for Hut founding Of a. College in, this Colony"

DEPOSITED BY THE

LINONIAN AND BROTHERS LIBRARY

THE GOSPEL FOR
AN AGE OF DOUBT

¦J*&f&-

THE GOSPEL FOR
AN AGE OF DOUBT

Che |pale ^Lectures on preaching
189G

HENRY VAN DYKE
D D. (PRINCETON, HARVARD, YALE)
PASTOR OF THE BRICK CHURCH IN NEW YORK

' But if any speak not concerning Jesus Christ,
1 look upon them as tombstones and sepulchres
of the dead, on which are written only the
names of men." St. Ignatius, Epist. ad Phil.

Neto gaik
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1896
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1896,
By THE MACMILLAN" COMPANY.

J. S. Gushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

FOREWORD

A few words may serve to make the aim
of this book more plain to those who read
it. A great part of what is written here was
spoken to the students of divinity at Yale
University in the spring of 1896, as one of
the courses of " Lectures on Preaching " which
have been given for some years on the Lyman
Beecher Foundation. But I must frankly con
fess that a strong wish to say something which
might reach beyond, or, better still, through,
the immediate audience, and be of help to the
wider circle of men and women who care for
the vital problems of faith, drew me aside
from the usual line of such lectures and gave
this book a new purpose.
The question of how to preach is highly
interesting to students for the ministry. But
it has already been answered so fully and so
ably by those who have preceded me in this
course that I cannot hope to add anything
of value to their various counsels. And after
all, it is a technical question. The art of

vi Foreword
preaching, important and beautiful and power
ful as it may be, is only a part of the larger
art of life. Religion is the spiritual secret
of this larger art of life. The force of relig
ion to move and inspire the hearts of men
lies not in the modes and forms of preaching,
but in the Gospel, — the message which it
brings to the human soul. The deep ques
tion, the important question, the question of
widest interest, is what to preach to the men
and women of to-day, to cheer them, to up
lift them, to lead them back to faith, and
through faith to a brave, full, noble life.
This is the question for which I have tried,
at least, to point the way to an answer.
What is the word of spiritual life and power
for the present age? Evidently it must be a
real gospel, a word of gladness and a word
of God.1 It will not do to teach for doc
trines the commandments of men. Tradition
is powerless. Dry systems of dogma cannot
quicken the soul. The preacher's message
must come to him from a heavenly source,
and take hold upon him with the charm of
a divine novelty. It must be so fresh, so
vivid, so original to his own heart that he
cannot help wanting to tell it to the world.
1 See Appendix, Note 1.

Foreword vii
This wonderful sense of newness in the gos
pel is what makes men long to preach it
and the world glad to hear it.
But it is no less plain that the message, in
a certain sense, must also be old. It cannot
be out of touch with the past. It must be
in line with the upward movement of human
ity through the ages. It must be in reverent
harmony with the faith and hope and love
which have already cheered and purified and
blessed the best of human lives. An alto
gether new religion can hardly be an alto
gether true religion.
Now the solution of this apparent difficulty
— the reconciling of the old and the new —
lies in a personal view of the gospel of Jesus
Christ. The effort to get such a view, for
every age and for every man, results in a thrill
ing and joyful sense of new discovery of an old
and changeless truth. One way in which this
feeling of newness comes is through the neces
sity of clearing away the human accretions which
have gathered about the gospel. Christianity
always has been, and probably always will be,
subject to obscuration and misunderstanding.
It has been presented as a complex system of
doctrine. In reality, it is a spiritual life.
The arguments used to defend it have often

viii Foreword
become hindrances to its acceptance. The
formulas framed to express it have often hid
den Him who is its true and only centre.
Christ is Christianity. To find God in Him,
to trust and love God in Him, is to be a
Christian. /\^ To preach Him, in the language
of to-day, to the men of to-day, for the needs
of to-day,1 is to preach a gospel as new and
as old as life itself.
This is the thing in which Christianity dif
fers from all other religions. It has a Person
at the heart of it ; a Person who is as real as
we are ; a Person who carries in Himself the
evidence of a spiritual world ; a Person who
has proved in myriads of souls His power to
save men, not only from the evil of sin, but
also from the gloom of doubt. He is the only
steadfast Light shining through the deep, star
less night of scepticism that has overspread
our proud and unhappy modern world. To
see Him is to be sure of God and immortality.
Such a Person could not have lived if the
universe were a mere product of matter and
force. It would be easier to think that the
floating clouds of sunset could beget out of
their vaporous bosoms a solid and eternal
mountain peak, than that the vain and vague
1 See Appendix, Note 2.

Foreword ix
dreams of spiritual life rising from a human
ity born only of the dust, and fated to crumble
altogether into dust again, could have pro
duced such a firm and glorious reality as the
character and life of Jesus of Nazareth.
This is the foundation of faith, to believe
that Christ is "the revelation of the true
meaning and the realization of the true des
tination of every man ; and that in Him as
the personal incarnation and reproduction of
the personal God in our personal selves, we
and the whole creation shall come into our
divine inheritance."1
We must get back from the confusions of
theology to the simplicity that is in Christ.
We must see clearly that our central message
is not the gospel of a system, but the gospel of
a Person. We must hold fast the true humanity
of Jesus in order that we may know what is
meant by His true divinity. We must recognize
His supreme authority in the interpretation of
the Bible itself. We must accept His revela
tions of human liberty and divine sovereignty.
Above all, we must accept His great truth of
election to service as our only salvation from
the curse of sin, which is selfishness.
1 W. P. Du Bose, S. T. T>., The Soteriology of the New
Testament (New York, 1892), p. 171.

x Foreword
If the following of this course should lead
us to break with some time-honoured dogmas
and definitions, let us only be careful to see
to it that our sole desire and aim is to discern
the truth as it is in Jesus more clearly and
preach it more simply. If it should lead us
to new modes of speech and forms of expres
sion, let them grow only out of the earnest
effort to bring religion more closely home to
the real lives of men. Our age has its own
character, its own perils, its own needs, its
own hopes and aspirations. The only gospel
that it is worth while to preach must stand
in vital relation and speak with vital power
to the present age.
This is the line that I have tried to follow
in this book. I have added a full appendix
of notes, chiefly from recent writers, with a
twofold purpose. First, to make it clear by
the sorrowful and confused confessions of
modern doubt how much the age needs a
gospel ; and, second, to show how many men
of all classes are moving in the same direc
tion, — towards a renewal of faith. In truth,
if the evils and dangers of the age are great,
its encouragements are even greater. The ex
periment of a secular unbelief has never been
tried on such a large and splendid scale, with

Foreword xi
such blank and desperate failure. The long
ings and efforts of the world to attain a
higher, happier existence for all men have
never been more generous and ardent. With
the materialism, the sensuality, the pride of our
age, Christianity stands in conflict. With the
altruism, the humanity, the sympathy of our
age, Christianity must stand in loving and ,
wise alliance. A simpler creed and a nobler
life will prepare the way for a renaissance of
religion greater and more potent than the
world has known for centuries. It seems as
if we stood on the brightening border of the
new day. The watchword of its coming is
the personal gospel of Jesus Christ, in whom
we find the ideal man and the real God.
Forest Hills Lodge, Franconia,
July 10th, 1896.

CONTENTS
LECTURE PAGE
I. An Age of Doubt  1
i— II. The Gospel of a Person . . 41
'"III. The Unveiling of the Father . 81
TV. The Human Life of God . . .123
V. The Source of Authority . . 167
VI. Liberty  203
VII. Sovereignty  245
VIII. Service  .281
Appendix  319

I
AN AGE OF DOUBT

" Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith !
She reels not in the storm of warring words,
She brightens at the clash of ' Yes ' and ' No,'
She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst,
She feels the Sun is hid but for a night,
She spies the summer thro' the winter bud,
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
She hears the lark within the songless egg,
She finds the fountain where they wail'd ' Mirage ' ! "
— Tennyson, The Ancient Sage.

AJST AGE OF DOUBT
There is one point in which all men resem- The person-
hie each other : it is that they are all different. a[ T ation
J of the age.
But their differences are not fixed and immuta
ble. They are variable and progressive. Types
of character survive or perish, like the forms
of animal life. Some predominate ; others are
subordinated. Thus it comes to pass that underneath all
the diversities of individual life, we may dis
cern, not with the clearness of a portrait, but
with the vague outlines of a composite photo
graph, the features of a Zeitgeist, a spirit of
the time. Generations differ almost as much
as the men who compose them. There is a
personal equation in every age.
To know this is a necessity for the preacher.
Even as the physician must apprehend the idio
syncrasy of his patient, and the teacher must
recognize the quality of his pupil, so must the
preacher be in touch with his age.

4 An Age of Doubt
Literature Tn endeavouring to arrive at this knowledge,
as an index .
of life. contact with the world is ot the first conse
quence. For one who desires to make men and
women what they ought to be, nothing can
take the place of an acquaintance with men
and women as they are. It seems to me that
one of the best means of obtaining this ac
quaintance is through literature, — not that
highly specialized and more or less technical
variety of literature which is produced ex
pressly for certain classes of readers, but liter
ature in the broader sense, as it appeals to
cultivated and intelligent people in general,
including contemporary history and criticism,
poetry and fiction, popular philosophy and di
luted science. This kind of literature is the
efflorescence of the Zeitgeist. It is at once a
product, and a cause, of the temperament of
the age. In it we see not only what certain
men have written by way of comment on the
movement of the times, but also what a great
many men are reading while they move. It
expresses, and it creates, a spirit, an attitude
of mind. " I do not imagine," says a keen
observer, " that I am announcing an altogether
novel truth in affirming that literature is one of
the elements of the ethical life, — the most im
portant perhaps ; for in the decline, more and

An Age of Doubt 5
more evident, of traditional and local influences,
the book is taking its place as the great ini
tiator."1 For this reason I believe that a course in The value
modern novels and poetry might well be made "^ g^nera
a part of every scheme of preparation for the
ministry. The preacher who does not know
what his people are reading does not know his
people. He will miss the significance of the
current talk of society, and even of the daily
comments of the newspapers, which are in fact
only a cheap substitute for conversation, unless
he has the key to it in the tone of popular
literature. It is from this source that I have
drawn many of the illustrations for this lecture.
If they appear unfamiliar or out of place in a
theological seminary, I can only say that they
seem to me none the less, but perhaps the more,
significant and valuable on that account. For
I think that one of the causes by which, as
John Foster wrote seventy years ago, " Evan
gelical Religion has been rendered unaccepta
ble to persons of cultivated taste,"2 has been
a certain ill-disguised contempt on the part of
1 Paul Bourget, Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine,
Paris, 1895. See Appendix, note 3.
2 John Foster, Essays, "On the Aversion of Men of Taste
to Evangelical Religion," p. 188.

6 An Age of Doubt
persons of orthodox opinions for what they
are pleased to call, "mere belles-lettres." And
though I do not fancy that there is any sym
pathy with that frame of mind in this place,
yet the occasion seems opportune for saying
in a definite way that the preacher who wishes
to speak to this age must read many books in
order that he may be in a position to make the
best use of what Sir Walter Scott called " the
one Book." He must keep himself in touch
with modern life by studying modern litera
ture, which is one of its essential factors.

A doubting As soon as we step out of the theological cir-
age. cle into the broad field of general reading we
see that we are living in an age of doubt.
I do not mean to say that this is the only
feature in the physiognomy of the age. It
has many other aspects, from any one of which
we might pick a name. From the material
side, we might call it an age of progress ;
from the intellectual side, an age of science ;
from the medical side, an age of hysteria ; from
the political side, an age of democracy; from
the commercial side, an age of advertisement ;
from the social side, an age of publicomania.

Honing
spirit.

An Age of Doubt 1
But looking at it from the spiritual side, which
is the preacher's point of view, and considering
that interior life to which every proclamation
of a gospel must be addressed, beyond a doubt
it stands confessed as a doubting age.
There is a profound and wide-spread un- The sites-
settlement of soul in regard to fundamental
truths of religion, and also in regard to the
nature and existence of the so-called spiritual
faculties by which alone these truths can be
perceived. In its popular manifestations, this
unsettlement takes the form of uncertainty
rather than of denial, of unbelief rather than
of disbelief, of general scepticism rather than
of specific infidelity.1 The questioning spirit
is abroad, moving on the face of the waters,
seeking rest and finding none.
It is not merely that particular doctrines,
such as the inspiration of the Bible, or the
future punishment of the wicked, are attacked
and denied. The preacher who concentrates
his attention at these points will fail to realize
the gravity of the situation. It is not that a
spirit of bitter and mocking atheism, such as
Bishop Butler described at the close of the
last century, has led people of discernment
to set up religion "as a principal subject of
1 See Appendix, note 4.

8 An Age of Doubt
mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of re
prisal for its having so long interrupted the
pleasures of the world. " 1 The preacher who
takes that view of the case now will be at
least fifty years too late. He will fail to
understand the serious and pathetic temper of
the age.
Respectful The questioning spirit of to-day is severe
but not bitter, restless but not frivolous ; it
takes itself very seriously and applies its meth
ods of criticism, of analysis, of dissolution,
with a sad courtesy of demeanour, to the deep
est and most vital truths of religion, the being
of God, the reality of the soul, the possibility
of a future life. Everywhere it comes and
everywhere it asks for a reason, in the shape
of a positive and scientific demonstration.
When one is given, it asks for another, and
when another is given, it asks for the reason
of the reason. The laws of evidence, the prin
ciples of judgment, the witness of history, the
testimony of consciousness, — all are called in
question. The answers which have been given
by religion to the most difficult and pressing
problems of man's inner life are declared to
be unsatisfactory and without foundation. The
1 Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion (London, Bell
& Daldy, 1858). "Advertisement," p. xxiv.

An Age of Doubt 9
question remains unsolved. Is it insoluble?
The age stands in doubt. Its coat-of-arms is
an interrogation point rampant, above three
bishops dormant, and its motto is Query?

n
If we inquire the cause of this general seep- Causes of
ticism in regard to religion, the common answer scep tcum"
from all sides would probably attribute it to
the progress of science. I do not feel satisfied
with this answer. At least I should wish to
qualify it in such a way as to give it a very
different meaning from that which is implied in
the current phrase " the conflict between science
and religion."
Science, in itself considered, the orderly and Science not
n i nn ,. ,-, . , hostile to
reasoned knowledge ot the phenomenal universe rengion,
of things and events, ought not to be, and has
not been, hostile to religion, simply because it
does not, and cannot, enter into the same sphere.
The great advance which has been made in the
observation and classification of sensible facts,
and in the induction of so-called general laws
under which those facts may be arranged for pur
poses of study, has not even touched the two
questions upon the answer to which the reality
and nature of religion depend : first, the pos-

10 An Age of Doubt
sible existence of other facts which physical
science cannot observe and classify ; and sec
ond, the probable explanation of these facts.
The task of What has happened is just this. The field in
changed but which faith has to work has been altered, and
enlarged. ft seems to me enormously broadened. But
the work remains the same. The question is
whether faith has enough vital energy to face
and accomplish it. For example, the material
out of which to construct an argument from
the evidences of final cause in nature has been
incalculably increased by the discoveries of the
last fifty years in regard to natural selection
and the origin of species. The observant wan
derer in the field of nature to-day no longer
stumbles upon Dr. Paley's old-fashioned, open-
faced, turnip-shaped watch lying on the ground.
He finds, instead, an intricate and self-adjusting
chronometer, capable not only of marking time
with accuracy, but also of evolving by its own
operation another more perfect and delicate
instrument, with qualities and powers which
adapt themselves to their surroundings and so
advance forever. The idea of final cause has
not been touched. Only the region which it
must illuminate has been vastly enlarged. It
remains to be seen whether faith can supply
the illuminating power. Already we have the

An Age of Doubt 11
promise of an answer in many books, by mas
ters of science and philosophy, who show that
the theory of evolution demands for its com
pletion the recognition of the spiritual nature
of man and the belief in an intelligent and per
sonal God.1
The spread of scepticism is often attributed The expan-
to the growth of our conception of the physical knowledge.
magnitude of the universe. The bewildering
numbers and distances of the stars, the gigan
tic masses of matter in motion, and the tremen
dous sweep of the forces which drive our tiny
earth along like a grain of dust in an orderly
whirlwind, are supposed to have overwhelmed
and stunned the power of spiritual belief in
man. The account seems to me incorrect and
unconvincing. I observe that precisely the
same argument was used by Job and Isaiah
and the Psalmists to lead to a conclusion of
faith. The striking disproportion between
the littleness of man and the greatness of the
stars was to them a demonstration of the ne
cessity of religion to solve the equation. They
saw in the heavens the glory of God. And if
man to-day knows vastly more of the heavens,
does not that put him in position to receive a
larger and loftier vision of the glory ?
1 See Appendix, note 5.

12

An Age of Doubt

Devout men
of pure sci
ence.

The arro
gance of
science
falsely so-
called.

We observe, moreover, that it is just in those
departments of science where the knowledge of
the magnitude and splendid order of the physi
cal universe is most clear and exact, namely, in
astronomy and mathematics, that we find the
most illustrious men of science who have not
been sceptics but sincere and steadfast believ
ers in the Christian religion. Kepler and
Newton were men of faith. The most brill
iant galaxy of mathematicians ever assembled
at one time and place was at the University of
Cambridge in the latter half of this century.
Of these " Sir W. Thomson, Sir George Stokes,
Professors Tait, Adams, Clerk-Maxwell, and
Cayley — not to mention a number of lesser
lights, such as Routh, Todhunter, Ferrers, etc.
— were all avowed Christians. " 1 Surely it
needs no further proof to show that the pur
suit of pure science does not necessarily tend
to scepticism'.
No, we must look more closely and distin
guish more clearly in order to discover in the
scientific activities of the age a cause of the
prevailing doubt. And if we do this I think
we shall find it in the fallacy of that kind of
science which mistakes itself for omniscience.

1 George John Romanes, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S., Thoughts
on Religion (Chicago, 1895), p. 147.

An Age of Doubt 13
" What we see is the pretence of certain sci
ences to represent in themselves all human
knowledge. And as outside of knowledge
there is no longer, in the eyes of science thus
curtailed, any means for man to come in con
tact with the realities, we see the pretence
advanced by some that all reality and all life
should be reduced to that which they have ver
ified. Outside of this there are only dreams
and illusions. This is indeed too much. It is
no longer science, but scientific absolutism. " 1
" The history of the natural sciences," said
Du Bois-Reymond in 1877, "is the veritable
history of mankind." "The world," says an
other, "is made of atoms and ether, and there
is no room for ghosts." M. Berthelot in the
preface to his Origines de I'alchimie, modestly
claims that " the world to-day is without mys
teries " ; meaning thereby, I suppose, that
there is nothing in existence, from the crys
tallization of a diamond to the character of a
saint, which cannot be investigated and ex
plained by means of a crucible, a blow-pipe, a
microscope, and a few other tools.
This is simply begging the question of a An immense
spiritual world in the negative. It is an im- assumPtion-
i Charles Wagner, Youth, translated from the French by
Ernest Redwood (New York, 1893), p. 28.

14 An Age of Doubt
mense and stupefying assumption. It is a
claim to solve the problems of the inner life
by suppressing them. This claim is not in any
sense necessary to the existence of science, nor
to any degree supported by the work which
it has actually accomplished. But it is made
with a calm assurance which imposes power
fully upon the popular mind ; and, being made
in the name of science, it carries with it an
appearance of authority borrowed from the
great service which science has rendered to
humanity by its discoveries in the sphere of
the visible.
Results of The result of this petitio principii in the
thisassump- mindg f thoge who accept ft fully and carr
tion. r j j
it out to its logical conclusion, is a definite
system of metaphysical negation which goes
under the various names of Naturalism, Posi
tivism, Empiricism, and Agnosticism. Its re
sult in the. minds of those who accept it
partially and provisionally, but lack the abil
ity or the inclination to formulate it, is the
development of a sceptical temper. Its result
in the minds of those who are unconsciously
affected by it, through those profound instincts
of sympathy and involuntary imitation which
influence all men, is an attitude, — more or
less sincere, more or less consistent and con-

An Age of Doubt 15
tinuous, — an attitude of doubt. The spirit
of the age tacitly divides all the various
beliefs which are held among men into two
classes. Those which are supported by sci
entific proof must be accepted. Those which
are not thus supported either must be re
jected, or may safely and properly be disre
garded as matters of no consequence.

in
Now this general scepticism, in all its The mirror
shades and degrees, from the most clear, self- Jt^ature
conscious, and aggressive, to the most vague, shadow of
diffused, and deprecatory, is reflected in the
productions of current literature. Never was
literary art more perfect, more accomplished,
more versatile and successful than in the pres
ent age. Never have its laws been more widely
understood and its fascinations more potently
exercised. Never has it evoked more magical
and charming forms to float above an abyss
of disenchantment and nothingness.
In the lay sermons and essays of Huxley
and Tyndall and Frederic Harrison and W. K.
Clifford, scepticism appears militant and trench
ant. These knights-errant of Doubting Castle
are brilliantly equipped as men of war; and

16 An Age of Doubt
even when they fall foul of each other, as they
often do, the ground of the conflict is an accu
sation of infidelity to the principles of unbelief,
and its object is to drive the adversary back
into a more complete and consistent negation.
Over the fragmentary but majestic life-
philosophies of Carlyle and Emerson, lying
in the disarray of stones hewn for a temple
yet unbuilt, imaginative scepticism hangs like
a cloud. Over Carlyle, it is the shadow of
a noonday tempest, full of darkness and tu
mult and muttering thunder. Over Emerson,
it floats like a cumulus of evening vapours,
luminous and beautiful, alluringly transfigured
" In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun." *
In the vivid and picturesque historical
studies of Renan and Froude, scepticism is
at once ironical and idealistic, destructive and
dogmatic. In the penetrative and intelligent
critiques of Scherer and Morley, it adheres
with proud but illogical persistence to the
ethical consequences of the faith with which
logic has broken : like a son disinherited, but
resolved to maintain the right of possession
by the strong arm.
1 Shelley, " Ode to a Skylark,"

An Age of Doubt 17
In the novels of unflinching and unblushing Fiction
naturalism, — like those of Zola and Maupassant gloomy.
and the later works of Thomas Hardy, scepticism
speaks with a harsh and menacing accent of the
emptiness of all life and the futility of all
endeavour. In the psychological romances of
Flaubert and Bourget and Spielhagen, George
Eliot and Mrs. Humphry Ward, it holds the
mirror up to human nature to disclose a face
darkened with inconsolable regret for lost
dreams. Far apart as Madame Bovary and
Cosmopolis, Problematische Naturen and Middle-
march and fiobert Flsmere may be in many of
their features, do they not wear the same ex
pression, — the cureless melancholy of disil
lusion ?
Fiction in its more superficial form, dealing
only with the manners and customs of the so
cial drama, and relying for its interest mainly
upon local colour and the charm of incident
narrated with vivacity and grace, betrays its
scepticism by a serene, unconscious disregard
of the part which religion plays in real life.1
In how many of the lighter novels of the day
do we find any recognition, even between the
lines, of the influence which the idea of God or
its absence, the practice of prayer or its neg-
1 See Appendix, note 6.

spondent.

