelieving God,
but by some astounding infatuation of "Infidel in
tellect" placing Satan himself on the throne of God.

GOD IN SCRIPTURE AND IN NATURE. 313
Inf. Oh ! you assign results to Infidelity not ne
cessarily involved in it.
Chr. "Pure infidelity" — belief in nothing — does
not exist. Relative Infidelity infers positive belief
in the contraries of Christianity. When Christianity
teaches " there is a God," Infidelity, by demurring,
means, " I believe something else than what Chris
tianity does to be God." What that is, it never is
able to give us any idea of.
Inf. It is, as I have repeatedly said, Nature.
Chr. Yes, and as you have repeatedly exemplified,
a nature of which the divinity vanishes at the first
touch of the finger of a Christian child. Let us enter
more practically into an analysis of this deity of In
fidelity. Whatever visibly exists is either nature or
artificialized from nature, — is that so ?
Inf. It is, what then —
" Est Deus quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris" —
the Universe is God — Nature in its plenitude is God.
Chr. Just so. And if so, every part of the uni
verse is part of God, every creature in nature is part
of God. A tiger is nature — is a tiger part of God ?
Inf. Ridiculous.
Chr. Not a whit more so than the whole system
of Pantheism, which thus makes nature God. If
nature be God, why deride the Egyptians, who, as
Pantheists, consistently worshipped the basest beasts
in nature ? The African negroes worship, some a
stone, some a monkey, some a venomous snake, each
its own fetisn. If nature be God, such worship is
logically due and right — a stone being part of nature
14

314 GOD IN SCRIPTURE AND IN NATURE.
is thus part of God : stone-worship, beast-worship,
block-worship, reptile-worship, is not idolatry, but
sound philosophy.
Inf. Nature is the only true deity, but whether in
her meanest aspects or creations she should be wor
shipped, is a distinct question.
Chr. For whom? for philosophers ? It is certainly
none for a Christian. Questionable whether a man
may worship a rat, a toad, a lizard ! The absurdity
is not in your inference, which is logically correct,
but in the premise, that nature is the deity. If it be
so, Pantheism is the true religion ; every thing in
nature being instinct with deity, may, perhaps ought,
to be worshipped. The lowest Negro tribes, such as
adore things horrible and not to be named, are, after
all, not idolaters, but practical Pantheists, true logic
al philosophers ; the intellect of infidelity appears
to have attained its brightest lustre here !
Inf. But in despite of the apparent absurdity, why,
nature being deity, should not each man select out
of all nature any part or object he pleases, to wor
ship as the symbol or representative of the whole
deity of nature ?
Chr. If nature be deity, I really do not see why
he should not. Every individual, according to his
taste and mental calibre, Negro, Hottentot, Tartar,
Malay, might exercise his right of private judgment
to the utmost extent in the selection of his gods ;
compared to most of them, a sagacious Newfound
land dog, or the Achilles in Hyde Park, would, I
imagine, be very respectable deities. Now, what
thorough trash, — it deserves no better appellation, — is

PANTHEISM. 315
this Pantheism when reduced from the verbiage of
the German " cloud-mind," to hard, matter-of-fact
practice, as it is in the whole modern idolatrous
world ! The very Negro has absolutely forestalled
in practice the conclusions of the Pantheistic " in
tellects" of Germany. Your table here is loaded
with Infidel productions, most of them, I observe,
originals or translations from the German — not one
idea is there in them which was not thousands of
years ago substantiated and concreted into idolatry
as coarse and foul as the grain and features of its
misshapen images. Nature, exclaims the Pantheist,
is God. Try it ; here is your cat, pure beast-nature ;
ask your servant to worship it. Reduce your Pan
theism, as whole nations have done it, to practice.
Your servant being unfortunately a common-minded
English Christian, would probably resent the request
by dispatching the innocent emblem of Pantheistic
nature through the open door yonder with his anti-
pantheistic foot. Nevertheless worse things than
this domestic and serviceable animal have been
adored by nations of Pantheists : we call them
idolaters ; for idolatry is nothing else than practical
Pantheism. Infidel intellect it seems has not, apart
from Christianity, in the nineteenth century, ad
vanced further or soared higher than the fetishism
of barbarian Africa.
Inf. But this is sarcasm, not argument.
Chr. Far from it. If much of the Infidelity of the
day be Pantheism, or, as you word it, the notion that
nature is the only deity, then is it in principle, and
would be in honest practice, the vile idolatry of old

316 PANTHEISM.
Egypt and of modern Nigritia. Any thing is God ;
any thing therefore may be worshipped ; what the
thing is, depending on the man's own choice and pre
dilection. Is this the ultima Thule attained by the
navigation of Infidelity on its own card and com
pass? Inf. You assume the most degrading, the Negro
view of Pantheism. Look at Nature — not in her
lowest, but her highest developments, — in an Alex
ander, a Pericles, a Phidias, a Washington.
Chr. Pantheism not in its mere animal, but its
human phase — hero-worship, as it is termed.
Inf. Well, hero-worship : the nature of such heroes
is the highest manifestation of deity with which we
are acquainted ; we know nothing of deity higher
than as it is evolved in such. The deity being nature
and these being the highest natures, it follows they
are the highest ideal or form we have of the Deity.
Chr. So reasoned Syria, Greece, Rome, of old :
their gods were heroes deified ; their religion hero-
worship. Pantheism in this aspect is a plagiarism
from the Greek mythology, a would-be reviver of
the Olympian gods, adding a few moderns after its
own peculiar taste to the catalogue.
Inf. And rightly.
Chr. And this " intellect" ends not where Greece,
but the idolatry of Greece, stood eighteen hundred
years ago, before Paul and Christianity shattered the
miserable system to fragments. Where, my friend,
is the " progress" of your intellect ? It immediately,
when left to itself, sinks down lower than the dark
est of the Dark Ages to " Mars, Bacchus, Apollo,

HERO-WORSHIP. 317
nomina virorum" — great names among school-boys,
and great conquerors no doubt in their day, but not
precisely personages to enact the deity.
Inf. What higher representatives of Nature in her
highest organization have ever existed ? Why, there
fore, should they not represent deity ?
Chr. On pantheistic or idolatrous principles there
is no more reason why they should not to the Greek
or Roman heathen, than why a crocodile or a calf
should not to a Negro heathen. Christians hold
Pantheism in all its forms, from its lowest action in
Boshmen to its highest in ancient Athens, to be un
mitigated idolatry — a prostitution of the immortal
soul to things as inferior to itself as mud is to mind,
or a coal-cellar to the sun. But let us for a moment
suppose nature to be the Deity ; man, the highest
genus of such deity ; and the hero species the highest
species of man. Let us concede with the bluff Spar
tans, " If Alexander wish to be a God, let him be a
God." We will take a modern instance, — Carlyle's
favorite " hero," — Oliver Cromwell. If worshipped
at all, it must be when he is living Oliver Cromwell,
must it not ?
Inf. Why?
Chr. Do you object to the worship of the live hero?
Inf. Few, during their lives, are acknowledged to
be heroes.
Chr. The recognition, it seems then, not the fact,
makes your hero. Cromwell alive on a pedestal, and
England on her knees to him, is too strong an hy
pothesis for the wildest Pantheist. It must be Crom
well dead, then, Cromwell like the Roman emperor

318 HERO-WORSHIP.
after his apotheosis. Infidelity is here again antici
pated in theory and practice.
Inf. The apotheosis would be the recognition of
this hero-being.
Chr. Of the once Oliver Cromwell? How so?
Where, after the dissolution of the material Oliver,
would any Oliver be ; for, as an Infidel, you deny the
immortality of any soul in Oliver? Oliver corporeal,
meanwhile, has resolved into a palmful of dust,
which is really all of Oliver left you to worship.
You will not assert that dust to be the whole of the
once hero ? Where then, or what then, according to
this Pantheism, after death, is the Oliver whom it
would heroize and deify? Nothing mortal or immor
tal but a little dust is left of him. It is not Oliver,
nor a hero, but the sound of the letters by which the
living Oliver was once signified, that your Infidelity
would adore.
Inf. But something not corporeal may have passed
at his dissolution from the " hero" to animate another
being, which, in that other being, is still what once
was the animating principle of Oliver Cromwell.
Chr. Immortal or mortal? Not mortal; other
wise, with Cromwell it would be dissolved. If im
mortal, you abandon Infidelity, and concede a soul
within Cromwell which does not die with Cromwell.
Inf. Being Cromwell once, it may, after his dis
solution, pass into and animate another organization
of the same deity,- — Nature, — remaining still cogni
zant of its previous life in Cromwell, and receiving
emotions of happiness from the apotheosis of its hero
state.

HERO-WORSHIP. 319
Chr. We pass already, then, from the infidelity of
Pantheism to the immortality and metempsychosis
of the soul — the old religion of the East and of Brit
ain, — Pythagoreanism, Buddhism, Druidism. Here,
again, Infidelity is sadly forestalled — " Pereant qui
ante nos — " The modern intellect of your champions
has certainly marvellously little freshness of imagi
nation — nothing more novel than the Bardism of our
British forefathers, nothing half so " splendide men-
dax" as the Metamorphoses of Ovid. This step is,
however, a far higher philosophy, an approximation
towards the truth. Pantheism itself cannot make a
hero without first finding him a soul — that is, with
out ceasing to be Pantheism and becoming Pytha
goreanism. Well, granting this transmissibility of
the psyche or anima of life, where do you transfer
Cromwell's — to some other Cromwell-like man ?
Inf. It is impossible to suggest.
Chr. It may have passed into, and be at this mo
ment, the psyche of some very unheroic creature
indeed ; but whether so or not, it has, at all events,
ceased to be that part of the deity of nature once
known and articulated as Oliver Cromwell. On
either supposition, Pantheism or Druidism, Oliver
has become a nonentity — the hero a vacuum : the
hero-worship the worship of a sound, of sheer nothing
ness — thus literally realizing St. Paul's definition of
an idol, "We know an Eidolon to be — nothing."
This nothingness however is, it seems, the new
" hero" of infidelity-worship. A national school-boy
might pardonably smile at such nonsense.

320 HERO-WORSHIP.
Inf. It reads in these authors very differently to
the light in which you place it.
Chr. I do not doubt it: but in plain English it
is as I have stated. The phraseology of these au
thors is intentionally adopted to obscure the truth
and bewilder the soul. Obscurity of meaning, under
a metaphysical mist of senseless verbiage, is their
strength. Yroung men, therefore, rising from their
perusal as young men will, without reducing their
theories to distinct propositions, though they acquire
no positive knowledge from their writings, neverthe
less imbibe a vague general feeling that Christianity
is not "the thing for superior intellects." For the
masses, for the mediocrities, it is excellent, it is indis
pensable, and must therefore be patronized and sup
ported. But their " intellect" places them above it.
Now on this point of " intellect" the young are
especially touchy : Infidelity gives them the oppor
tunity of claiming it by the easiest of all processes :
they have only to adopt the reasoning — " The rejec
tion of Christianity as inferior to ' Intellect' is a
proof of superior intellect: I reject it as inferior
— therefore I am a superior intellect." Here are no
college examinations to be gone through, but every
young man can, by simply pronouncing himself an
Infidel, raise himself in his own imagination to an
equality with the minds which carry off the honors
and wranglerships of the Universities. Thus there
is established a most comfortable understanding be
tween the man and his " intellect," on principles of
mutual consideration, and charity of no ordinary

hero-worship. 321
kind. By this argument indeed the whole heathen
world — Islamites, Buddhists, Chinese, Savages, Afri
cans — have all the " intellect" entirely to them
selves. Christendom and Christians are the inferior
mind-caste. Is that, think you, the fact ?
Inf. The heathens have never known Christianity.
Chr. Nor has one in a hundred of these men.
We have seen how reckless Newman is in his allega
tions about the very texts of Scripture. It is well
known that the great Infidel of the last century, Vol
taire, confessed he had never in his lifetime read the
New Testament. His attacks upon it were as if a
man who has never mastered the first definitions of
Euclid should spend fifty years in arguing against
mathematics. Inf. I am not amenable to such imputation. Here
is the Bible.
Chr. And here are forty or fifty anti-Bibles.
Which have you studied most — the one or the fifty —
the accused or the accusers ?
Inf. I determined to read both sides, and form my
own conclusions.
Chr. Most fair and judicious. But why confine
the question to one point — that between the books ?
Inf. Explain.
Chr. Christianity is something much broader,
much higher than the Bible. Christianity is the liv
ing presence of God in Christ — of God the Holy
Spirit — in the spirits of men. He comes to and
dwells in these spirits by ways of which the Bible is
only a record, or at best but a mental or literary chan
nel. The Bible cannot preach, baptize, pray, admin-
14*

322 FRAGMENTARY VIEW OF
ister the Eucharist, or the ordinances, or be the liv
ing priest or the living Church to any man. It was
never intended of Christ to be such — it was to His
living priesthood, not to the New Testament written
thirty years afterwards by certain members of that
priesthood, He said, " Go, teach and baptize all na
tions — I am with you always." To confound the
province of the Bible, as the record of the Church,
with the living Church itself is the great error
of all schismatics. I would have the Bible in
the hands of every Christian, as I would have the
Army Manual in the hands of every soldier — but the
Manual is not the army, nor the Bible the Chris
tian Church. As reading the Manual will not make
a soldier ; or Aristotle on poetry, a poet ; or Locke
on logic, a reasoner; or Grotius on statesmanship,
a statesman — so neither will the possession or
reading of the Bible make a Christian. As the
soldier, the poet, the reasoner, the statesman, are,
though readers, something far more and above mere
readers of the Manual, of Aristotle, of Locke, of
Grotius — so is the Christian something much higher
than a mere reader of the Bible. The operation of
the Spirit of God on the souls of men is not limited
to the Bible ; there are higher and more universal
channels of grace which have, in all ages, carried the
work and blessing of God with them on the nations
which received them. Europe, for instance, was
converted by the Church, not by the Bible — the
modern savage is converted by the missionary, not
by the Scriptures. And this is strictly in accordance
with the way and promise of Christ ; were it other-

CHRISTIANITY BY INFIDELS. 323
wise, what need of the organization of the Church,
of bishops, priests, deacons, missionaries, at all, when
dead print and paper could as well do the work now
consigned and commanded, and only blessed by
Christ when done by living souls to living souls?
But Infidelity does not seem capable of viewing
Christianity in other than two of its aspects — its Bible
and its Priesthood. On these, as I suppose, its most
vulnerable points, you manoeuvre the whole hostile
forces at your command. If you can hit upon appar
ent literary contradictions in the former, or point to
moral contradictions between profession and prac
tice in the latter, you deem the question with Chris
tianity itself settled. Now the truth of Christianity,
as the power and will of God to the soul of man, does
not, in the first place, depend on the perfect accu
racy, or supposed inaccuracy of the writings of Sts.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, James.
Could errors be detected in them, they would no more
affect the truths of the religion under the inspiration
of which they wrote, than the errors in the ephemeris
of astronomers affect the truths of the science
under the teaching and discoveries of which they
write. Could Infidelity, by any means prove errors
in the record, it would still, before it succeeded in
affecting the truth of God Himself, have to encounter
and explain the Power of God carrying out this
truth in the conversion of ages and nations without
the record. Extinguish the Scriptures entirely,
which convey to us the knowledge of the fact that
Christ said to His Church, " I am with you always,"
the truth and power of that Promise is not extin-

324 FRAGMENTARY VIEW OF
guished with the extinction of its record. The record
might perish : Christ Himself would still be with
His Church, would still prepare its way, and turn the
hearts of men to the wisdom of salvation. The Scrip
tures, or the records of the Church, were for ages
comparatively unknown to the world ; but the action
and ordinances of Christ and His salvation have
never for a moment ceased their career, or failed of
their promised effect. The transference of the power
and glory of Christ Himself to the written record of
the Church, is as gross a sin on the part of schis
matics, as is the same transference by the Roman
Catholic Church to the mother of Jesus Christ.
Their Bibliolatry, indeed, is a lower species of idol
atry, because it degrades Christ more than Mariolatry
does. The Roman Catholic gives the glory of Christ
to the Virgin Mother, the schismatic to the Book of
his disciples : of the two, the latter is the worse er
ror — a book is inferior to a woman ; and to idolatrize
a book is worse than to idolatrize a woman. Nor, in
the second place, does the truth of Christianity, as the
Spiritual Power of God, depend on the moral or
immoral lives of its ministers, any more — to follow up
our first illustration — than the truths of astronomy
depend on the moral or immoral characters of Gal
ileo, Newton, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Hinde. Sup
posing all the astronomers who have ever lived to
have been morally objectionable characters, the sub
lime realities of astronomy itself would remain as
true as ever. The immorality of man does not affect
the reality of either the physical or spiritual Truths
of God. It may, and often does, turn those realities

CHRISTIANITY BY INFIDELS. 325
against himself, but it does not destroy them. All
men may be liars, says St. Paul ; their being so would
in no degree affect the existence of any one of the
truths of God. What should we think of the mariner
who, because many men of science have been also
men of vicious indulgences, refused to use the com
pass which science has discovered ? The sailor prac
tically exclaims, " The morals of scientific men have
nothing to do between me and my compass. Is the
compass they have found and given me in itself true
and trustworthy ? I sail and navigate, not by their
morals, but by their compass." So Infidelity may
readily prove that thousands of Christians, priests
and laymen indifferently, — for that which excludes a
priest, will exclude also a layman from heaven, their
baptismal vow being one and the same to the Lord
of Heaven, — have led base and objectionable lives
— how does that admitted fact touch the truth of
Christianity itself? The objection, indeed, refutes
itself. For how know you such lives to be sinful
and immoral ? Where is your standard of j udgment ?
" Oh !" you reply, " Christianity itself." Thus it is
by the teaching of Christianity itself, that the ob
jector is enabled to ascertain what is in accordance,
what is not, with sound morality. Christianity is
the light by which your eye thus sees ; because it
exposes sad flaws in men professing Christianity, you
strangely turn round upon the light itself, as if it were
the cause of the very deficiencies it reveals, and which,
without its beams, would perhaps appear very virtues
and excellencies to the darkness of your natural mind.
Inf. But there ought to be uniformity between a
Christian's profession and his life.

326 PROFESSION AND PRACTICE.
Chr. What Christian denies so trite a truism?
But you are not, I think, aware of the admission
involved in your dictum. Why should there be
uniformity in a Christian's life and practice ?
Inf. It stands to reason there ought to be agree
ment between a man's religion and his practice of it.
Chr. Does it so? Let us see. An East Indian
Thug professes murder as the sacrament of his reli
gion. The religion of murder by strangulation, as
a sacrifice to the goddess Khalya, is his profession.
Ought his practice to agree with his profession ?
Inf. How can you propose such a question ?
Chr. On the general principle you lay down of
consistency between every man's religious profession
and practice ; why should it not ?
Inf. Because the practice is murder.
Chr. His profession does not consider it such :
with him it is religion, not murder. The fact is
notorious. Inf. His religion is a lie, and the practice of it a
high crime.
Chr. You would not extend toleration to it ?
Inf. I would exterminate it.
Chr. Without mercy ?
Inf. Without mercy; for it would be the extrem-
est cruelty to India to tolerate for a day such a mur
derous religion as Thugism.
Chr. And if all India were abandoned to Thug
ism — seeing a nation wholly corrupt cannot be cor
rected and reformed by aught of good in itself — how
would you proceed then against Thugism ?
Inf. Asia and the world must be saved from the
extension of so destructive and pernicious a super-

PROFESSION AND PRACTICE. 327
stition. We must undertake its destruction our
selves. Chr. But we are not Indians — we are foreigners
and conquerors in India.
Inf. What of that? It is incumbent on every
nation to extirpate a superstition, which, if not sum
marily dealt with, would depopulate the earth.
Chr. It appears to me, then, that you are quite
prepared to re-enact and justify, in the nineteenth
century, the wars of Joshua and the Israelites against
the Canaanites and their murderous religion in old
time — only the Jews professed to act under special
commission from God : you, thinking such commis
sion superfluous against Thugism, are ready to pro
ceed on your own authority. How soon the Infidel
becomes the self-commissioned Joshua ! But we will
pass that by as a very common incident in Infidel
history. If the Thug's religion and practice were
consistent, you would order such a thorough-grained
miscreant to be hanged — as they do hang them — on
the first tree.
Inf. Certainly — all nations, all laws, would sanc
tion the execution.
Chr. Again. In the Feejee and other Polynesian
Islands cannibalism is openly and undisguisedly a
profession: an invitation to a stranger lo a cannibal
feast is the highest, mark of distinction which can be
paid him. What is here to be condemned, if it be
not the consistency between a horrible profession
and a horrible practice ?
Inf. Proceed.
Chr. Let us return home. In our English cities

328 PROFESSION AND PRACTICE.
there are thousands of unhappy creatures avowing
as their profession theft and prostitution. The hor
ror here again consists in the agreement of their
practice with their profession. The commencement
of reformation would consist in the first act of down
right inconsistency between the two.
Inf. Evidently.
Chr. We should pronounce the man mad who
praised a professed bravo, burglar, courtezan, canni
bal, for living in keeping with his or her profession.
The brutality and shame lie in the very fact that,
however fearful the profession is, the individual's
practice is in consistency with it.
Inf. That position cannot be questioned.
Chr. Does it, then, stand to reason that there
should universally be consistency between a man's
profession and his practice ?
Inf. Clearly not universally.
Chr. You would think it a good sign, if any one
of these individuals began to act contrary to his pro
fession. Take, again, the Turk. He, acting in per
fect consistency with his religion, purchases human
beings for money, destroys all statues and paintings,
spits upon all Giaours, and would, if he dare, thrust
his sword into the man who refuses the Koran. Which
would be right, consistency or inconsistency between
faith and practice ih his case ?
Inf. Inconsistency.
Chr. Why, again, in all ages, have very many
men, in all false religions, been better than their
religions? It is because they were fortunately the
very reverse of being consistent with their profes-

PROFESSION AND PRACTICE. 329
sions — professions, the honor of which was " in the
breach, not the observance." Now, how comes it
that you would, in all these and similar cases, account
inconsistency a virtue, but that you impute it to a
Christian as a scandal and reproach ?
Inf. I see your scope.
Chr. The beauty and holiness of Christianity as
the standard and guide of human life are thus the
very things you take for granted, before you can urge
the Christian's inconsistency in practice with such a
profession as a reproach to himself. For the moral
or spiritual knowledge, which enables the Infidel to
address a reproach to a Christian, he is himself
indebted to the light of Christianity. The truth,
then, is this — the more contradictory every man's
practice is to a false profession or religion in that
wherein it is false, the better for that man's nature.
The more contradictory it is to the only true, the
only elevating religion, the worse and more disgrace
ful is it to his nature. Your objection, therefore, to
Christianity, on the score of inconsistency of life
in Christians, subverts your Infidelity. For why
should a Christian be a Christian, or inconsistency
in practice with Christianity in profession be a re
proach, except on the ground that Christianity is
indeed that God-delivered law, between which and
the life of our souls there should be as little incon
sistency as possible ? Your objection assumes this :
what becomes, then, of your Infidelity ? But further,
should you, foreseeing this necessary inference, hark
back, the form of the question would stand thus : —
you, as an Infidel, believe Christianity an impo-

330 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PEOPLES.
sition : you reproach a Christian for not being what
he professes, for not acting up to the full require
ments of the imposition. How is it that you, who
hold that every Christian professes a falsehood, blame
him because his life is not in agreement with such
falsehood ? Should you not rather, on your admis
sion made above, approve and praise him? Where,
herein, is your own consistency as an Infidel ?
Inf. I must abandon this ground of opposition as
untenable. But I still insist that men are deterred
from being Christians, more by the unchristian lives
of professing Christians, than by all other causes
united. Chr. Weak men are ; men who fear but do not
wish Christianity true, are ; men who desire an ex
cuse for not being Christians, are ; but all these and
other such-like minds are after all few and unim
portant, in comparison with the vast masses in all
ages whose common-sense has informed them that
the reproach of a man not acting like a Christian is
the most universal of all confessions to the truth,
the obligations, and the necessity of Christianity
itself. Yet none of these robust, strait-thinking,
uncloseted multitudes ever expected a Christian to
be without inconsistencies, or alleged such inconsist
encies as an argument against the faith. Why?
Christianity, itself, by one of its first doctrines, that
every man is in many things a defaulter, enabled them
to point to every one liable to such reproach, to every
man, that is, without exception as a proof of — what?
— of the untruthfulness ? — no — of the universal truth
fulness of the religion which had thus forewarned

CHRISTIANITY AND THE PEOPLES. 331
and pre-instructed them. Suppose, therefore, appar
ent discrepancies here and there in a record extending
over four thousand years ; let the precise line of de-
markation between the fallibility and infallibility of
the apostles and evangelists be as yet in duhio; let
every priest be denounced as a spiritual bugbear to
the laity ; let the priesthood of Christ itself be pro
scribed as an imposition, a conspiracy, or " a craft,"
yet here are the enormous masses of your favorite
human nature content from century to century to
become, to believe, to live, and die as Christians ;
each conscious to himself of more or less inconsist
ency between his life and the holy faith he pro
fesses ; each in his heart believing and revering that
holy religion the more from the very distance between
his practice and the holiness of its commands. Drop
therefore the Scriptures and the priesthood. Answer
the laities, answer the peoples. Objections to the
Bible and the priesthood have been pretty much the
same in all ages ; but with the peoples they have
never told against Christianity itself; they have in
deed only elicited increased efforts to obtain a better
executive, a more active administration of the pure
religion itself. How come the objections which the
peoples have always treated with practical contempt
to carry any weight with philosophers ? How comes
philosophy itself to be the thing practically most
despised, and Infidelity the thing practically most
abhorred and feared by the peoples ? Here we have,
as you observed, the millions of the Continent, and
of England, wholly or partially devoting fifty-two
days in the year to the sanctifying of one only of the

332 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PEOPLES.
great ordinances of Christianity. Let philosophy try
to get them together one such day, it cannot ; the
peoples in fact despise it, why ? — because all that is
worth having or knowing in philosophy is theirs
already in an infinitely higher form than philosophers
understand or present it. A ranting preacher dilating
to living souls on the destiny of souls, will gather a
greater audience than the greatest of mere philoso
phers, lecturing on the properties of birds, beasts,
fossils, metals, minerals, oxygen, and hydrogen. The
most illiterate missionary will, with a few rough,
broad enunciations of faith, open living fountains up
in the hearts of his hearers, of which that philosophy
which pretends to be " knowledge" has never known
the existence or tested the power. If the peoples be
right, what estimation must be formed of all philoso
phy apart from Christianity ? If such philosophy be
right, it only pierces Christianity through the sides
of collective human nature, of the peoples which,
according to Pantheism, are the aggregate of deity
itself. In what a position Infidelity herein places its
advocates ! So strange as scarcely to admit of descrip
tion. Infidelity is herein opposed to that which it
declares to be Deity itself in a high form, human
nature. Human nature, en masse, will have Chris
tianity as the truth of God and the guarantee of im
mortality ; over every grave it perseveres in the
midst of tears in looking up to heaven, in holding
fast its faith in the word and honor of God, in
sobbing forth the unconquerable conviction of its
soul, " He is not dead, he sleepeth ; he will wake
again to the life eternal." Infidelity, opposed to its

CHRISTIANITY AND THE PEOPLES. 333
. own deity, declares all this false ; but this deity is
herein Christian, and so, to crown the absurdity, the
faith which Infidelity denies is the very faith which
the deity of Infidelity — poor human nature — persists
in believing and accepting as the truth. Confess this
to be what Horace calls " insaniens sapientia," phi
losophy that has lost its senses and run mad.
Inf. Well, we have diverged from the topic we
were engaged upon, the extirpation of the Canaan
ites by the command of Jehovah.
Chr. You solved the objection to it yourself, I think,
by insisting on the extermination of the Thugs by
England. But let us revert to it again : we have
examined it as an instance of the execution of the
legal justice of God on national criminality.
Let us now substitute your own view of Nature as
deity, and observe how she acts. By Nature we con
tinue, I suppose, to mean the invisible and visible
order of present existence — existence in action. And
this, according to you, is the Deity. In its highest
development, human and hero nature, we have
already seen what the notion leads to ; let us proceed
to briefly analyze it in its lower manifestations.
There are such things as war, famine, pestilence,
epidemics, cholera, yellow fever, small-pox?
Inf. Yes.
Chr. Have not whole tribes been exterminated ;
whole nations and continents depopulated by their
action ?
Inf. Undoubtedly.
Chr. What causes war?
Inf. There are many causes of war.

334 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PEOPLES.
Chr. War between human beings must be in
duced by causes innate in human beings : ambition,
ignorance, misconception, pride, rapacity, hatred,
honor, glory, self-preservation, lust of aggrandize
ment. The causes of war must pre-exist in those
engaged in war.' The most fertile land is thus not
the cause, but the object of war; the desire for its
retention or possession in the human mind is the
motive cause.
Inf. Conceded.
Chr. We have thus, then, your highest genus of
Deity, man, causing from age to age in every country
of the world that which, when done in two solitary
and very peculiar instances, by the order of Jehovah,
you object to as irreconcilable with the true idea of
deity. Your highest type of deity has, nevertheless,
always been, and still is, on the grandest scale, doing
this very thing — making war. The act of justice
against the Canaanites destroyed, perhaps, one million
of people. Your deity, nature in man, has probably
destroyed — to say nothing of the objects in view —
not less than a thousand millions. This is a fact of
Nature ; this Nature you hold to be the Deity, it is
therefore a fact of the Deity ; yet you say, to do one-
thousandth part of what your acknowledged deity
has done, is irreconcilable with the true idea of deity.
If your objection, therefore, is valid as against the
revealed idea of God, it is one thousand times more
valid against nature as God, or as the expression of
God. If it tells against Scripture, how much more
against your own substitute for Scripture ?
Inf. Your induction strikes me as forcible.

WORSHIP OF NATURE. 335
Chr. But if you affirm " war" in man to be in
variably wrong, the dilemma which follows is this, —
nature, your deity, is and has been in its highest
type a wrong thing ever since it assumed that type.
Can the bathos of Infidel intellect descend lower ? If
war is evil, your deity, nature, is and ever has been
evil. If your deity, on the other hand, inflicts this
evil as a penalty only, as something external to it
self, how can you object to the same infliction from
the hands of Jehovah as a penalty against sin ?
Inf. I cannot so far take exception to your argu
mentative process.
Chr. Let us descend to another still lower phase
of this deity, nature. Is the plague, the yellow
fever, the cholera, "nature?" Are they also parts
of the Deity ?
Inf. They are results of nature.
Chr. How?
Inf. A stagnant swamp, a mephitic sewerage, an
atmosphere of close, corrupted human breaths will
generate or foster plague or cholera.
Chr. Suppose we grant such and similar conditions
will generate it, which is, I think, more than I am
warranted in doing. Foster and invite it they do ;
generate it, I think, they never do. Is the cholera
in itself an evil ?
Inf. Certainly.
Chr. There are certain results then which Nature
itself brings on, that are in themselves unmitigated,
devastating, world-wide evils. Your deity, then, is, in
some of its phases, the reverse of beneficent or mer
ciful ; in some of its most active and extensive forms,

336 WORSHIP OF NATURE.
it is purely an evil deity. Now Christians admit
the existence of evil in the creation of God: its
action often perplexes us, but no Christian has ever
said, as Infidelity does, that this evil was God, or in
any sense part of God. Yet at the very time you cite
the existence of evil, as irreconcilable with the fact
of an all-beneficent Creator, your own philosophy
compels you to infer evil itself to be not a thing
temporal or probationary of good, but part of the
Deify itself. As long as there is deity, so long,
by your reasoning, must evil itself be co-existent.
Thus, again, is the worst half of Zoroaster plagia
rized by the " Intellect" of Infidelity ; the worst, — for
in the ancient Persian creed, Ahriman finally per
ishes, and Oromasdes alone is eternal. In your mod
ern Pantheism, evil or the devil is both part of and a
co-existent eternal with God. It is thus impossible
to carry on any process of reasoning on Infidel
premises, without being obliged to enunciate the
most blasphemous, as well as the most ridiculous
deductions. Inf. But you are not, I think, stating this part of
the question fairly.
Chr. Let me hear, then, your view.
Inf. Tlie plague, cholera, and all such sweeping
maladies are results of nature in a certain state :
under certain conditions of nature they are certain
to be evolved. But it by no means follows that that
condition of nature which is destructive of the
genus, man, is therefore an evil in itself. It
may be absolutely necessary to the production of
greater good. Quoad us, as it were, it may be

WORSHIP OF NATURE. 337
evil: quoad greater beings than we, it may be
good. Chr. Man, you stated, was the highest genus,
heroes the highest species of the highest genus, of
the deity Nature. What greater beings can there
be? Inf. Well. But I now modify the expression.
There may, I say, be higher forms of existence than
any hero species of man. Man may suffer for the
good of them, as animals do for the good of man.
Chr. Conceding your modification, how do you
apply the principle of it in the present case ?
Inf. It follows that hereafter, even by and through
the destruction of man, beings greater than man may
be formed out of the human elements themselves.
The grain-food is in the earth before it is corn : the
life is in the mother before it is in the child — so that
may be in man which is the life and the food of
'another and higher being out of man.
Chr. Be it so. But this is Infidelity abandoned,
not maintained. The principle you here lay down
is akin to that of the Resurrection — very like that
which Plato maintained, that death is the mother
of life.
Inf. That which appears and is felt by us to be
evil, may in reality only be the death-process of
nature to a higher life, a greater good.
Chr. And you include such agencies as the cholera
or plague in this death-process to a higher life ?
Inf. Why not ? Who knows ? What is the de
struction of a few regiments, when the destinies of
future nations are being elaborated ? What the ex-
15

338 worship of nature.
tirpation of a few millions, when the eyes of all
mankind are to be opened, through their destruc
tion, to the great sanitary laws of Nature ?
Chr. Is not your Infidelity here stealing an argu
ment from Calvinism ?
Inf. What I mean is this : in one sense cholera
and the plague may be termed the effects of certain
material conditions of nature — the swamp, the pois
onous ditch, the irrespirable air. But Nature never
intended man to live under such conditions. If he
attempts it, he dies. The peculiar process by which
he is decomposed under such conditions, we call the
typhus, pestilence, cholera. The trying to live, under
such conditions, is a perpetual violation of the laws
of nature : he necessarily dies : the nature which he
violates by doing what he is by his whole constitu
tion forbidden to do, kills him for the violation.
Nature, by his death, thus avenges the infringement
of her own laws. The next generation, seeing the
effects of the infringement, observe those laws : they
escape the cholera and the plague : they are so far,
therefore, a healthier and a higher race than those
which perished.
Chr. And this Nature is your deity : this process
is the penal process of such deity ?
Inf. And is it not visibly true ? Does not all sci
ence prove that by such devastating maladies as the
yellow fever and the cholera, Nature is, after all,
doing nothing more than avenging man's violation
of her laws, as they bear upon himself?
Chr. And is she right ?
Inf. Why — what pure absurdity it would be to say

WORSHIP OF NATURE. 339
she was wrong. She must be right, because she is
Nature. Chr. But her victim, man, is nature also — and
the highest organization of nature.
Inf. He suffers in this instance, because he vio
lates the very laws of that nature of which he is the
highest organization. Why does his nature, consti
tuted to live on the free, wholesome, unbarriered
earth, and to breathe the pure unconfined air of
heaven, sink itself into that of a noisome marsh-
reptile, burrowing in filth, and imbibing a venomous
atmosphere at every pore ? If he will degrade him
self into such vermin, the law of his nature extermi
nates him and his race.
Chr. Nature avenges the violation of her laws by
the infliction of the most terrible penalties, at the
cost of millions of human lives, from India to New
Orleans, from Batavia to England. Her penalties
in fact, gird the world. She is your deity. How
then can you, who contend for such acts as insepa
rable from deity, object them to the character of
God, as revealed in Scripture ? If certain such acts
were not revealed as His, there would ensue, by your
reasoning, a mutilation in His character or attri
butes as the Deity. Your objection here again tends
to confirm the truth of those Scriptures. Your deity,
Nature, perpetually avenges the infraction of her
laws by the most destructive and fearful punish
ments : she must be, you allege, necessarily right.
God avenges the infraction of His laws — of man's
degrading himself from his original state to the level
of such vermin as you describe — by one or two

340 WORSHIP OF NATURE.
signal instances of judicial execution. You say it
cannot be: it is inconsistent with all true ideas of
deity. Nature, from century to century, in every
land, and under all conditions of life, is paying man
back according to his folly, blindness, stupidity,
ignorance, perversity, criminality. He whom Chris
tians believe the God of Nature, reveals Himself as
doing once or twice what Nature, with the most
inflexible impartiality, is at all times doing towards
every man, or aggregate of men, that take it upon
them — in ignorance or not — to infringe her laws.
God, you contend, never could give such a command
as the extirpation of the Canaanites: whatever being
gave it could not be God. You, then, immediately
append: Nature invariably avenges the violation of
her laws. She admits no excuse, makes no allowance
for ignorance. It is the very ignorance which places
itself in antagonism to her laws, that sweeps popula
tions away — what cares Nature for that? She slays
her millions : if she did not, if she permitted any
condition of the mind to be pleaded as a right of
exemption from obedience to her fiat and precepts,
she would not be deity. Observe what you exchange
— a God of rare severity, for a deity that never, in
one instance, overlooks a violation of its laws. If
England choose to put itself in a position of hostility
to such laws, it must perish as inevitably as would
a horde of naked savages. If England is content to
remain under cholera conditions, the sword of the
justice of nature will infallibly smite within her
man, woman, and child, with equal indifference as
within a clan of houseless Patagonians. And this

WORSHIP OF NATURE. 341
very fact of never sparing, never knowing what
mercy is, you prefer as the clearest proof that it is
deity. When God exercises, in one or two instances,
the same power, that is the clearest proof He is no
Deity. How can sense or consistency be extracted
from such wild contradictions ?
Inf. Nevertheless my view of Nature is right.
She never does forgive: she forgives no one: she
knows no distinctions : she is no respecter of per
sons : if a Shakspeare or a Wellington puts himself
under cholera conditions, she would immolate him
with the same stern indifference as she would the
veriest savage on the face of the earth. There is
something grand in such impartiality.
Chr. Of the grandeur I say nothing. The fact is
indisputable. But when a Christian professes to be
lieve " every soul that sinneth must die " — be it that
of Shakspeare or a Hottentot — lo ! though the anal
ogy with the laws of Nature is complete, you demur
admitting as a truth, with reference to God, what
you strenuously contend for as truth in reference to
Nature. Now, by comparing what Nature does by
certain agencies to our bodies in the material world,
with what God does by certain other agencies to our
souls in the immaterial world, it is wonderful in how
many respects faith is, after all, the extension of
sight and vision. It is, indeed, the pure vision itself;
it is real seeing ; for, as St. Paul expresses it, it is see
ing the invisible. In the present instance, how en
tirely Nature compels you on the evidence of science,
and of your own sensible experiences, to recognize
as facts of universal prevalency, the very principles

342 WORSHIP OF NATURE.
which you refuse to accept when embodied in the
doctrines of Christianity. If such be the doctrines
of Nature, they must, on your theory, be the doc
trines of the Deity. How much more, then, must
that Christianity which revealed them in their high
est, that is, their spiritual form, ages before science
discovered them in their lowest, be the religion of
the Deity ? Thus, from whatever point we view the
subject, Infidelity is driven by Nature itself into a
faith which, if not Christianity, is in marvellous
analogy with it. Marvellous, I mean, to you. To
us who hold Nature and Christianity to be only the
visible and invisible, the physical and spiritual reve
lations of one and the same Almighty Being, it is
an additional proof of the identity of the principles
of our faith with the truths that rule the material
universe. Inf. But Christians appear to me to see more in
Christianity than is really contained in it.
Chr. Not so ; but the reverse. None has ever
yet mastered Christianity in its fulness. In compar
ison, indeed, with Infidels, we do see more. New
ton saw more in the firmament than other people :
a geologist sees more in a rock than other people :
a botanist sees more in a field than other people : a
physician sees more in a face than other people.
Every scientific man sees more than others in the
subject-matter of his science. So is it with the
Christian. But as Newton never professed to see
more in his discoveries than the first breakings on
the shore of the mind of the ocean of infinity, so the
Christian, though comparatively he may know more

MIRACLES AND SCIENCE. 343
than others of Christianity, never professes to know
it absolutely further than in part. A spiritual
science it is, the harmony of all the components of
which shames the architecture of the heavens. A
Christian may, therefore, see in Christianity — and
truly — much that is invisible to the Infidel vision,
which is affirming no more than that the mind which
has long studied Nature, has its eyes opened to
countless truths in that great field of research which
entirely escape the observation of such as have never
devoted their attention to the pursuit.
Have you many more objections in reserve?
Inf. You have directly or incidentally adverted to
the greater number of those which appeared to me
to be entitled to serious consideration. I shall concen
trate such as remain upon these two points. I take
exception to the whole system of miraculous agen
cies recorded in your Scriptures, and I firmly refuse
to admit the existence of such a state or place as
Hell.
Chr. We shall be able, perhaps, to deal with both
points at once. You disbelieve the miracles of Scrip
ture. Let us specify some of the miracles of Nature,
and see how far our faith or credulity in them ex
tends. Science proves, and we believe such miracles,
for instance, as the following :
The air is capable of solidification, liquefaction, and
color. A pressure from " without" of fifty miles deep of
such air surrounds the earth.
Every adult supports a pressure on his own person
of thirty thousand pounds' weight of this air.