18 An Age of Doubt
lect, actually exercise upon the character and
conduct of men ? Take, for example, Trilby,1 as
the type of a clever book carelessly written for
the thoughtless public of a passing moment. It
is incredibly credulous in regard to the dramatic
possibilities of hypnotism. It is pitifully in
adequate in its conception of the actual poten
cies of religion ; and it uses Christianity chiefly
as a subject for caricature in the style of the
illustrated newspapers, which are called comic.
Poetry de- Poetry has always been the most direct and
intimate utterance of the human heart. And
it is in poetry that we hear to-day the voice
of scepticism most clearly, "making abundant
music around an elementary nihilism, now
stripped naked." 2 Listen to its sonorous chant-
ings as they come from France in the verse of
Leconte de Lisle, celebrating the sombre ritual
of human automata before the altar of the un
known and. almighty tyrant, who agitates them
endlessly for his own amusement. Listen to
its delicate and decadent lyrics, as Charles
Baudelaire sings his defeat in life and his
thirst for annihilation.
" Morne esprit, autrefois amoureux de la lutte,
L'Espoir dont l'eperon attisait ton ardeur
1 George Du Maurier, Trilby (Harpers, 1895).
* Paul Desjardins, Le Devoir Present (Paris, 1892), p. 65.

An Age of Doubt 19
Ne veut plus t'enfourcher. Couche toi sans pudeur,
Vieux cheval dont le pied a chaque obstacle butte.
Re'signe-toi, mon coeur, dors ton sommeil de brute.
Et le Temps m'engloutit minute par minute
Comme la neige immense un corps pris de roideur :
Je contemple d'en haut le globe en sa rondeur
Et je n'y cherche plus l'abri d'une cahute !
Avalanche, veux tu m'emporter dans ta chute?" 1
Turn to England and hear its musical con
fession in the cool, sad, melodious tones of
Matthew Arnold, no enemy of faith, but her
disenchanted lover.
" Forgive me, masters of the mind,
At whose behest I long ago
So much unlearned, so much resigned —
I come not here to be your foe ;
I seek these anchorites not in ruth,
To curse and to deny your truth ;
Not as their friend, or child, I speak
But as on some far northern strand,
Thinking of his own gods, a Greek,
In pity and mournful awe might stand
Before a fallen Runic stone, —
For both were faiths, and both are gone." 2
There is a poem by Tennyson (who never
broke with faith, though he felt the strain of
i Charles Baudelaire, Fleurs du Mai (Paris, 1888), p. 205.
"LegofitduNeant." 2 Matthew Arnold, Poems (New York, Macmillan, 1878),
p. 337. " Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse."

20 An Age of Doubt
doubt), in which he describes with intense
dramatic sympathy the finality of scepticism
in the human soul. It is called "Despair."
A picture of There is another poem, called "Sea Dreams,"
doubt. in which he gives a vision of the rising tide of
doubt as it threatens to undermine and over
whelm the beliefs of the past. The woman is
telling her husband the dream which came to
her in the night as she watched by their sick
child. " But round the North, a light,
A belt, it seem'd, of luminous vapour, lay,
And ever in it a low musical note
Swell'd up and died ; and, as it swell'd, a ridge
Of breaker issued from the belt, and still
Grew with the growing note, and when the note
Had reach'd a thunderous fulness, on those cliffs
Broke, mixt with awful light (the same as that
Living within the belt) whereby she saw
That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more,
But huge cathedral fronts of every age,
Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could see,
One after one : and then the great ridge drew,
Lessening to the lessening music, back,
And passed into the belt and swell'd again
Slowly to music : ever when it broke
The statues, king, or saint, or founder, fell ;
Then from the gaps and chasms of ruin left
Came men and women in dark clusters round,
Some crying, ' Set them up 1 they shall not fall ! '
And others, ' Let them lie, for they have fall'n.'
And still they strove and wrangled : . . .
. . . and ever as their shrieks

An Age of Doubt 21
Ran highest up the gamut, that great wave
Returning, while none mark'd it, on the crowd
Broke, mixt with awful light, and show'd their eyes
Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept away
The men of flesh and blood, aud men of stone,
To the waste deeps together." 1
It was but a dream, dispelled from the mind The pity of
of her to whom it came in the night-watches ""
by the crying of her little child, and soon for
gotten in the sweet reality of human love.
Only a dream, but how many souls have felt
the vague sadness, the haunting, helpless pity
and fear of a like vision, looking out upon the
landscape of man's inner life, and seeing the
ancient landmarks slowly melted or swiftly
swept away, the shrines of memory shaken
and removed, the fair images of immortal de
sire and aspiration dissolving and disappearing
in the onward waves, silently creeping, or surg
ing with mysterious and inarticulate music out
of the waste deep of doubt, —
" The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea." 2
Who can think of the sharp anguish and dull
grief that have fallen upon innumerable hearts
through the loss of their most precious faiths ;
i Tennyson's Poetical Works (Macmillan, 1890), p. 138.
2 Matthew Arnold, "To Marguerite." Poems (Macmil
lan, 1878), p. 184.

22 An Age of Doubt
who can think of the gray, formless, ever-mov
ing, yet immovable flood of mordant gloom that
has covered so many once bright and fertile
fields of human hope and endeavour, so many
once secure and peaceful homes of human trust
and confidence, — who can think of these things,
even though his own standpoint be still un
touched, his own faith-dwelling founded upon
an untrembling rock far above the tide, with
out a sorrowful perturbation of spirit and a
deep, inward sense of compassionate distress
and dread ? We stand upon the shore, but we
stand beside the sea. And we look out upon
it, as Emile Littre sadly wrote,1 like the women
of Troy, whom the Roman poet pictured gaz
ing at its mighty currents and engulfing waves :
"Pontum adspectabant ftentes."

IV
Sympathy It is with no careless and exaggerating hand,
with doubt. ., . . ,-, , • n ¦, ¦ ...
it is m no unsympathetic and condemning spirit,
that I have tried to draw this picture of the
sceptical age in which we live. Its faults, its
perils, are mine and yours. The preacher who
assumes a supercilious and damnatory attitude
1 Emile Littre^ Conservation, Revolution, Positivisme,
Remarques, p. 430.

An Age of Doubt 23
towards the doubts of the present time can do
little to relieve, and may do much to increase
them. If we desire to be true ministers to a
doubting age, we must put ourselves in the posi
tion of Maurice, who said, "I wish to confess
the sins of the time as my own."1 So far as .
current scepticism has its source in evil, it flows
from faults of which Ave all partake, — the pride
of intellect, the haste of judgment, the prefer
ence of the seen to the unseen, the impatience
of ignorance, the vain demand of perfection in
the finite comprehension of the infinite, and the
disloyalty of reason to conscience.
But indeed this is not the point of view from Lessons of
which we speak. This lecture is not an indict- enmura(Je-
x ment.
ment. It is a diagnosis. Doubt, as we are
thinking of it, is not a crime, but a malady. •
And if we are to have any hope or power of
staying its progress and healing its ravages, we
must not only be sympathetic in our understand
ing of it, but we must also look through it,
earnestly and patiently, to see whether there
are not some favourable symptoms, some signs
of enduring vitality, some promises of returning
health and strength in the spirit of the age.
Of these it seems to me that there are three,
1 The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice (New York,
Scribners, 1884), vol. ii., p. 235.

24

An Age of Doubt

Pessimism.

Cheerful
scepticism almost ex
tinct.

so evident and so important, that we ought not
to overlook them. First, the acknowledged
discontent and pain of unbelief; second, the
practical recoil of some of the finest minds
from the void of absolute scepticism ; third,
the persistent desire of many doubting spirits
to serve mankind by love, self-sacrifice, and
ethical endeavour. In other words, I would
read the lesson of encouragement in the suffer
ings of doubt, in the doubts of doubt, and in
the splendid moral inconsistencies of doubt.
Begin, then, with pain, which is not only a
warning of disease, but also a sign of life. The
pessimism which goes hand in hand with scep
ticism in this nineteenth century is a cry of
suffering. The closely reasoned philosophies of
Schopenhauer and Hartmann, with their prem
isses of misery and conclusions of despair, are
only the scientific statement of a widely diffused
sentiment of dissatisfaction and despondency in
regard to life.1 Their spread, like that of some
apparently new disease, is due to the fact that
they give a name to something from which men
have long suffered.
It seemed at one time as if the course of
modern scepticism was to be free fjom sadness,
a painless malady. At the beginning of the
1 James Sully, Pessimism, pp. 2, 3. See Appendix, note 7.

An Age of Doubt 25
century the tone of infidelity was jubilant and
triumphant. Percy Bysshe Shelley walked into
the inn at Montanvert and wrote his name in
the visitors' book, adding " democrat, philan
thropist, atheist," — as if it were a record of
victory and a title of glory. This cheerful
type of scepticism still survives, here and there,
in a few men who insist that the process of dis
enchantment is pleasant and joyous, and that
the optimism which belonged to faith may re
main while the faith itself disappears. It is
like the smile of the famous cat, in the child's
story-book, which broadened and brightened
while the cat faded, until finally the animal was
gone and nothing but the grin was left.
But for the most part modern doubt shows a The sorrow
sad and pain-drawn face, heavy with grief and °/a.^ins
dark with apprehension. There is an illustra
tion of this change in the life of George Eliot.
In her girlhood she passed suddenly, by an un
conditional surrender, out of a warm faith in
Evangelical Christianity into the coldest kind
of rational scepticism. She writes of the dull,
and now forgotten, book which wrought this
change, Charles Hennell's Inquiry concerning
the Origin of Christianity, with strange and al
most fantastic merriment: "Mr. Hennell ought
to be one of the happiest of men that he has

26 An Age of Doubt
done such a life's work. I am sure if I had
written such a book I should be invulnerable
to all the arrows of all the gods and goddesses.
The book is full of wit to me. It gives me that
exquisite kind of laughter which comes from
the gratification of the reasoning faculties."1
But the arrows which she despised struck
home, ere life was ended, to her own heart.
" I remember," writes Mr. F. W. H. Myers,
"how at Cambridge I walked with her once
in the Fellows' Garden of Trinity, on an even
ing of rainy May, and she, stirred somewhat
beyond her wont, and taking as her text
the three words which have been used so
often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of men,
— the words God, Immortality, Duty, — pro
nounced, with terrible earnestness, how in
conceivable was the first, how unbelievable
was the second, and how peremptory and abso
lute the third. Never, perhaps, had sterner
accents affirmed the sovereignty of imper
sonal and unrecompensing law. I listened and
night fell ; her grave, majestic countenance
turned towards me like a Sibyl's in the gloom ;
it was as though she withdrew from my grasp,
one by one, the two scrolls of promise, and
1 George Eliot's Life, as related in her Letters (New York,
Harpers), vol. i., p. 119.

An Age of Doubt 27
left me the third scroll only, awful with in
evitable fate." x
An inevitable fate, seen through the gloom The sad as-
of falling night, — that indeed is the aspect of pec
life which the literature of doubt displays to
us. A gray shadow of melancholy spreads
over the questioning, uncertain, disillusioned
age ; languid sighs of weariness breathe from
its salons and palaces. Bitter discontent mut
ters in its workshops and tenements. "Never,
I believe," says Paul Desjardins, "have men
been more universally sad than in the present
time." And then he adds, with keen insight,
" Our misery lies in feeling that we are less
men than we were sixty years ago."2 Human
life has been unspeakably impoverished and
narrowed by the loss of faith. Comedy has
become tragic, and tragedy has grown mean
and sordid.3 Men have lost the sound of a
Divine voice in the story of their existence
and learned to listen to it as "a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing."
1 R. H. Hutton, Modern Guides of English Thought
(London, Macmillan, 1887), p. 262.
2 Le Devoir Present, pp. 17, 19.
8 See the plays of Ibsen : Ghosts, A DolVs House, The
Wild Duck, etc.

28 An Age of Doubt
Love itself, the great purifier and ennobler, has
been transformed in the subtle analysis of sex
ual passion, from the sea-born Venus, pure and
radiant with immortal youth, to a dirt-engen
dered goddess, concealing her secret ugliness
with illusory and artificial charms, and presid
ing with malignant power over the lower cur
rents of man's being, — a veritable Cloacina of
human life.1
The mean- The thought of "the grandeur and misery
man. Q£ man," as Pascal conceived it, was painful
but elevating. The conception of the insig
nificance and misery of man as scepticism pre
sents it, is painful and dispiriting. Born of
blind force and unconscious matter, quickened
by some mysterious cruelty to a consciousness
of his own origin and a foreboding of his inex
plicable and fruitless destiny, he " drees his
weird," between two fathomless abysses of
gloom, as one who is indeed weary and heavy-
laden. The music with which he accompanies
his inarch towards the blank and dismal bourn,
rolls and clashes through the literature of every
land with deep and mournful discords, as if
man had at last invented that strange organ of
1 Bourget, Psychologie Contemporaine, pp, 5, 8. See
Appendix, note 8.

of existence.

An Age of Doubt 29
expression which a satirist has called " the Mis-
^rophon." 1
" This philosophy," says Stendhal, comment- The nausea
ing upon the last reflections of his hero in Rouge
et Noir, " was perhaps true, but it was of such a
nature as to make one long for death." And
then the critic from whom I have quoted these
words, adds his own commentary. " Do you
perceive, at the close of this work, the most
complete which the author has left, the break
ing of the tragic dawn of pessimism ? It rises,
this dawn of blood and tears, and, like the clear
ness of a new-born day, it overspreads with
crimson hues the loftiest spirits of our age,
those whose thoughts are at the summit, those
to whom the eyes of the men of to-morrow lift
themselves, — religiously. I am come in this
series of psychological studies to the fifth and
last of the personages whom I propose to ana
lyze. I have examined a poet, Baudelaire ; a
historian, Renan ; a romancer, Flaubert ; a
philosopher, Taine ; I have just examined one
of these composite artists in whom the critic
and the imaginative writer are closely united ;
and I have found in these five Frenchmen of
1 Anton Bettelheim, article in Cosmopolis, January, 1896.
See Appendix, note 9.

30 An Age of Doubt
such importance, the same philosophy of dis
gust with the universal nothingness."1
Melancholia. If we turn to Russia, which has given us
some of the most brilliant and influential,
though undisciplined, writers of modern fic
tion, do we not hear, in an accent harsher
and more formidable, the same conclusions,
the same cries of nausea over the inextricable
confusion and vain efforts of human life? If
we turn to England, do we not see the same
cloud of melancholy, less threatening, less
angry, but no less dark, rising from the
chasm which doubt has made between man's
inner life and the world as scientific posi
tivism pictures it? How mournful is the
voice in which W- K. Clifford proclaims,
" The Great Companion is dead ! " How dark
with silent, passionate grief is that lonely
wood in which "Robert Elsmere" feels him
self going blind to the dearest visions of his
former faith.2 How black the air in which
" Jude the Obscure " breathes out the last
throbbings of his insurgent heart in curses
upon his sordid and desperate fate ! 3 Let a
1 Paul Bourget, Psychologie Contemporaine, p. 321.
2 Mrs. Humphry Ward, Robert Elsmere (Macmillan,
1888), vol. ii., chap. xxvi.
8 Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (Harpers, 1896).

An Age of Doubt 31
poet, with that sublime insight of genius
which endures even amid the ruins created
by its own destructive passion, speak the
last word of doubt, — the epitaph of The
City of Dreadful Night. The portentous fig
ure of " Melancholia " sits enthroned above her
vast metropolis.
" The moving Moon and stars from east to west
Circle before her in the sea of air ;
Shadows and gleams glide round her solemn rest.
Her subjects often gaze up to her there :
The strong to drink new strength of iron endurance,
The weak, new terrors ; all, renewed assurance
And confirmation of the old despair." 1
But why despair, unless indeed because Pain gives
i . , j . , an argu-
man, in his very nature and inmost essence, mentof
is framed for an immortal hope? No other hope.
creature is filled with disgust and anger by
the mere recognition of its own environment
and the realization of its own destiny. This
strange issue of a purely physical evolution
in a profound revolt against itself is incred
ibly miraculous. Can a vast universe of atoms
and ether, unfolding out of darkness into dark
ness, produce at some point in its progress,
and that point apparently the highest, a feel
ing of profound disappointment with its par-
1 James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night, xxi. 12.

32 An Age of Doubt
tially discovered processes and resentful grief
at its dimly foreseen end? To believe this
would require a monstrous credulity ! Athe
ism does not touch this difficulty. Agnosti
cism evades it. There are but two solutions
which really face the facts. One is the black,
unspeakable creed that the source of all things
is an unknown, mocking, malignant Power,
whose last and most cruel jest is the misery
of disenchanted man.1 The other is the hope
ful creed that the very pain which man suffers
when his spiritual nature is denied, is proof
that it exists, and part of the discipline by
which a truthful, loving God would lead man
to Himself. Let the world judge which is
the more reasonable faith. But for our part,
while we cling to the creed of hope, let us
not fail to "cleave ever to the sunnier side
of doubt," and see in the very shadow that
it casts the evidence of a light behind and
above it. Let us learn the meaning of that
noble word of St. Augustine : Thou hast made
us for Thyself, and unquiet is our heart until it
rests in Thee.
1 "It must have been an ill-advised God, who could fall
upon no better amusement than the transforming of Himself
into such a hungry world as this, which is utterly miserable and
worse than none at all." — David Friedrich Strauss, quoted
in The British Quarterly Review, January, 1877, p. 146.

An Age of Doubt 38
Yes, the inquietude of the heart which The renal.
doubt has robbed of its faith in God, is an sa,lceof
faith.
evidence that scepticism is a malady, not a
normal state. The sadness of our times under
the pressure of positive disbelief and negative
uncertainty has in it the promise and potency
of a return to health and happiness. Already
we can see, if we look with clear eyes, the
signs of what I have dared to call "the re
action out of the heart of a doubting age
towards the Christianity of Christ and the
faith in Immortal Love."1
Pagan poets, full of melancholy beauty and
vague regret for lost ideals, poets of decadence
and despondence, the age has born, to sing its
grief and gloom. But its two great singers,
Tennyson and Browning, strike a clearer note
of returning faith and hope. " They resume
the quest, and do not pause until they find
Him whom they seek."2 Pessimists like Hart-
mann work back unconsciously, from the vague
remoteness of pantheism, far in the direction,
at least, of a theistic view of the universe.
His later books — Religionsphilosophie and
1 The Poetry of Tennyson (New York, Scribners, 1889),
p. xiii. 2 Vida D. Scudder, The Life of the Spirit in the Modern
English Poets (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., 1895), p. 333.

34 An Age of Doubt
Selbstersetzung des Christenihums — breathe a
different spirit from his Philosophie des Un-
bewussten.1 One of the most cautious of our
younger students of philosophy has noted with
care, in a recent article, the indications that
"the era of doubt is drawing to a close."2 A
statesman, like Signor Crispi, does not hesitate
to cut loose from his former atheistic connec
tions and declare that "the belief in God is
the fundamental basis of the healthy life of
the people, while atheism puts in it the germ
of an irreparable decay." The French critic,
M. Edouard Rod, declares that " only religion
can regulate at the same time human thought
and human action."3 Mr. Benjamin Kidd,
from the side of English sociology, assures
us that " since man became a social creature,
•the development of his intellectual character
has become subordinate to the development
of his religious character," and concludes that
religion affords the only permanent sanction
for progress.4 A famous biologist, Romanes,
1 James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World
(New York, Randolph, 1893), pp. 456, 457. See Appendix,
note 10.
2 The Methodist Review, January, 1896. "The Return
to Faith," by Prof. A. C. Armstrong, Jr.
* Edouard Rod, Les Idees Morales du Temps Present
(Paris, 1894), p. 304.
4 Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution (London, 1894), p. 245.

An Age of Doubt 35
who once professed the most absolute rejec
tion of revealed, and the most unqualified
scepticism of natural, religion, thinks his way
soberly back from the painful void to a posi
tion where he confesses that " it is reasonable
to be a Christian believer," and dies in the
full communion of the church of Jesus.1
All along the line, we see men who once
thought it necessary or desirable to abandon
forever the soul's abode of faith in the unseen,
returning by many and devious ways from the
far country of doubt, driven by homesickness
and hunger to seek some path which shall at
least bring them in sight of a Father's house.
And meanwhile we hear the conscience, the The indomi-
ethical instinct of mankind, asserting itself
' ° science.
with splendid courage and patience, even in
those who have as yet found no sure ground
for it to stand upon. There is a sublime con
tradiction between the positivist's view of man
as " the hero of a lamentable drama played in
an obscure corner of the universe, in virtue of
blind laws, before an indifferent nature, and
with annihilation for its denouement,"2 and the
doctrine that it is his supreme duty to sacrifice
himself for the good of humanity. Yet many

Thoughts on Religion, p. 196.
Madame L. Ackermann, Ma Vie (Paris, 1885), p. xviii.

crusade in
France.

36 An Age of Doubt
of the sceptical thinkers of the age do not
stumble at the contradiction. They hold fast
to love and justice and moral enthusiasm even
though they suspect that they themselves are
the products of a nature which is blind and
dumb and heartless and stupid. Never have
the obligations of self-restraint, and helpful
ness, and equity, and universal brotherhood
been preached more fervently than by some of
the English agnostics.
Tlie new In France a new crusade has risen ; a cru
sade which seeks to gather into its hosts men
of all creeds and men of none, and which pro
claims as its object the recovery of the sacred
places of man's spiritual life, the holy land in
which virtue shines forever by its own light,
and the higher impulses of our nature are in
spired, invincible, and immortal. On its ban
ner M. Paul Desjardins writes the word of
Tolstoi, uIlfaut avoir une dme; it is necessary
to have a soul," and declares that the crusaders
will follow it wherever it leads them. " For
my part," he cries, " I shall not blush certainly
to acknowledge as sole master the Christ
preached by the doctors. I shall not recoil if
my premisses force me to believe, at last, as
Pascal believed." J
1 Le Devoir Present, 46.

An Age of Doubt 37
In our own land such a crusade does not yet The i
appear to be necessary. The disintegration of
faith under the secret processes of general
scepticism has not yet gone far enough to make
the peril of religion evident, or to cause a new
marshalling of hosts to recover and defend the
forsaken shrines of man's spiritual life. When
the process which is now subtly working in so
many departments of our literature has gone
farther, it may be needful to call for such a
crusade. If so, I believe it will come. I be
lieve that the leaders of thought, the artists,
the poets of the future, when they stand face
to face with the manifest results of negation
and disillusion, which really destroy the very
sphere in which alone art and poetry can live,
will rise to meet the peril, and proclaim anew
with one voice the watchword, " It is necessary
to have a soul! And though a man gain the
whole world, if his soul is lost, it shall profit
him nothing." But meanwhile, before the fol
lowing of the errors of France in literature and
art has led us to that point of spiritual impov
erishment where we must imitate the organized
and avowed effort to recover that which has
been lost, we see a new crusade of another
kind: a powerful movement of moral enthu
siasm, of self-sacrifice, of altruism, even among

crusade in
America.

38 An Age of Doubt
those who profess to be out of sympathy with
Christianity, which is a sign of promise, be
cause it reveals a force that cries out for faith,
and for Christian faith, to guide and direct it.
The cry for Never was there a time when the fine aspira-
teadershii *i°ns °f the V0UI1g manhood and young woman
hood of our country needed a more inspiring
and direct Christian leadership. The indica
tions of this need lie open to our sight on every
side. Here is a company of refined and edu-
c' cated people going down to make a college set
tlement among the poor and ignorant, to help
them and lift them up. They declare that it is
not a religious movement, that there is to be
no preaching connected with it, that the only
faith which it is to embody is faith in human-
0 ity. They choose a leader who has only that
faith. But they find, under his guidance, that
the movement will not move, that the work
cannot be dqne, that it faints and fails because
it lacks the spring of moral inspiration which
can come only from a divine and spiritual
faith. And they are forced to seek a new
leader who, although he is not a preacher, yet
carries within his heart that power of religious
conviction, that force of devotion to the will of
God, that faith in the living and supreme
Christ, which is in fact the centre of Christian-

An Age of Doubt 39
ity. All around the circle of human doubt
and despair, where men and women are going
out to enlighten and uplift and comfort and
strengthen their fellow-men under the perplex
ities and burdens of life, we hear the cry for a
gospel which shall be divine, and therefore
sovereign and unquestionable and sure and vic
torious. All through the noblest aspirations
and efforts and hopes of our age of doubt, we
feel the longing, and we hear the demand, for
a new inspiration of Christian faith.
These are the signs of the times. Surely we The signs of
must take note of them, surely we must labour
and pray to understand their true significance,
if we are to say anything to our fellow-men
which shall be worth our saying and their
hearing. Renan made a strange remark not long be
fore his death: "I fear that the work of the
Twentieth Century will consist in taking out
of the waste-basket a multitude of excellent
ideas which the Nineteenth Century has heed
lessly thrown into it." The sceptic's fear is
the believer's hope. Once more the fields are
white unto the harvest. The time is ripe ;
ripe in the sorrow of scepticism, ripe in the
return of aspiration, ripe in the enthusiasm of

the times.

40 An Age of Doubt
humanity, for a renaissance of the spiritual life.
Blessed are they who are come to the kingdom
for such a time as this, if indeed they believe
and preach a living, saving Gospel for this Age
of Doubt.

II
THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON

Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter,
Churches change, forms perish, systems go,
But our human needs, they will not alter,
Christ no after age shall e'er outgrow.
Yea, Amen ! O changeless One, Thou only,
Art life's guide and spiritual goal,
Thou the Light across the dark vale lonely, —
Thou the eternal haven of the soul.
— John Campbell Shairp.

II
THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON
The prevalence and the quality of modern How shall
doubt, with its discontent and sadness, its weservethe
' present age?
self-misgivings and reactions, its moral incon
sistencies and fine enthusiasms, bring the
preacher who is alive and in earnest, face to
face with the most important question of his
life. What can I do, what ought I to do, as
a preacher, to meet the strange, urgent, com
plicated needs of such a time as this ?
First of all, as a man, — and every preacher
ought to be a man, though not every man is
bound to be a preacher — as a man, it is nec
essary to lead a clean, upright, steadfast, use
ful life, purged from all insincerity, and lifted
above all selfishness, and especially above that
form of religious selfishness which is the beset
ting peril of those who feel themselves rich in
faith in the midst of a generation that has been
made poor by unbelief. Never has there been a
time when character and conduct counted for
43

44 The Gospel of a Person
more than they do to-day. A life on a high
level, yet full of helpful, healing sympathy
for all life on its lowest levels, is the first debt
which we owe to our fellow-men in this age.
But beyond this, is there not something per-
senal and specific which the conditions of the
present demand from us, as men who have not
only the common duty of living, but also the
peculiar vocation of speaking directly and con
stantly to the inner life of our brothers ? We
want some distinct and definite message, which
is to be clearly formed in our thought and feel
ing and utterance, as the central, guiding, domi
nating force in all our efforts to realize the fine
aspiration of the old hymn :
" To serve the present age,
My calling to fulfil, —
Oh, may it all my powers engage
To do my Master's will ! "
Proposed Now the -moment we look at the problem in
insufficient, this light, we see that there are various lines
of activity open to us, and along all of these
lines men are making promises and prophecies
of usefulness and success. The cures which
are suggested for the malady of the age are
many and diverse. Of some of them we need
speak only in passing, to recognize that for
us, at least, they are unsuitable.

The Grospel of a Person 45
Herr Max Nordau, for example, in his Reaction to
curious and chaotic book, Degeneration, diag
noses the sickness of modern times as the
result, not of a loss of faith, but of a fatal
increase of nervous irritability produced by
the strain of an intricate civilization. He
declares that the malady must run its course,
but that in time it will be healed by the re
storative force of " misoneism, that instinctive,
invincible aversion to progress and its difficul
ties that Lombroso has studied so much and to
which he has given this name." 1
The name is certainly not a pretty one, nor
do I think that, after the first feeling of pleas
ure in learning to pronounce a newly imported
word has passed, the contemplation of its
meaning will afford us any profound sense of
satisfaction or hope. The picture of mankind
as a magnified Jemmy Button, returning from
his temporary residence in England to his na
tive Terra del Fuego, and flinging away his
gloves and patent-leather shoes, to relapse into
a peaceful and contented barbarism, is not in
spiring. Who is there that would care to de
vote his life to the hastening of such a result ?
Who but the veriest quack, himself affected by
the hysteria of the age, would think of curing
1 Max Nordau, Degeneration (New York, 1895), p. 542.

46 The Gospel of a Person
the convulsions of St. Vitus' dance in an over
strained humanity by throwing the patient into
the stupor of typhoid fever ?
Psychical Another and very different method of deal-
ing with the malady of the times is suggested
by those who believe that Science itself, in the
immense future advance which is predicted for
it, will supply the antidote for the scepticism
which has accompanied its previous course.
New discoveries will be made which will sup
port the proposition : II faut avoir une dme.
New arguments will be constructed which will
give us a scientific demonstration of the un
seen universe and the future life. It is in
this spirit that Mr. F. W. H. Myers calls at
tention to the phenomena of mesmerism and
hypnotism and telepathy, and suggests that
the need of the age is a more cordial and
general interest in the investigations of the
Society of Psychical Research.1 I do not
think, for "one, that these investigations are
to be slighted or despised. They may be of
great value. But it is difficult to believe that
this is the source to which the preacher is to
look either for his inspiration or his message.
For, in the first place, it is highly improbable
that science is about to make any such aston-
1 See Appendix, note 11.

The Gospel of a Person 47
ishing advance, either in methods or results,
as some men anticipate. The best authorities
admit this, and warn us that there are "limi
tations in the nature of the universe which
must circumscribe the achievements of specu
lative research."1 Mr. Myers himself makes
the same admission, and says that so far as
our discoveries are confined to the physical
side of things, there is no ground whatever
for sanguine hope. Moreover, in the second
place, whatever work may be done in this di
rection must be accomplished, not by preachers,
but by scientists. The average preacher has
no particular vocation, and no adequate qual
ification, for the task. Neither by tempera
ment nor by training is he fitted to judge
of these matters. Now and then you will find
a rare exception ; but as a rule nothing could
be of less value than the scientific sermons of
preachers who have only a bowing acquaint
ance with science. If the cure of modern
scepticism is to be accomplished by the further
progress of physical investigation, at least we
must confess that this enterprise is not for us.
But there are two other ways of deal
ing with current doubt which demand closer
attention. One of them is the philosophic
i gee Appendix, note 12,

48 The Gospel of a Person
Thorough- method of a reductio ad absurdum. The logic
goingrationalism. °^ rationalism is applied to its own premisses
in order to show that they are unfounded and
unverifiable. The result of this attack, as it
has been made with a relentless and masterly
hand by the Hon. Arthur James Balfour in
his Defence of Philosophic Doubt, is to exhibit
the startling fact that " the universe as repre
sented to us by science is wholly unimaginable,
and that our conception of it is what in The
ology would be termed purely anthropomor
phic."1 The evidence for the existence of a
world composed of atoms and ether is no
more conclusive, the account which science
gives of their nature and qualities is no more
coherent, than the evidence and account which
faith gives of a world created by a personal
God and inhabited by immortal souls. Pure
agnosticism is thus forced into the service of
Christianity and used to destroy all a priori
objections to it. Giant Doubt is brought low
by turning his own weapons against himself,
even as Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, slew the
Egyptian "with his own spear."2
The value of this service of philosophy is
1 A Defence of Philosophic Doubt (Macmillan, 1879),
pp. 284, 285, 287-289. See Appendix, note 13.
2 1 Chron. xi. 23.

The Gospel of a Person 49
considerable. The Christian preacher ought
not to be ignorant of its actual results, for
they are such as to encourage him in preserv
ing his independence against the tyrannous
claims of positivism ; nor unfamiliar with its
methods, for they are fitted to train and disci
pline his mind by hard exercise and exact work.
But it must be remembered that only a mighty
man of valour, one who, like Benaiah, ranks
above the host, and above the thirty captains of
the host, can hope to play a leading part in this
enterprise of " carrying the war into Africa."
It must be remembered also that the reduction
of scientific naturalism to an absurdity falls far
short of the establishment of religious faith as
a verity. Grateful for .all that philosophy can
do, and is doing, to. clear the way, the preacher
must have a principle, an impulse, a line of
action which will carry him beyond the nega
tive result of making unbelief doubtful, to the
positive result of making belief credible.
At this point our attention is called to an- Theological
other way of dealing with current scepticism,
— the dogmatic method, which relies for the
defence of faith upon the construction of a
complete and consistent system of doctrine in
regard to God and man, the present world and
the future life. Faith, in other words, is to

50 The Gospel of a Person
be established by fortification, surrounded and
entrenched with banquette and parapet, scarp
and ditch and counterscarp of iron-worded
proof, defended on every side by solid syllo
gisms, and impregnable against all assaults of
unbelief. It is foolish not to recognize the
great work which has been done along this line
by wise and strong men in the past. Those
who affect to despise it and make light of it,
are simply ignorant of some of the loftiest
achievements of the human intellect. The
works of Augustine and Anselm and Thomas
Aquinas, of John Calvin and Richard Hooker
and John Owen, of Ralph Cudworth and
William Chillingworth, of Richard Baxter and
Samuel Clarke and Joseph Butler, of Jonathan
Edwards and Charles Hodge and W. G. T.
Shedd, are massive works. They impose a
sense of wonder upon every thoughtful ob
server.
Changed But concerning the attempt to conquer mod-
ern doubt by a system of dogmatic theology,
certain things must be remembered. The con
ditions of warfare change from age to age.
The vast fortresses of solid stone whose posses
sion was once regarded as the security of
nations, are not ranked so high as they were
a hundred years ago. The earthwork, the

The Gospel of a Person 51
rifled cannon, the iron-clad ship, the torpedo,
have wrought great changes. Deductive logic
is just as strong as it ever was, but somehow or
other men are not as much impressed by it.
Induction is the method of to-day: and that is
a subtle, evasive, mobile method. It cannot
be shut in by a ring of fortresses. Already
the dogmatic systems in which the inductive
method is ignored or subordinated (whether
made long ago, or constructed yesterday as
modern antiques) are out of date. They are
good for the men who are within them, but
on the outside world they have no more effect
than Windsor Castle would have in protecting
England from a foreign invasion.
We feel sure that theology, in time, must The future
and will vindicate its claim to be considered as
an essential factor in the intellectual life of
man, by adapting itself to the changed condi
tions, and producing even mightier works by
the new methods than those which it produced
by the old. Already we see the promise of a
renaissance of dogmatics in such books as Mul-
ford's The Republic of God, Harris' The Self-
Revelation of God, Orr's The Christian View of
God and the World, and Fairbairn's The Place
of Christ in Modern Theology. But we must
remember that even those who anticipate and

52 The Gospel of a Person
Great things predict this reconstruction of the old truth on
demandedof , .
the new the- the new lines most enthusiastically, recognize
ologian. that it must be a long and difficult task, and
that the man who is to be a master-builder
must have a magnificent equipment. How ex
hilarating at the first sight, but at the second
sight how overwhelming and discouraging, are
the demands of the age upon him who would
fain be an epoch-making theologian, as they are
stated, for example, in Mr. Balfour's Founda
tions of Belief, or in Dr. George A. Gordon's
inspiring book The Christ of To-day.1 Truly it
appears that such a man must realize the sup
position of St. Paul : he must speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, and have the
gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries
and all knowledge. Who is sufficient for these
things? It will take a long time for the best
of us to learn all this. Perhaps the most of us
may never go so far. Meantime, whether we
are labouring towards that goal, or despairing
of it, we need something divinely simple and
divinely true that we can preach at once, di
rectly, joyfully, fervently to the heart of the age.
A view of the world, a Welt-anschauung, is de
sirable, perhaps in the long run necessary, for
the mind of man ; but there is another thing
1 See Appendix, note 14.

The Gospel of a Person 53
which is more desirable and of prior necessity, A starting-
and that is a standpoint of practical conviction fZ'thiTthe
from which to obtain such a view. It may be flrst neces-
but a foothold, only a single point of contact, U V'
but we must have it, and it must be solid as a
fact. A complete and consistent theology is a
consummation most devoutly to be wished for ;
but before it can come there must be some
thing else, — a living, active power of faith in
the soul. This power, as we believe, already
exists in every human being. But there is
only one thing that can awaken it and call it
into action, and that is a gospel, a message
clear as light, which in its very essence is a
force to quicken and stir the soul.
We look out upon the world and we see that Preaching
, , -. , 1 -ii. j. 1 with power.
some men have had such a gospel without be
ing in any sense finished and systematic theo
logians. St. Paul and St. Peter and St. John
had it. St. Chrysostom and St. Francis of
Assisi and Savonarola had it. John Wesley
and George Whitfield had it. In different ages
and under different conditions these preachers
had the primal message which moves men to
believe. And in our own age, under our own
conditions, a like message has been proclaimed
with power. Pere Lacordaire preached such a
message in Notre Dame, and Canon Liddon in

54 The Gospel of a Person
St. Paul's, to listening thousands. Bishop
Brooks made it thrill like a celestial music
through the young manhood of America; and
Dwight L. Moody has spoken it with vigorous
directness in every great city that knows the
English tongue. In many things, in ecclesias
tical relation, in theological statement, in dress,
in manner, in language, these preachers are
unlike. One thing only is the same in all of
them, and that is the source of their power.
Their central message, the core of their preach
ing, is the piercing, moving, personal gospel
of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and Sav
iour of mankind. This, in its simplest form ;
this, in its clearest expression ; this presenta
tion of a person to persons in order that they
may first know, and then love and trust and
follow Him— this is pre-eminently the gospel
for an age of doubt.

The Gospel The adaptation of our central message, thus
conceived and thus expressed, to meet the
peculiar needs of a time of general scepticism,
is the theme of this lecture. I do not say that
this is the whole of Christianity. I do not say
that when the preacher has delivered this mes
sage in this form he has fulfilled all of his

The Gospel of a Person 55
duties. He may have to bear testimony against
errors of thought and vices of conduct; he is
certainly bound to give encouragement and
guidance to new efforts of virtue and new en
terprises of benevolence in every field. But
his first and greatest duty, the discharge of
which is to give him influence over doubting
hearts and strength for all his other work, is
simply to preach Christ.
This gospel meets the needs of the present The gospel
time because it is the gospel of a fact. ° '
Personality is a fact. Indeed we may say
that it is the aboriginal fact ; the source of all
perception ; the starting-point of all thought ;
the informing and moulding principle of all
language. " All human observation implies
that the mind, the ' I,' is a thing in itself, a
fixed point in a world of change, of which world
of change its own organs form a part. It is the
same, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. It
was what it is, when its organs were of a dif
ferent shape and consisted of different matter
from their present shape and matter. It will
be what it is, when they have gone through
other changes."1
1 Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Frater
nity. Quoted by Hutton, Contemporary Thought, I., p. 114.
See Appendix, note 15.

56 The Gospel of a Person
Personality This fact of a rational, free, conscious, persist-
%s tfiG fouti-
dation. ent self is the foundation of all sensation and
of all reflection; it is the basis of physics as well
as of metaphysics. By contrast it gives us our
first notion of matter ; by resistance, our first
notion of force ; by operation, our first notion
of causality. It is a necessary assumption even
in the philosophies of agnosticism, positivism,
and materialism. They cannot move a step
without it. " They reckon ill who leave me out."
To deny personality is to deny the possibility
of any kind of knowledge and reduce the uni
verse to a blank.1
Moreover, it is not only true that the recogni
tion of our own personality lies at the root of
perception and reasoning. It is also true that
contact with other personalities, conscious, in
telligent, free, and persistent like ourselves, is
the gateway through which we reach the reality
of all external things. To a solitary mind the
outward world may be only a dream. But the
moment two minds come into contact and com
munication, it becomes at least a permanent
possibility of sensation. By comparison and
contrast with the sensations and experiences of
1 See Appendix, note 16.