344 SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE.
Except for such an enormous compression from
without man would explode.
Except for this air sound and life, including within
them reason and language, could not exist.
Many plants breathe, perspire, propagate by sexual
distinctions, and possess a circulation of sensitive
life. The age of many trees, which are, as it were, the
aristocracy of plants, exceeds four thousand years.
There are, at least, no less than 70,000 distinct
species of such trees and plants.
The smallest insects are the architects by whom
islands and continents have been built up out of the
water. The Pyramids are constructed of stones formed of
the concretions of minute shells of these insects ; and
all the chalk hills and chalk strata of the world are
nothing but their excrements and remains.
Among land insects, the white ant and the bee have
lived for thousands of years under hereditary insti
tutions of established loyalty and order.
Others of these insects have thirty thousand
eyes. There have existed tribes of frogs, lizards, flying
dragons, equal in dimensions to bisons, hippopotami,
elephants. The whole earth was once nothing but slime.
The earth, fifty miles beneath its surface, is in a
state of fiery fusion.
The earth, and, as far as we can infer, nature itself,
has been at least a dozen times destroyed and again
created.

SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE. 345
If the earth were a little nearer the sun, it would
be liquefied, and pass away " in smoke," by evapo
ration. If the earth were where any other planet is, or
any other planet where the earth is, the whole solar
system would be thrown back into chaos.
The moon is a world destitute of all vital air,
water, vegetation, and verdure — a horror of un-
breathing lifelessness.
Mercury is a world where granite would instantly
fuse. The sun attracts and discharges comets to and
from distances of 70,000,000,000 miles from itself.
The moon revolves round the earth, the earth
round the sun, the sun round a centre in the Pleiades,
that centre round some other, and so on from centre
to centre, in the invisible Infinite.
There are 18,000,000 such suns and systems as
ours in the Milky Way alone.
The nebulas, or sun-stars of Orion, give us light at
a distance requiring 60,000 years for its transit.
This light travels at the rate of 12,000,000 miles
per minute.
Beyond the furthest fields of telescopic vision there
are other systems never to be visible to us on earth,
because the light proceeding from them is, from
their remoteness, decomposed in its transit before it
reaches us.
That part of the universe, the vision of which is
commanded by the earth, is thus necessarily limited
—it may not be 1,000,000,000th part of it.
There are behind these physical worlds invisible
15«

346 SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE.
and semi-immaterial powers — heat, light, ether, gal
vanism, electricity, life.
Here are a few articles selected from the creed of
modern science — do you believe them ?
Inf. You have selected certain conclusions which
scientific men accept as capable of demonstration. I
do not, therefore, believe them — I know them to be
true. Chr. Have you demonstrated them yourself?
Inf. No.
Chr. You accept them on the testimony of science
and scientific philosophers ?
Inf. I do.
Chr. Such acceptance, I conceive, is faith or be
lief. Be that as it may, you confess them realities.
We are now discussing " the miraculous." Do the
Scriptures or the Christian creed contain any article
so "miraculous," or drawing so largely on the credu
lity of the world at large as many of these articles of
science do on the unscientific world ? For instance,
the first article of our Creed is, " I believe in God
the Father Almighty." Whoever or whatever made
and still regulates the universe, must be at least
intellectual. We must admit the Creator of the
intellect of man to be himself intellectual — must we
not?
Inf. Well.
Chr. It is evident, also, the universe is taken care
of — though not by man, your highest form. He,
poor creature, is asleep — cannot do without sleep
one-third the time his own earth goes round, every

SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE. 347
twenty-four hours, on its own axis. Everywhere
there exists that order and punctuality, the attain
ment of the knowledge of which makes science
science. Without such pre-existent order, science —
astronomy for instance — could not exist.
Inf. Clearly not.
Chr. The most natural title for human beings to
adopt and use towards one who, for love, takes care
of persons and things is a Father. That such a Father
is the same with the Creator of the universe you do
not, I suppose, deny. In judging of His Power by
His works, — a few of which these articles of science
have specified, — is it possible to demur to His being
Almighty? Can we imagine any work or effect
which the power that has thus already created, and
is now sustaining the universe and its operations,
cannot at His will produce ?
Inf. We so far concur.
Chr. In that case all objection to the miraculous
or supernatural in Christianity falls at once to the
ground ; nature is as full of the stupendous, the
wonderful, the apparently incredible as the Scrip
tures. It is the ignorance, the gross ignorance of
man, which, both in nature and the Scriptures,
causes, him to dream of such terms as " the incredi
ble, the impossible," as applicable to God.
Inf. So far as the miraculous in facts is concerned,
the creed of science draws heavier bills, perhaps,
than the creed of Christianity on the bank of faith.
If I rejected science on the score of its wonderful
revelations of nature, I should be rejecting it for the

348 SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE.
reasons which, of all others, ought to recommend it
most fervidly' to my acceptance — its grandeur and
sublimity. Chr. Good ; nor do you, I think, reject the human
facts of the life of Christ.
Inf. I must admit them.
Chr. And as a fact yon are also obliged to admit
the existence of the Catholic Church in the world,
calling itself the kingdom of Christ.
Inf. I am.
Chr. With reference then to the other articles of
our Creed, it is not the miraculous element in them
to which you object? By the side, indeed, of the
miracles of God in nature, they sound as plain and
simple as it is well possible for Omnipotency to ex
hibit itself in action. Neither is there one of them
which does not affect the being or well-being of man
in his highest destinies, more than all the facts of all
the physical sciences put together pretend to do.
Inf. Nature herself, I grant, throws any objection
to Christianity on the ground of the miraculous out
of court. But I contend that all these articles of
science are demonstrable by infallible processes to
be true, whereas there exists no such processes to
demonstrate the truth of the articles of your creed.
I do not object, therefore, to them because they are
miraculous, but I deny them to be facts at all.
Chr. You abandon, then, the anti-miracle ground ?
Inf. Entirely. I take my position upon the non
existence of the facts alleged.
Chr. Are these facts capable of demonstration by
human evidence ?

SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE. 349
Inf. Ah ! you would bring me, I perceive, into
collision with Hume.
Chr. Perhaps so. Hume contends no amount of
human evidence can verify a miracle. You, on the
contrary, state the mere fact of a work being a
miracle is no bar to its reception.
Inf. Not to me, nor, I think, to any practical
man. Chr. Because every practical man sees that Hume
begs the whole question as to what nature is, and
as to what a miracle is. His sophism is, — " A
miracle is something contrary to the whole course of
nature : any thing contrary to the whole course of
nature is an impossibility ; no evidence can prove an
impossibility : therefore no evidence can prove a
miracle." By this process of reasoning there is not
a single scientific discovery which might not before its
achievement have been pronounced an impossibility,
the accomplishment of which was not to be demon
strated by any amount of sensible evidence. Without
a full and thorough knowledge of all the resources
in nature, how can any man pronounce what is, or
what is not, contrary to nature? This is the first
great fallacy. If, on the other hand, we define
nature as the known routine of physical laws on
matter and men, then, again, the question as to
whether such routine has ever been suspended, an
nulled, or modified, must be decided by evidence.
The implied denial that miracles are a question of
facts, and that facts must in every case be deter
mined by evidence, is Hume's second fallacy.
Inf. Hume contends that such a statement as that

350 SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE.
of the Resurrection cannot be proved by any amount
of evidence, because it is opposed to all experience
of nature.
Chr. To which we reply, the Resurrection, like
every other fact, takes its stand upon its own evidence.
And, secondly, we accept the fact proved by such
evidence as in unison with innumerable other facts
demonstrating the existence of a God absolutely su
preme above all the laws of nature, by whom alone
nature and her laws are what they are.
Inf. You ascend, thus, beyond Hume's reach.
Chr. We do, just as the man of science ascends
above the ploughman's reach. When he tells him
that he supports on his own body 30,000 lbs. weight
of atmospheric pressure, what would be the illiterate
ploughman's reply? " It is contrary to all experience
of nature ; neither he nor any one else had ever felt
such a weight ; all the academies in Europe should
not convince him contrary to his senses." Which
would be right, science or the ploughman ?
Inf. Science, of course.
Chr. Again ; are geologists correct in stating that
nature has repeatedly ceased to be what nature pre
viously was ?
Inf. I suppose so.
Chr. Nature, then, as constituted at present, is
nothing more than perhaps the tenth or twentieth
universal miracle which has been wrought by the
Power above nature.
Inf. In that case all present nature, considered
with reference to the past, is a new miracle.
Chr. Clearly : was not the first creation of man

SCRIPTURE AND SCnJNCE. 351
a complete innovation on previous nature? Com
paring a. m. 5858, with a. m. 1, are there not millions
of miracles in the forms of men and women meeting
our senses every day which had no previous existence
whatever, except, as Plato and Newton would ex
press it, in the sensorium of the Deity ?
Inf. Conceded.
Chr. Present nature, then, is a new heaven and a
new earth with new inhabitants, as compared to
precedent nature.
Inf. According to modern geology.
Chr. How many such creations have taken place
in the revolutions of time ?
Inf. Perhaps seven.
Chr. Perhaps seventy and seven. You swallow
with the utmost complacency the new heavens and
new earths of science ; you pride yourself on knowing
all about the changes of geology — it is science — it is
shameful in these days to be ignorant of such doc
trines ! But when the Scriptures propound a cog
nate truth, forthwith you exclaim, " Impossible ! in
credible ! "
Inf. What cognate truth in this respect?
Chr. That the present heaven and the present
earth will make place for a new heaven and a new
earth, and that new creatures, men celestialized and
spiritualized, will be resident therein. In ten or a
dozen such changes past you do believe. In one
more such change to come, though it be in perfect
analogy with the past as elucidated by science, you
not only decline to believe, but reject it as an im
possible miracle. Is that which by the evidence of

352 SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE.
science, has already taken place times indefinite, an
impossibility to take place again ? Is it not rather,
by all preceding analogies, a possibility which is sure
to become once more a fact ? " The heavens shall
be dissolved and the elements shall melt, but we, ac
cording to his promise, look for new heavens and a
new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." l
Inf. But such a declaration as this of St. Peter's
would thus be as much science as prophecy.
Chr. Exclude the words, " wherein reigneth right
eousness," it may be both. What prevents God
from delivering as prophecy a fact which after-ages
discover to be also in entire unison with His govern
ment of the universe in antecedent periods? The
next great change will be — because righteousness
will reign supreme and alone therein — the consum
mation of all the preceding changes, the final form
in which they will all " rest," — the eternal sabbath of
creation passing on to it through successive stages of
travail, each like the mother producing out of itself
its own future existence. For this very reason change
will cease, and immutability begin.
Inf. To that conclusion no one would object. If
the future heavens were inclusive of every sentient
being who has ever existed, I should be well dis
posed to believe the religion which taught so glori
ous and blissful a state of finality. But Christianity
proposes an immutable hell as well as an immutable
heaven. Rather, therefore, than accept one on the
condition of accepting both, I reject both together.
» 2 Pet. iii. 12.

HELL. 353
Chr. You do not believe in the existence of hell?
Inf. No, the supposition is too horrible.
Che. Do you disbelieve it as a place ?
Inf. I disbelieve it in toto.
Chr. What say you then to the existence of Mer
cury ? Is not that planet, compared to ours, a world
of fire ?
Inf. But there is no life there.
Chr. How know you that ?
Inf. If there be, it must be attempered to an
atmosphere of fire.
Chr. Forever?
Inf. I do not say forever ; but if attempered it
must be life without pain.
Chr. It is possible, and the reverse is possible.
Inf. How ?
Chr. Men settle in the swamps of the Mississippi :
such and such is the climate. Do they become at
tempered to it ?
Inf. Yes.
Chr. Without suffering effects which adhere to
them as long as they live, be it ten or forty years ?
Inf. The constitution must of course be in some
way permanently a sufferer.
Chr. It is possible, then, that a world may exist
the climate of which is itself a pain-inflicting medium
on every object endowed with life under its action.
We have before our eyes, in Mercury, the fact that a
world of fire comparatively near us does exist in
creation. Hell, therefore, considered simply as " a
place," a place of fire, is quite in analogy with the
facts of astronomy. The fact physical is all which

354 hell.
astronomy can teach ; such teaching, so far as it
goes, confirms the declaration of Scripture.
Inf. But hell is generally believed by the mass of
Christians to be beneath the earth.
Chr. If there be a hell, it can matter little where
it is. But the popular belief may place it rightly.
Inf. Nonsense ! a hell under the earth !
Chr. The earth is about 8000 miles in diameter.
Fifty miles below its crust, if physical philosophy
and science are to be received as authorities, granite
can only exist in a state of fusion, " it melts with
fervent heat." What must be its temperature one
thousand miles below ?
Inf. It may be a vast hollow.
Chr. True, of fire and fusion, which approaches, I
apprehend, very near the immemorial idea of hell.
Inf. But I do not believe philosophy and science
on this point. What more than we can they know
of the interior of the globe ?
Chr. Or, as the ploughmen say, How can they
more than we know that we carry 30,000 lbs. of air
upon our backs ? Well, you must settle such points
with them. My statement is that science, be it
right or wrong, corroborates not only Scripture on
the fact of there being a world of fire, but the an
cient idea of the whole of mankind, heathen and
Christian, that such a world is the centre or abyss of
our earth.
Inf. Not where souls are imprisoned and pun
ished—science is guiltless of that addition.
Chr. Science in this, as in every other instance,
can only walk up to a certain height with Chris-

HELL. 355
tianity. There Christianity expands her wings and
directs her flight to realms it is permitted science
only to gaze far off upon, while her sister of Divine
birth is lost to her vision in the ever-rising ascents
of her native eternity. But so far as the mortal
sister can go, she walks hand in hand with the white-
robed daughter of God. The Scriptures reveal a world
of fire. Science, is it possible ? " Not only possible,
it is a common fact in the systems of the universe."
Popular faith places hell beneath our feet, in the
centre of the earth. Is it true, O Science ? " It is true
that such a place as hell is popularly supposed to be
exists in the interior of the earth ; as to its con
nection with the future state of man I know noth
ing." Inf. Science then fails you on the very point on
which you need its evidence.
Chr. Not so. You, as an Infidel, denied the pos
sibility of the existence of hell as a place at all.
Science refutes your position by showing there are
such worlds as correspond in substance, and one
beneath our feet both in substance and locality with
the popular religious idea of the nature of hell.
Inf. Well, grant so far ; grant even the interior
of our own globe to be an abyss of fire and fusion ;
how can a soul suffer pain ? How can such a place
be one of suffering, penal or purgatorial, to a soul ?
Chr. You have seen a dead body.
Inf. Often.
Chr. If you applied fire to its hand or foot, would
it suffer pain ?
Inf. No.

356 HELL.
Chr. If you applied fire to the hand or foot of a
living body, would it suffer pain ?
Inf. Certainly.
Chr. It is not the body then, quasi, simply body,
but life in the body which suffers. The greater the
life or nervous power, the greater is the capability of
suffering. No life, no suffering or pain.
Inf. That is clear.
Chr. Is there such a thing as suffering distinct from
bodily suffering? Is there such a thing as purely
mental or spiritual suffering ?
Inf. No doubt of it.
Chr. When the body, therefore, suffers, it is life in
the body which suffers. Distinct from the body this
life, call it in man what you please, mind, spirit,
soul, has a suffering of its own ; but, distinct from
this life, the body itself has no capability of suffer
ing. I am speaking of man in his entirety.
Inf. Proceed.
Chr. Will you term this principle the soul ?
Inf. The name matters little, so the thing be un
derstood between us. Term it the soul.
Chr. The soul, then, is that life within us by
which we — either through the body, or distinct from
the body — are susceptible of suffering.
Inf. But we are discussing the material suffering
of fire as applicable to the soul in hell. You do not
contend that, apart from the medium of the body,
the soul can be susceptible of bodily or material
pain? Chr. Certainly not. We have conceded the soul
to have a suffering of its own, quite distinct from

HELL. 357
those communicated to it through material media.
We have conceded, also, that separate from the soul
in man these material media have no susceptibility
of suffering in themselves. But I fully admit that
material suffering, such as that felt from fire, can
only be felt by the soul through material media, such
as the body.
Inf. Animals have life — are susceptible of suffer
ing — but that life is not a soul.
Chr. Man is something more than an animal, and
we are speaking of that principle within him by
which he feels pain and delight as man, and not as
an animal. Cattle have no principle within them
susceptible of a thousand emotions of pain and pleas
ure of which the principle in man is susceptible. Is
not that most evident? What do mere animals know
or feel, I do not say of any purely mental, spiritual,
or moral emotion, but of any moral, spiritual, or
intellectual sensation at all? The principle of sus
ceptibility to such things is not in them : in man it
is. We agreed to call it, the soul.
Inf. Well!
Chr. The question, then, stands thus. The body,
without this soul, is not in man capable of pain.
With this body it is capable of — first, material pain,
such as mere animals suffer, such as the body in
its animality suffers; secondly, of immaterial pain,
proper to itself, and altogether independent of ma
terial media.
Inf. What follows ?
Chr. It follows — first, that that which is cast into
hell must, of necessity, be this life or soul itself oi

358 HELL.
man, which alone imparts to the body the capacity
of pain. For the body without this principle not
possessing susceptibility, to cast it alone would be no
more than the ancients did in consigning their dead
friends to the funeral pyre.
Inf. A very graceful mode of restoration to the
four elements.
Chr. If hell be the place of retributive suffering
for the wicked, that of the wicked which is cast in
must be that life or soul by which also they were
wicked. Inf. Proceed.
Chr. Supposing the soul or life alone to be there
condemned, you admit it would, under all contin
gencies and events, suffer the pain proper and pecu
liar to itself, ,be it in a material medium or not.
Inf. If you carry hell no further than spiritual
pain or remorse, I do not think I should dissent so
much from the idea.
Chr. I dare say not — but Christianity cannot ac
commodate itself to your ideas on the subject. It
goes much further. We see, then, that a soul cannot
only suffer pain, but that alone which does suffer
human pain in the body or out of it, is the soul :
without this life the body, in or out of hell, has no
more sense of any kind of suffering than the stone
in the road, or the iron in the furnace. Now, if the
life itself be condemned to hell, it is, I conceive, a
secondary consideration, whether its suffering there
be only spiritual, or both spiritual and material ; but
you, I infer, do not think so ?
Inf. Certainly not : I think just the contrary, and

HELL. 359
so, I believe, do ninety-nine men out of a hundred.
I think the material suffering the primary, the all-
important question.
Chr. Well, it may be so — I will raise no difference
on that point. But will you give your reasons for
such opinion? Why should the material suffering
be the primary consideration ?
Inf. Because, to speak frankly, I do not think men
in general care a fraction for spiritual suffering or
remorse compared to what they do for bodily pain.
It stands to reason they should not. The more in
sensible any thing is, the less — as you state — is it
susceptible of suffering. Now, the consciences of
most people in the world are quite insensible to
purely spiritual considerations, consequently quite
insensible to any spiritual pain for the neglect or
violation of them.
Chr. There is, I think, much truth in your state
ment ; but observe to what conclusion it forces you.
If hell consisted of spiritual suffering alone, it would,
by your reasoning, be no hell at all to the characters
that have no conscience, the very characters for
whom it is designed. The very fact of their having
no conscience would cause it to be no hell of the
soul, no place of spiritual remorse to them.
Inf. Precisely. There can be no suffering of con
science to such as have petrified the conscience — no
suffering of the soul to those in whom the soul has
long been as dead and insensible as a cannon-
ball. Chr. But it would, nevertheless, still remain a hell
of the soul to all such as had not entirely, in this life,

360 HELL,  MATERIAL.
extinguished the sense of conscience, or the vitality —
so to call it — of the soul.
Inf. It would.
Chr. In other words, the hell to which you do not
except, a hell of spiritual but not material pain, would
be none whatever to the very characters whom God
and man alike arm themselves against and abhor;
natures without pity, humanity, soul, or conscience.
It would be hell only to such as still retained some
sensibilities of their better being. Grant some con
science to remain in a man, that remnant becomes
his hell: grant none whatever, that "none" becomes
his total exemption from the possibility of all suffer
ing in hell. Such a hell is a premium, not a punish
ment, for utterly quenching conscience. For how
can pain of conscience affect a Nero, a Borgia, in
whom the thing itself has long ceased to exist ? We
might, with as much sense, talk of a tiger feeling the
hell of spiritual remorse for the infant he has de
voured. Inf. I am, I fear, in a difficulty here.
Chr. Is not this notion of a mere spiritual hell
the reverse of what mankind have, in all ages in
some form or other, held hell to be — a place of just
punishment hereafter for those whom justice has
failed to reach in this world ? Your theory, which
is too the theory of a certain stamp of modern re
ligion wishing to be thought Christianity, proffers re
demption from suffering as a premium upon the
worst and blackest degrees of villany and crime.
Provided a man be only so deep a miscreant as to
have cast away all sensibility to good, forthwith his