The Gospel of a Person 57
others, we verify our own. If it were not for
this the whole universe would dissolve around
us like the baseless fabric of a vision. The
subtle analysis of modern science, transforming
the apparently solid elements into invisible
atoms, and these atoms into vortex rings in
the impalpable and immeasurable ether, throws
us back, more and more, upon personality, sub
jective and objective, as the only thing that
remains sure and immutable.
Persons, then, are the most real and substan- Persons are
tial objects of our knowledge. They touch us
at more points, they affect us in more ways and
with greater intensity, they fit more closely into
the faculties and powers of our own being, than
anything else in the universe. A person who
has influenced us or our fellow-men leaves a
more profound, positive, permanent, and real
impression than any other fact whatsoever.
We live as persons in a world of persons, far
more truly than we live in a world of phenomena
or laws or ideas.
Now, in an age that is characterized, as some
German writer has said, by " a hunger for facts,"
the gospel of a person, if it is rightly appre
hended and preached, ought to have peculiar
power because it is a factual gospel. We can
come to those who are under the benumbing

58 The Gospel of a Person
spell of universal doubt and say : Here is a
fact, a personality, real and imperishable. It is
not merely a doctrine that was believed in Pales
tine eighteen hundred years ago. It is some
one who was born and lived among men. It is
not merely a theory of God and the soul and
the future life that sprang up in the East in the
first century and has strangely spread itself
over the world. This religion is historical in
every sense of the word, as the actual fulfilment
of an ancient hope, and the starting-point of a
new life.1
The reality The person of Jesus Christ stands solid in the
of Christ. . . .
history ot man. He is indeed more substantial,
more abiding, in human apprehension, than any
form of matter, or any mode of force. The
conceptions of earth and air and fire and water
change and melt around Him, as the clouds
melt and change around an everlasting moun
tain peak. All attempts to resolve Him into
a myth, a legend, an idea, — and hundreds of
such attempts have been made, — have drifted
over the enduring reality of His character and
left not a rack behind. The result of all criti
cism, the final verdict of enlightened common-
sense, is that Christ is historical. He is such a
person as men could not have imagined if they
1 See Appendix, note 17.

The Gospel of a Person 59
would, and would not have imagined if they
could. He is neither Greek myth, nor Hebrew
legend.1 The artist capable of fashioning Him
did not exist, nor could he have found the
materials. A non-existent Christianity did not
spring out of the air and create a Christ. A
real Christ appeared in the world and created
Christianity. This is what we mean by the
gospel of a fact. n
And here we come at once into sight of the The gospel
second quality of this gospel which is pecul
iarly fitted to meet the needs of a doubting age.
If it be true that a person is a fact, it is no
less true that a person is a force. The world
moves by personality. All the great currents
of history have flowed from persons. Organi
zation is powerful ; but no organization has
ever accomplished anything until a person has
stood at the centre of it and filled it with his
thought, with his life. Truth is mighty and
must prevail. But it never does prevail actu
ally until it gets itself embodied, incarnated, in
a personality. Christianity has an organiza
tion. Christianity has a doctrine. But the
force of Christianity, that which made it move
1 See Appendix, note 18.

60 The Gospel of a Person
and lent it power to move the world, is the Per
son at the heart of it, who gives vitality to the
organization and reality to the doctrine. All
the abstract truths of Christianity might have
come into the world in another form, — nay,
the substance of these truths did actually come
into the world, dimly and partially through the
fragmentary religions of the nations, more
clearly and with increasing, prophetic light
through the inspired Scriptures of the He
brews ; but still the world would not stir, still
the truth could not make itself felt as a univer
sal force in the life of humanity until
" The Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds,
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought." 1
I think we must get back, in our conception of
Christianity and in our preaching of it, to this
primary position. The fount and origin of its
power was, and continued to be, and still is, the
Person Christ.
Christ was This was the secret of His ministry. He
Himself was the central word of His own
preaching. He offered Himself to the world
as the solution of its difficulties and the source
1 Tennyson, In Memoriam, xxxvi.

The Gospel of a Person 61
of a new life. He asked men simply to be
lieve in Him, to love Him, to follow Him. He
called the self-righteous to humble themselves
to His correction, the sinful to confide in His
forgiveness, the doubting to trust His assur
ance, and the believing to accept His guid
ance into fuller light.1 To those who became
His disciples He gave doctrine and instruction
in many things. But to those who were not
yet His disciples, to the world, He offered first
of all Himself, not a doctrine, not a plan of
life, but a living Person. This was the sub
stance of His first sermon when He stood up
in the synagogue at Nazareth and having read
from the Book of Isaiah the prophecy of the
Great Liberator, declared unto the people
" This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your
ears."2 This was the attraction of His univer
sal invitation, " Come unto Me, all ye that
labour and are heavy laden and I will give
you rest."3 This was the heart of His sum
mary of His completed work when He said, " I,
if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all
men unto Me."4
1 Henry Latham, Pastor Pastorum (New York, James
Pott & Co., 1891), pp. 273-275.
2 St. Luke iv. 16-21.
* St. Matt. xi. 28.
* St. John xii. 32.

62

The Gospel of a Person

The life of
the Church
flowed from
Christ.

We are not considering, at this moment, the
tremendous implications of such a personal
self-assertion, unparalleled, I believe, in the
founder of any other religion. We pass by
for the present that famous and inevitable
alternative, Aut Christus Deus, aut homo non
bonus est.1 The point, now, is simply this.
As a matter of history, setting aside all ques
tion of the divine inspiration and authority
of the Gospels, taking them merely as a
trustworthy report of a certain sequence of
events,2 it is plain that the force which started
the religion of Jesus was the person Jesus.
Christ was His own Christianity. Christ was
the core of His own gospel.
Read on through the other books of the New
Testament, the Acts and the Epistles, and you
will see that they are just the record of the
operation of this force in life and literature.
It was this that sent the apostles out into the

1 See Appendix, note 19.
2 The evidence for the historic trustworthiness of the
Gospels may be found summed up in its modern form in Dr.
Salmon's Introduction to the New Testament, fourth edition
(New York, Young & Co., 1889); in Bishop Lightfoot's Es
says on "Supernatural Religion'1'' (Macmillan, 1889); in
Beyschlag's New Testament Theology (Edinburgh, T. & T.
Clark, 1895), pp. 29-31, 216-221 of volume i. ; and in Prof.
George P. Fisher's Grounds of Theistic and Christian Be
lief (Scribners, 1883).

The Gospel of a Person 63
world, reluctantly and hesitatingly at first, then
joyfully and triumphantly, like men driven by
an irresistible impulse. It was the manifesta
tion of Christ that converted them,1 the love
of Christ that constrained them,2 the power of
Christ that impelled them.3 He was their
certainty4 and their strength.5 He was their
peace 6 and their hope.7 For Christ they la
boured and suffered ; 8 in Christ they gloried ; 9
for Christ's sake they lived and died.10 They
felt and they declared that the life that was in
them was His life.11 They were confident that
they could do all things through Christ which
strengthened them.12 The offices-of the Church
— apostle, bishop, deacon, evangelist, — call
them by what names you will — were simply
forms of service to Him as Master ; 13 the
doctrines of the Church were simply unfold-
ings of what she had received from Him as
Teacher ; 14 the worship of the Church, as dis •
tinguished from that of the Jewish Synagogue
and the Heathen Temple, was the adoration
of Christ as Lord.15
Now it was precisely this relation of the
i Gal. i. 16. 6 Eph. ii. 14. " Gal. ii. 20.
2 2 Cor. v. 14. 7 Col. i. 27. 12 Phil. iv. 13.
s 2 Cor. xii. 9. 8 Phil. iii. 8-10. 13 Eph. iv. 8-12.
* 2 Tim. i. 12. 9 Gal. vi. 14. « 1 Cor. xi. 1, 23 ; xv. 3.
6 2 Tim. ii. 1. 10 2 Cor. iv. 5, 11. 15 Phil. ii. 11; 1 Cor. xii. 3.

64

The Gospel of a Person

Tlie influ
ence of
Christianity
came from
Christ.

The magic
of Christ's
name.

early Church, in her organization and doctrine
and worship, to the person Christ, held fast
in her memory as identical with the real Jesus
who was born in Bethlehem and crucified on
Calvary, conceived in her faith as still living
and present with His disciples, — -it was this
personal animation of the Church by Christ
that gave her influence over men. Contrary
to all human probability, against the prejudice
of the Hebrews who abhorred the name of a
crucified man, against the prejudice of the
Greeks and Romans who despised the name
of a common Jew, she made her way, not by
concealing, but by exalting and glorifying, the
name of Jesus Christ. Indeed, it seems as if
her career of conquest was actually delayed
until that name was taken up and written upon
her banners. It was in Antioch, where the
disciples were first called Christians,1 that the
missionary enterprise of the Church began, and
it was from that centre, with that title, that
she went out to her triumph.
The name of Christ was magical ; not as a
secret and unintelligible incantation, but as
the sign of a real person, known and loved.
It enlightened and healed and quickened the
heart of an age which, like our own, was dark
1 Acts xi. 26 ; xiii. 1-3.

The Gospel of a Person 65
and sorrowful and heavy with doubt. It was
the charm which drew men to Christianity out
of the abstractions of philosophy,1 and the con
fusions of idolatry darkened with a thousand
personifications but empty of all true person
ality. The music of that name rang through
all the temple of the Church, and to its har
monies her walls were builded. The acknow
ledgment of that name was the mark of Christian
discipleship. To confess that "Jesus is the
Christ " was the way to enter the Church. The
symbolism of that name was the mark of Chris
tian worship. The central rites of the Church
were baptism into Christ and communion with
Christ. Fidelity to His name was the crown
of Christian martyrdom. Unnumbered multi
tudes of men and women and children went
down to death because they would not deny
the Christ. Whatever the early Church
Was and did, beyond a doubt her character
and her activity were but the resultant of
the personal influence that flowed from Jesus
Christ.2 When we '.urn to follow the history of Chris
tianity through the later centuries down to the
1 See Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, chap. viii.
2 George B. Stevens, The Pauline Theology. See Appen
dix, note 20.

66

The Gospel of a Person

Christ is
the charm
of Christi
anity.

Thepersonai present time, we see that the same thing is
Christ true. The temporal power of the Bishop of
continues. Rome doubtless grew out of the union of the
Church with the Empire. The immense wealth
and secular authority of ecclesiastics may be
traced to social and political causes. But the
' inward, vitalizing, self-propagating power of
Christianity as a religion has always come from
the person of Jesus who stands at the heart of
it. The attraction of its hymns and psalms and
spiritual songs, the beauty of its holy days and
solemn ceremonies, were derived from Him
who is the central figure in praise and prayer.
The renaissance of Christian Art sprang from
the desire to picture to the imagination the
visible, adorable form and face of Him whom
speculative theology had so often concealed or
obscured. The penetrating and abiding fra
grance of Christian literature resides in those
books, like The Imitation of Christ, in which the
sweetness of His character is embalmed forever.
The potency of Christian preaching comes from,
and is measured by, the clearness of the light
which it throws upon the personality of Jesus.
Read the roll of those in every age whom the
world has acknowledged as the best Christians,
kings and warriors and philosophers, martyrs
and heroes and labourers in every noble cause,

The Gospel of a Person 67
the purest and the highest of mankind, and you
will see that the test by which they are judged,
the mark by which they are recognized, is
likeness and loyalty to the personal Christ.
Then turn to the work which the Church is
doing to-day in the lowest and darkest fields
of human life, among the submerged classes of
our great cities, among the sunken races of
heathendom, and you cannot deny that the
force of that work to enlighten and uplift, still
depends upon the simplicity and reality with
which it reveals the person of Jesus to the
hearts of men. Christianity as a missionary
religion would be fatally crippled if you took
out of it the familiar story of Jesus and His
love. "Mr. Darwin," says Admiral Sir James Sulli- The testi-
. . mony of a
van, " had often expressed to me his conviction doubter.
that it was utterly useless to send missionaries
to such a set of savages as the Fuegians, proba
bly the very lowest of the human race. I had
always replied that I did not believe any human
beings existed too low to comprehend the sim
ple message of the Gospel of Christ. After
many years he wrote to me that the recent
account of the mission showed that he had been
wrong and I right . . . and he requested me
to forward to the Society an enclosed cheque

68

The Gospel of a Person

The force
which breaks the
inertia of
unbelief.

for £5, as a testimony of his interest in their
good work." J
Observe, we are not constructing an argu
ment. We are only tracing a force, — the
force that flows from the person of Jesus Christ.
The more closely, the more powerfully we can
feel it in ourselves and in others, the more confi
dently we can come to a doubting age and say :
Here is this force, intense, persistent, far-
reaching. It has moved all kinds of men,
from the highest to the lowest. What do you
make of it ? What will you do with it ? Is
it not the only thing that can lift and move
you out of your doubt ? For scepticism is
just the inertia of the soul which stands
poised between contrary and mutually destruc
tive theories. From that state of impotence
there is but one deliverance, and that is by
force, the force of life embodied in a person.

Ill

But the force which proceeds from the person

The gospel
spiritual °f Jesus is not mere power, blind and purpose-
porld. iess. It moves always in a certain direction.
It has a quality in it which produces certain
1 Alfred Barry, Some Lights of Science on the Faith
(London, Longmans, 1892), p. 116.

The Gospel of a Person 69
results. And one of these results is an im
mediate and overwhelming sense of the reality
and nearness of spiritual things. This is the
third point of adaptation in the gospel of the
personal Christ to the needs of a sceptical age.
It carries with itself an evidence of things not
seen, a substance of things hoped for.
An aura of wonder and mystery surrounded The mystery
Jesus of Nazareth in His earthly life. All who
came in contact with Him felt it ; in love, if
they desired to believe ; in repulsion, if they
hated to believe. In His presence, faith in the
invisible, in the soul, in the future life, in
God, revived and unfolded with new bloom
and colour. In His presence hypocrisy was
silenced and afraid, but sincere piety found a
voice and prayed. This effluence of His char
acter breathes from the whole record of His
life. It was not merely what He said to men
about the eternal verities that convinced them.
It was something in Himself, an atmosphere
surrounding Him, and a silent radiance shining
from Him, that made it easier for them to
believe in their own spiritual nature and in
the Divine existence and presence. He drew
out of their fallen and neglected hearts, by
some celestial attraction, spontaneous, gentle,
irresistible, a new efflorescence of faith and

ence

70 The Gospel of a Person
hope and love. Where He came a spiritual
springtide flowed over the landscape of the
inner life. Blossoms appeared in the earth
and the time for the singing of birds was come.
The effect of Faith was not imposed on doubting hearts
Hispres- by an external and mechanical process. It
grew in the warmth that streamed from Him.
It was not merely that men were at their best
in His company, except, indeed, those who
were at their worst through sullen resistance
and malignant alarm at His power. It was
that men were conscious of something far bet
ter than their best, a transcendent force, an
influence from the unfathomable heights above
them. And to withstand it they must sink
below themselves, make new falsehoods and
new negations to bind them down, grapple
themselves more closely to the base, the
earthly, the sensual. But if they yielded to
that influence, it lifted and moved their
thoughts inevitably upward. It was not
merely what He told them of His own sight
of spiritual things. It was what they saw
reflected in His face and form of that loftier,
wider outlook. He was like one standing on a
high peak, reporting of the sunrise to men in
the dark valley. They heard His words. But
they saw also upon His countenance the glow

The Gospel of a Person 71
of dawn, and dazzling all about Him the
incommunicable splendours of a new day.
This was the effect of the personality of
Jesus, as He stood amid the shadows and un
certainties of human life ; an effect strangely
overlooked and ignored, often even beclouded
and hidden, in much that has been written
about Him by theologians and historians. I
do not dream that I can put it into words.
But I know that it can be felt as a reality in
the Gospels. And I turn back to one who saw
Him face to face, one who touched His hand
and leaned upon His bosom, for the expression
of the soul-uplifting, faith-begetting wonder of
the person of Christ : The Word was made flesh
and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory,
the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth.1
Nor has this effect vanished from the world The influ-
-,.-, j. ence of His
with the removal of the bodily presence ot piCture.
Jesus. It has perpetuated itself by its own
vital power, increasing rather than diminish
ing. It still flows from the picture of His life
which is preserved in the Gospels, from the
image of His character as it is formed in the
minds of men. Eliminate, if you please, what
is called the miraculous element. Make what
1 St. John i. 14.

72 The Gospel of a Person
allowance you will for the enthusiasm and
unguarded utterance of His disciples. There
still remains that enthusiasm itself to be reck
oned with, an enthusiasm which was kindled
by Him alone. There still remains the figure
of the person of Christ, who never can be
expressed in terms of matter and force, who
never can be explained by natural and histori
cal causes, who carries us by His own inherent
mystery into the presence of the spiritual, the
divine, the supernatural.
Christ Something of this spiritual light, I will ad-
unique. . _.,,...,.
mit, — nay, 1 will maintain with joyous and
firm conviction, — comes from every human
personality, even the lowliest, in so far as it
refuses to be summed up in terms of sense
perception, in so far as it gives evidence, by
its affections and hopes and fears, of ele
ments in man that are not of the dust. But
in Christ this, light is transcendent and unique,
because He manifestly surpasses the ordinary
attainments of humanity, because He cannot
be accounted for by the laws of heredity
and environment. The more closely we apply
these laws, the more clearly He shines out
above them.1
"The learned men of our day," says M.
1 J. S. Mill, Essays on Religion, p. 253.

solitary.

Thf Gospel of a Person 73
Pierre Loti in his latest book, La GaUlie,
"have endeavoured to find a human explica
tion of His mission, but they have not yet
reached it. . . . Around Him, none the less,
there still glows a radiance of beams which
cannot be comprehended."1
Historically He appears alone, as no great Christ
man has ever appeared before or since.
Heroes, teachers, and leaders of men have
always been seen as central stars in larger
constellations, surrounded by lesser but kin
dred lights. Plato shines in conjunction with
Socrates and Aristotle; Caesar with Pompey and
Crassus ; Luther with Melanchthon and Cal
vin ; Shakespeare with Beaumont and Fletcher
and Ben Jonson ; Napoleon surrounded with
his brilliant staff of marshals and diplomats ;
Wordsworth among the mild glories of the
Lake poets. In every case, if you search the
neighbourhood of a great name, you will find
not a blank sky, but an encircling galaxy.
But Jesus Christ stands in an immense sol
itude. Among the prophets who predicted
Him, among the apostles who testified of
Him, there is none worthy to be compared or
conjoined with Him. It is as if the heavens
were swept bare of stars ; and suddenly, un-
i Pierre Loti, La Galilee (Paris, 1895), p. 93.

74 The Gospel of a Person
expected, unaccompanied, the light of lights
appears alone, in supreme isolation.
Christ sin- Nor js there anything in His antecedents,
in His surroundings, to explain His appear
ance and radiance. There was nothing in the
soil of the sordid and narrow Jewish race
to produce such an embodiment of pure and
universal love.1 There was nothing in the
atmosphere of that corrupt and sensual age
to beget or foster such a character of stainless
and complete virtue. Nor was His own life,
— I say it reverently, — judged by purely hu
man and natural laws, calculated to result in
such an evident perfection as all men have
wonderingly recognized in Him. The high
est type of human piety, the excellence of a
beautiful soul, has never been reached among
men without repentance and self-abasement.
But Jesus never repented, never abased Him
self in shame and sorrow before God, never
asked for pardon and mercy. Alone, among
His followers who kneel at His command to
confess their unworthiness and implore for
giveness, He stands upright and lifts a cloud
less face to heaven in the inexplicable glory
1 Amory H. Bradford, Heredity and Christian Problems
(New York, Macmillan, 1895), p. 266. See Appendix,
note 21.

The Gospel of a Person 75
of piety without penitence. Moral perfection
of this kind is not only without a parallel ;
it is also without an approach. Men have
never attained to it, and there is no way for
them to climb thither. We can only look up
to that perfection, serene, sinless, unsurpassable,
and feel that here we are in sight of something
which cannot be expressed except by saying
that it is the glory of eternal spirit embodied
in a person. IV
But the force which resides in the person The gospel
of Jesus is not exhausted in the production
of this profound impression of its own spirit
ual and transcendent nature. It goes beyond
this result of a vivid sense of the reality
of the unseen. It has in itself a purifying,
cleansing power, a delivering, uplifting, sanc
tifying power. The Gospel of Christ is the
gospel of a person who saves men from sin.1
And herein it comes very close to the heart
of a doubting age.
The great and wonderful fact of this expe
rience, which can neither be questioned nor
fully explained, is not involved in the theo
logical speculations which have gathered about
1 See Appendix, note 22.

76 The Gospel of a Person
it. The person of Jesus stands out clear
and simple as a powerful Saviour of sinful
men and women. In His presence, the publi
can and the harlot felt their hearts dissolve
with I know not what unutterable rapture
of forgiveness. At His word, the heavy-
laden were mysteriously loosed from the
imponderable burden of past transgression.
He suffered with sinners, and even while
He suffered He delivered them from the
sharpest of all pains, — the pain of conscious
The power an(j unpardoned evil. He died for sinners,
cross. according to His own word ; and ever since,
His cross has been the sign of rescue for
humanity. Whatever may be the nature
of that sublime transaction upon Calvary ;
whatever the name by which men call it, —
Atonement, Sacrifice, Redemption, Propitia
tion ; whatever relations it may have to the
eternal moral law and to the Divine right
eousness, — its relation to the human heart is
luminous and beautiful. It does take away
sin. Kneeling at that holy altar, the soul at
once remembers most vividly, and confesses
most humbly, and loses most entirely, all her
guilt. A sense of profound, unutterable relief,
a sacred quietude, diffuses itself through all
the recesses of the troubled spirit. Looking

The Gospel of a Person 77
unto Christ crucified, we receive an assurance
of sin forgiven, which goes deeper than thought
can fathom, and far deeper than words can
measure. " We may not know, we cannot tell
What pains He had to bear,
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.
" He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good ;
That we might go at last to heaven,
Saved by His precious blood."
This is not theory, this is not philosophy,
this is not theology. It is veritable fact. The
person Jesus, living with men, dying for men,
has actually made this impression of pardon for
the past and hope for the future, upon the heart
of mankind. And from pure love of Him — a
love which is first of all and most of all a sense
of gratitude for this immeasurable service — -
have blossomed, often out of the very abysses of
sin and degradation, the saintliest and sublimest
lives that the world has ever seen.
Now this, as I know from my own experience,
is the gospel for doubting men, and for an age
of doubt ; the gospel of a Person who is a fact

78 The Gospel of a Person
and a force, an evidence of the unseen, and a
Saviour from sin. Can we preach it ? Will we
preach it ? Then one thing is necessary for
us, a thing which might not be necessary,
perhaps, if our message were of another kind.
All knowledge, of the world, of human na
ture, of books, will be helpful and tributary ;
all gifts, of clear thought, of powerful speech,
of prudent action, will be valuable and should
be cultivated ; but one thing will be abso
lutely and forever indispensable.
To know If We are to preach Christ we must know
Chvist
the one Christ, and know Him in such a sense that we
thing need- can say with St. Paul that we are determined
fui. not to know anything save Jesus Christ and
Him crucified.1 We must study Him in the
record of His life until His character is more
real and vivid to us than that of brother or
friend. We must imagine Him with ardent
soul, until His figure glows before our inward
sight, and His words sound in our ears as a
living voice. We must love with His love, and
sorrow with His grief, and rejoice with His joy,
and offer ourselves with His sacrifice, so truly,
so intensely that we can say, as St. Paul said,
that we are crucified by His cross and risen in
His resurrection.2 We must trace the power
1 1 Cor. ii. 2. 2 Gal. ii. 20.

The Gospel of a Person 79
of His life in the lives of our fellow-men, fol
lowing and realizing His triumphs in souls
redeemed and sins forgiven, until we know
the rapture that thrilled the breast of a St.
Bernard, a St. Francis, a Thomas a Kempis, a
Samuel Rutherford, a Robert McCheyne ; the
chivalrous loyalty that animated a Henry Have-
lock, a Charles Kingsley, a Frederick Robert
son, a Charles Gordon ; the deep devotion that
strengthened a David Brainerd, a Henry Mar-
tyn, a Coleridge Patteson. We must become
the brothers of these men through brotherhood
with Christ. We must kindle our hearts in
communion with Him, by meditation, by prayer,
and by service, which is the best kind of
prayer. No day must pass in whicli we do not
do something distinctly in Jesus' name, for
Jesus' sake. We must go where He would go
if He were on earth. We must try to do what
He would do if He were still among men.
And so, by our failure as well as by our effort,
by the very contrast between our incomplete
ness and His perfection, the image of our Com
panion and our saving Lord will grow radiant
and distinct within us. We shall know that
potent attraction which His person has exer
cised upon the hearts of men, and feel in
pur breast that overmastering sense of loyalty

80 The Gospel of a Person
to Him, which alone can draw us to follow
Him through life and death.
" If Jesus Christ is a man, —
And only a man, — I say
That of all mankind I cleave to Him,
And to Him will I cleave alway.
" If Jesus is a God, —
And the only God, — I swear
I will follow Him through heaven and hell,
The earth, the sea, and the air."1
1 Richard Watson Gilder, " Song of a Heathen, sojourning
in Galilee, a.d. 32."

Ill
THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER

" He, who from the Father forth was sent,
Came the true Light, light to our hearts to bring ;
The Word of God, — the telling of His thought ;
The Light of God, — the making visible ;
The far-transcending glory brought
In human form with man to dwell ;
The dazzling gone — the power not less
To show, irradiate, and bless ;
The gathering of the primal rays divine,
Informing Chaos to a pure sunshine I "
— George MacDonald.

Ill
THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER
In the famous fifteenth chapter of The De- A sceptic's
cline and Fall of the Roman Empire, that ^H^eadof
painstaking historian and superficial sceptic, Christian-
Edward Gibbon, Esq., introduces an account of %ty'
the rise and spread of the Christian Religion.
He attributes its remarkable triumph over the
established religions of the earth to a series of
causes which he ironically describes as sec
ondary, and uniformly treats as primary. He
exhibits them as in themselves sufficient to
explain the peculiarly favourable reception of
the Christian faith in the world, and sets aside
the question of a possible divine origin as
unnecessary. With serene self-satisfaction he
traces the rapid growth of the Christian Church
to the five following causes : I. The Zeal of
the Christians, derived from the Jews, — but
purified from that narrow and unsocial spirit
which, instead of inviting, had deterred the
Gentiles from embracing the law of Moses,
83

84

The Unveiling of the Father

The shallow
ness of this
view.

II. The Doctrine of a Future Life, improved
by every additional circumstance which could
give weight and efficacy to that important
truth. III. The Miraculous Powers ascribed
to the primitive Church. IV. The Pure and
Austere Morals of the Christians. V. The
Union and Discipline of the Christian Republic,
which gradually formed an increasing and in
dependent state in the heart of the Roman
empire.1 Now this is a very fair, we may even say a
brilliant, example of the kind of work which
was done by the shallow and complacent scep
ticism of a century ago. But the moment we
subject it to the more searching analysis of the
scepticism of the present age, it dissolves into
a thin and incoherent absurdity. For it is
evident that, so far from giving an explanation
of the growth of Christianity, Gibbon is simply
describing some of the phenomena which ac
companied that growth. What, for example,
is " the zeal of the Christians " but an unillu-
minating name for a contagious and irresistible
enthusiasm which spread through the world
in connection with faith in Christ ? What is

1 Edward Gibbon, Esq., A History of the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire (London, John Murray, 8th
Edition, 1854), vol. ii., p. 152.

The Unveiling of the Father 85
" the union and discipline of the Christian re
public " but a description, without explanation,
6f the organic unfolding of a new, myste
rious principle of fellowship. These alleged
" causes," more closely examined, are in fact
the very things that require to be accounted
for. Instead of clearing up the mystery, they
increase it.
By a singular fatality of language, the seep- The"ex-
tical historian has embodied in the statement needs t0 be
of his position the demonstration of its insuf- explained.
ficiency. In each of his causes, and in the
relation that subsists between them, he has
practically suggested a difficulty which de
mands another and a higher solution of the
whole problem. Examine his words carefully.
By what means, human or divine, was the Questions
zeal of the Christians ' purified from the narrow mand an
and unsocial spirit of the Jews ' ? The natural answer.
history of sects and schisms teaches us that
their invariable tendency is to intensify rather
than to eliminate bigotry and exclusiveness.
Through what influence was the doctrine of a
future life ' improved by every additional cir
cumstance that could give it weight and effi
cacy ' ? The inevitable course of its human
development under the guidance of abstract
philosophy has been towards vagueness, cold-

86 The Unveiling of the Father
ness, and uncertainty; under the guidance of
concrete superstition, towards puerility and
crass sensualism. On what grounds were mir
aculous powers ascribed to the early Church ?
They must have been ascribed truly or falsely.
If truly, there must have been some basis of
fact for them to rest upon. If falsely, the
Christians themselves were either ignorant,
or cognizant, of the falsehood. Take the
former supposition, and you present yourself
with the inexplicable theory that what Pliny
the Younger called superstitio prava immodica,
and imagined would be easily and certainly ex
tirpated, was able to hold its own against all
the assaults of learning and philosophy. Take
the latter supposition, and you are forced to the
incredible assumption that a conscious decep
tion was the fountain of highest and strongest
moral force that the world has ever felt.1
How then did the " pure and austere morals of
the Christians " come into existence ? From a
lie, or from a truth? If from a truth, what
was the nature of that truth, in what form was
it expressed, and how did it win credence?
1 Carlyle, Heroes and Hero- Worship, sect. ii. ; "A false
man found a religion ? Why, a false man cannot even build
a brick house ! If he do not know and follow truly the
properties of mortar, burnt clay, and what else he works in,
it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish heap."

The Unveiling of the Father 87
And, finally, how did " the Christian republic "
succeed in maintaining and increasing itself as
an independent state in the heart of the Roman
empire ? Every other attempt to do this par
ticular thing, by secret philosophic doctrine, or
by open political organization, failed, and was
violently crushed by imperial power, or silently
dissolved and absorbed by imperial statesman
ship. How was it that this one invisible fel
lowship, this one visible organization, lived,
and spread, and stood out at last, serene, com
plete, and magnificent, when the time-worn
ruins of the empire crumbled around it ? 1
The answer to these questions is found in the The answer
person of Christ. This is not a matter of choice. ls chnsL
It is a matter of necessity. For if He was, as
all candid observers will admit, the originator
and animator of Christianity, then to stop short
of Him in our inquiry as to the causes of its
existence and progress is to stop half-way, as
if one should account for the flow of the Nile,
after the fashion of the ancient geographers, by
attributing it to the melting of the snows on
the Mountains of the Moon, instead of tracing
it to its great fountain in the Albert Nyanza.
Christ stands above and behind the Church,
and all these secondary causes which have been
1 See Appendix, note 23.

88 The Unveiling of the Father
Christ, the enumerated to account for her growth and
creator of
Christian- power flow directly from Him. He it was who
ity. purified and humanized the zeal of Christians,
so that they emerged from the narrowest of
races to preach the broadest and most universal
of all religions. He it was who cleared and
enlarged their view of immortality, so that it
became at once important and efficacious, the
only doctrine of a future life that has exercised
a direct and uplifting influence upon the pres
ent life. He it was who endowed the Church
with whatever powers she possessed. He it was
who cleansed and ennobled her moral ideals and
gave her the only pattern and rule of virtue
which has been universally acknowledged as
self-consistent, satisfactory, and supreme. He
it was who cemented her union and strength
ened her discipline to such an indestructible sol
idarity, that the tie which bound the individual
soul to Him was regarded as superior to all
earthly relations, and the fellowship which that
common tie created, surpassed and survived all
fellowships of race, of culture, of nationality.
These are simple historical facts. In stating
them we make no assumptions and propound
no theories. It is not necessary to take any
thing for granted or to adopt any particular
theological or philosophical system, in order to

The Unveiling of the Father 89
see clearly and beyond the possibility of mis
take that all the force and influence of Chris
tianity in the world have, as a matter of fact,
flowed directly from Jesus Christ and from the
faith which He has inspired in the hearts of men.
The one question of supreme importance, Who, then,
then, if we would understand what Christian- ts ChHst ?
ity really means, is, Who is this person who
stands at the centre of it and fills it with life
and strength? What did the first Christians
see in Him that made them believe in Him so
absolutely and implicitly and gave them power
to do such mighty works? What has the
church seen in Him through the ages that has
bound her to Him as her living Lord and Mas
ter ? And what are we to see in Him if He is
to be in deed and in truth the theme of our
gospel? What think ye of Christ?
This question, you see, is vital and inevitable. The inevi-
If we are to have a Christianity which is real tioru
and historical, we must get into line with his
tory. If we are to have behind us the power
which comes from actual achievements of our
gospel in the world, we must understand the
relation which it has always held to the person
of Christ. If we are to be in any sense the
followers of the first Christians, and to share the
joy and peace and power of their religion, we

answer.

90 The Unveiling of the Father
must take the view which they took, of Jesus
of Nazareth.1
The historic Now, the object of this lecture may be stated
in a single sentence. It is to show that the
first Christians saw, and that the Church has
always seen, in Jesus Christ a real incarnation
of God ; a true and personal unveiling of the
Father ; God in Christ, reconciling the world
unto Himself. In other words, not only must
we find in Jesus Christ the centre of Christian
ity, but we must also behold an actual divinity
as the centre of life in Jesus Christ.

Chnst s we are not to suppose that faith m Christ
Godhood -, , n
slowly re- began with a clear and definite conception of
veaied. His divinity. On the contrary, it is evident
from the whole gospel record that the idea that
Christ was divine gradually developed and un
folded in the minds of those who knew and
loved and trusted Him. The idea of an incar
nation was foreign to the Hebrew mind. There
was no race in the world that held so strongly
to the thought that God was solitary, unsearch
able, and incommunicable. They believed that
even His true name could not be pronounced
by human lips, and that it was impossible for
1 See Appendix, note 24.

The Unveiling of the Father 91
human eyes really to behold His glory. And
the very strength of this ancestral faith of
theirs, standing as it must have done directly
in the way of belief in an incarnation, is an evi
dence of the tremendous power and unquestion
able reality of the experience which forced the
disciples, by slow degrees, to believe firmly and
unhesitatingly in the divinity of Christ.
The process by which this result was accom- The gradual
plished lies open to our thought in the New Proc*ss°f
Testament. We must go back to the point in
dicated in the second lecture. It was the im
pression made upon the disciples by Christ's
own manifestation of Himself, His character,
His actions, and His words, evidently consistent
and unique, which led them at last to see in
Him the object of divine faith and worship.
He was not a mere man. That was evident and
undeniable. He was higher than men ; holier
than men ; He possessed an excellence and a
power which made them feel in His presence
that He was more than they were. What then
was He ? There were but two directions in
which their faith could move. The alternative
was sharply set before the disciples on that
memorable day at Csesarea Philippi, when Christ
asked them first, " Whom do men say that I, the
Son of man, am ? " and then, " But whom say ye

92

The Unveiling of the Father

The new
line of Chris
tian belief.

What it
meant to be
the Christ.

that I am ? " There were but two lines open to
them. One was the line of popular superstition,
which led them back into the past to see in
Christ only the ghost of John the Baptist, or
Elias, or one of the prophets come to life again.
The other was the new line of Christian faith
which led them forward to see in Jesus "the
Christ, the Son of the living God." x
New ? Of course it was new ! It had to be
new, in order to fit the facts, which were such
as had never been seen before. And just be
cause it was so new it had to unfold itself by
degrees to the fulness of conscious apprehension
of all that it involved.
It is evident that the disciples did not know
at first what was meant by the Christhood,
the Messiahship, the fulfilment of all ancient
prophecy and sacred ritual in Jesus. But they
learned the lesson as they kept company with
Him. They, heard Him speak with an author
ity which none of the prophets had ever claimed.
Recognizing a divine inspiration in the Old
Testament Scriptures, He distinctly set Him
self above them as the bringer of a new and
better revelation. He accomplished, interpreted,
and revised them. " Ye have heard how it hath
been said by them of old time" — by whom?
1 St. Matt. xvi. 13-16.

The Unveiling of the Father 93
By the lawgivers and prophets and psalmists
whom Christ recognized as His own forerun
ners and foretellers. " But I say unto you,
love your enemies, bless them that curse you,
and pray for them that despitefully use you." 1
Suppose that this were all ; suppose that the Anew power
Sermon on the Mount were the whole of the truth_
New Testament, what should we behold in it ?
Not merely the amazing revelation of a morality
more pure and perfect than any other the human
heart has conceived, proceeding from the lips
of an unlearned Nazarene peasant of the first
century, but the absolutely overwhelming sight
of a believing Hebrew placing Himself above
the rule of His own faith, a humble teacher
asserting supreme authority over all human
conduct, a moral reformer discarding all other
foundations, and saying, " Every one that hear
eth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I
will liken him unto a wise man which built his
house upon a rock."2 Nine and forty times, in
the brief and fragmentary record of the dis
courses of Jesus, recurs this solemn phrase
with which He authenticates the truth : Verily,
I say unto you. And every time that the dis
ciples heard it they must have gotten a new
idea of what it meant to be the Christ.
1 St. Matt. v. 43, 44. 2 St. Matt. vii. 24.

94 The Unveiling of the Father
A new Think also of the significance which the
human 7° favourite Messianic title used by Jesus to de
scribe Himself must have had to their minds.
He called Himself " the Son of man." 1 Why ?
Was it because He was merely human? If
that was all, surely it would not need to
be asserted and emphasized again and again.
Imagine any other man, the highest and the
holiest, insisting upon the reality of his human
life, dwelling upon it, repeating the assertion
of it over and over. But this title was, in fact,
the claim to a peculiar and supreme relation to
the human race. Christ was not a son of man,
but the Son of man, one who, in the luminous
words of Irenseus, recapitulavit in se ipso longam
hominum expositionem.2 And as such He as
sumed on earth and in His prevision of heaven
a position which no mere man could rightly
take. " The Son of man hath power on earth
to forgive sins."3 "The Son of man is Lord
also of the Sabbath."4 "When the Son of
man shall come in His glory, and all the holy
1 In St. Matthew, 30 times ; in St. Luke, 25 times ; in
St. Mark, 14 times. See Appendix, note 25.
2 Irenaeus, Adv. Hasr., iii. 18. 1 . "He summed up in
himself the long unfolding of humanity." The Syriac ver
sion of this passage is equally beautiful and significant:
" He commenced afresh the long line of men."
3 St. Matt, ix, 6, * St. Mark ii. 28,

The Unveiling of the Father 95
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 another, as a shepherd divideth
the sheep from the goats." 1
Consider what this implied. It was a decla- -4 supreme
ration that Jesus expected, and was willing, to ^dgTthe '°
take into His own hands the task of discrimi- world.
nating between the good and the bad in the
unsearchable confusions and complexities of
the human heart, and of determining, without
hesitation, without misgiving, without redress,
the final destinies of the untold myriads of
men ; " an office," it has been well said, " in
volving such spiritual insight, such discern
ment of the thoughts and intents of the heart
of each one of the millions at His feet, such
awful, unshared supremacy in the moral world,
that the imagination recoils in sheer agony
from the task of seriously contemplating the
assumption of these duties by any created in
telligence."2 When the disciples heard their
Master declare that He would fulfil this office
of Judge of the World, they must have begun
to feel what it meant to be the Christ.
1 St. Matt. xxv. 31, 32.
2 H. P. Liddon, The Divinity of Our Lord (London,
1885), p. 176.

96 The Unveiling of the Father
What it Nor do I suppose that they realized at first
meant to be . . . ..
the Son of the full intention ot that second phrase in
God. which their view of Jesus was expressed. The
Son of the living God, — that also was an idea
to be gradually apprehended and unfolded.
And think what light must have fallen upon
it from the conduct of Jesus as they followed
Him from day to day. The more closely they
knew Him, the more deeply they felt His sin
less purity and sovereign virtue. There was a
certainty, an independence, a freedom from all
effort and from all restraint in His goodness,
such as no other good man has ever shown.
He had the deepest knowledge of the evil of
sin, yet no shadow or stain of it fell upon His
own soul. He was on terms of closest inti
macy — an intimacy such as no saint ever
dared to assume — with God. He conversed
with the Father in a friendship which was
utterly without fear or regret or misgiving.
Christ's own Now when the disciples saw this, it must have
words. put them upon deep thoughts, and the guidance
to these thoughts was given by Christ's own
words about Himself. He put Himself side by
side with the Divine activity. " My Father
worketh hitherto and I work." 1 The Jews
who heard Him say this, sought to kill Him,
1 St. John v. 17.

The Unveiling of the Father 97
because He had not only broken the Sabbath,
but said also that God was His Father, making
Himself equal with God. And if the Jews
thought this, what did His own disciples think ?
He claimed a Divine origin and mission : " I
came forth from the Father ; " x " My Father
sent me. " 2 He claimed a Divine knowledge and
fellowship : " No man knoweth the Father save
the Son;"3 "O righteous Father, the world
hath not known Thee, but I have known
Thee."4 He claimed to unveil the Father's
being in Himself : " He that hath seen me hath
Seen the Father. I am in the Father and the
Father in me."5
To what conclusion must such conduct and The
Such words as these lead the disciples in their conciusion,
interpretation of the true meaning of the title
"the Son of God"? A conclusion which Jesus
Himself, if He was as wise and good as all men
admit, must inevitably have foreseen. A con
clusion which He Himself, if He had been only
a holy man, better than His disciples but of
the same nature, would certainly have guarded
against and prevented at any cost. A con
clusion which is expressed in the attitude of
1 St. John xvi. 28. s St. Matt. xi. 27.
2 St. John xii. 49. 4 St. John xvii. 25.
« St. John xiv. 9, 11.