HELL  MATERIAL. 361
very excess of depravity becomes his reward, his
guarantee against pain. But let him retain some
tenderness of conscience, some capability of penitence,
contrition, sorrow, then in exact proportion to the
amount of such tenderness you assign a spiritual hell
and its pains to him. The ancients would hardly
have selected their Minos from the ranks of Infidelity.
Inf. I had never reasoned the subject out to this
extent. Chr. Shall we admit, then, that a mere spiritual
hell is none at all to the very characters whom — not
to allude to the Scriptures — the universal judgment
of mankind pronounces as only fit to be condemned
to a separate world by themselves, to be, in fact,
transported from the state in which, in defiance of all
law and persuasion, they have become incurably
vicious themselves, and nuclei of deadly infection to
others ? Human governments, in dealing with such
subjects, are compelled to adopt a course analogous
to that which God has declared will be His course on
the day of His judgment. Separation for years or
for life in one case, for eternity in the other, is the
principle of legislation. In both cases it is sepa
ration of two contrary classes of soul into contrary
localities : here political, as well as before scientific
analogy, is in accordance with Christianity, and con
demnatory of Infidelity. Human law finds it can
deal with certain characters in no other way than
the Divine has declared they will finally be dealt
with by itself.
Inf. But I can never persuade myself that hell is
a place of bodily or material pain.
16

362 HELL  MATERIAL.
Chr. If it be not, there is not, on your supposition,
any hell for such as are universally pronounced most
deserving of it. Choose, then, between no hell at
all, or a hell of material as well as spiritual pain ; for
no hell at all is certainly less a premium on utter
and irredeemable depravity than the one you suggest.
Inf. No hell at all, then, certainly. I will not
believe in an eternity of future bodily pain ; it is too
frightful a conception to be for a moment entertained.
Chr. Do you believe in pain now ?
Inf. I must ; feeling is believing.
Chr. Material pain exists here — in the next world
why should it not also exist ?
Inf. It may ; there is no proof that it does.
Chr. There is no shadow of proof it does not :
there is every reason to infer it will and must. Is
there not such a thing as just punishment?
Inf. It cannot be doubted.
Chr. Our nature derives all its notions and feel
ings of justice from the Creator of that Nature, from
God. He must, therefore, be justice itself. If man
be just, how much more God his maker? It must
also be acknowledged, that in all ages scenes of the
most revolting cruelty, extending from the throne to
the cell of torture, have been perpetrated by classes
of men — perpetrated often as the rule, not the excep
tion of government — sufficient to freeze the blood
with horror. Now can you in your heart believe
that the God who has implanted in us these feelings
of indignation, — feelings so deep and vehement that
they have, times innumerable, transported men into
the commission against the agents of cruelty and

HELL  MATERIAL. 363
oppression, of the very acts of cruelty and oppression
they detest and condemn, — sees all the pain, injustice,
and misery, inflicted by the brutal and depraved on
the good, the weak, the unresisting, and yet really
cares nothing about it ? Is it in harmony with, or in
direct opposition to, right reason, that such monsters
as those whom history consigns to the just execra
tion of mankind should be regarded and treated by
God precisely in the same light as the innocent, un
offending victims of their vice, villany, and passions ?
Is it within the bounds of rational probability that
God should view with equal indifference the men
who devote their whole lives to truth and benefi
cence, and the men who systematically and deliber
ately inflict pain and degradation on all within their
influence or power ? Can it be that all the Herods
on one side in the world, and all the Howards on the
other, are considered as one character, to be dealt
with by no distinction of condemnation or approba
tion, of penalty or reward, in the mind, the heart,
the counsels of the Almighty ? If you believe this
of any being, that being cannot be God ; nothing is
clearer : for such a being would be devoid and des
titute of the first elements of rectitude. You may
suppose the existence of such a being, but to propose
him to us as identical with the Creator of the uni
verse and the author of conscience is an act of Infi
del delusion and insanity. God cannot be this ; term
the being to whom you impute such a total absence
of all discrimination between right and wrong any
thing you please, he is as different from God as mid
night from midday, as powerlessness from omnip-

364 HELL  MATERIAL.
otence, as guilt from goodness. God still remains,
with God you still will have to deal. He that
does separate forever between the righteous and the
wicked is still to be encountered. Judge yourself
herein. You do not shake hands with a convict ;
you do not receive a burglar into your house ; you
do not admit an immodest woman into the society of
your wife and daughters ; if you do, your own heart
rises in judgment against you for making in your
choice no difference between vice and virtue, be
tween the evil and the good. Will the God who
created that heart, who is greater and truer than it,
make no difference in His sphere, in His home, in
His family, in heaven ?
Inf. I find great difficulty in replying. The Be
ing that makes no distinction between good and evil
men, good and evil actions, cannot be God. Any
idea, therefore, of such a being has nothing to do
with the true idea of God, which seems necessarily
to involve and carry with it the definition of God as
the very Being who has Himself originally made, and
will Himself finally manifest the eternal distinction
He has so made between good and evil. The execu
tion of this distinction, as proceeding from Himself,
will be His judgments as contradistinguished from
the judgments we now form as to who or what are
good or wicked. Then, if God judges, He must
condemn ; if He condemn, He must sentence ; that
sentence must be a punishment: there can be no
punishment, unless of pain, material or spiritual;
certain characters have lost all capability of spiritual
pain ; material pain, therefore, alone remains ; con-

HELL  MATERIAL. 365
sequently, as they must be separated totally in
place as they already are in disposition from the
opposite characters, the separate place of punishment
— their hell — must be a place of material torment
or pain. I must concede this, or affirm that the
God who implanted the sense of justice, and of the
distinction between right and wrong in my nature,
has no such sense, or makes no such difference Him
self, which would be an inadmissible absurdity.
Chr. You grant, then, that if God be just — and
you say the idea of justice cannot be separated from
that of God — there must exist for a certain class of
souls a material hell.
Inf. I am most loth to believe it, most reluctant
to admit it.
Chr. Reluctant to admit the practical justice of
God? Unless God be a mere sound, a name, and
nothing else, such a hell for such souls must exist.
Why, then, should you be more loth to believe in
God's justice in act than in theory ?
Inf. It is easily explained. Spiritual pain, by
repetitions of the first act which caused it, ceases
to be pain. I steal for the first time ; I am miser
able. I steal again ; I am less sensitive, therefore
less miserable. A third time ; I am scarcely affected.
A fourth time ; I am become indifferent to con
science. A fifth time ; it is clever. A sixth time ;
I pride myself upon it. A seventh time ; I despise
honesty, and match myself against the police. An
eighth time ; I deprave others — perverting others
constitutes my greatest, if not my sole pleasure. A
ninth time ; I glory in the principle itself of lawless-

366 HELL  MATERIAL.
ness and vice. A tenth time ; I am detected, tried,
and hanged ; but as for spiritual pain, or any hell of
conscience within me, I feel no more of that than
the gallows on which I am suspended. Not so with
material pain ; that may sometimes kill the body or
wear the nerve out ; but it may also, as for example,
in tic-douloureux, last as long as life itself, and each
attack exceed the last in acuteness and severity. Spir
itual pain has thus that in its nature which soon causes
it to cease to be a pain at all. I do not care, there
fore, for a merely spiritual hell, — I confess it : human
nature does not care for it nor fear it : why ? It sees
and feels by experience that it very soon ceases to
be pain or hell at all. Nero wept when he signed
the first death-warrant submitted to him : a few
years after he gloated over daily massacres and Rome
incendiarized. Compunction had ceased its action.
But I do fear a material hell : so does every man.
Men fear pain more than death ; they will do all
things, try all remedies, to rid themselves of bodily
pain and torture. Now, if hell be material, and the
life it affects eternal, that is a notion, I repeat, too
harrowing to be entertained.
Chr. More so, do you think, than the notion that
God is a Being without any sense of love to the
good, or of justice to the merciless, the depraved,
and the impenitent? Which is the more terrible,
that the universe should be without any other God
than the fiction of a name, or that the men who are
the cause of nine-tenths of the misery of mankind, —
men without a grain of living soul or conscience in
them towards God or man, — should be made amenable

HELL  PENAL, NOT PROBATIONARY. 367
to eternal justice in the only way of which their na
tures are left susceptible — material pain ?
Inf. Why not forgive ?
Chr. God proffers unlimited forgiveness, but it
must be accepted now ; it must be acted upon now ;
it must be attended now with that effect which alone
renders such forgiveness the initiatory step to salva
tion from such a hell, the change of such a nature
from moral and spiritual death to moral and spiritual
life. Inf. But why not forgive then ?
Chr. Forgive a nature which would ever remain
the same ?
Inf. No ; renew it then as well as forgive.
Chr. And for its renewal in faith and works roll
back the times of God to this period of probation, in
which the evil itself is the probation ; reverse the whole
order and succession of the Divine counsels in heaven
and earth ! It cannot be. God Himself can do no
more than He has done to save the soul of man. He
Himself can do no more than He has done in the
sacrifice of His Son; if that be rejected by man,
eternity itself presents no further, no other, no sec
ond Sacrifice for Sin, or Saviour from hell.
Inf. If I believed a material hell as inevitably
consequent on impenitent sin, or on the rejection of
Christ as the Saviour-God, I would never sin, I would
become a Christian. No man really and unfeign-
edly believing it, would ever by vice or indifference
incur the risk of so awful a penalty. The fact that
men do sin, do abandon themselves to secular fears
and indulgences of every description, proves of itself

368 HELL  PENAL, NOT PROBATIONARY.
that they do not believe in such a future material
place of pain as hell. If they did, they would not
for a single day continue to lead the lives they do ;
that is as clear as that a man, however thirsty he
might be, would never touch the cup, however tempt
ing and sparkling it might appear, of which he knew
the contents to be the beverage of poison and death.
Chr. Very true; and it is this very Infidelity,
this want of faith in the expressed revelations and
forewarnings of God, that makes men wicked, keeps
them wicked, obdures them in their wickedness.
They do not believe that God will judge the wicked ;
they do not believe in such a state of pain and sepa
ration for the wicked as hell ; otherwise, as you
state, they would no more do evil than a thirsty
man would drink off an assured and immedicable
poison. It is Unbelief that thus murders the souls of
men, and perpetuates moral disorder in individuals,
families, and nations. The Scriptures are, therefore,
by your own confession, right in stating the exist
ence of Faith in the Word of God, in a future judg
ment, heaven, and hell, to be that indispensable re
quisite which preserves the soul from vice, defilement,
and shame, and establishes it in righteousness, devo
tion, and purity. Your Infidelity, on the contrary,
by utterly ignoring and refusing to believe in the
practical justice of the Almighty, positively encour
ages and inflames men to the perpetration of every
crime, and the indulgence of every ruinous passion.
It destroys the vitality of the soul, and the sensibility
of the conscience ; it rends up that most just, truth
ful, and salutary fear of a holy and sin-remembering

THE FEAR OF GOD — WHAT IS IT? 369
God, with which all human laws are superfluous,
without which they are useless to deter man from
the commission of turpitude, crime, and impiety.
Inf. But surely this fear of hell would never of
itself render a man a good, lovely, or noble char
acter ?
Chr. Who affirms it would ? or who affirms that,
where it does exist, it ever exists " by itself?" It is
not the end, it is the beginning of the soul's wisdom ;
for who does not know that he who believes in a hell
for the cruel, the pitiless, the exacting, the oppres
sive, the insensible, will fear to be cruel, pitiless,
exacting, oppressive, insensible ?
Inf. And you advocate " fear" as a sound princi
ple of appeal and penalty ?
Chr. In its true sense there is none sounder, none
more deeply implanted in man's nature, none produc
tive of more certain results. False fears there are in
numerable, as of every true sensation there are innu
merable counterfeits ; the world is a mass of false and
contemptible fears of things that ought to be spurned,
not feared, but "the fear of God" is as genuine,
pure, and holy a part of man's right nature as hope,
or faith, or love. He is the only legitimate object of
the soul's fear ; nothing is there more truly natural
or more elevating than the fear of God. Something
of it remains in the worst of men ; how few, how
very few, die that do not breathe a prayer to be at
peace at least with God ! You must yourself feel,
that to confront God face to face in judgment is
a very different thing, indeed, from arguing against
Christianity, its priesthood, and its Scripture ; for a
16*

370 THE FEAR OF GOD  WHAT IS IT?
man to be about to prove in his own person, and at
the cost of his own soul, whether there is a holy God
and an Eternal Judgment, is a far different thing
than to propose this and that imaginary objection to
religion and its ways. Supposing these even to carry
certain weight in theory, what becomes of them in
the light of the great fact of his own impending
judgment ? God Himself, — a holy God, — is to be
met; before Him the man by himself and upon
himself stands to receive judgment. And no wise
man will ever cast away the " fear" of that judgment
in himself, or seek to weaken it in others.
Inf. But the fear of hell is not the fear of God.
Chr. It is part of it — a very essential part ; for it
is the fear of the power and just judgment of God in
the punishment of sin.
Inf. But this " fear" has led at times to the most
frightful and destructive superstitions.
Chr. The Christian fear of God has not only not
led to a single superstition, but it expels from the
soul every false, every servile, every superstitious
terror whatever. But I go much further than this :
the fear of God it is which in all ages, even though
under superstitious forms, has made the moral and
therefore also the physical strength of nations. The
people who have faith in this one great truth of the
future justice of God will always prove themselves of
higher caste, character, and power, than the people
who, possessing all the advantages of wealth, posi
tion, civilization, have fallen from faith in that truth.
The soul of the people is in this last case a lie
towards God, and they are sure to decay and perish

THE FEAR OF GOD  WHAT IS IT? 371
from the effects of the lie, from the corruption of
their own soul. All history teaches us this lesson,
that the substances of many of the great truths of
Christianity have been embodied in the religions
of many nations before Christ put His seal upon
them as of Divine origin and sanction. The forms
in which the substances were taught and accepted
were often superstitious, but the substance under
those forms was and remained true and Divine. In
Rome, for instance, as long as the nation preserved
their faith in the substantial truth of a Divine sepa
ration between the righteous and the wicked in a
future world, under the superstitious forms of Elysium
and Tartarus, the mischief of the superstition of the
form was nothing in the balance against the good
effect of the genuine faith in the substantial truths
themselves. " Such superstitions," argued a certain
class of infidels in the forms and substances alike,
" are very well for the people ; " bnt gradually the
Infidelity extended to the people : no distinction
was drawn between the variety of the form and the
verity of the substance ; both were equally ridiculed
and disbelieved. The result was, that the Roman
people, from being the highest-principled race in the
world, became a populace without piety, without
patriotism, without worth, without morals, fit only
to be ruled by the iron despotism their own vices
challenged and established. Polybius, the Greek
historian, emphatically remarks, that as long as the
Romans retained their superstitions, no nation rival
led them in private honor and public probity ; every
officer of the State might have been intrusted with

3 I 2 THE FEAR OF GOD  THE ROOT OF CONSCIENCE.
untold treasures ; and he affirms this character for
integrity to have been the real source of both their
home strength and foreign influence. With the ex
tinction of the Old Faith perished also the moral
worth of Rome and all the confidence of foreign
nations in the personal or national integrity of the
Roman. With this view I fully concur. The phi
losophers or sciolists who spoke contemptuously of
these superstitions, as if they were nothing but pure
illusions, were themselves the representatives of the
grossest and most dangerous ignorance, — the igno
rance that neither saw, knew, nor appreciated the
eternal and vital truths impressed by such forms on
the hearts and souls of the people. They were them
selves more shamefully shallow in error and wider
from the truth than the simplest-minded Samnite
farmer on the Apennine Hills. When both the good
and the bad, the false and the true of the ancient
religion had melted down into a Stygian Lake of
black and stagnant Infidelity, Christianity cast the
first rays of a new morning through the hideous
mists of this foul and false philosophy. Men hailed
and accepted it, because it was both salvation for
society in this world and for the individual soul in
the next. It restored the just fear of God, the true
faith in the eternal distinction between vice and
virtue and their future finalities.
Inf. It is very probable that such a conviction,
being once made part of a man's nature, will pre
serve him from lawlessness and crime.
Chr. By removing it, what have you in the man

THE FEAR OF GOD — THE ROOT OF CONSCIENCE. 373
himself to fall back upon ? In dealing with the soul
and its impulses, have external physical preventatives
and barriers been ever successful ? Is the thief made
less a thief by loading him with irons ? the murderer
less a murderer by chaining him to the galleys ? the
shameless woman less shameless by the bars and
bolts of Oriental immurement ? Having no principle
of true fear towards God to appeal to within the
man's soul, you are compelled for very safety's sake
to have recourse to the police, the prison, and the
scaffold. Inf. You are. certainly right, here ; we must have
police, prisons, and scaffolds ; certain characters
could never be managed without them.
Chr. They are absolutely necessary for the irre-
claimably, the incorrigibly criminal; but are they
effective of that moral life and conduct which the
internal principle of faith and fear towards God pro
duces, independent of all external appliances, in
every individual in whom it operates ? Are they not
to the wicked now precisely what hell will be to
them hereafter — penal, not purgatorial nor preven
tive? For a preventive you must look to a rectify
ing of the conscience itself in man ; if yoia expect
the police to do the work of the conscience, experi
ence declares the more they are called upon the less
effect do they produce ; a certain proof that we are
attempting to make them do a work which some
thing else ought to do. A tenant of yours sows
henbane in one of his best fields. He complains in
autumn that it costs him a ruinous expenditure of

374 INFIDELITY  ITS POVERTY.
money to employ people to weed the field clean
of henbane, and collect it into poisonous heaps to
be destroyed ; — what would you say to him ?
Inf. Why did he sow henbane seed ?
Chr. The henbane is Infidelity ; the field is Eng
land ; the farmer is the nation ; the spring is youth ;
the autumn is manhood ; the weeders are the police ;
the poisonous heaps are the prisons and the gallows ;
or rather so it would be if the principles of these
infidel works were to be disseminated and drilled
into the families and schools of England. In a few
years she would perish in her own home by mortal
infection and disease from the plants of her own
sowing, growth, and gathering. Thus, whether you
reason from the nature of spiritual or bodily pain,
from the distinction between the probationary and
penal states, or from the general laws of analogy,
you find it not in your power to deny the existence
of a material hell. Start and instil doubts upon it in
men's minds ; you cannot solve those doubts, you
cannot render them certainties, still less can you
liberate a single soul from hell, should it really exist
as the future penal state of all that is odious and
detestable in mankind. On such a subject, to be free
from fear, a man must be incontestably certain as to
the nonentity of such a place ; you do not pretend to
give him this certainty; you suggest doubts only; yet
by condemning his Faith, you cause him to lead such a
life as, without any doubts at all, will, if it be a reali
ty, end in it and the sentence of condemnation which
precedes it. Yet you express surprise that mankind
will have nothing to do with " the intellect" of such

INFIDELITY — PRACTICALLY TESTED. 375
Infidelity as this— an Infidelity that has no guaranty
to offer them for the truth of any one of its asser
tions, or the security of any one of its positions. To
even the most unscrupulous character Infidelity must
thus appear a most hazardous investment against
time and eternity. On the other hand, what does it
propose to the pure, the good, the compassionate,
the kind-hearted, the generous, the truthful, the suf
ferer for the relief and happiness of others, the mar
tyr for righteousness, principle, and truth ? Where
is its heaven, its immortality, its consummation of
all things in the sinless kingdom and blissful vision
of the unveiled Almighty ? What single inducement
does it hold out to eschew evil and ensue good ?
Inf. Inducement ! Do you then, after all, reduce
Christianity to considerations of selfishness ?
Chr. If by selfishness you mean intense devotion
to one's individual interests, without reference to the
feelings and happiness of others, it is unnecessary to
say a word in defence of Christianity against so
groundless an imputation. Its most malignant ene
mies admit it to be a religion, the first sacrifice on
whose altars must be that of " self." If, on the con
trary, you contend that Christianity infers consid
eration for our own interests, as defined and designed
for us by the wisdom and goodness of our Maker,
you are, in my opinion, right — it is " selfish," in the
sense that faith in its revelations and obedience to
its precepts are so thoroughly our interest, that they
will exalt our " very selves, body and soul," to the
highest acme of gloriousness and joy which created
existence can attain. " Selfishness," in its ordinary

376

INFIDELITY  PRACTICALLY* TESTED.

acceptation, signifies the pursuing our own interest
according to our unenlightened and ignorant idea of
it. Christianity implies the pursuing such according
to the wisdom of God, and not our own. Selfishness
sacrifices others to itself ; Christianity, itself to others.
The selfish man follows an interest destructive of all
but his own pride, comfort, or importance ; the Chris
tian an interest conducive to, and conservative of, the
welfare of each and all as well as himself.
Inf. Nevertheless it is " selfishness," though in its
noblest form.
Chr. You mean, I presume, that Christianity,
which eradicates selfishness in every low form from
the human heart, yet so terminates as eventually to
realize for the believer the objects which the noblest
form of selfishness — the sublimest ambition, for in
stance — proposes to its devotee ? Granted ; but to
apply to it such a term as " selfishness," because it
effects for every man, in God's way, all and infinitely
more than selfishness effects for itself only in man's
way, is, I think, a perversion of language. If a pa
rent propose to each of his children such a line of
conduct as will insure the individual and collective
happiness of all, can you term those children " self
ish," because they adopt and persevere in that line ?
He, rather, would be the selfish character who, aban-
d Dning it, and with it the interest of the family in com
mon, sought out ways to aggrandize himself at the cost
of the disunion and misery of his brothers and sisters.
The former case is that of Christianity, which is no
less the interest of all society than of each individual
— the latter is that of the man who acknowledges

FAITH AND LOVE. 377
no obligation, in his own person, to observe the moral
and spiritual duties God has prescribed, without ex
ception, to the whole family of man on earth.
Inf. But it requires more faith than I can com
mand to believe, among other things, that the
blessed results which it promises goodness and vir
tue, will any more issue from it, than the penal re
sults which it suspends above the heads of the crim
inal and impenitent. It may be true that a certain
soul-repose is now gained by the Christian — but it
appears quite a delusive hope to imagine that heaven,
immortality, sinlessness, everlasting youth and joy
can be his indefeasible inheritance hereafter.
Chr. That would, I apprehend, resolve itself into
the question whether they are really promised him
by the Almighty or not. If they are, there is no
Infidel who would not admit the promise of God to
be tantamount to certainty.
Inf. But the faith required to believe that such
will be the fact is very great.
Chr. Believing that God has already given His
Son to be crucified for the redemption of the soul, I
consider heaven and its accompaniments not to be
distinct and after-gifts, but part and elements of that
gift itself. I regard the gift of heaven and immor
tality as bearing no more comparison in the sight of
the Almighty to the gift of His own son, than, in
the sight of Abraham, did the wood of the altar to
the life of Isaac. However glorious that inherit
ance of the saints may be, it is not to be named as
a proof of God's love to us with the giving of His
Son to the humiliation and death of the Cross.

378 FAITH AND LOVE.
Were I, indeed, a Socinian — did I not believe Jesus
Christ to be the eternal Son of God, the very mag
nitude and excess of the future reward, having no
antecedent of equal greatness of love towards us in
God's past dealings with our souls, might suggest
feelings of incredulity in the verity of the promise.
But now that the Almighty Father, who has given
His Son, should in Him give us heaven also, appears
to me to be a very small thing indeed to raise any dif
ficulty of faith upon. In addition to this, the same
amount of faith which was exacted of earlier believ
ers has ceased to be exacted from me : it has become
knowledge. I see so many of the august promises
of old to the Church now substantiated, that faith in
the accomplishment of the remainder scarcely tries
my soul at all. Had I been one of the Twelve, I
should, perhaps, have been staggered at the promise
which affirmed that the Church of the Twelve should
become the Church of all nations. I witness it so far
fulfilled, that what remains of it to be realized I con
sider in the light of an absolute certainty. Had I
travelled with them, and observed the debased moral
feeling of all the nations whom they were commanded
to teach and baptize, I might, perhaps, have despaired
of the promise that in Christianity God would " pour
forth of His Spirit on all fiesh." Now that I see
whole nations, once as sanguinary and savage as the
brutes of the forest, reclaimed, humanized, and re
fined by the instruction of the Gospel and the Grace
of the Holy Spirit, the demand that I should believe
India, China, Africa will be no exceptions to the
universality of this Divine influence, constitutes no

FAITH AND LOVE. 379
great exaction on my faith and reason. The faith of
those men of old who, against all that their own eyes
presented to them, doubted not that whatever God
promised He would surely bring to pass, was more
deeply drawn upon than mine, before whose senses
these past promises stand forth as present incon
testable facts of the social and spiritual state of the
world. It is in my power, living in the nineteenth
century, to sweep my arm around the whole horizon
of the globe, and exclaim, with reference to the truth
of the promises hereafter to be realized, " Behold !
the past and the present are the evidence and the
pledges of the future. He that, according to His
Word, hath so far wrought, will, according to the
same Word, finish his work of salvation on earth and
in heaven." Thus, as generation on generation pro
ceed, they will find less exacted of God from their
faith, more from their love, until faith itself shall
have ceased and been lost in witnessing the verifica
tion of the last of the promises of God ; until hope
dissolve in fruition, and of all the graces now required
of us, Divine charity alone will be the one which
Heaven itself shall cause to never fail. The Great
Day of God, as it will terminate the existence of hope
and faith, so will it commence that state of pure, un
alloyed, and holy love, which alone is the real king
dom of Christ. The nearer we approach that mani
festation of what Christianity really is — for now it is
man's Christianity, as it were, not Christ's, which we
witness ; its struggles in flesh, not its triumphs in God
and the good— the more, one after another, by this
very fulfilment, the unfulfilled promises of God will

380 the christian's faith 
decrease in number ; the less and less call shall we
have on our faith, the more will God look to us to
increase and sanctify ourselves in that grace of char
ity, which, gradually absorbing all other duties into
itself, as God draws all the souls it animates nearer
to Himself, will as the alone image of God survive
with God Himself, the end of all means, and comple
tion of all virtues. To him, therefore, who duly
considers how mightily and effectually the power of
God has in all cases hitherto realized His word,
His future promises of heaven and immortality pre
sent no difficulty of faith. I will tell you who, to
my mind, requires far greater faith than the Christian
does. Inf. Who?
Chr. The unchristian, worldly Infidel. The Chris
tian believes in the certainty of the future happiness
promised him by the Almighty. No experience
gainsays this belief — the rest and ease of soul pro
duced by it attests its truth : all analogy, and the
fulfilment of many as wonderful, and at the time as
incredible promises, so far confirm it as to give it in
some respects the character of perfect knowledge.
He has reason, therefore, of the most solid descrip
tion for such faith, and for the course of life which
proceeds upon it. But will you inform me of the
nature and vastness of the faith which is exercised
by the man that, after the experience of so many
thousand years to the contrary, still believes and
acts on the belief that the happiness of the soul is
to be found in something apart from God ? Every
age has tried the experiment: every age pronounced

381
and held it up to warning, as a desperate failure.
He has only to examine his own circle to be con
vinced that, unless a man possesses something under
him more stable than himself or any temporal source
of power, it is not in the nature of things that he
can be happy or at rest in soul. Nevertheless, so
unbounded is such a one's faith in his own conceit,
in the capability of fortune to bestow all that his
heart desires, that he ventures health, conscience,
life itself, on the pursuit. I affirm this to be a wilder
and more insane faith than any you can impute to
the most illiterate fanatic in Christianity ; for it is
in defiance of all past and present experience, of all
the deductions of common-sense, of all the avowals
and declarations of the wisest and most practical
men, and — if God ever spoke to man — against the
explicit word and admonition of his Creator. The
faith of the Christian in God's promises is, to my
mind, wisdom, reason, experience, sense, love, nobil
ity, compared to what this worldling promises him
self on the principle of Infidelity in God. This man
succeeds in his pursuit : nothing is more common
than for God to give a man his heart's desire, not to
withhold from him the legitimate material result of
his toil and energies : if he seeks riches, to let him
gain them ; if station, to master it ; if pleasure, to
command it. But then, the misery of the success !
the deception to his soul which his whole life is now
detected to have been ! the black vacuum which
makes the fretful, dissatisfied, morose old man
even more wretched over his success, than have
previously all the preyings of mind and trepidations

382 the christian's faith 
of alarm by which he has ceaselessly been tormented
during the fifty years of its weary chase ! From the
vulgar mania of this man's credulity my reason and
my soul alike recoil. Christianity appears to me to
speak with the voice of pure reason, as well as with
the witnessing of the issues of all such pursuits as
these, when it would persuade us to lay the founda
tion of all our actions in God and His truthfulness.
Infidelity jars upon every nerve of sense within me
when it advises — " Have faith in every thing but
God ; believe in any thing but the Word of God ;
believe that money, advancement, opinion, worldly
success can make you happy ; but do not believe that
heaven and its success, the advancement of your
best self, the soul, the fruition of its better joys, the
praise of God and angels can possess that power."
Infidelity here exhausts and bankrupts the patience
of reason. I desire to know if faith in any power
created of God — mind, man, myself, means — be rea
sonable, is not faith in God Himself more reason
able ? If I transfer to any of them the faith which
nothing but Omnipotence can verify, I have surely so
far lost the correct sense of things, and the guidance
of right reason. Let a man so far-prize fortune as it
really conduces to his independence of mind, his
health, his comforts, his j ust position, his freedom from
the trammels of servility, or excessive and wasting la
bor. Is there any necessity to carry this appreciation
into idolatry ? Are there not countless instances daily
recurring, in which the incapacity of fortune to touch
the soul are as evident to the child as to the philoso
pher ? There are necessities in the soul of Croesus

383
the wealth and bullion of Croesus cannot supply.
And if the soul be hollow, the whole man above the
animal still remains a want, a pauperism, and a
craving. The higher we ascend in the scale of crea
tion, the weaker become in us those feelings and
propensities that receive gratification from the pleas
ures procurable by mere riches. Of all the joys
in heaven, not one is attainable by the possession of
wealth : of all the true, hearty, genuine joys on earth,
how few are there that mere money can originate
or command— how many are there which it posi
tively vitiates and destroys ! In the costly board,
the massive plate, the Sybaritic viands, the correct
establishment, the imposing ostentation and display
of rank, we see the extent of what opulence can
effect for corporeal and social gratification. He that
has not all this, believes that if he had he would be
happy. Are they that have it, indebted to it for
happiness? If it be hereditary, if it be what they
are accustomed to from their infancy, they are as
profoundly indifferent to it as the farmer is to his
parlor, or the laborer to his kitchen. They are
panting for something else. Opulence and its advan
tages, great and envied as they may be, fail to con
tent "the spirit that is in man:" it would be as
much to the purpose to expect it to be satisfied with
carrion as with gold. Now does Infidelity deem
it "intellect" to tell us that this interior spiritual
world does not exist, or that, if it does, there are
no objects designed to be its respondents? With
more reason might it aver that God having created
in me an eye, He has created nothing to be seen ;

384an ear, yet nothing to be heard ; hands, yet nothing
to be felt ; a mind, yet nothing to be learnt ; than
that He has created an immortal soul, yet nothing
to answer and satisfy the immortal needs and action
of that soul.
Inf. This illustration you derive from the analogy
of Nature, or perhaps the economy of supply and
demand in commerce.
Chr. It may exist there, but I derive it from
another source— from the Great Teacher of the
Soul. "Who is there among you that, if his child
ask him for bread, he will give him a stone ; or if he
ask a fish, will he give him a scorpion ? " The soul
does ask God its Father for the bread of the soul —
for that which will sustain and satisfy, not that
which, like the scorpion, will sting, inflame, exas
perate, and poison, with the torture of a hellish thirst,
its immortal longings. God gives his child, the soul,
that which it does in all its inexpressible aspirations
and emotions pray Him to give : He gives it Christ
and heaven. But what has Infidelity to proffer it —
be it the soul of a heathen or Christian — when it
thus, after the first libation, spurns the contentments
of the sensual life, and cries to its Creator for pleas
ures of like nature with itself — spiritual, eternal,
incorruptible ?
Inf. Nothing. How, not admitting such immor
tality, could it have ? It would be a contradiction.
Chr. As it is, it is a flagrant contradiction. In
this present existence we have these yearnings and
passions of the soul in full activity : we request from
Infidelity an explanation of them. The meanest

385
creature in whom God has implanted an appetite,
finds wherewith to meet and satisfy it : in Scriptural
language, " God feeds the very sparrows :" it is that
satisfaction which constitutes such happiness as theirs
is : but, say you, for the Soul, the dove of eternity, there
is no food prepared of God to meet those appetites
which will not and cannot feed on the carnal, the mun
dane, the sensual. Right reason, I submit, must reject
the supposition that God should so provide for the
necessities of the fowl of the air and the worm of the
earth, yet leave wholly uncared for the necessities of
the noblest part in His noblest work. That the soul is
not content with what contents the body, is a matter
of universal experience and confession : we do not learn
that from Christianity ; but we do learn from Chris
tianity that God has made special provision, and what
that provision is, for its special and paramount needs
both in time and eternity. What a singular grievance,
in truth, his own soul must often be to an Infidel !
What a cause of the most perplexing contradictions
between himself and his creed ! What a protest in
every form of tacit rebellion and passive resistance
against being subordinated to its own subjects and
implements — the perishing organs of the body and
their more perishing pleasures ! What irrepressible
abhorrences of the swine-husks the Infidel intellect
presents to it for food! What stragglings to be
liberated from its foul companions, and to return,
though naked and in tears, to its own home — " Let
me arise hence, and go to my Father !"
Inf. Granting that there is a proper fruition pre
pared for the soul, a point yet remains to be cleared
17

386 what is it that
up to my apprehension. How is it that any man who
has not utterly extirpated every slightest penchant
for every slightest sin, can be an inheritor of that
kingdom of pure and perfect righteousness ? Now
no man dies without some tinct of sin. If all tinct
of sin be not purged away in this life, you Prot
estants hold it cannot be forgiven in the life to
come. Chr. I am no further Protestant than the Church
of England is : I can only answer you, therefore, as
an Anglo-Catholic : other Protestants can answer for
themselves. Inf. Does not the Anglo-Catholic Church hold the
view I have stated ?
Chr. I am not aware it does to the extent you
assume. There is a certain sin, saith our Lord, which
shall not be forgiven, either in this world, nor in the
world to come — implying that certain sins are for
given in the world to come — such may be those of
which good Christians, suddenly cut off, may not
have had time to bethink themselves, to confess to
God, and to implore remission for. We may believe
this, yet consistently repudiate purgatory, or the
notion that such purification can only take place
through the agency of penal fire.
Inf. Nevertheless, whatever tinct of sin or immo
rality remains unforgiven on earth must be cleansed
before such a man inherits the Kingdom — if not here,
then by an act of Christ in the next world.
Chr. Yes.
Inf. If this solution protects you in one quar
ter, it exposes you to greater peril from another.

EXCLUDES FROM HEAVEN? 387
How is it that sin does not forever exclude from
Heaven ?
Chr. It does.
Inf. Forever?
Chr. Forever.
Inf. Surely not. No soul is there of the race of
Adam in heaven which was not once sullied with
sin: many, like David, deeply sullied. Yet they
are in heaven. Sin, therefore, does not forever ex
clude from heaven.
Chr. Is the stain of sin on them now ?
Inf. No.
Chr. If such stain were on them could they be in
heaven ?
Inf. I conclude not — that is, according to your
faith, which declares that nothing but the perfectly
pure and holy can exist in heaven.
Chr. And such are they. The blood of Christ has
not only obliterated the stain, but destroyed in them
the existence of the thing which imparted the stain.
Except for this blood, sin, both in its stain and power
— and of that power expulsion from heaven is part —
would have remained in them. Regarded by itself
sin does forever exclude from heaven. But where
Christ is, sin ceases to exist. David, and every saint
in Rest were once sinners, therefore in themselves
forever excluded. Now they are so washed in the
laver of a new birth and creation in Christ, that sin
has ceased to either attach or inhere into their soul.
For the same reason no soul of man, which is not
thus washed and cleansed in the blood of Christ, can
enter heaven: sin remains in it, and that will, of

388 WHAT IS IT THAT
itself, forever exclude it, without the necessity of
any further act of judgment on God's part — or, as
St. John expresses it, " He that receives not Christ,
is condemned already."
Inf. I so expected — and thus come to my con
cluding objection to your religion, which is, that
your faith, by making heaven dependent wholly on
Jesus Christ, and not on morality, undermines the
value and obligations of morality.
Chr. The answer to such a speculative objection
as this, must be made by matters of fact. Does
Christianity moralize or demoralize men — individu
ally and socially — does it demoralize England? Is
the immorality in any country attributable to the
precepts and faith of Jesus Christ ?
Inf. I cannot be so hardy as to answer in the
affirmative. But it is for this reason the more ex
traordinary that it does not make heaven the recom
pense of the morality it forms in men, instead of
being a gift of mercy from God in Christ His Son.
How do you explain such an anomaly ?
Chr. Is it an anomaly ?
Inf. Surely. Christianity builds up a moral sys
tem in man for the kingdom of heaven — yet it as
serts this morality constitutes not the remotest claim
to this kingdom, which is solely a gift and not a wage
from God. Would it not much more strengthen and
exalt morality, to make heaven its wages, and not —
irrespectively at times of all morality, such as in
the instance of the Robber on the cross — a grace in
Christ? Chr. You deem it more reasonable that heaven

EXCLUDES FROM HEAVEN? 389
should be a premium awarded by the Almighty to a
moral life on earth, than part only of God's gift to
us, in Christ, His Son ?
Inf. Yes.
Chr. By a moral life you mean the observance of
the moral law — much what Scripture means by keep
ing the whole law of God !
Inf. Exactly.
Chr. Nothing then prevents you from challenging
heaven in your own right as a perfect moral char
acter. Inf. Yes, Christianity prevents.
Chr. You greatly err. So far from preventing
you, it declares that if you can truly challenge
heaven on the ground of moral rectitude, you will,
according to the infallible promise of God, receive
it as your own right. He that doeth, shall live.
" What shall I do to inherit eternal life ? Keep the
commandments." That, the original promise, does
and will forever hold good to every soul of man.
Every soul which has kept the Law of God may
claim the promise of heaven from God by the title
of its own individual obedience. If you have kept
it, well and good : you will as surely receive heaven
in your own right, according to God's promise, as the
Christian will in Christ's right, according to God's
promise. The question here again resolves into a
matter of fact. Have you kept the whole law or not? "
Inf. The whole law who could keep ?
Chr. Infraction of the law in one point is an in
fraction of the whole as law. A murderer may keep
the law of England in all points but that which pro-

390 CHRISTIANITY AND MORALITY.
hibits murder : infringing it in that one point, he
incurs the full penalty of the law in its integrity as
a law-breaker. Similarly the observation of nine
commandments extends no immunity to the violation
of the tenth : he that is guilty of one incurs the guilt
attached to the failure of legal obedience. Whether
you or any other individual are thus guilty or not, is,
I repeat, a question of evidence and facts. Chris
tianity first declares that if your legal obedience is
inviolate, heaven is yours in your own right. If it
has been violated, then, on your own grounds, any
claim you may have of your own to heaven is for
feited ; you are disenfranchised and disinherited of
all right or title to heaven. Is not that clear ?
Inf. Certainly: if I desert service, or as it were
abandon my work, the engagement is on my part
violated, the stipulations annulled, and the wages
forfeited. Chr. Secondly, it affirms that by reason of a cer
tain flaw in your nature, occasioned by the very act
of desertion, it is impossible you can now, however
sincerely or assiduously you exert yourself, fulfil the
original compact of that obedience through the love
due from the soul to its Creator. However far your
obedience may extend, the obedience itself is radically
defective by the absence from it as its right root and
cause of this spiritual love to God. The rich young
man instanced in the Gospel illustrates my meaning.
" What shall I do to inherit eternal life ?" " Keep the
commandments." "All have I kept from my youth
upward." "One thing thou lackest, follow me." No
— he would not ; the soul-love to God, to Christ as

CHRISTIANITY AND MORALITY. 391
our God, and the following Him from that soul-love
alone, was that lacking in him and in us, which
vitiates even whatever obedience we do by nature
attain to. But so far from Christianity preventing
you from any attempt at this perfect obedience, it
implores you to try it. " Be perfect as your Father
in heaven." Knowing full well that the more un-
feignedly you do try, the more heartfelt will be your
confession that you cannot, by your own power, act
up to even the requisitions of your own conscience,
much less of the holy law of God. If heaven is to
be yours, it must be by some other title than such as
is grounded on your moral merit, or legal obedience.
Is there any Priestcraft in such plain dealing as this ?
If you have kept the law, you are secure of heaven in
your own right ; for the promise of God has gone
forth upon such obedience to Adam, to you, to every
soul of the race of Probation. If you have never
fallen from God's law, you have no need of a Saviour.
Christianity is not commissioned, nor did Christ
come to such, for so He expressly states. " I am not
come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance :
I am not sent except to the lost." " Christ came
into the world to save sinners." This is one of the
fundamental principles of the Gospel, and pervades
its whole delivery to man.
Inf. Very true ; but this very Gospel, in laying
down such a principle, terrifies, instead of, as it might
be imagined, soothing me.
Chr. How?
Inf. It compels an appeal to my own conscience ;
it holds up before that conscience the mirror of the