98 The Unveiling of the Father
Thomas, kneeling at the feet of Christ and
crying, "My Lord and my God."1 A conclu
sion which is finally and definitively embodied
in the action of the apostles going out into the
world to disciple all nations, and to baptize
them " into the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost."2 n
The disci- There cannot be any question as to the state
that Christ °f min(l which this action implied. It was the
roas Divine, deep conviction, not necessarily reasoned out
and formulated, but lying at the very root of
conduct, that Jesus Christ the Son was the un
veiling of His Father God, and that the Holy
Spirit who came upon the disciples was the
Spirit of the Father and the Son. The part
which the resurrection played in the clarifying
and confirming of this conviction was impor
tant. But we must not misunderstand the
meaning of the resurrection. It was not in
any sense a new and different revelation of
God, imagined or actually received. Whatever
the form in which Jesus appeared to the dis
ciples during the forty days that followed His
death, He was recognized as the same Jesus ;
and the one effect of His appearance was
1 St. John xx. 28. 2 St. Matt, xxviii. 19.

The Unveiling of the Father 99
simply to confirm and deepen the truth of what
He had said and done while He was with them.
And with this confirmation the truth took shape
and substance as an active and enduring power
in human faith and life and worship.
There is no more room for doubt that the
early Christians saw in Christ a personal un
veiling of God, than that the friends and fol
lowers of Abraham Lincoln regarded him as a
good and loyal American citizen of the white
race.1 And even if we could find no direct and
definite statement of either of these views, the
evidence that men held them could be clearly
and certainly read in the facts of history.
Divine honours were paid to Christ in the The early
primitive Church. The first common prayer worshipped
of the disciples, when they were assembled to Christ.
choose an apostle in the place of the traitor
Judas, was addressed to Christ.2 The Chris
tians were distinguished both from the Jews
and from the heathen as those who called upon
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.3 The dying
martyr Stephen showed what was meant by this
phrase in his prayer, " Lord Jesus, receive my
spirit."4 Saul of Tarsus, when he was con-
1 See Appendix, note 26.
2 Acts i. 24. See Alford in toe.
8 Acts ix. 21 ; 1 Cor. i. 2. * Acts vii. 59.

100 The Unveiling of the Father
vinced by that strange experience on the road
to Damascus that Jesus was not an impostor,
but the Christ, at once addressed Him in
prayer, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to
do?"1 And Ananias, who received Saul into
the Church, asked guidance and direction from
the same Lord.2 Peter baptized the multi
tudes on the day of Pentecost in the name of
Jesus Christ.3 John wrote of prayer to the
Son of God as a familiar ground of confidence
in Christian experience.4 The apostolic bene
diction was : " The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and the love of God, and the communion
of the Holy Ghost be with you all."5 The
whole current of adoration and devotion in the
New Testament leads up naturally and without
surprise to the magnificent words of St. Paul,
in which he speaks of " Christ, who is over all,
God blessed forever." 6
It should be frankly recognized that the first
Christians assigned a certain subordination to
the Son in relation to the Father ; but it must
be admitted with equal candour that this sub
ordination was not in any sense a separation,
1 Acts ix. 6. 2 Acts ix. 13. s Acts ii. 38.
4 1 John v. 13-15. 5 2 Cor. xiii. 14.
"¦ Rom. ix. 5. Cf. Stevens, The Pauline Theology, p. 201,
for a succinct statement of the grounds on which this inter
pretation of the text is preferred.

The Unveiling of the Father 101
and that it really implied and involved a unity
between them which made it possible and nat
ural and inevitable for the disciples to pay an
adoration to the Son with the Father, which, if
it had been offered to, or claimed by, the great
est and best of the apostles, would have been
instantly repudiated by the whole Church as
not only absurd but radically blasphemous.
It is an easy matter to trace the worship of
Christ in the later development of Christianity.
There are two sources of evidence : the Chris
tian hymns and liturgies ; the heathen attacks
and the apologies which they evoked.
The earliest hymns of the Greek Church, the The testi-
" Thanksgiving at lamplighting," "Shepherd of nymns.
tender youth," " The Bridegroom cometh," the
" Hymn to Christ after Silence," celebrate the
praise of the Lord Jesus. Syriac poetry, through
its great poet, Ephrem Syrus, takes up the same
strain of adoration to the Son of God, and its
undying music may still be heard among the
mountains of Armenia where the unspeakable
Turk is exterminating a whole race for loyalty
to the name of Christ. Latin hymnody, from
its earliest origin in translations from the Greek
like the Gloria in Fxcelsis and the Te Deum,
through its splendid unfolding in the poetry
of Hilary of Poictiers, Ambrose of Milan, and

102 The Unveiling of the Father
Gregory the Great, to its sweet culmination in
the two Bernards, him of Clairvaux and him of
Cluny, repeats the same burden :
" O Jesus, Thou the glory art
Of angel worlds above ;
Thy name is music to my heart,
Enchanting it with love."
In every land and language, in German, in
French, in English, the most precious and
potent melodies of the Church are fragrant with
the name of Christ.
The testi- The early liturgies bear the same testimony
early Utur- to the pre-eminence of the Lord Jesus in the
gies. doxologies and supplications of Christian faith.
The Apostolical Constitutions,1 the liturgy of
St. James,2 the liturgy of St. Mark,3 the liturgy
of St. Adseus and St. Maris,4 unquestionably
preserve the spirit of the early Christian wor
ship; and they all are witnesses to the fact that
the Christians prayed directly to Christ. In
deed, it lies upon the very surface of history
that the growth of Christianity, as manifested
1 Apost. Const., Book VIII., chap. vii.
2 The Divine Liturgy of St. James, iii..- "Sovereign
Lord Jesus Christ, 0 Word of God," etc.
3 The Divine Liturgy of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist
Mark, v., xxii., etc.
4 Liturgy of the Blessed Apostles, composed by St. Adazus
and St. Maris, xiv.

The Unveiling of the Father 103
in a spreading worship, was not simply the in
crease of those who were willing to adore God
on the authority of Christ. It was distinctly
and essentially the diffusion of an inward force
which impelled men to blend the name of Christ
with the name of God in tlieir prayers, and to
worship the Son with the Father. The beauti
ful Prayer of St. Chrysostom, which closes the
Litany and the Morning and Evening Prayers
of the Protestant Episcopal Church, is addressed
to Christ, " who dost promise that when two or
three are gathered together in Thy name, Thou
wilt grant their requests."1 There is not in
the world to-day a single great liturgy, Greek,
Roman, Armenian, French, German, Scotch, or
English, which does not contain ascriptions of
divine glory, and petitions for divine grace,
addressed to Jesus Christ.
Heathen writers of very early date assure us The testi-
that this was the practice of Christians from '^a^n.
the beginning. The younger Pliny reported
to the Emperor Trajan that the people called
Christians were accustomed to assemble before
daybreak and "sing a hymn of praise respon
sively to Christ, as it were to God."2 In the
1 St. Matt, xviii. 20.
2 a.d. 112. See the chapter on "Pliny's Report and
Trajan's Rescript " in Ramsay, The Church in the Roman
Empire (New York, Putnam, 1893), pp. 196 ff.

104 The Unveiling of the Father
public trials that followed there was never any
denial of this statement. It was admitted alike
by those who apostatized under the pressure of
persecution and by those who remained faithful
to the name of Christ. The Emperor Hadrian
wrote to Servian that of the population of Alex
andria "some worshipped Serapis, and others
Christ." Lucian, the pagan satirist, says in
his biography of Peregrinus Proteus : " T»he
Christians are still worshipping that great man
who was crucified in Palestine."1
Christians In all the apologies for the Christian religion
worshipping which were put forth during the persecutions
Christ. under Hadrian, and his successors Antoninus
Pius and Marcus Aurelius, there was no at
tempt to refute the universal charge that the
Christians worshipped Christ.2 As if to con
firm this evidence by one of those indications
which are all the more significant because they
are so slight and so clearly unpremeditated,
there still exists a rude caricature, scratched
by some careless hand upon the walls of the
1 Luciani Samosatensis Opera. (Ed. Leipsic, 1829), Tomus
iv., p. 173.
2 The First Apology of Justin Martyr, chap. xiii. : "Our
teacher of these things is Jesus Christ ; and that we reason
ably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the
true God Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and
the prophetic Spirit in the third, we will prove."

The Unveiling of the Father 105
Palatine Palace in Rome not later than the
beginning of the third century, representing a
human figure with an ass's head hanging upon
a cross, while a man stands before it in the
attitude of worship. Underneath is this ill-
spelled inscription, —
" Alexamenos adore his God." 1
Thus the songs and prayers of believers, the
accusations of persecutors, the sneers of scep
tics, and the coarse jests of mockers all join
in proving beyond a doubt that the primitive
Christians paid divine honour to the Lord
Jesus. I do not see how any man can be in
touch with Christianity as a living form of
worship in the world, unless he knows the
reality and appreciates the force of this un
questionable fact. in
Nor will it be possible to understand the Christ was
ft 7X€\0
intellectual and moral teachings of the Chris- tneoiogy,
tian religion, as they are recorded in the New
Testament, unless we put ourselves at the focal
point from which, as a matter of history, these
teachings were first conceived and then un-
1 Das Spott-Crucifix der Romischen Kaiser Palaste, Fer
dinand Becker (Gera, 1876). Das Spott-Crucifix vom Pala-
tin, Franz Xaver Kraus (Freiburg, 1872).

106 The Unveiling of the Father
folded. This point was the vision of an un
veiling of the being and mind of God in
Christ.1 It was not merely that Jesus said
certain things about God which men had not
known, or had forgotten. It was that they
saw in the coming of Christ a personal revela
tion of the Divine Being. And this revelation
touched and transformed every possible sphere
of thought and feeling in regard to the prob
lems of religion. The personality of God was
made distinct and luminous, not only by the
recognition of an eternal Fatherhood in His
nature, but by the light of the knowledge of
His glory shining in the face of a person.2
The righteousness of God was disclosed in a
new aspect by the thought that He had sent
His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and
for sin to condemn sin in the flesh.3 The good
ness of God was confirmed and made sufficient
for all possible human needs by the conviction
that He who spared not His own Son, but freely
delivered Him up for us all, would also with
Him freely give us all things.4 The saving
will and power of God were apprehended
through the vision of Him in Christ reconcil
ing the world to Himself.5 The everlasting
1 See Appendix, note 27. 2 2 Cor. iv. 6.
8 Rom. viii. 3. 4 Rom. viii. 32. 6 2 Cor. v. 19.

The Unveiling of the Father 107
and inseparable love of God became the sure
ground of hope only when it was seen em
bodied in Christ Jesus our Lord.1 The true
meaning of filial obedience to God and of
union with God was interpreted in the light
of conformity to the image of His Son.2 And
the immense significance of immortality was
comprehended in the possession of a life hid
with Christ in God.3
Now the window through which men caught God was
sight of these truths was, and could have been, Christ_
nothing else than faith in a real incarnation
of God in Christ. The personal, moral, sym
pathetic view of God which distinguished the
early Church was seen only through that open
ing.4 She saw the Divine Being beaming with
a new radiance, she saw the wide landscape of
human duty and destiny illuminated and trans
figured, she saw a new heaven and a new earth,
when she saw in Christ all the fulness of the
Godhead dwelling bodily.5 And it was in the
1 Rom. viii. 39. 2 Rom. viii. 29. 8 Col. iii. 3.
4 First Epistle of St. Clement, chap, xxxvi. . "By Him
we look up to the heights of heaven. By Him we behold,
as in a glass, His immaculate and most excellent visage. By
Him are the eyes of our heart opened. By Him our foolish
and darkened understanding blossoms up anew towards the
light." Bp. Lightfoot's Edition. (Macmillan, 1890.)
6 See appendix, note 28.

108 The Unveiling of the Father
strength and enthusiasm of this vision, that she
concentrated all her moral and intellectual en
ergies on the one point of keeping that window
open, and maintaining against direct assault
and secret dissolution the real and personal
Deity of Christ. IV
Christian I am careful to put the statement in this
grew around f orm because I believe that it alone corresponds
the Deity of viith the facts, and because it is only by get-
ting our minds into this position that we can
hope to understand the course, the meaning,
and the force of Christian doctrine. The early
Christians looked at God through Christ : they
did not look at Christ through a preconceived
idea and a logical definition of God. The true
development of theology, to put the matter
plainly, was not abstract, it was personal
and practical. The doctrine of the Trinity
came into being to meet an imperious neces
sity.1 That necessity was the defence of the
actual worship of Christ, the actual trust in
Christ as the Unveiler of the Father, which
already existed at the heart of Christianity.
It was recognized instinctively that the loss
of this trust, the silencing of this worship,
1 See Appendix, note 29.

The Unveiling of the Father 109
meant the death of Christianity by heart-fail
ure. Every speculation which threatened this
result, every theory of human nature or of
divine nature which seemed to separate the
personality of Christ from the personality of
God, was regarded by the Church as dangerous
and hostile. Every attempted statement of
theological dogma which appeared to obscure
or to imperil the reality and the eternal valid
ity of the unveiling of the Father in the Son,
was resented, and a counter statement of theo
logical dogma was framed to meet it. This
was the intellectual conflict of Christianity in
the first centuries : a struggle for life centring
about the actual Deity of Christ.
As we trace the progress of this conflict, The conflict
. with heresy.
its vital importance emerges more and more
clearly. Often, I suppose, we cannot help feel
ing a sense of sympathy with the earnest pur
pose and the personal character of those men
who were called heretics. Often we are con
scious of a certain distrust for the meta
physical and exegetical arguments, and of a
grave repugnance for the physical and politi
cal methods, which were used by the orthodox
to enforce their definitions. Athanasius was
not an altogether lovely person. Some of the
early Church Councils were almost as disor-

110

The Unveiling of the Father

The Palla
dium of
Christian
ity.

derly and as cruel as some of the regiments
that fought in the war to defend the American
Union and free the slave. But the question is
not one of the manner of defence or attack. It
is a question of the reality and significance of
the cause attacked and defended. And here we
see that Athanasius with all his faults was on
the right side, and Arius with all his virtues
was on the wrong side. Through all the con
fusion of metaphysical dispute about the exact
meaning of substance and subsistence, nature
and personality, ideal existence and real exist
ence, — terms which, as I conceive them, must
change their significance as the methods of
human philosophy change, and must always
represent imperfectly a mystery which is for
us unsearchable and indefinable, — through all
this confusion one fact shines out clear and dis
tinct. The unveiling of the Father in Christ
was, and continued to be, and still is, the
Palladium of Christianity. All who have sur
rendered it, for whatever reason, have been
dispersed and scattered. All who have de
fended it, in whatever method, have been held
fast in the unity of the faith and of the know
ledge of the Son of God.1

1 Eph. iv. 13.

The Unveiling of the Father 111
This point of view must condition the atti- The doc-
' tl*1T}P 0"f tfiP
tude of our minds towards the doctrine of the Trinity con-
Trinity. No Christian man can be hostile or structedto
, . ~. •!, • defend the
indifferent to it when he remembers its history. Deity 0j
It may have been too much elaborated by minds Christ.
over-curious in metaphysical distinctions. It
may have been put in a position of undue pre
eminence by theologians whose energies were
all absorbed in its construction and in the con
templation of the work of their own reason in
the service of Christianity. But in spite of all
excesses and errors, it stands as an enduring
monument of the loyalty of the faith to its cen
tral conviction. In all its forms, from the
sharply tri-personal Trinity of Athanasius, to
the essentially tri-modal Trinity of Augustine,
the great service which it has rendered is not
abstract nor philosophical. It is practical.
It has protected the conviction that the real
nature of God is revealed in Christ ; it has jus
tified the consciousness that the Spirit of Christ,
animating the Christian life, is the Spirit of
God ; it has preserved the sense of real com
munion with God in Christ which is the nerve
of Christian worship.
And yet the doctrine of the Trinity is not the
gospel, nor is it the foundation of the gospel.
It cannot be preached as a saving message to the

112

The Unveiling of the Father

The doc
trine of the
Trinity
subordinate to the gos
pel.

souls of men, except in that form in which we find
it in Phillips Brooks' noble Sermon for Trinity
Sunday, and Dr. George A. Gordon's powerful
discourse on The Trinity the Ground of Humanity.
It is the effort to apprehend a relation of the
Being of God to the conscious experience of
man ; a truth exhibited in the course of revela
tion and recognized in its mysterious unfolding
both before and after all efforts to symbolize
it in theological language ; in brief, it is the
reaching out of the human mind, conscious of
its limitations and conditions, towards a vision
and worship of the Father in the Son through
the Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity is not
the Palladium. It is the defence. I will con
fess that in its broad outlines it seems to me
necessary and satisfactory. I will confess that
no other answer to the profound questions
which inevitably arise out of the contact be
tween the idea of God, and the experience of
real life in all its manifoldness, appears to me
half so reasonable or complete as that which
asserts that " the various fundamental forms of
society on the earth, the essential relationships
of humanity, have their Archetype, their Eter
nal Pattern and Causal Source, in the nature of
the Infinite."1 I will confess that the form of

1 Gordon, The Christ of To-day, p. 101.

The Unveiling of the Father 113
this answer which contemplates the existence
of these eternal relationships in the Divine
nature as most clearly and positively personal,
is more conclusive to my mind than any other.
But if other men think otherwise on this point,
we are not therefore divided from each other,
or from the Christian faith. The question is
one of metaphysics. It is not a question of re
ligion. All modes of defining the Trinity as a
doctrine must be kept subordinate to the pur
pose for which it exists. All attempts to ex
press it are valuable only in so far as they help
us to keep in view the unveiling of the Divine
nature which centres in Him who was mani
fested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen
of angels, preached among the nations, believed
on in the world, received up in glory.1

Now wherein is a message like this, the gos- The gospel
pel of a personal unveiling of God in the per- %^mation
son of Christ, adapted to the needs of the adapted to
o this age.
present age !
1. It seems to me first of all that the course
of modern thought has prepared the way for it
by destroying the a priori objections to the In-
1 1 Tim. iii. 16.

114 The Unveiling of the Father
Philosophy carnation. Shallow agnosticism makes two as-
has clsctfBct
the way for sumptions which are contradictory. It assumes
iL that man is unable to attain to the knowledge
of God ; and that it is impossible for God to
reveal Himself to man. But if we cannot
know Him, how can we know that He cannot
reveal Himself? This would be in effect the
most intimate kind of knowledge. To take it
for granted that an Incarnation of God is im
possible or incredible is to profess a most per
fect and exclusive understanding of the Divine
nature. "At one time," says Mr. Romanes,
" it seemed to me impossible that any proposi
tion, verbally intelligible as such, could be
more violently absurd than that of the Incarna
tion. Now I see that this standpoint is wholly
irrational. ... ' But the Incarnation is op
posed to common sense. ' No doubt : utterly
so ; but so it ought to be if true. Common
sense is merely a rough register of common
experience. * But the Incarnation, if it ever
took place, whatever else it may have been,
was not a common event. 'But it is deroara-
tory to God to become man.' How do you
know? Besides, Christ was not an ordinary
man. Both negative criticism and the positive
effects of His life prove this ; while if we for a
moment adopt the Christian point of view for

The Unveiling of the Father 115
the sake of argument, the whole raison d"etre
of mankind is bound up in Him. Lastly, there
are considerations per contra, rendering an In
carnation antecedently probable."1
2. Now these considerations to which Ro
manes alludes are not foreign to the intellect
ual atmosphere of our age ; they are native to
it ; they are in fact the offspring of the times,
born of the spirit which now leads the best
thoughts of men.
The whole doctrine of development, as it is Evolution
conceived by the deepest and clearest minds, ^°wn^d -,
looks forward to the discovery of an Incarna
tion which shall be at once the crown and the
completion of the process of natural evolution.
If nature is an orderly and progressive mani
festation of an Unseen Power ; if each succes
sive step in this manifestation realizes and
exhibits something higher and more perfect,
to which all that has gone before has pointed,
and in which the potentialities of all previous
developments are not only summed up, but
raised to a new power ; if the mechanical struct
ure of inorganic substances contains a proph
ecy (only to be interpreted after the event) of
organic life, af^fearganic -life is a basis for in-
stinct and the" elementary processes of intellect,
1 Thoughts on Religion, p. 186.

116 The Unveiling of the Father
and the rude forms of thought and feeling in
the lower animals foreshadow the unfolding of
reflective reason and moral consciousness in
man, — then surely this reflective reason and
this moral consciousness, in themselves con
fessedly imperfect, must be only the founda
tion for a fuller and more perfect manifestation
of that Unseen Power out of whose depths
all preceding manifestations have come forth.
And if the universal verdict of human science
and philosophy is correct in assuming that the
lower must precede the higher, and that or
ganic life is above inorganic life, and that rea
son is above instinct, and that virtue is above
automatic action, then it is to be expected that
the complete manifestation of that Unseen
Power which makes for Reason and Righteous
ness will neither be omitted nor intruded before
its time. It cannot come too soon, without vi
olating the .order of evolution. It cannot fail
to come, without destroying the significance of
. evolution.
Personality But in what form can it come except in one
revelation, which at once sums up all that has gone before
it, and advances to a new level ? If the uni
verse contains an unveiling of the might, and
wisdom, and reasonableness, and righteousness,
of its Primal Cause, then certainly it must con-

The Unveiling of the Father 117
tain at last an unveiling of His personality.
This is the only thing that remains to be
added. This is the only thing that embraces
all the rest and raises it to a new power. The
highest category known to our minds is that
of self-conscious life. Without the conception
of a personal God, man's view of the universe
must remain forever incomplete, incoherent,
and unreasonable. Without the revelation of
a personal God, the process of evolution as the
unfolding of the real secret of the universe
must remain unfinished and futile. Philosophy
as well as religion pushes us forward to this
conclusion. Personality is the ultimate reality.
Personality must be the final revelation. But
a person can be unveiled only in a personal
form. Therefore all the presumptions of rea
son are in favour of an Incarnation of the
Deity, not outside of nature, but in nature, to
consummate and crown that visible evolution
whereby the invisible things of Him from the
creation of the world are clearly seen.1 And
all the processes of intelligence are satisfied,
and rest and repose in the conviction that
the Word, which was in the beginning with
God and which was God and by whom all
things were made, finally became flesh and
dwelt among us, revealing His glory, the glory
1 See Appendix, note 30.