392 CHRISTIANITY AND MORALITY.
Gospel-law of God ; it drags me to its bar ; it con
trasts my obedience with its requisitions ; it will not
permit me to compare myself, my actions, my life,
with any other code, or to judge by any other stand
ard than that of God.
Chr. But what in all this should terrify or alarm
you, if, as you say, your conscience is clear ?
" Hie murus aheneus esto,
Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa.' '
It is the very process which a conscience clear of all
self-accusations would court and challenge, the very
process it must go through at the bar of heaven, if
not on earth, before it can establish the validity of
its claim to heaven. If you need no Saviour, what
should alarm you in the fact of His coming to others
who do need Him ? If you are sound, why should
you be troubled when the physician passes you to
visit the sick ?
Inf. But the act of forcing my conscience to come
to a judgment according to the spiritual law of God,
not by any inferior criterion, is of itself sufficient to
create feelings of misgiving and distrust in one's own
state. Chr. Would you judge the soul by any other law
than the law of the soul? Would you judge a man
by the law of the wild beast, or the mind by the law
of a mineral ?
Inf. Of course not : the soul must be judged by
the law of its own nature ; that I admit.
Chr. The Gospel presents the soul that law, and
entreats it to judge of itself by it. What should
there be more alarming in such an act to a guiltless

CHRISTIANITY AND MORALITY. 393
and unfallen soul, than in my presenting the statutes
against treason to a thoroughly loyal subject ? Ought
not the soul which has kept the law to rejoice at
receiving it, for is it not, in fact, the very title in
right of which it claims the tenure and reversion of
heaven ?
Inf. No ; for as there is not a living soul that on
examining the law can conscientiously say it has in
all points observed either the letter or spirit of its
enactments, the conscience becomes alarmed.
Chr. Truly so : the cause of the terror then is the
conscience, not the Gospel. Ought not Christianity
in justice, to say nothing of mercy, to lay before the
eye of your soul the copy of that original law by
obedience to which you yourself claim heaven ? How,
unless it does, can your conscience know whether
you have obeyed or not, whether it is to accuse or
excuse you, whether you need a Saviour or not?
You would, I conceive, express indignation if it did
not as the first step beseech you to consider by the
light of this law whether the obedience on which you
rely is solid and faultless or not. If it be, the prom
ise of God stands irrevocable to you in your own
person. If not, the law and your own conscience
condemn you, not Christianity. Being conscience-
condemned by your own test, Christianity then
comes to you as " glad tidings." But she does not
judge : that is not her province, nor the province of
Christ now. He is now the Saviour and the Com
forter, not the Judge — hereafter he will be the judge.
Now it is the law and the conscience which judge ;
much more, until these two have both judged and
17°

394 CHRISTIANITY AND THE MORAL LAW.
condemned the man, the man cannot come to Christ
at all, nor is he at all received by Christ. Christ
explicitly states, " Unless you are lost, you do not
need Me ; you are secure of immortality and heaven
by the promise of God to obedience. That word
in heaven stands fast for ever and ever. But if you
are law-condemned, self-condemned; if your heart
and conscience confirm the justice of that condemna
tion, and you know not where to fly for refuge or
seek for comfort, come to Me : I am your Saviour
and your God, and will give rest and peace to your
soul." To suppose that Christ and His Gospel came
to accuse, condemn, and judge, is a complete subver
sion and misunderstanding of the whole purport of
His Divine mission. He most emphatically abjured
all jurisdiction whatever in this sense, as being utterly
the reverse of His purposes in coming in an Incarnate
state from heaven to man : " Woman ! hath no man
condemned thee? No man, Lord. Neither do I
condemn thee : go and sin no more." He left judg
ment to the law of God, which had from the first
been given to man ; so far from interfering with its
power and prerogatives, He constantly declared it
must to its least particle be obeyed, and would, to
its smallest tittle, be fulfilled; He magnified it by
bowing His own neck to its stroke, and yielding up
His own soul to its justice.
Inf. But if no man can keep the law, to what end
was it given ?
Chr. The man Christ Jesus has kept it ; kept it
as man, and, therefore, He in His own right claims
and possesses heaven ; in Him, as the sinless man,

CHRISTIANITY AND THE MORAL LAW. 395
God has verified His promise to obedience ; over
Him, because He was sinless, death lost all power in
the grave. Could we, like Christ, keep the law, like
Christ we should in our own right ascend to the
land of everlasting life. But He is the only one who
has done so. Fulfilling the perfect will and law of
God, He attained the promise for himself as the man
Christ Jesus ; then, having so attained, He laid down
that sinless life for us, that, as the second Adam, He
might be to us the beginning of that life eternal due
to obedience, as the first Adam had been of the
death due to disobedience.
Inf. But, as you say no other man has ever ful
filled the Law, of what practical use, therefore, was
it to reveal it to mankind, seeing they were in a state
incapable of paying obedience to it ?
Chr. That very incapability was the demonstra
tion of their state. The consciousness of such state
produced by comparing their life with the righteous
ness which the law exacted, formed that preliminary
conviction which St. Paul calls " the conviction of
the law." It constituted, therefore, the revelation
of a man's nature to himself: it brought home to
every one individually the fact of the Fall in his
own person. The more strenuously a man attempted
to obey its requisitions, the more profoundly would
the inevitable failure impress him with the necessity
of looking elsewhere than to himself for the restora
tion of this nature and its redemptibility for the in
heritance promised to obedience. Its end, therefore,
in this respect, was to bring a man through his own
conscience to Christ.

?>96 CHRISTIANITY AND THE MORAL LAW.
Inf. Your religion, of course, calculated upon this
result. No conscience pretends to be altogether free
from the sense of some violation or other of the
moral and spiritual law ; no man's conscience, there
fore, would permit him to advance a claim to heaven
on the ground of moral perfection.
ChR. How, moreover, can moral excellency be more
highly honored than by Christianity addressing itself
thus to the most moral of men ? " High as you
deem your moral worth to be, it can make no pre
tension to have attained the standard of heavenly
righteousness. Exalted as it may be in your own
opinion, it is a very low kind indeed of holiness com
pared with that true loveliness of the soul which
alone qualifies for the presence and society of God."
The absolute rejection by Christianity of the most
advanced phase of human morality as unworthy
the name of righteousness in the judgment of God,
conveys to my mind the strongest and most elevated
idea of what the righteousness of the soul and the
purity of heaven really are. Except for this revela
tion to us of the Divine standard, every little society
and clique, every individual might debase morality
and moral worth down to the practices, conven
tionalism, or usages of himself and his interests.
The fact that in the heathen world this was the
result, is apparent from the very words "morals,
morality," meaning to them nothing more than the
habits or the prevalent manners of this or that in
dividual family or people. The man who would
claim heaven as being fit on the score of his own ex
cellence to live forever with God and the Angels,

CHRISTIANITY AND THE MORAL LAW. 397
appears to us Christians to entertain very extraordi
nary ideas of the holiness of heaven, and to labor
under a total misconception of wherein the real value
of all morality consists.
Inf. In what does it consist except in its being
conducive to a man's own good ?
Chr. Take the most moral of men, one guilty of
the fewest immoral thoughts and actions, one that
rests all his religion and respectability on his moral
ity; what, I beg, of all his morality would be left
possible for him in heaven ? Nothing of that which
we call morality can have existence there. The notion
of present moral excellences being either excellences
or existences in heaven, carries on the face of it the
assumption of absurdity. How can such virtues as
chastity, temperance, sobriety, honesty, almsgiving,
respect for social decorum — all that circle of qualities
which in this corporeal life constitute what we now
mean by morality — have place or being in the spirit
ual natures and the Christ-pervaded realm where God
is all in all ? The morality of the present existence,
on which you would thus found religion, perishes
with the present system of things. It dies with our
dust at the very moment Christianity ascends in life
and immortality to a state too high, and a develop
ment too glorious to admit the possibility of such
moralities among its conditions.
Inf. In what, then, does the worth of morality
consist? So far from gaining heaven, it cannot even,
it seems, rise above the earth. Dissolving with our
dissolution, to connect its subject-matter with aught
in heaven is evidently ridiculous.

398 CHRISTIANITY AND THE MORAL LAW.
Chr. The real value of the moral law consists in
its having been made by God the test to the soul of
its love to Him. " If ye love me, ye will keep my
commandments." "Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all
thy strength, with all thy mind : this is the first and
great commandment. And the second is like to it.
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these
two commandments hang all the law and the proph
ets." The observance of the moral law, unless it
originates, proceeds, and ends in this love of the soul
to God, unless its love to God be the cause and
motive of its morality, however serviceable to our
selves and society in its present state, is utterly
valueless to the soul in a future state.
Inf. You raise the question above my immediate
field of view.
Chr. Is it not reasonable to presume that God, in
selecting the test of our individual love to Him,
should select one, the observance of which would, at
the same time, be an inestimable blessing and ad
vantage to mankind at large ?
Inf. Very reasonable.
Chr. But it is very possible that a man may ob
serve this test without the slightest care or reference
to the original object of its institution simply for the
sake of its indirect and collateral advantages. A
man may thus be thoroughly moral, and yet also
thoroughly destitute of even a spark of devotion
or affection to God.
Inf. A common, a very common case.
Chr. There may exist, therefore, the greatest mo-

CHRISTIANITY AND THE MORAL LAW. 399
rality without the least religion. Such a person be
ing moral for his own purposes, not from a spirit of
love and attachment to his Creator, cannot be ad
judged to fulfil the proper end of morality. He
uses it as an expedient of mere worldly selfishness.
God is thrown aside, himself and his family alone
considered. With his death the advantages of such
observance cease and determine. Having never
connected morality with God in any sense, it is to
his soul worth nothing, and its benefits as mere
morality die with him.
Inf. Then a thoroughly moral man in this sense
has no more prospect of heaven than an immoral
man, supposing both to be equally destitute of any
higher principle than nature or morality.
Chr. It is so. But on the other hand, if a man
observe the moral law in evidence of his love to Him
who has given it as the test of such love, the blessings
of such obedience in Christ are eternal. The moral
law itself and its temporal benefits, as in the contra
ry case, die with him in the grave ; but the Religion
of that law — the love of God in the soul — ascends
and lives and receives its full fruition in heaven in
the union of the soul with the God of its love. Moral
ity is thus in itself transient ; religion imperishable.
It is the Love of God which alone constitutes true
religion, and it is religion which alone communicates
to morality its own imperishable value.
We have now, I believe, examined the catalogue
of your objections against Christianity in order and
succession. Before we break up our conference,
permit me in my turn to suggest a few very practical

400 INFIDELITY  PRACTICALLY TESTED.
objections against Infidelity. Will you engage to
teach and rule your family for six months on infidel
principles ? Will you call in your wife, your sons,
daughters, and servants, and inculcate upon them, as
solid truth and sound philosophy, the principles ad
vocated by these infidel authors, Newman and oth
ers : " That there is no God, no Christ, no Holy Spirit,
no heaven, no hell, no future judgment; that the
Bible is a myth, the Gospels a forgery, the Apostles
impostors, Christianity priestcraft, the Sacraments
magical delusions ; that God has never spoken to
man, nor cares what any man thinks, says, or does ;
that vice and virtue, good and evil, are equally indif
ferent to Him, and that He neither has now, nor ever
will He make any distinction between them ?" Will
you undertake to teach them this ?
Inf. Clearly it would never do.
Chr. It ought to do if Infidelity be true. You
just now affirmed that Infidelity was freedom, and
Religion slavery. Release your family and establish
ment from the " slavery " of Religion, and initiate
them into the " freedom" of Infidelity. Why should
you alone be "free?" You eulogize Infidelity in
theory, why do you shrink from putting it into
practice ?
Inf. I should regret for many reasons disturbing
the religious convictions of my family, especially
of the female branches of it; for I admit Christi
anity to be the support and elevating power of
womanhood. Chr. That is, for half the world; the half that

INFIDELITY  PRACTICALLY TESTED. 401
form, mould, and refine the other and coarser half;
— a large admission. Try the experiment, then, on
your valet. Train him carefully in the Infidel cate
chism. Tell him in plain English style what these
authors tell you in the obscure German style ; in
struct him that all he has ever hitherto heard and
believed in the Bible or the Church, is an imposition
on his credulity; that there never was any com
mandment against lying, theft, or murder ; that such
as pass for the commandments were invented seven
or eight hundred years after Moses, if there ever
was such a man, died; and especially, that Jesus
Christ was what Newman delineates Him. You
talk much about the " sincerity" of Christians ; here
is a test for the sincerity of Infidels in Infidelity, —
one easily tried within your own home. Will you
venture it?
Inf. No.
Chr. Decidedly your " no" is very emphatic. I
am requesting nothing out of the way, only that you
will teach your servant the principles of Infidelity in
the same manner that Christian families teach their
servants the principles of Christianity ; that you
would, for instance, instead of the Scriptures, read
Strauss, Foxton, Paine, or Voltaire to them. And
this, if you are sincere and consistent, you ought to
do. If you feel Infidelity to be a blessing, impart it
to them, and, above all, see they practise it. Take
your theory out of the stable and put it into harness.
After your valet has thoroughly comprehended that
there is no Divine prohibition against robbery and

402 INFIDELITY — PRACTICALLY TESTED.
assassination, show him the contents of your bureau,
then go, yourself, to sleep, and let the instruction
work. Inf. You put an extreme case.
Chr. Extreme ! I am putting the most common,
the most domestic case I can suggest — master and
servant — a case for every home and establishment in
the kingdom. On Infidel principles, why should not
your valet practise upon you your own teaching?
On the principles which reject a future life and in
evitable judgment as priestcraft and delusion, what
should prevent him from rifling your bureau and
stabbing you in your slumbers to the heart ?
Inf. The chance, or rather certainty, of being de
tected and hanged.
Chr. What is the daily pay of a private soldier ?
Inf. A shilling a day.
Chr. The sum for which your valet risks his life
is perhaps a thousand pounds. Now, so far as mere
death is concerned, which, according to Infidelity, is
the end-all, what reason can you assign why your
valet is not more justified in chancing his life for a
thousand pounds than the soldier is for a shilling ?
By his master's principles nothing but annihilation
and insensibility follow death; the soldier risks that
death for a shilling ; the valet for twenty thousand
shillings. If the soldier escapes being shot, he gets
but the one ; if the valet escapes being hanged, he
gets the twenty thousand. If it comes to the worst
with both, the soldier dies for the shilling, the
valet for the thousand pounds. On Infidel princi
ples the infamous murderer is thus, whether he

INFIDELITY  PRACTICALLY TESTED. 403
escape or hang, a wiser calculator than the gallant
soldier. Inf. Christianity itself cannot always prevent such
murders. Chr. Infidelity produces them. On the principles
of Infidelity they are not " murders," they are specu
lations in which a man stakes his life for so much
money against the police and the law. Except for
Christianitj*, where now* we have one, we should
have a hundred such instances. But Infidelity, by
and out of its own principles, as naturally generates
crime as the root of the deadly nightshade does the
poisonous berries of the plant. An intellectual In
fidel is certain to be guilty of intellectual crime, and
almost certain to be guilty of moral crime, for his Intel
lect will reason out Infidelity into act. If you escaped
from such an attempt on your life as I have sup
posed, your Infidelity incapacitates you from putting
any further question to your servant than this, " Had
you no fear of the gallows ?" He replies, " None ;
why should I have ? what is the gallows but death ?
what is death but extinction and insensibility ? This
is the only world ; why should not I as well as your
self make the most of it ? Why should you be the
master and I the servant, except because you have
money ! To be my own master, to make the most
of this the only life, I must have money ; I tried for
yours." " And you will be executed for it." " What
of that, sir? I shall feel nothing after it; I should
have been weak to have thrown my life away, like
the rank and file of the army, for a shilling ; but a
thousand pounds and a run to America were worth

404 INFIDELITY  PRACTICALLY TESTED.
the risk ; and if I escape, as I still may, I may ven
ture it again rather than be a drudge for life." This
would be coarse, vulgar reasoning, but on your In
fidel premises quite unanswerable. This is your do
mestic "hero."
Inf. You are assuming for granted that Christi
anity would deter such a character from crime.
Chr. What makes him such a character at all, but
the total absence of Christian faith? You confess
that despite every defence you can erect against the
positive revelations of a future state in the Scriptures
and teaching of Christ, that teaching penetrates into
and often agitates your heart. The mass of mankind
— such as your servant is — do not irritate and weary
themselves with petty distinctions or petty objections
in religion : they proceed upon its broad, massive,
prominent truths ; against them they never think of
fabricating barriers for themselves of verbal wind and
metaphysical obscurities. From their infancy they are
taught and believe " it is appointed unto man once to
die, and after death the judgment." And such faith
does, as a matter of fact, prevent the intrusion of
even criminal ideas and intentions into their minds,
which now, by a life-long habit of Faith, rest as nat
urally for support upon the Scriptures as their feet do
on the solid earth.
Again, let us extend the experiment. Infidels
are singular in this respect : they compose and pub
lish a long treatise in favor of Infidelity ; they pre
sent it to the nation : a plain, practical man takes
it up and asks, " Has Mr. Newman or Mr. Hennell
ever tried to work out this Infidel theory of his

INFIDELITY  PRACTICALLY TESTED. 405
in practice? Merchants, agriculturists, manufac
turers, in introducing a new scheme or mode of
operations in their respective provinces, refer to their
own experience of its working, in order to recom
mend it to the public judgment and adoption. Has
Mr. Newman ever ' farmed ' or worked a parish on
the principles he here lays down — that the Scriptures
are false, and Jesus Christ a myth or an impostor ?
If not, what does the man mean by publishing stuff on
paper which will not stand a day's trial of real work ?
If he has, why does he not supply us with the result?"
Inf. You would not expect them to answer that
challenge. Chr. Is it not a challenge Christianity daily not
only submits to, but what she incessantly entreats
the world to give her, that she may accept it ? Is
not every parish such a challenge, such an accept
ance ? Infidelity, in its self-complacency, sits down
in a closet, imagining it the easiest thing to devise a
quasi-religion, which can face the rough attritions
and unceremonious probations of the world. " Preach
the Gospel to every creature." How easy that
sounds ! but immediately it attempts to substitute
something else than the Gospel to be so preached, it
discovers itself in a dead-lock. It casts its eye on
every human work of wisdom, science, philosophy,
but, somehow or other, none of these can stand being
preached upon, preached against, analyzed, torn into
fragments, day after day, century after century, to
Jew, Greek, Roman, Celt, Briton, German, Hindoo,
Negro, Indian, every phase of mind and civilization,
yet remain as fresh, as vital, as keen and powerful

406 INFIDELITY  PRACTICALLY TESTED.
a two-edged sword to the spirit of man, as it was
when its first accents from the Temple Porch wrung
forth the cry for salvation. "Men and brethren,
what shall we do ?" Compare the number of pulpits
in the world, among high and low, rich and poor,
the taught and untaught, the town and country, the
refined and the barbarous, with the number of uni
versities, colleges, academies of arts and sciences ;
the disproportion will give us some conception of the
Gospel as that only thing of Light which "can be
preached to every creature." Nothing else can be :
substitute what you will, instead of proving as the
Gospel, the fire of God to the altar-fuel of the uni
versal soul of man, it will drop as destructively as
poison on the tongue, or as ineffectively as water on
the rock. I should wish, therefore, to know what
Infidelity intends to preach from every parish pulpit
instead of the Gospel : what it intends to visit with
into every house : what to teach with to every child :
what to comfort with to every sick and dying bed :
what to rebuke with to every shameless and dangerous
character : what to convert with to every penitent ?
At a death-bed, for instance, what has it to say or im
part of hope, consolation, or strengthening to the soul?
Inf. That would not be the place for it to speak.
Chr. Something must and will speak there to the
soul. Why does Infidelity muffle its face up ? why
does its tongue cleave to the roof of its mouth ? why
is it a voiceless and fearful conscience when the
Angel of Christianity is pouring forth the rich treas
ures of eternal truth, bringing down its God- to the
soul, opening the, gates of heaven, changing the

INFIDELITY  PRACTICALLY TESTED. 407
grave to victory and the sting of death into the
sceptre of immortality ? All this, again, is practical
— occurs in Great Britain alone a thousand times
every day, for such is the average of deaths per day
in our island — and at every death either Christianity
or Infidelity must minister. Now why does not the
intellectual infidel form as it were a parish, preach
Infidelity from the pulpit, and carry Infidelity to the
cradles, the hearth-stones, and bed-sides of every
family in the parish ? Why is he afraid to reduce to
practice what he is not afraid to publish? The real
reason is, he is perfectly conscious that, if he did so
successfully, that parish would, in twelve months'
time, be a local hell. His own life would not be
worth a week's purchase. Yet you tell us of the
"Intellect of Infidelity" — the intellect that cannot
govern a parish of five hundred souls, except to
dissolve, rain, and literally damn every thing it
acts successfully upon — be it the servant, the master,
the family, or the society — an " Intellect" that can
not stand up in a pulpit, or communicate a word of
solace when solace is most needed and most precious !
an Intellect that cannot find one champion in all
its ranks to do that on its own principles— instruct,
elevate, and govern a certain society of souls — which
thousands of Christian curates of ordinary abilities
do on Christian principles, for innumerable parishes
in every part of the globe ! Whence is this differ
ence ? If in the " Intellect," or power of government,
what a despicable thing Infidel intellect must be ! If
in Infidelity itself, what a despicable thing Infidelity
must be !