118

The Unveiling of the Father

as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of
grace and truth.1
The gospel 3. Moreover, this view of Christ is adapted
incarnation t° the present age because it is historically con-
is histori- sistent. We have seen that it underlies the
sistent. verv existence and growth of the Christian
Church. The testimony of eighteen centuries
to the impossibility of explaining the person
ality of Christ on humanitarian grounds is in
itself an evidence of His divinity.
Lincoln was right when he said : " You can
fool some of the people all of the time, and all
of the people some of the time, but you can
not fool all of the people all of the time." A
thousand attempts to account for the life of
Christ without admitting His divinity have
been made. Not one of them has succeeded
in winning the assent and approbation of any
great mass of men for any great length of
time. They have hardly survived the lives of
those who have invented them. Each new
naturalistic theory of Christ has discredited
and demolished its predecessors. And if any
one of them is alive and finds credence to-day,
it is only because it is the latest, and it is but
1 See Lyman Abbott, The Evolution of Christianity
(Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1894), "Christ is not the prod-
, uct of evolution, but the producer," pp. 240-242.

The Unveiling of the Father 119
waiting for its successor (as the theory of
Socinus waited for the theory of Strauss, and
the theory of Strauss for the theory of Renan)
to be its judge and destroyer.
Meantime historic Christianity, which be- The impreg-
holds God incarnate in Christ, stands as a rock 0f chris-
around which the tides of opinion ebb and flow, tianity.
The Church has changed in some things, but
not in this. It has modified, enlarged, dimin
ished, or abandoned some articles of faith, but
not this. If it be an error, it is such an error
as the world has never seen anywhere else ;
for it has not only stood firm through the
fiercest and most persistent storm of criticism
that has ever been directed against any human
opinion, but it has also been the foundation of
the strongest and saintliest lives that humanity
has ever known. If it be a truth, it must be
for every Christian preacher the central truth.
For it is certain that this age of ours, with
its ruthless critical spirit, with its keen histori
cal sense, will never respect the intelligence,
though it may acknowledge the good inten
tions, of a man who professes to speak in the
name of Christianity without proclaiming, as
the core of his message, the Divine Christ.
4. And this gospel meets the need of our
times because it is the satisfaction of humanity.

120

The Unveiling of the Father

The incar
nationsatisfies the
humanheart.

More urgent and painful even than the ques
tions of the intellect in regard to the being and
nature of God, are the misgivings of the heart
in regard to His relations to us. If He is that
remote and inaccessible Sovereign
" Who sees with equal eyes, as Lord of all,
A hero perish or a sparrow fall,"
what possible answer can we find in Him to
the longings and desires of our souls for a
Divine love? what possible support can we find
in Him for our struggles against outward
temptation and indwelling evil ? what possible
sympathy can we find in Him for our hopes
and aspirations and upward strivings, out of
the quicksands of heredity and environment,
towards liberty and light ? The religion of
the Incarnation is the only one that brings us
near to Him, assures us of our kinship with
Him, and of His infinite, practical, helpful love
for us. This faith alone bridges the chasm
that divides the eternal self-existent Spirit
from our finite, despondent, earthbound souls.
This faith alone gives us any knowledge of the
things that we most need to know about Him.
Deism is like a message written in an inscruta
ble hieroglyph which conveys no clear meaning
to the mind. Theism is like a message which
is intelligible to the intellect, but unsatisfac-

MS.

The Unveiling of the Father 121
tory to the heart, because it has no personal
address and no signature. Christianity is a per- £>
sonal message, signed by the hand of a Father,
and conveyed to us by the hand of the Son.1
The comparison is imperfect. It falls far Christ is
short of the truth. In Christianity the mes
senger is the message. The love which sent
and the love which delivered it are the same.
Christ is Immanuel, God with us. The gospel
of the Incarnation does not profess to remove
all intellectual perplexities in regard to the
existence of God and our own souls. It pro
fesses simply to establish such a conscious re
lation between our souls and God that our
ethical needs shall be satisfied at once ; and
thus it shall be infinitely easier, either to dis
solve, or to endure, our intellectual perplexi
ties. This relation is possible only in Christ.
And it is possible in Him only when we receive
Him as the unveiling of the Father. This re
quires an act of faith. But it is a faith which
is simpler in its form, more natural in its
method, and more profound in its spiritual re
sults than any other. For in the last analysis
it is just an act of personal confidence in a
person. And this does not demand perfect
knowledge, but absolute trust.
1 See Appendix, note 31.

122 The Unveiling of the Father
The Deity of To imagine that we can adapt our preaching
strength of t° this age of doubt by weakening, concealing, c
our gospel, or abandoning the truth of the Deity of Christ
is to mistake the great need of our times. It
is to seek to commend our gospel by taking
away from it the chief thing that men really '¦'
want, — an assurance of sympathy and kinship
with God. " One of the great marks of the
youth of to-day," says Ernest Lavisse, — "I
speak of thinking youth, — is a longing for the
Divine."1 This longing is to be met not by
slighting, but by emphasizing, not by clouding,
but by clarifying, not by withdrawing, but by
advancing, the true Deity of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Let us take up the words of the ancient
creed : " We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, only-begotten of the Father, that
is of the substance of the Father, God of God,
Light of Light, very God of God, begotten, not
made, being of one substance with the Father:
by Whom all things were made which are in
heaven and earth: Who, for us men and for our
salvation, came down, and was incarnate, and was
made man, and suffered, and rose the third day,
and ascended into the heavens, and shall come
to judge the quick and the dead."2
1 Ernest Lavisse, La Generation de 1890.
2 Symbolum Nicaenum, The Creeds of Christendom, Vol.
ii. (Harpers, 1882).

IV
THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD

" Behold Him now where He comes !
Not the Christ of our subtle creeds,
But the light of our hearts, of our homes,
Of our hopes, our prayers, our needs ;
The brother of want and blame,
The lover of women and men,
With a love that puts to shame
All passions of mortal ken.
" Ah no, thou life of the heart,
Never shalt thou depart !
Not till the leaven of God
Shall lighten each human clod ;
Not till the world shall climb
To thy height serene, sublime,
Shall the Christ who enters our door
Pass to return no more."
— Richard Watson Gilder,
The Passing of Christ.

IV
THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD
Nearly fifty years ago, Horace Bushnell, A great
, i • -i r -i ¦ • i . truth in
the most mystical ot logicians, or the most logi- eciipSe.
cal of mystics, delivered before Yale University
a magnificent discourse upon The Divinity of
Christ. In that fine work of genius, wrought
out of darkness and light, mystery and clear
ness, like an intricate carving of ebony and
gold, I find these words : " Christ is in such
a sense God, or God manifested, that the un
known term of His nature, that which we are
most in doubt of, and about which we are least
capable of any positive affirmation, is the
human."1 This sentence, it seems to me, is not of light,
but of darkness. It does not represent that
illuminating and harmonious kind of truth
which comes directly from the divine revelation
of Christ. It belongs rather to that obscured
1 Horace Bushnell, God in Christ (New York, Scribners,
1887), p. 123. 125

126

The Human Life of God

Theology
has lost
sight of
Christ's
humanity.

and discordant manner of presenting truth
which is the consequence of studying it too
much at second-hand and too little at first
hand, too much in the speculations and reason
ings of men and too little in the facts of life
wherein it was first manifested. Whatever
may be said of this sentence as a statement of
the result of dogmatic theology, — and in this
sense I, for one, do not question its accuracy,
— when we consider its plain meaning as an
expression of Christian experience and faith,
one thing is clear : It is utterly out of touch
with the experience and faith of the first dis
ciples. It is in sharp and striking discord
with the consciousness of the primitive Church.
For if there is anything in regard to which the
New Testament makes positive and undoubting
affirmation, it is the complete, genuine, and
veritable humanity of Christ. If there is any
fact which stands out luminous and distinct
in the experience of the early Christians, it is
that they saw in Christ, not merely a myste
rious manifestation of the Divine in a form cal
culated to beget new doubts, and under con
ditions which must remain inscrutable and
incomprehensible, but something utterly differ
ent. They saw the mystery reduced to terms
of simplicity, the revelation levelled to the

The Human Life of God 127
direct apprehension of man, the unveiling of
the Father under conditions which were so
familiar that they dissolved doubts and diffi
culties. They saw in Christ the human life
of God.
The object of this lecture is, first, to trace How shall
very briefly the way in which this view of l^tor*^
Christ has been beclouded so that His human
ity has appeared doubtful and less capable of
positive affirmation ; second, to show how the
primitive view of His person and life may be,
and in the history of Christian faith often has
been, recovered and restored to its pristine
brilliancy and beauty ; and third, to try to
express, though but imperfectly, the meaning
and importance of this view for the present
age.

Definition is dangerous. Necessary it may Obscuration
be ; useful it undoubtedly is ; but our recogni- yJormu as-
tion of these qualities ought not to make us
forget or deny the peril which the process cer
tainly involves. And this is the nature of the
danger : the definition has an inherent ten
dency to substitute itself for the thing defined.
The terms in which a fact is expressed creep
into the place of the fact itself. The reality is

128

The Human Life of God

An illustra
tion from
the history
of Art.

removed insensibly to a remote distance behind
the verbal symbols which represent it. The
way of access to it is blocked, and its influ
ence is restricted by the forms of expression
invented to define it.
I do not know where we can find a more vivid
illustration of this process than that which is
given, in many ways, in the history of art. The
first effort of the artist is to represent something
that he has seen or imagined. Out of this
effort and the work which it produces, grow
certain methods and habits of representing
landscape and architecture and the human
figure. Out of these habits grow rules and
formulas, not only for the hand but also for the
eye. On these formulas schools are founded.
In these schools the example of masters comes
to have an authority which overshadows and
limits the vision of facts as well as the repre
sentation of them.1 The Japanese artists, of
certain schools, actually reproduce that infan
tile condition of sight in which all things
appear flat, in a single plane without perspec
tive. The Giotteschi of Italy carried their
disregard of anatomy to such a point that
joints and articulations vanished from the
human figure. 1 See Appendix, note 32.

The Human Life of God 129
Now this same process of limitation by for- Representa-
mulas may be observed, on the ideal side, in c°f^sf
the course of religious art. The first pictures
of Christ, traced in colour upon the walls of
the Catacombs, or carved in stone upon the sar
cophagi of the Christian dead, do not give us
indeed the very earliest conception of Him ; for
the Christian art of the first two centuries, if it
ever existed, has long since perished. But that
which remains, dating from the third and fourth
centuries, bears witness to an idea of the Christ
which was simple and natural and humane.
He appears as a figure of youthful beauty and
graciousness ; the good Shepherd bearing a
lamb upon His shoulders ; the true Orpheus
drawing all creatures and souls by the charm
of His amiable music.1 These are only sym
bolic representations, yet they evidence a con
ception of Him which was still in touch with
the facts. A little later we find an effort to
conceive and depict Him with more realism.
His face appears in pictures which resemble
the description given in the spurious Epistle
of Lentulus : " A man of dignified presence,
with dark hair parted in the middle and
flowing down, after the custom of the Naza-
1 So in the paintings from the Catacombs of S. Agnese
and S. Callisto.

130

The Human Life of God

Tradition
petrifies Christian
Art.

renes, over both shoulders ; His brow clear
and pure ; His unfurrowed face of pleasant
aspect and medium complexion ; His mouth
and nose faultless ; His short, light beard
parted in the middle ; His eyes bright and
lustrous."1 But when we pass on to the creations of so-
called Byzantine art, we find ourselves face to
face with an utterly different view of the Christ.
His countenance now stares out in glittering
mosaic from the walls of great churches, huge,
dark, threatening, a dreadful and forbidding
face. The fixed and formal lines are repeated
and deepened by artist after artist. Every feat
ure of naturalness is obliterated ; every feature
that seemed to express awfulness is exagger
ated and emphasized. The wide-set eyes, the
long narrow countenance, the stern, inflexible
mouth, — in this ocular definition the man
Christ Jesus has vanished, and we see only the
immense, immutable, and terrible Pantokrator,
who cannot be touched with the feeling of our
infirmities.2 When we turn to the intellectual life of the
Church out of which this type of art grew, we
1 This is the imago Christi which we see in the painting
from the Catacomb of S. Ponziano.
2 See the mosaic of Christ in the Church of St. Paul out
side the walls, near Rome.

The Human Life of God 131
see there the process explained. The early Dogmas
Greek Fathers, like Irenaeus, went directly to view 0j.
the Holy Scriptures for their view of the per- Christ.
son of Christ, and frankly accepted all the
features of the living, lovely portrait there dis
closed.1 They recognized without reserve the
reality of Christ's human growth in wisdom and
stature and in favour with God and men ; the
actual limitations of Christ's human knowledge
as expressed in the questions that He asked and
in His profession of ignorance in regard to the
time of His second advent ; the intimacy of His
sympathy with us in temptation, suffering, and
death. But with the development of theological
definition this direct view of Christ was modified,
obscured, and at last totally eclipsed. Instead of
looking at God through His revelation in Christ,
the Fathers began to look at Christ through a
more and more abstract, precise, and inflexible
statement of the metaphysical idea of God. It
became necessary to harmonize the Scripture
record of the life of Jesus with the theories of
the divine nature set forth in the decrees of
councils and defined with amazing particularity
in the writings of theologians. In the effort to
accomplish this, two main lines of thought were
followed. One line abandoned the belief in
1 See Appendix, note 33.

132 ' The Human Life of God
The hiding Christ's real and complete humanity, and re-
of Jesus. duced His human life to a tenuous and filmy
apparition. The other line distinguished be
tween His humanity and His Divinity in such
a way as to divide Him into two halves, either
of which appears virtually complete without
the other, and both of which are united, not in
a single and sincere personality, but in an out
ward manifestation and a concealed life, cover
ing in some mysterious way a double centre of
existence. It is only fair to say that the ex
treme results of these two lines of thought were
condemned by the Church in the heresies of
Doketism and Apollinarianism, Eutychianism
and Nestorianism. But it is equally fair to say
that the influence of these theories was by no
means checked nor extirpated. They continued
to make themselves felt powerfully and perni
ciously ; now in the direction of dissolving
the humanity of Christ into a mere cloud
enveloping His Deity ; and again in the
direction of dividing and destroying the
unity of His person in the definitions of a
dual nature.
Bending the It is not necessary, nor would it be possible,
definitions. f°r us to trace this process in detail through all
its complexities and self-contradictions. It
will be enough to give two or three specimens

The Human Life of God 133
of the kind of work to which it led in dealing
with two essential features of the picture of
Christ which is given to us in the Gospels : His
human limitation of knowledge, and His human
growth in wisdom, stature, and grace. Both
limitation and growth are unexempt conditions
of manhood. Both are unquestionably attrib
uted to Christ in the New Testament. Both
are explicitly denied by theologians. Ephrem
Syrus, commenting upon the Diatessaron of
Tatian, says : " Christ, though He knew the
moment of His advent, yet that they might not
ask Him any more about it, said, I know it not."1
Chrysostom, in his explanation of St. Matthew
xxiv. 36, paraphrases Christ's words in this
extraordinary fashion : " For if thou seek after
the day and the hour thou shalt not hear them
of me, saith He ; but if of times and preludes,
I will tell thee all exactly. For that indeed
I am not ignorant of it, I have shown by many
things. — I lead thee to the very vestibule ;
and if 1 do not open unto thee the doors, this
also I do for your good."2 John of Damascus,
defending the orthodox faith, declares that,
1 Evang. Concordant. Expos. (Aucher and Moesinger,
Venice, 1876), p. 16.
2 St. Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew,
lxxvii. 2. The Nicene Fathers (New York, Christian Litera
ture Co., 1888), vol. x.

134 The Human Life of God
" Christ is said to advance in wisdom and
stature and grace, because He grows in fact in
stature, and through His growth in stature
brings out into exhibition the wisdom which
already existed in Him. . . . But those who
say that He really grew in wisdom and grace as
receiving increase in these, deny that the flesh
was united to the word from the first moment
of its existence."1 Peter Lombard does not
explicitly adopt, but quotes with evident ap
proval, the opinion that the person of the eter
nal Word put on a human body and soul as a
robe, in order that He might appear suitably to
the eyes of mortals, yet in Himself He was not
changed by this incarnation, but remained one
and the same, immutable.2
A very full and clear exhibition of the dark
ness and unreality in which the patristic and
mediaeval theologians involved the person of
Christ may be found in Professor A. B. Bruce's
great book on The Humiliation of Christ,3 and
in Canon Charles Gore's two admirable vol
umes on The Incarnation,* from which I have
1 John Damascene, De Fide Orthod. , Lib. iii. chap. xxii.
2 Peter Lombard, Sentt., Book iii., Dist. vi. § 6.
8 Prof. Alexander Balmain Bruce, The Humiliation of
Christ (New York, Armstrongs, 1887).
4 Canon Charles Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God,
Bampton Lectures, 1891 (New York, Scribners, 1891). Dis-

The Human Life of God 135
taken some illustrations after verifying them.
Professor Bruce sums up the matter by saying :
" The effect, though not the design, of theories
of Christ's person has been to a large extent to
obscure some of these elementary truths,- —
the unity of the person, or the reality of the
humanity, or the divinity dwelling within the
man, or the voluntariness and ethical value of
the state of the humiliation. That is, certain
ties have been sacrificed for uncertainties, facts
for hypotheses, faith for speculation."1
Canon Gore, in his Bampton Lectures, The man-
. hood of
adroitly uses the Jesuit theologian De Lugo as jesus
a man of straw through whom he may safely
and vigorously attack the false conceptions of
Christ's person which are still current, and to a
considerable degree dominant, in dogmatic the
ology. He says that De Lugo depicts a Christ
"who, if He was, as far as His body is con
cerned, in a condition of growth, was, as re
gards His soul and intellect, from the first
moment and throughout His life in full enjoy
ment of the beatific vision. Externally a way
farer, a viator, inwardly He was throughout
a comprehensor, He had already attained. . . .
It is denied that He can be strictly called
sertations on Subjects connected with the Incarnation (New
York, Scribners, 1895). J The Humiliation of Christ, p. 192.

van
ishes.

136 The Human Life of God
' the servant of God ' even as man, in spite of the
direct use of that expression in the Acts of the
Apostles. He is spoken of at the institution of
the Eucharist as offering sacrifice to His own
Godhead."1
Modem ex- Canon Gore condemns this picture by De
amples of . . .
false Chris- Lugo as in striking contradiction to that which
toiogy. fjjg New Testament presents. But the point
which I wish to make clear and distinct, is that,
in spite of this contradiction, the picture has
not been frankly and finally discarded in Chris
tian theology. It still exercises an obscuring
and perverting influence upon the vision of
Christ. It still produces, by imitation, repre
sentations of Him in which definitions dominate
facts, and formulas hide or obliterate realities.
We do not need to go back to the seventeenth
century, nor abroad to the Jesuits, for our ex
amples. We may turn to Archdeacon Wilber-
force's book on The Incarnation, and find him
representing the body of Christ as miraculous
in its freedom from sickness, its power over
animals, its exemption from the necessity of
death, and its inherent power of communicat
ing life to others.2 In regard to the mind of
1 The Incarnation, p. 164
2 Archdeacon Wilberforce, The Doctrine of the Incarna
tion (New York, Young, 1885), pp. 60-65.

The Human Life of God 137
Christ, he says that " since it would be impious
to suppose that our Lord had pretended an
ignorance which He did not experience, we
are led to the conclusion [astonishing conclu
sion !] that what He partook, as man, was
not actual ignorance, but such deficiency in
the means of arriving at truth as belongs to
mankind."1 We may turn to the Dogmatic
Theology of Dr. W. G. T. Shedd and read:
"Jesus Christ as a theanthropic person was A double
..,.,/. i • • , , , conscious-
constituted ot> a divme nature and a human ness
nature. The divine nature had its own form
of experience, like the mind in an ordinary
human person ; and the human nature had its
own form of experience, like the body in a com
mon man. The experiences of the divine nature
were as diverse from those of the human nature
as those of the human mind are from those of
the human body. Yet there was but one per
son who was the subject-ego of both of these
experiences. At the very time when Christ
was conscious of weariness and thirst by the
well of Samaria, He also was conscious that He
was the eternal and only-begotten Son of God,
the second person in the Trinity. This is proved
by His words to the Samaritan woman : ' Who
soever drinketh of the water that I shall give
1 Ibid., p. 71.