408 INFIDELITY  PRACTICALLY TESTED.
Inf. There appears to me great weight due to this
part of your argument.
Che. You will, perhaps, as a rich man, having
some stake in the preservation of law and property
in the country, see still greater weight in the third
and final application of it. Let us extend Infidelity
beyond the family and the parish to the whole mass
of society — to the people. You are rich : the great
majority of the people are poor — so poor that hard
and continuous labor barely enables them to pro
cure the necessaries of subsistence. Supposing them
to be Infidels as well as yourself, why should not the
valet's reasoning with reference to your bureau be as
validly applied by them to the whole of your prop
erty? Why should they not seize your land and
fortune, and enjoy them themselves ?
Inf. My answer is the same — the law would pro
ceed against them.
Chr. Such as the answer is, it will not hold here.
An individual is not, but a people are, the law : an
Infidel people, Infidel law. Why should the law
proceed against them ?
Inf. Because, in brief, it is the law.
Chr. And if the law were altered, so as to legiti
mize the robbery of the rich, to declare it no
crime at all, but rather a restitution of property to
the right original owners, the men of labor, the
people, what then ?
Inf. The law reversed !
Chr. The Social maxim of Infidelity in France
was, "All property is robbery." During the first
revolution, in the. reign of infidel reason or intellect,

INFIDELITY  PRACTICALLY TESTED. 409
which was also the Reign of Terror, that maxim
became the law and practice of the State. Within
the last six years it has again been attempted to
make it the law of the State, and such attempt was
only crushed by deluging the streets of Paris with
blood. Am I not correct? Are not the facts I
state perfectly undeniable ? Infidelity in religion is,
in this age, Red Republicanism or Communism in
politics, and its fundamental principle is, " All prop
erty, all capital is robbery : its recovery and distri
bution among the people is not robbery, but right
and just restitution.
Inf. Your facts are correct ; proceed.
Chr. The Socialists have proved themselves very
hard, straightforward, matter-of-fact men in carrying
out those principles, have they not ? So much so,
that they left France no alternative between Red
Republicanism and Absolute Despotism. France
chose the latter, she was reduced to that choice by
Infidelity. We are speaking of things before our
eyes on the other side of the Channel.
Inf. But we have comparatively few Socialists in
England. Chr. Just as many as we have Infidels, neither
more nor less. And it is to this point I specially re
quest your attention. If Infidelity is right, the Red
Socialist is right : if his premises are true, his infer
ences are correct. They, like you, are Infidels : they
have no " weaknesses," no " fear" of God ; they do
not believe in such " absurdities" as the future judg
ment and everlasting life. They hold this life to be
the only one, the only chance of enjoyment : they
18

410 TNFTDELrrY  PRACTICALLY TESTED.
utterly deny all responsibility of the soul to God, or
any further existence than the present. Now answer
the Red Republican or the Chartist on the common
principles you both hold of Infidelity. Why, this
world being the only one, this life the only life,
there being no God, or one to whom vice and virtue
are equally indifferent, should you be permitted to
retain and enjoy your five thousand per annum, to
revel in every luxury, and to gratify every indulgence,
while they — who are a hundred to one in numbers
against you — should still continue to " toil and slave,
to hunger and thirst, to see their wives and children
shivering with cold and penury on less, perhaps,
than twenty pounds per annum ? Why should all the
labor and misery be theirs, all the ease, profit, and
pleasure yours I Why should this confessedly fright
ful disparity be submitted to.? Now these men have
numbers on their side against the rich : they are their
equals in bodily, and perhaps in mental strength.
They come to you, not speaking of God in any way :
nor do you. It is about to be simply a struggle be
tween two men, both of them without God in this
world or faith in the next. They demand a redistri
bution of your property among them. How would
you answer them?
Inf. I would pistol them as I would a wild beast.
Chr. Exactly ; and they you. This is " the free,
happy, independent life" you would soon realize,
were all your fellow-citizens in England Infidels like
yourself. It is evident, on Infidel principles, the rich
Infidel is at the mercy of the poor one ; the question
between them can only be decided as it has been

INFIDELITY  PRACTICALLY TESTED. 411
in France — by physical force ; and the contest be
tween them would be chronical ; it would be period
ically revived as long as both acknowledged no other
maxims than those of Infidelity. Observe, therefore,
if Infidelity be right, the poor Infidel, the man of
labor, the man of physical power, is logically justi
fied in becoming a communist and applying to your
property, to all property, the principles of commu
nism. For if this life be the only life, and God cares
nothing for human actions, it would argue sheer
imbecility on the part of the infidel communist to
permit any one man to monopolize his 100,0002.
per annum while 100,000 better, stronger, more res
olute men were, by mere legalities, changeable at
any time by getting the Legislature into their own
hands, proscribed to lives of ceaseless work and
thankless indigence. You, as a man of wealth and
position, enjoy the full advantages of the sanctity
with which Christianity in this country invests life
and property : but — pardon me for saying so — you
not only shirk all acknowledgments of your heavy
debt to it, but you advocate yourself and encourage
in others, principles, the application of which by the
masses of society — the poor at your own door — to
yourself, would, in a very brief period, bring your
neck to the lamp-post and your property to paupers
or the flames. Yet this again is the " intellect" of
Infidelity ! I for my part know no fool so shallow
or short-sighted as a rich man professing or encour
aging Infidelity ; and he himself would be the first
to confess as much, if Christianity once stood aside
and let him by himself fight the battle of rich versus

412 INFIDELITY — PRACTICALLY TESTED.
poor irresponsibility. I consider every one of these
infidel publications which you have the infatuation
to pile round you in the light of so many incendiary
brands, requiring only the hand of an infidel laborer
or servant to wrap you and your family in a shroud
of fire. A rich man an Infidel ! a man proclaiming
to characters of every description that there is no
Divine commandment against robbery and murder !
" It is only a forgery of the reign of Hezekiah !" So
Newman affirms ; and so you, the rich Infidel, would
trumpet in the streets of London and proclaim from
the roof of Newgate ! It is fortunate for you such
" intellect" makes few Englishmen proselytes to its
principles. Inf. Christianity in its appeal to property has cer
tainly the advantage over Infidelity.
Chr. I am at a loss to conceive what shadow of
advantage Infidelity can bring to property, or what
comparison of any kind can, in this respect, be insti
tuted between it and Christianity. Infidelity at work
means the abolition of property and the dissolution of
society — but what I desire to impress upon yon is,
that such abolition and dissolution correctly and legit
imately ensue from the premises and principles of In
fidelity. To this you seem to be blind : you appear
totally unconscious that in arguing on your own prin
ciples with the communist, he is palpably and com
pletely your master ; wrenching with irresistible force
from your hand the sword you have forged and at
tempt to wield against Christianity, he plunges it with
instantaneous and mortal effect into your own bosom.
And I again and again demand, on the principles of

INFIDELITY  PRACTICALLY TESTED. 413
Infidelity, why should he not ? You are mute, or your
sole reply is that which, in other countries, has been
repeatedly submerged in torrents of blood or scat
tered to the winds by the roar of artillery.
Inf. Reserving the expression of my decision on the
other topics of our investigation, I will admit Chris
tianity to be the most solid guaranty the world pos
sesses for the preservation of law and order in society.
I will even add, that being so, it must be the
direct interest, as well as the duty of every man of
means and influence to support its claims and ex
tend its principles through every grade of the com
munity — and this admission ought, I think, at pres
ent, to satisfy you.
Chr. It ought not to satisfy yourself. Through
how many hands has this property of yours since the
Conquest passed ?
Inf. Perhaps a hundred.
Chr. And it will pass through hundreds of others.
How much of it have your ancestors taken with them
out of the world ? How much will you take ?
Inf. Nothing.
Chr. Property really means that which is "your
own." Now it is only by a conventional deception
of language, than which you know nothing is more
wilfully common, that you can call this estate, through
which you are only one of so many passers through,
your property. Extend the idea a little further, and
the passengers in the railroad carriages yonder,
which are at this moment shooting through it, may
as well call it their property, the difference is simply
one of time, — between minutes and years, — not

414 INFIDELITY  PRACTICALLY TESTED.
between defeasible and indefeasible possession and
usufruct. If you support Christianity by reason of
its being the only power that binds the conscience
itself to the defence of property, the advantages
which accrue to you from it will, like the morality of
the soulless character to which we referred, surcease
to you with this life. You will be using — wisely, I
grant in your generation — the love and grace of God
to the souls of men for selfish temporary purposes of
your own. That alone is your true property which
can never be taken away from you, which cannot be
separated from yourself : over which neither death
nor time has the power of dissolution or removal ;
the possession and treasures of which you can
dispatch beforehand to precede your own arrival in
heaven ; I mean the soul with its virtues and works
in Christ. To consider any thing except the soul
yourself, or any thing of which you cannot transfer a
single particle with you into the future state of your
self " your property," is weakly permitting yourself
to be imposed upon by the common courtesy of
worldly language. The hollowness of the Chris
tianity which is only such for the sake of its prop
erty is certain to betray itself, and the very object
of its hypocrisy, though in the especial point of
secular security it may succeed, will almost as cer
tainly be turned by some process of God, as easy as
it is inscrutable, into the reverse of a blessing or
source of happiness to the man who thus practises
with the religion of self-sacrifice and the Cross. It
is within your knowledge how gravely Christianity
deals with mere riches and mere rich men. While

CONCLUSION. 415
most solemnly forbidding a grain of their gold, or a
blade of their grass being coveted or touched, it de
clares that, in the present constitution of our fallen
nature, " it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom
of heaven." And all experience confirms the truth
that there is less of real nobility of spirit, less large
ness of mind, less faith towards God, and practical
good towards man in the rich, than in those who are
" not rich in this world." If the religion of Christ
allows the conjunction of the terms, "a rich Chris
tian," it certainly does not allow the possibility of
such a conjunction as that of a hoarding Christian.
Inf. What say you, then, of those men who live
only to die worth their hundreds of thousands ?
Chr. Let them judge themselves. It is not they
who are alone to blame. The servile respect for mere
wealth, which, to a great extent, debases both the
religious and commercial world, is of itself sufficient
to make infidels and revolutionists of the poor and
industrial classes. The constant witnessing of it in
the highest classes of society, is of itself enough to
make the acquisition of that which is thus bowed
down to and acknowledged as their master by their
superiors, the passionate object of the envy and
cravings of the lower classes of the community ; and
if they once become Infidel, they become also and
remain " the dangerous classes ;" in which case the
shortest means of becoming rich will approve them
selves as the best also to their principles and judg
ment. Did Christianity do no more than lift up a
voice of unceasing protest against so degrading a
standard of worth, its value would, even in this single

416 CONCLUSION.
respect, be incalculable ; but it also effects its own
teachings and convictions in the hearts of tens of
thousands of the Christian poor. Simple faith in
the Gospel destroys at once that spirit of dissatisfac
tion arising from a false valuation of things which lies
at the root of social turbulence and civil conspiracy.
If the masses of England were not in the main Chris
tian, the laws and constitution of England would not
be worth the paper on which they are written : it is
the faith of the people that makes the government,
not the government the people.
" Quid vante sine Morihus prosint Leges ?
Dis te minorem quod geris, imperas ;
Hinc omne Principium, hue refer Exitum."
To limit, therefore, your acceptance of Christianity
to its protective aspect of your temporalities, would
infer a withering kind of wisdom for yourself. It
may increase the amount of moral guaranty which
insures you a life-interest in your estate ; but re
ceived in this mercenary spirit, of what avail would
it be to yourself, to your soul ? If, property being
the motive, you embrace Christianity because it is a
shield to it, you may as readily throw it away when,
by doing so, there is a prospect of dishonestly ac
quiring the property of another. Christ has nothing
salvatory to do with your soul, nor your soul with
Christ, in a proceeding which thus tampers with
right motives and holy obligations. The benefits of
it are as transient as your tenure. If, being con
vinced of the superiority of Christianity as the firmest,
and beyond comparison the cheapest, constitution for
a civilized people, with all the intricate combina-

CONCLUSION. 417
tions of personal and real rights involved in the
action of civilization, you are disposed by giving
your support to its institutions and ordinances to
show yourself a Christian, will it not be much more
satisfactory to your conscience, as a matter of good
faith and honesty towards God, to be a Christian at
once ? If you think of doing a Christian work, why
not do it on Christian principles, do it as a proof
and memorial of the love of God to your soul and of
the responsive love of your soul to God? If Chris
tianity be of God, such a work will both precede
and follow you to heaven ; it is as immortal as the
soul, as deathless as the Saviour ; of it and the
benediction of the Almighty attached to it, no
change in body, time, or circumstances can deprive
you ; it has in its very act and completion become
an imperishable part of your eternal existence.
Whatever you do, therefore, let it not be factitious ;
be it little or great, let it, at all events, for the sake
of the highest part of yourself, be done on the right
motive, the true principle of a Divine and holy faith
in God.
Inf. I will, then, in trying some Christian work as
an experiment of conscience, do so as a Christian and
not as a politician.
Chr. Felix esto : you will at least discover that
whatever sensations may be connected with other
reminiscences of your life, the action of " the gifts
of God" in the soul entail no repentance.

We have thus brought our arguments to a conclu
sion. We first showed what that standard of the
18°

418 CONCLUSION.
Orthodox Faith is which is professed by Catholic or
universal Christendom ; we drew attention to the
fact that the Unity of Faith, expressed by this rule
or standard, includes nearly one half of the present
population of the globe ; we pointed out the Standard
of Faith in the Church of England to be no other
than this of universal Christendom-— the Scriptures
and the Three Creeds. We then proceeded to analyze
and dispose of the most prominent objections urged
by Infidelity against Christianity as contained in
these standards. We dealt first with the exceptions
taken to certain special portions of the Scriptures,
and secondly, with those against the general doc
trines of Christianity as summed up and delivered in
the Creeds. In doing so, we examined the nature
and tendency of the principal opinions of Infidelity
in its modern form and aspect. Lastly, we proved
Infidelity, in any form whatever, to be logically and
necessarily productive of debasement and destruction
alike in the individual, the family, the parish, and
the state. If our conference should induce you to
calmly reconsider the pretensions of such Infidelity
to " intellect," or lead you to view that great System
of Spiritual Order comprehended under the name of
Christianity as no less the law of God than Nature
itself, the time occupied in these discussions will not,
with God's blessing, have been spent in vain.

INDEX

Abraham, had held personal oommuuioation with God, 88 ; why he
obeyed the command to sacrifice Isaac, 89 ; hia faith ours, 44.
Adam, life of, in the human race, 250.
Adultery, objection that it was admitted to the Jew, but denied the
Christian, answered, 292.
Apostles, their manner of dealing with false doctrine, 82 ; with proph
ecy, 82 ; the first intellects in spiritual conspiracy, 229 ; false to speak
of them as mere fishermen, 229 ; more powerful than emperors, 230 ;
subordinate to St. Peter and St. Paul, 238; overthrew the Pagan
world by their intellect and resolution, 233 ; the spiritual empire
which they have founded, 234.
Articles, the Thirty-nine, partial not universal, 9 ; binding on the clergy,
not on the laity of the Church of England, 9, 10 ; might be added to,
or cancelled without affecting the orthodoxy of the Church, 10.
Bible (see Scriptures), not the living priest or Church to man, 322 ; its
province confounded with that of the Church, the error of schisma
tics, 822 ; the transferance of the power and glory of Christ to the
written record of the Church, as gross a sin as Mariolatry, 824.
Brahminism, does not pretend to prophecy or miracles, 120 : nor yet
does Buddhism, 120.
Canaanites, God's command to exterminate them, 305, 333 ; His justice
and mercy reconciled in their case, 305-308.
Carthage, conquest of, not a parallel to that of Jerusalem, 61.
Cause and Effect, spoken of ignorantly by Infidels, 148 ; no existence
apart from God, 150; the miracles a proof of this, 150.
Child, more wonderful than the universe, 131 ; Christ comes to us in a
child, 182.
Christ, His acknowledgment by all nations ever confronting the Jew,
68 ; His crucifixion the turning point of the spiritual and temporal
destinies of the Jews, 68 ; the primary sense of every type and
prophecy, 88 ; foretold in the Psalms, 71-81 ; the only one who fills

420 INDEX.
up all those prophecies, 86 ; acted so as to bring His life in accord
ance with them, 86, 87 ; fills up predictions both of suffering and
triumph, 87 ; unable, as a mere man, to compel the convergence of
prophecy in His own person, 88 ; as of those of His passion and His
triumph, 89; walled in with prophecy from before birth till after
death, 90 ; His resurrection and its consequences proved, 92 ; His
worship not explained away by Gibbon, 94; His universal worship,
95; His kingdom, power, and glory inconsistent with mere manhood,
97 ; His resurrection explained both as fact and prophecy, 98 ; im
portance of its taking place on the third day, 98-100 ; the stealing of
His body shown to be impossible, 103-106 ; eame to fulfil, not super
sede Moses and the prophets, 119 ; puts it in the power of every one
to decide as to His mission by the prophecies hearing on Him, 120 ;
if abolished, the Scriptures are without a key, 123; no communion
with God but through Him, 127, 133 ; not a " good man," if only a
man, 208-219 ; His assertions those of Divinity, 211 ; is responsible for
the effect of His words, 213 ; neither a deceiver, nor deceived, 214 ;
His assertions of His own divinity, 217 ; must be received as God, or
denounced as the Power of Darkness, 216-218 ; unless a man helieves
Him to be "very God of very God," he must be damned, 220 ; justi
fication by faith in, 222 ; difference to man, if He was crucified as
man, or God, 224 ; not a military, but spiritual Messiah, 231 ; Strauss'
opinion that He is a myth, 232; condescends to man, not only the
creator, but the recreator, 240 ; His divinity, the Church has never
receded from, 241 ; if He be God infidelity is perdition, 242; showed
faith in His own preaching of immortality, 254; even as man, 255.
Christian (see Christianity), one who believes in the incarnation of
God, 204.
Christianity, the defect of books in defence of, v; practical unity in,
14 ; the effect of a cause, the crucifixion, 149 ; the only true philoso
phy, 164 ; made a more awful thing by the Church than by the Luth
erans or abstractionists, 224 ; its tyranny over conscience, 228 ; death
conquered with it, 238 ; a pure delusion, the adulation of man, 239 ;
if Christ be not God, owes its success to intellect, 242 ; rests on the
immortality of the soul, 246 ; truer than mathematics, 248 ; goes be
yond Platonism, 256 ; foresees and guards against every weakness of
philosophy, 261 ; is in the Old Testament, 267 ; " not the thing for
superior intellects," 320 ; something broader, higher than the Bible,
the presence of God in Christ and in men, 321 ; its truth not depend
ent upon the accuracy of the writers of the Bible, 328; nor upon the
morals of its ministers, 824; the objection to, on the ground of in
consistency, shown to be subversive to infidelity, 329-831 ; its hold
on the peoples, 881; the guarantee of immortality, 332; Christians
Bee more in it than do infidels, 342; its truths embodied in many re-

INDEX. 421
ligions before Christ put his seal to them, 871 ; accepted by men be
cause it brought salvation for society in this world, and for individual
souls in the next, 372; its selfishness explained, 875; the elevating
power of woman, 400 ; challenges infidelity to a practical test, 405 ; in
its appeal to property has the advantage of infidelity, 412 ; the most
solid guarantee for the preservation of law and order, 413 ; its deal
ing with rich men, 414; its value in destroying the dissatisfaction
arising from the valuation of things, 416 ; must not be held solely on
account of its protective power, 416; but Christian work must bo
done on Christian principles as a matter of honesty, 416.
Church, of England, its standard in controversy, 4; Catholic, born out
of the crucifixion, 43 ; its number, and power of the keys, 43,44;
the subject of prophecy by the same Being who commanded the sacri
fice of Isaac, 44 ; types and ritual of the Jewish Church, shadows of
the Christian, 83 ; those of the Christian, shadows of the Church in
heaven, 83 ; composed of good and bad, 108-111 ; cannot be confined
to the good alone, 111-113 ; we have seen the " gathering," shall also
see the " severing," lis ; love, the law of, 304.
Civilization, mental, test of, the use of Latin and Greek, 129.
Conscience, makes a man a coward, 226; what is it? 229.
Creation, a mystery even to Infidels after rejecting Christianity, 36.
Creeds, contain the orthodox faith, 8, 9 ; the standard of unity, 8 ; their
use, 198.
Damnation, not the result of sin, but of rejecting the atonement ; re
jecting Christ as "very God of very God," 220.
Death, a misnomer, 273 ; may be only a process of nature to a higher
life, 387 ; death and disease the avenging of nature's law, 338.
Deity, cannot reason about, 137 ; no true symbol of in nature, 138 ; no
definite idea of, apart from Christianity, 138.
Diabolical possessions, existence of, not to be mistaken for ordinary
bodily maladies, 192.
Discussion, order in which it is conducted in this work, 1.
England, if her people were not Christian, her laws would be value
less, 416.
Enthusiasm, is soul-action ; possessed by Christians, not by Infidels, 85.
Epistles, written mainly not to impart doctrine, but to correct error, 82.
Evil, its existence and origin, 291 ; admitted in creation by Christians,
made a part of God by Infidels, 336.
Faith, what constitutes, 40 ; ours in Abraham " second-hand," 43 ; as
a faculty exists in everybody, 221 ; truth of its objective matter con
stituted the sine qu& non of justification, 222; justification by, the

422 INDEX.
maxim of Luther, 223 ; difference between his sense and that of the
Church, 223; the believing powers of man unfathomable, 227; not
so much required in the present day as of old, 378 ; the Infidel re
quires more than the Christian, 380 ; the comparison of the two,
380-882.
Fatalism, inconsistent with the Almighty, 140-146; the Christians,
168-170 ; none but every word that proceedeth from the mouth of
God, 170.
Fear, a sound principle of appeal and penalty, 369 ; of God, what is
it? fear of hell part of it, 369; does not lead to superstition, 370;
has made the moral or physical force of nations, 870 ; Rome an in
stance, 371.
France, reduced by despotism to Infidelity, 409.
God (see Christ), His love never diminished, shown by atoning sacri
fice, 33 ; has a right over natural powers and instincts, 37 ; His om
niscience, 125; no communication with material nature, 133; varia
tion of the idea of God derived from nature, compared with variations
of interpretations of Scripture and the Church, 134 ; omnipresence,
omniscience, omnipotence, &c, 135-139 ; time no element in, 136 ;
prescience and omnipotence reconciled, 140 ; is Almighty, 146-148 ;
cause and effect cannot exist apart from Hiin, 150 ; His power infinite,
151 ; His sympathy with the perfection of man the great doctrine of
practical religion, 198; terms to define Him, 219; these applied to
Christ, 219 ; as in the universe nothing to a man, 225; as incarnate,
226 ; as suffering, all powerful, 236 ; never leaves man, 239 ; paternal
relation, 239 ; not to be viewed in parts, 281 ; His practical justice
even in punishment, 362 ; love to, moral law the test of, 398 ; love of,
the true religion, 399.
Gospel, true understanding to be found in the Greek, 129 ; terrifies by
presenting the law to conscience, 891 ; difficulty of substituting a
quasi one, 405.
Heaven, has never moved, man has, he must complete the circle to
return to it, 303; new heavens and earth compared with precedent
nuture, 351 ; as much science as prophecy in St. Peter's promise, 862 ;
gift of, no comparison with gift of the Son of God, 277 ; attainment
of, dependent on Christ, not morality, 388 ; not the recompense of
morality, but the gift of mercy, 388 ; a legal right, if legal obedience
is kept inviolate, 389; a Saviour needed, 892.
Hell, is a place, in analogy with astronomy, 353 ; a world of fire, per
haps in the interior of the earth, 355 ; in it the life or soul must suf
fer, 856-359 ; both spiritual and material pain, 858-862 ; why not pro
bationary, 862 ; men do not believe in, else would not sin, 867 ; fear

INDEX. 423
of, the beginning of wisdom, 869 ; fear of, an essential part of the fear
of God, 870 ; its existence cannot be denied by arguments from the
nature of pain, from the distinction between penal and probation
ary states, or the laws of analogy, 374.
Hero worship (see Pantheism), of live men objected to, 817 ; their
apotheosis, the recognition of the hero being, 818 ; what becomes of
the "psyche?" 319; resolved into St. Paul's definition of an idol,
" nothing," 319.
Hero species of man, may be higher forms of existence than, 337.
Hollow of the heavens, Druidic tenet, was God, 138.
Holy Ghost, Operation of inspiration, 277 ; existence of, 277 ; proved
by the emotions of the soul, 278-281.
Hosea, chap. iii. explained, 176-179.
Hume, sophisms respecting miracles, 349 ; fallacy concerning the resur
rection, 250.
Husbands and wives, Roman, 186 ; St. Paul's injunction to, 187.
Immortality of the soul, a matter of faith, not to be proved, 247 ; of the
body, 256 ; and of the soul in Christ, 258 ; of the wicked as eternal as
that of the righteous, 259 ; taught in the Old Testament, 262-265 ; of
every man, 273, 274.
Inoarnation, of one God held by Christians, of millions, by Infidels,
205 ; by the heathen, by Buddhism and Brahminism, 205 ; only true
faith is that which accepts one true incarnation, 205; of man, is the
incarnation of created spirits, of Christ, that of the creating spirit it
self, 206 ; of God in Christ, ever the faith, in some true or corrupt
form of the human race, 207 ; of Christ, the whole strength of reli
gion, 228 ; the most powerful argument to men, 235 ; why the doc
trine was adhered to, 285 ; " the crown of that system of adulation to
human nature, which Christianity is," 237.
Infidelity, unless proved contrary to sense and reason, must be con
fessed to be as rational as Christianity, vii. ; rejects Christianity from
the number of sects, 6-13 ; most educated Christians have passed
through it, 35; only two phases in its vocabulary, "I don't know,"
" I don't believe," 98 ; pure Infidelity does not exist, 813 ; relative,
infers belief in the contraries of Christianity, 318; has no idea which
was not substantiated into idolatry thousands of years ago, 315 ; of
the present day is Pantheism, 815 ; by ignoring the justice of the Al
mighty encourages crime, 368 ; cannot guarantee the truth of one of
its assertions, 375; a hazardous investment against both time and
eternity, 375 ; holds out no inducement to eschew evil and ensue
good, 375; practically tested in government of a family, 400; of a
servant, 401; fails at the death-bed, 406; cannot, with all its "intel
lect," govern a parish, 407 ; or a nation, 408.

424 INDEX.
Infidels (see Infidelity), cannot be good subjects, 156 ; make man de
pendent on the laws of the universe, 156; will not work out their
theories and present the result, 404.
Inspiration (see Holy Ghost).
Intellect, responsibility of, greater than that of morality, 25 ; of Infidels,
apart from Christianity, has not advanced further than the fetishism
of Africa, 315 ; the progress of, when left to itself, actual sinks to
Mars, &c, 317.
Isolation of man, not possible, 805.
Jesus (see Christ).
Jews, only nation preserving certain signs and characteristics, 64 ; even
if Scripture be thrown aside, we must explain profane history, 66
why still few in number, 67 ; why Jews, 67 ; why oppressed, 67
why compelled to see Christ acknowledged in a widening Church, 68
Christ's crucifixion the hinge of their destinies, 68 ; whole history a
proof of Divine inspiration of the Pentateuch, and an evidence of
Christianity, 68, 69; Hosea's prophecy concerning them explained,
176-179 ; their present destitute religious state, 179.
Judaism, its truth depends upon that of Christianity, 293-296.
Judea (see Palestine).
Justification by Faith, maxim of Luther, 228 ; churches who held it, in
his sense, have lapsed into Infidelity or Socinianism, 223; the differ
ence between the Lutheran, or pseudo-evangelical sense, and that in
which it is held by the Church, 223.
Language, the expression of the soul, making a child more wonderful
than the material universe, 131.
Law, why given, 394 ; real value of the moral law, 398 ; reason why
God should select that as a test which would benefit the world, 398.
'O Aoyot (see Word), may have assumed other forms besides that of the
race of Adam, 127 ; the medium of the action of the Supreme Being
upon the world, 127 ; fulness of the expression to a Greek, 128 ; is
Omnipotence, 228.
Love, more required now than in days of old, 379.
Man, his fallen nature must be conceded, 810 ; else the creature is more
righteous than the Creator, 310; greater beings may be formed out of
human elements, 337.
Marriage (see Polygamy), what constitutes it, 297 ; often a mere civil
union in Great Britain, 298, 301 ; the true marriage in heaven, 302 ;
the sacramental symbol of the love and union of Christ and the
Church, 304.

INDEX. 425
Martineau, difference between, and Newman, 197, 198 ; accepts a cer
tain Jesus, but not that of the Scriptures or Church, 196.
Messiah (see Christ), hypothesis that one might be created from the
prophecies of the Psalms, 86 ; the Messiahship before birth, after
birth, in life, in death, after death walled in with prophecies, 90; the
pretension of Christ to it, would not have been cared for by the
Jews if so many prophecies had not met in Him, 90 ; a modern
one impossible, 91 ; faith of the Christian world for eighteen cen
turies built upon a Messiah, 124; the Jews, before Christ, drew the
same picture of theirs from the Scriptures as does modern Christen
dom, 124.
Miracles, stress whioh Christ laid on, 118 ; a fair test between Christ
and Joseph Smith and Mohammed, 119 ; why Mohammed per
formed none, 119 ; of Infidelity exceed those of Christianity, 234 ; of
Scripture compared with those of science, 343; neither Scripture nor
creeds contain any article so miraculous as those of science, 845 ;
Hume's sophism respecting them, 849 ; its fallacy shown, 350.
Mohammed, no prophecy concerning him before his birth, 117 ; dis
claimed all pretension to miracles or prophecy, 117 ; his title of
" prophet" explained, 117.
Morality, if the question to be settled by it, Infidels confess their case
is hopeless, 21 ; not to be balanced against doctrinal teaching,. 24, 25 ;
excellency of, exalted by Christianity, 896 ; yet unworthy the name of
righteousness, 396 ; may exist without religion, 898.
Moriah, Mt., scene of the sacrifice of Isaac and Christ, 29, 34, 36.
Mormonism, not Infidelity, 296.
Nations, judged in this world, individuals in the next, 155 ; and man,
rights not ignored in the New Testament, 189.
Natural affection, none in a parent towards a child, unless he has it also
towards God, 37.
Nature (see Universe), the medium of God, the Infidel's religion, 57 ; it
cannot act or predict of itself, 59 ; is ruled by God, 60 ; insufficient
to teach about either God or herself, 133-135 ; contrasted with the
teaching of Scripture, 135 ; cannot hear nor see, 185 ; and matter have
no other law than the will of God, 150, 151, 153 ; created to be sub
dued by man, 152 ; no further to serve man than man is the servant
of God, 153; terms not allowable as "violation of natural laws,"
"suspension of ordinary powers," 153; reason cannot conceive why
nature was created, etc., 157 ; is the transient, Christianity the perma
nent form of supernaturalism, 171 ; is more than Scripture the "crux
philosophcri'iim," 309 ; the true deity, 314, 333 ; then any individual
may select his God, 314; hence Pantheism, 313-316; the reverse of
merciful by war, disease, etc., 335 ; avenges herself the violation of

426 INDEX.
her laws, hence the Infidel cannot object to the Christian's God of
nature doing the same, 839 ; Infidel's deity inexorable, Christian's of
rare severity, 340 ; indifference of both, 841 ; principles of nature em
bodied in Christianity, and revealed in their highest forms, before
Science discovered them in their lowest, 342 ; as constituted as pres
ent, perhaps not the twentieth miracle wrought by the Power above,
850 ; all present a new miracle, 350.
Newman, Francis William and John Henry, their moral lives not to be
weighed in favor of their religious systems, 22-25.
Newman, Francis William, assertions respecting the prophecies of
the Pentateuch, 28-59 ; his admission as to the verification of
some prophecies fatal to Infidelity, 69; denies that the Psalms
are prophetical of the Messiah, 122; a Roman Catholic rather
than an Infidel, 175 ; argument respecting the extermination of the
Canaanites answered, 180-183; misquotes Scripture, 182; declares
that the first preachers of Christianity appealed to the inward senses
as the supreme arbiters, 183 ; that it cannot appeal to any self-sustain
ing power, 185 ; not the decisive influence which has raised woman
kind, 186 ; that it ignores the rights of men and nations, 189 ; super
stitions about witches, etc., derive support from the Bible, 191 ; his
steps in Infidelity, 194, 195 ; difference between, and Martineau, 195 j.
disbelieves in Jesus, 195 ; rejection of the creeds his first step in apos
tasy, 198 ; his final phase, the doctrine that " all practical religion de
pends on the sympathy of God with the perfection of individual
man," 198 ; doubts if the gospel narrative be not unjust to Christ,
199 ; his great dogma shown to be Christ's elementary one, 201 ; reck
less in his allegations about Scripture, 821 ; never tried to work out
his theory, 404.
New Testament, object of, 82.
Omniscience (see Christ, God), an abstraction, 125.
Orthodox faith, vindicated in this work, that of the Anglo-Catholic
Church of England, vi.; definition of, 6 ; how to find, 7 ; contained
in the creeds, 8.

Palestine (see Jews, Judaism), conquest of, by the Romans foretold,
46, 52, 61 ; change in physical features in accordance with prophecy,
54, 55, 59 ; one of its rainy seasons now suspended, 54; no parallel
with any other nation conquered by Rome, 61.
Pantheism, its absurdity, 313; asserted to be the true religion, 314; in
respect to hero-worship a plagiarism from the Greek mythology, 316 ;
is idolatry, 317 ; cannot make a hero without becoming Pythago
rean, 319.

INDEX. 427
Parables were prophecies, 107; that of the drag-net an instance,
107-110.
Passions, intended to be used, 282 ; abuse sinful, 282-284 ; their depra
vation a proof of fallen nature, 286-290.
Pentateuch (see Newman), declared to be the production of a later age
than the Mosaic, 45 ; of Hezekiah's, 52.
St, Peter and St. Paul, originated the illusion, which human nature
craved, 282 ; hreroes despising death, 283.
Polygamy (see Marriage), condemned by Christianity, not by Judaism,
292 ; not a contradiction between the two, 299 ; the bond of marriage
extended among the Jews, contracted among the Christians, 800; il
lustrations of the principle, 300.
Police, Prisons, and Scaffolds, penal not preventive, 872 ; cannot do the
work of conscience, 873.
Prayer, the unity of worship in, 14; consistent with the omnipotence
and omniscience of God, 140 ; made to a God able to hear and grant,
142 ; difficulties in it, 146-148 ; a law as great as gravitation, 148 ; the
order of the spiritual universe, 149 ; how nature is " overruled" by
it, 152 ; the fulfilment of the design of nature, 153 ; if granted, but
not through nature, Infidelity must admit Christianity, 153 ; co-opera
tive, not separate from duty, 154.
Prediction (see Prophecy).
Profession and Practice, their consistency, 326 ; false ground, 828 ; the
more contradictory practice is to false profession the better, 829.
Prophecy (see Pentateuch, Psalms), its evidence vindicated, 27 ; New
man's assertion concerning those of the Pentateuch, 28-39 : its two-
senses, 83 ; non-seriptural annals can supply no instance, 121 ; spirit
of among the Romans accounted for, 121 ; the element of no religion
except Christianity, 120-123 ; the Messiah not invented to correspond
with, 122 ; correspondence acknowledged by nations, 123 ; not iden
tical with Fatalism, 161.
Property, protected by Christianity, 412 ; deception to call estates " your
own," 418 ; that only is yours which death cannot take away, 414.
Protestantism, ultra-controversalists, when arguing against Rome, ha
bitually argue against Christianity, vi. ; the great principle of, 4; its
advocates changeable as Proteus, 8-5.
Psalms, the Messianic prophecies, 70-81 ; whole book one precal pro
phecy of the Messiah, 71 ; passages which refer to Christ, 71-81; paeans
of Christ's victory, 80 ; why not more quotations from, in the New
Testament, 82 ; expression of suffering, 84; man or Christ portrayed
in them, 84 ; those of passion, prophecies of profound suffering, 85 ;
only fulfilled jn Christ, 86 ; refer to Resurrection, 105 ; Newman's
denial that they are fixed on the Messiah, 122.
Pythagoreanism, infidelity of Pantheism becoming, 819.

428 INDEX.
Religion (see Christianity), fetters a man as an infant, 227 ; and through
life, 228.
Eepublicanism, Red, in politics like Infidelity in Religion, 409.
Responsibility, individual, a difficulty to the Infidel, 256.
Resurrection (see Christ), the vis vital of Christianity, 89 ; not ex
plained by Gibbon, 94 ; denied as a fact, 98 ; examined both as a fact
and a prophecy, 98-101 ; Jewish precautions, 102 ; prophecy of, in
Ps. ii., 105; the fact never disproved, 106; one of the dilemmas of
Infidelity, 103.
Revenge, a depravation of a good passion, 286.
Rome, would persuade us that Christianity is not maintainable as a
rational religion, 6'; responsible for schism, 15. Pagan Rome pre
served her moral force as long as her faith in the future separation of
the good and bad, 371.
Russell, Lord William, act upon the life of, involved murder, 288.
Sacraments, present Christ as '0 Aoyos, 132 ; by them Christendom re
ceives Christ, 132.
Sacrifice of Isaac, a prophecy fulfilled in Christ, 28-34 ; its teaching to
the ancient Church, 82 ; not murder, 38 ; why Abraham did not hesi
tate, 39 ; Abraham believed the command to be divine from previous,
we from subsequent evidence, 44 ; identity of it with the crucifixion
of Christ, 44; the visual part of the prophecy fulfilled in the cruci
fixion of Christ, the oral part being fulfilled in the acceptance of the
religion of the Cross, 45.
Salvation, only through Christ as God incarnate, 220, 224 ; possible to
all, but attained only by those who attach their faith to the proper
object, 224.
Satan, placed on the throne of God by Infidelity, 312.
Saviour (see Christ).
Schism, sin of our inherent nature, not of Christianity, 15; Rome
responsible for the sin of, 15.
Scripture, not inspired, 1, and the three creeds the banner of the
Church of England, 5 ; the hold its language has over man, 47 ; stress
laid, not, as in Shakspeare or Virgil, on the beauty of the language,
but the truths conveyed, 48 ; no levity in it, 49 ; different writers, yet
the tone the same, an evidence of inspiration from one Being, 50 ¦
even if extinguished, yet Christ's promise to be with the Church no
extinguished, 323; right in making future judgment the requisite
which preserves souls from vice, 368.
Seneca, predicted the discovery of Amerioa, 114 ; his predictions com
pared with those of Isaiah, 115.
Sin, must be forgiven, either in this world or the next, before the soul
can enter heaveu, 386; is so by the blood of Christ, 887.

INDEX. 429
Sin, Original, admitted, 290.
Sinlessness of man, if believed, man's misery compels the inference
that there is no God, 809 ; or else He is worse than merciless, 810.
Slavery, denounced by St. Paul, 190.
Socialism, its maxim, 408 ; right if Infidelity be true, 409-412.
Socinians (see Unitarians), not Christians, 203; the philosophy of their
views examined, 204 ; their tenet, " Christ a good man," shown un
tenable, 208-219.
Socinianism, the most hopeless of all compromises between truth and
falsehood, 219.
Soul, immortality of, a matter of faith not to be proved, 248 ; metemp
sychosis of, 319 ; not to be dealt with by external physical preventa
tives, 872 ; has immortal needs, 384 ; what God gives it, what Infi
delity can offer, 884 ; not content with what contents the body, 885.
Spiritual manifestations, rampant in the two most advanced " physical-
philosophy" countries, 194.
Strabo, supposed a new continent, 115 ; his suppositions compared
with Isaiah's prophecies, 116.
Strauss, his opinion that Christ was a myth, 232.
Suffering, implies superiority over senselessness, 131.
Thuggism, 326; its extermination if advocated, justifies that of the
Canaanites, 327.
Time, no element of God, 136, 146-148.
Trinity, belief in, upheld and explained, 201, 202.
Unitarians (see Socinians), all Christians, 201 ; Jews and Mohammed
ans, 202 ; their absurdity of dividing the Godhead exhibited, 201.
Unity of worship, among two hundred millions, 14.
Universe, unconscious of its existence, 157 ; not man's, but God's, 159;
Infidelity declares that man can direct its matter and properties, but
God cannot, 159.
Volney, his accounting for the recognition of a Messiah, 125.
Voltaire, had never read the New Testament, 821.
War, causes of, must pre-exist in those engaged in it, 834.
Wealth, the higher we ascend in the scale of creation, the weaker
become the propensities gratified by it, 883 ; not one of the joys of
heaven attainable by it, 883 ; servile respect for, debases the world
and makes infidels, 415 ; Christianity protests against it, 415.
Wife, the old Roman, relative to her husband, morally as high as in
modern Italy, 186.
Woman, indebted for her restoration to Christ, 188.

430 INDEX.
Word, a, identically one with reason, mind, spirit, etc., 125.
Word of God (see Aoyos), strange expression applied to a living person,
125 ; God only an abstraction except through Him, 126 ; immense
signification attached to the term by the Scriptures and the Church,
126 ; used in the full Greek sense, 128 ; the cause why its predictions
come to pass, 162, 167 ; the only " must be" of Christianity, 163 ; the
will and power to create, 165; rejected by Newman, 171-173.
Words, except as defining animal wants, must be derived from He
brew, Greek, and Latin, 130.
Zoroaster, infidel plagiarism from, 336.

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