138

The Human Life of God

His man
hood a
vesture.

him shall never thirst ; but the water that I
shall give him shall be in him a well of water
springing up into everlasting life. I that speak
unto thee am the Messiah.' The first-mentioned
consciousness of fatigue and thirst came through
the human nature in His person ; the second-
mentioned consciousness of omnipotence and
supremacy came through the divine nature in
His person. If He had not had a human nature,
He could not have had the former consciousness;
and if He had not had a divine nature, Hje could
not have had the latter. Because He had both
natures in one person, He could have both."1
We may turn to Canon Liddon's magnificent
work on The Divinity of our Lord and find him
writing : " Christ's Manhood is not of Itself an
individual being ; It is not a seat and centre of
personality ; It has no conceivable existence
apart from the act whereby the Eternal Word
in becoming Incarnate called It into being and
made It His Own. It is a vesture which He has
folded around His person ; It is an instrument
through which He places Himself in contact with
men and whereby He acts upon humanity."2
1 W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology (New York, Scrib-
ners, 1888), vol. ii., pp. 307, 308.
2 H. P. Liddon, The Divinity of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ, Bampton Lectures, 1866 (London, Rivingtons,
11th edition, 1885), p. 262.

The Human Life of God 139
And so, if we accept this picture of Christ, The human
the manhood of Jesus fades, retreats, grows lost
dim and shadowy. It wavers like a veil. It
dissolves like mist. It descends again mys
terious and impenetrable, illusory and imper
sonal, to envelop Him whom we love and adore
in its strange and unfamiliar folds. We grope
after Him, but we can touch nothing but the
hem of His mystic robe. We long for Him,
but He approaches us, and comes into contact
with us, only through an instrument. He is
not what He seems. The Son of God behind
that veil is beyond our reach. The Son of
man, whom human eyes beheld and human
hands touched, is not the real, living, veritable
Saviour, but only the form, the garment, of an
inscrutable life. And if, in our dire confusion,
our reasoning faith still succeeds in holding
fast to the Eternal Logos, our confiding faith is
maimed and robbed by the loss of that true,
near, personal, loving, sympathizing Jesus, who
was born of a woman, suffered under Pontius
Pilot, was crucified, dead, and buried. He is
gone from us, as certainly as if the Pharisees
had spoken truth when they said that His dis
ciples came by night and stole Him away. The
thing of which we are most in doubt, and
about which we are least capable of any positive

140

The Human Life of God

affirmation, is the humanity of Christ. We are
left with a perfectly orthodox doctrine of two
natures, but we no longer have a clear and
simple gospel of One Person to preach to the
doubting souls of men.1

The cry of
the heart for
a human
Saviour.

The wor
ship of the
Virgin
Mary.

II
But the heart of Christendom has never
rested content with this distant, vague, uncer
tain view of the real manhood of our Lord.
There has always been a protest against it.
There has always been an effort to escape from
it. We can see a strange and indirect but
indubitable evidence of this deep inward dis
satisfaction, in the rise and growth of an im
passioned devotion to the human mother of
Jesus. The worship of the Virgin Mary was
a reprisal for the obscuration of the humanity
of her Son. * In the thought of her true
womanly tenderness and affection, her real and
unquestionable sorrows, her simple and familiar
joys, her intimate, genuine, unfailing sympathy
with all that makes our mortal life a bitter,
blessed reality to us, the souls of the lowly and
the lonely found that peace and consolation

1 See Appendix, note 34.

The Human Life of God 141
which they could no longer find in the con
templation of the distant Second Person of the
Trinity through the telescope of theology.
That which Jesus Himself was to John and
Peter, to the household of Bethany, to the
penitent publican, and to the woman which
was a sinner, Mary became to the baffled and
confused faith of a later age, — an approachable
mediator of the divine mercy, a helper who
could really understand and feel the need of
those who cried for help, a warm and living
image of the Eternal Sympathy in flesh and
blood. In the light of mediaeval dogmatics
Mariolatry appears not without its justifica
tion. And for my part, I should not wish to be
bound to the Christology of Peter Lombard
and Thomas Aquinas, without finding the com
pensation which their followers found in per
sonal devotion and confidential trust, flowing
instinctively and irresistibly towards the blessed
Virgin. But, after all, this was only a substitute for The search
the real thing. It gave to faith the image of
a lovely and adorable humanity in closest union
with God ; but it did not give back the old
vision of the human life of God. And so
through all the ages we see men turning, now
in solitary thought, now in great companies, to

142 The Human Life of God
seek that vision. The renaissance of Christian
art, with its beautiful pictures of the infancy of
Jesus, with its piercing and pathetic representa
tions of the sufferings of Jesus, bears witness
to the eagerness of that search. The revivals
of Christian life, seen in such diverse yet cog
nate forms as the rise of the " Poor Men of
Lyons " and the foundation of the " Brother
hood of St. Francis" are evidences of the same
movement back to Christ. Peter Waldo outside
of the Church, and Francis of Assisi within the
Church, were awakened by the same vision of
Jesus, " a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief," and were inspired by the same desire to
make His real human life the pattern of all piety
The spirit and the example of all goodness. The Refor
mation ' mati°n> which was at once and equally an intel
lectual and a spiritual protest against the arro
gance of current theology and the coldness of
religious life, supplies no better watchword to
express its great motive than the saying of
Erasmus : " I could wish that those frigid subt
leties either were completely cut off, or were
not the only things that the theologians held as
certain, and that the Christ pure and simple might
be implanted deep within the minds of men."1
1 Erasmus, quoted in Gore, Dissertations, etc., p. 180,
Epistle 207.

The Human Life of God 143
Modern Biblical scholarship, with its splendid
apparatus of linguistic and historical learning,
proceeding in part, at first, from a sceptical im
pulse, has developed in our generation, either
through the conversion of sceptics in the process
of research, or through the awakening of be
lievers to the necessities of their faith, into a
reverent and eager quest for the historic Christ,
the Jesus of the Gospels, the Lord of the primi
tive Church, that we may see Him as the first
Christians saw Him, in the integrity of His per
son and the sincerity of His life, and receive from "Back to
Christ ' ' '
Him what they received, — a faith that dissolved
doubts and an inspiration that conquered diffi
culties. Back to the New Testament of our
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, — back to the
facts that lie behind the definitions, back to
the Person who embodies the truth, back to the
record and reflection of that which the apostles
"heard, and saw with their eyes, and looked
upon, and their hands handled of the word of
life," — this, and this only, is the way that leads
us within sight of
" the heaven-drawn picture
Of Christ, the living Word."
Now it is a marvellous thing, and one for
which we can never be grateful enough, that

144

The Human Life of God

The Bible
gives us a
Kinsman- Redeemer.

The Christ
of the
Gospels.

when we come to the New Testament in this
spirit, we find in it exactly what we need ; not an
abstract formula, not a collection of definitions,
but the graphic reflection of a Person seen
from a fourfold point of view, and the simple
record of manifold human experience under the
direct and dominant influence of that Person.
And the one fact that emerges clear and tri
umphant from the reflection and the record, is
that the writers of the New Testament never
were in doubt of the human nature of Christ
and never hesitated to make the most positive
affirmations in regard to it.
The Christ of the Gospels is bone of our
bone, flesh of our flesh, mind of our mind,
heart of our heart. He is in subjection to
His parents as a child. He grows to man
hood. His character is unfolded and perfected
by discipline. He labours for daily bread, and
prays for Divine grace. He hungers, and
thirsts, and sleeps, and rejoices, and weeps.
He is anointed with the Spirit for His minis
try. He is tempted. He is lonely and dis
appointed. He asks for information. He
confesses ignorance. He interprets the facts
of nature and life with a prophetic insight.
But He makes no new disclosure of the secrets
of omniscience. There is no hint nor indica-

The Human Life of God 145
tion that He is leading a double life, reigning
consciously as God while He is suffering appar
ently as man. His personality is simple and
indivisible. The glory of what He is and does,
lies not only in its perfection, but in the hard
conditions of its accomplishment. Superhuman
in His origin, as the only-begotten Son of God ;
superhuman in His office and work, as the re
vealer of the Father and the redeemer of man
kind ; in His earthly existence the Christ of the
Gospels enters without reserve and without de
ception into all the conditions and limitations
which are necessary to give to the world, once
and forever, the human life of God.1
When we turn to the Epistles to see how The Ghrist
of the
this view of Christ was affected by the recog- Epistles.
nition of His divine glory and power as one
who had been raised to the right hand of God
and made head over all things to the Church,
two things strike us with tremendous force.
First, the identity of His person was not lost,
nor the continuity of His being broken : the
exalted Christ is none other than "this same
Jesus."2 Second, the reality and absoluteness
of His humiliation are emphasized as the ground
and cause of His exaltation.
How vividly these two things come out, for
1 See Appendix, note 35. 2 Acts i. 11.

view.

146 The Human Life of God
St. Paul's example, in the writings of St. Paul. It has
been well said that " the Christ whom Paul had
seen was the risen Christ, and the conception
of Him in His glorified character is the one
which rules his thoughts and forms the start
ing-point of his teaching." 1 Corresponding to
this present glory, Paul assumes an eternally
pre-existent glory of Christ as the image of
the invisible God, the medium and end of crea
tion.2 Now it is of this Person, divinely glori
ous in the past as the One who is before all
things and in whom all things consist,3 divinely
glorious in the present as the One who is far
above every name that is named, not only in
this world but in that which is to come,4 —
it is of this Person that Paul writes, in words
so strong that they touch the very border of
the impossible : " For our sakes, He beggared
Himself that we through His beggary might
be enriched."5 And again: "He, existing in
the form of God, did not consider an equal
state with God a thing to be selfishly grasped
and held, but emptied Himself, and took the
form of a slave, being made in the likeness of
man."6 These powerful expressions, "self-
1 Stevens, The Pauline Theology, p. 206.
2 Col. i. 16. s Col. i. 17. 4 Eph. i. 21.
6 2 Cor. viii. 9. « phil. ii. 6, 7.

The Human Life of God 147
beggary," "self-emptying," seem to be directly
designed to break up the conventional moulds
in which dogmatic theology has attempted to
cast the truth and let it harden. They bring
back a vital warmth and motion into the facts
of the Incarnation. Once more it glows and
flows. Once more we see that it is not a mere
exhibition of being but a process of becoming.
The idea of self-beggary mightily overflows
the mere statement that a human nature was
added and united to the divine nature ; for
that would have been no impoverishment but
an enrichment.1 The idea of self-emptying The
shatters the narrow dogma that the Son of
God suffered no change in Himself when He
became man. It was a change so absolute, so
immense, that it can only be compared with
the vicissitude from fulness to emptiness. He
laid aside the existence-form of God, in order
that He might take the existence-form of man.
Whatever right He had to an equal state of
glory with God, that right He did not cling
to, but surrendered, in order that He might
become a servant. And upon this real self-
emptying there followed a real self-humilia
tion, wherein, being found in fashion as a man,
He became obedient unto death, even the death
1 See Appendix, note 36.

148 The Human Life of God
of the cross.1 It was on account of this, —
and by " this " we must understand the entire
actual operation of the self-denying, self-hum
bling, self-sacrificing mind of Christ, — it was
for this .reason, St. Paul declares, that " God
highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the
name which is above every name."2 And I
know not how to interpret such language
with any reality of intelligence, unless it
means that the present glory of the Son of
God is in some true sense the result of His
having become man and so fulfilled the will
of God.
The Epistle This view, which St. Paul condenses into a
brotherhood, single pregnant "wherefore," is expanded in
the Epistle to the Hebrews. The object of
this Epistle is to show the superiority of the
priesthood and sacrifice of Christ, which are
substantial and enduring, to the priesthood and
sacrifice of the old dispensation, which were
shadowy and transient. But the method which
the writer follows is not to deny, but to assert
the verity of Christ's humanity. Without this
He could not be the true priest nor offer the
true sacrifice. ' ' In all things it behoved Him
to be made like unto His brethren."3 " For we
have not an high priest which cannot be touched
1 Phil. ii. 8. 2 Phil. ii. 9. * Heb, ii. 17.

scension.

The Human Life of God 149
with the feeling of our infirmities : but was in
all points tempted like as we are, yet without
sin."1 "Though He were a Son, yet learned
He obedience by the things which He suffered,
and being made perfect, He became the author
of eternal salvation unto all them that obey
Him."2 This complete incarnation, this thor- The
ough trial under human conditions, this perfect con e'
© 7 r scension
discipline of obedience through suffering, was a
humiliation. But it was in no sense a degrada
tion. On the contrary, it was a crowning of
Christ with glory and honour in order that He
might taste death for every man. " For it be
came Him, for whom are all things, and by
whom are all things, in bringing many sons to
glory, to make the captain of their salvation
perfect through suffering."3 If the Epistle to
the Hebrews teaches anything, it certainly
teaches this. The humanity of Jesus was not
the veiling but the unveiling of the divine
glory. The limitations, temptations, and suffer
ings of manhood were the conditions under
which alone Christ could accomplish the great
est work of the Deity, — the redemption of a
sinful race. The seat of the divine revelation
and the centre of the divine atonement was and
is the human life of God.
1 Heb. iv. 15. 2 Heb. v. 8, 9. a Heb. ii. 9, 10.

150

The Human Life of God

in

A summary
of conclu
sions.

Current
theology
'at fault.

Human theoriesnot to be
insistedupon.

Here, then, we may pause for a moment and
try to sum up the conclusions to which the New
Testament leads us in regard to the person of
Christ. I am sincerely anxious not to be misunder
stood. On the one hand, I would not conceal
for a moment my conviction that current theol
ogy has failed, very often and very largely, to
do justice to the meaning of the Incarnation on
the human side, and that we must go back to
the image of Jesus Christ as it is reflected in the
Gospels to purify, and refresh, and simplify
our faith. We should not suffer any reverence
for ancient definitions of doctrine, however well
founded, nor any fear of incurring reproach and
mistrust as innovators, to deter us from that
necessary and loyal return to the reality of the
Person in whom our creed centres and on whom
it rests. To find Jesus anew, to see Him again,
as if for the first time, in the wondrous glory
of His humility, is the secret of the revival of
Christianity in every age. This is not innova
tion ; it is renovation.
On the other hand, we have no right and we
ought to have no inclination to insist exclusively
upon any particular theory as the only possible

The Human Life of God 151
explanation of the facts of the Incarnation.
Every earnest and thoughtful man must feel
that these facts are so deep and mysterious that
the plummet of human reason cannot sound
their ultimate recesses. With all our thinking
upon this subject, there must ever mingle a con
sciousness of insufficiency and a confession of
ignorance. But with this confession of igno
rance there must go also a clear recognition of
those portions of the truth which are unques
tionably revealed in the New Testament. Three
things are there made plain to faith.
1. God is not such a being, absolute, immu- Three vital
table, and impassible, that the Divine Logos
cannot descend by a free act of self-determin
ing love into the lower estate of human exist
ence, and humble Himself to the conditions of
manhood without losing His personal iden-
tity.1 2. The essence of the Gospel is its declara
tion of the fact that this act of condescension,
of self-humiliation, actually has been performed,
and that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God
who has taken upon Him the existence-form of
a servant, and lived a truly human life, and
been obedient even unto death, in order to re
veal to the world the saving love of God.
1 See Appendix, note 37.

points.

152 The Human Life of God
3. The distinctive attributes of personality
in Christ (self-consciousness and self-deter
mination) are not dual, as of two persons,
the one divine and the other human, co-exist
ing side by side in a double life, but individual,
and manifested as the life of one person. That
person is the Son of God, who laid aside the
glory which He had with the Father, and emp
tied Himself, and so became the Son of man ;
and on account of this humiliation God hath
highly exalted Him and crowned Him with
glory and honour as the God-man forever.
These points These are the points which are vital to the
defended. reality of the Gospel of the Incarnation. All
theories which make these points clear, safe
guard the truth in its integrity and in its rec
onciling power. The question of the method
of the divine humiliation and the human exal
tation of Christ, lies beyond these points. It
is not necessary to insist upon any particular
form of its solution. Indeed, it may well be
that the profundity of the question, the inher
ent mystery of the facts of life and personality
with which it deals, and the limitations of
human thought and language, preclude the
possibility of a complete and final answer at
present. It must be frankly acknowledged
that none of the solutions which have been pro-

The Human Life of God 153
pounded hitherto are free from serious perplex
ities. But it must be recognized with equal
frankness that the theories which have been
put forward in modern times, with new earnest
ness and power, by men of unquestionable loy
alty to the Christianity of the New Testament,
who have sought to find a clear and positive
meaning for the great word Kenosis, which
St. Paul uses to describe the self-emptying of
Christ in the Incarnation, — theories which
have been stigmatized as kenotic, as if the name
were enough to mark them as unorthodox, —
are so far from being heretical that they have
the rare merit of conserving and emphasizing a
truth of surpassing value, undoubtedly taught
in the Bible, and too much neglected, if not
practically denied, during many centuries of
theological speculation. It may be, as Julius
Miiller held, that the distinctive attributes of Various
....... methods of
personality are, abstractly considered, identical safe-guard-
in God and man, so that, by the divine self- m3 them-
limitation in the Incarnation, they are actually
unified, like two circles which have a common
centre.1 It may be, as Dr. Fairbairn holds,
that the Son of God, being the eternal repre-
1 For this statement of Miiller's view, which he gave in
his lectures, I am indebted to Dr. George P. Eisner, who was
one of his hearers.

154 The Human Life of God
sentative of the filial relationship within the
Godhead, the symbol of the created within the
uncreated, needed but to surrender the form
and status of the uncreated Son in order to
assume, by the same act, the form and status
which man as the created Son was intended to
realize.1 It may be, as Godet holds, that the
Incarnation was by deprivation, and that the
Eternal Word renounced His divine mode of
being, and entered into life, without omnisci
ence, omnipresence, or omnipotence, as an un
conscious babe.2 It matters little in what form
of words we try to express the transcendent
truth. But it matters much, it is supremely
important for the integrity of our Gospel and
for its influence upon the heart of this doubting
age, that we should hold fast to the fact that
the life of Jesus of Nazareth is the human life
of God.
The new The timers at hand when this simple and
Christ. profound view of Christ, which beholds in Him
the God-man in whom Deity is self-limited
and humbled in order that humanity may be
divinely exalted and perfected, must break
through the clouds which have obscured it, and
become the leading light of religion and theol-
1 The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 476.
2 Godet, Commentary on John i. 14.

The Human Life of God 155
ogy. The life of Christ needs to be restudied
and rewritten under this luminous guidance, in
absolute and unhesitating loyalty to the facts
as they lie before our eyes in the Gospels.1 The
doctrine of Christ's person needs to be recon
structed and restated in this light. It must
include, as the creed of Chalcedon included,
not only the truth of a Homoousia — a sameness
of nature and experience — with God, which
the past has vindicated ; but also the equal
truth of a Homoousia with man, wliich the fut
ure is to unfold as the universality of Christ's
manhood is exhibited through His progressive
triumphs among all the races of men and all
the modes of human life. The humanity of the
incarnate Christ must stand out as clear, as pos-
1 "No action of our Saviour's earthly life, from Bethlehem
to Calvary, exhibits divinity. He appears first as a helpless
babe in the manger. He is subject to His parents. As the
child grows, He waxes strong in spirit and increases in wis
dom. Such an increase in wisdom implies increase in know
ledge, and less knowledge or greater ignorance to-day than
to-morrow. Omniscience could not have been exercised by
the Jesus who was growing in wisdom. If any say here, as
we usually do, that the humanity grew hut the divinity was
omniscient, let us ask if there were two persons in Jesus.
This Nestorianism is practically the creed of the present-day
with the Reformed Churches. They have gone over to a
virtual duplication of the person of Christ." — Howard
Crosby, The True Humanity of Christ (New York, Ran
dolph, 1880).

156 The Human Life of God
itive, as indubitable, as His Deity. Nay, more,
it must stand where the New Testament puts
it, in the foreground of faith. For it is only in
this humanity that we can truly find the Son of
God who loved us and gave Himself for us.
The old How urgent and pressing are the needs of
definitions .
inadequate. our own age which Call US to this WOl'k! HOW
far behind us, how effete and inadequate, are
the terms and illustrations which were used in
former ages to express the results of human
thought in regard to the person of Christ !
Recall, for instance, that fine similitude of the
heated sword which the Lutheran theologians
borrowed from the Fathers to explain the
union of the divine with the human in Christ!
To them it was satisfactory because they re
garded heat as one substance and iron as
another substance. In their view the divine
nature penetrated and pervaded the human
nature as the caloric fluid was supposed to per
meate a mass of metal. But in our world the
caloric fluid does not exist. Heat is not a sub
stance, but a mode of motion in substances.
In the light of modern science the old simili
tude fades into a meaningless comparison of
things which cannot be compared.
We cannot accept the scholastic terminology
of " natures " and " subsistences " in the final

The Human Life of God 157
and absolute sense in which it was once em
ployed. The philosophy of realism, which
ascribed an objective existence to universals
apart from individuals, is not the philosophy of
to-day. Its language is not only foreign, but
dead. The philosophy of being and not-being
has opened to receive the philosophy of becom
ing ; and, in so doing, it has been utterly trans
formed. Life is now the regnant idea ; personality its Life is the
utmost expression. It is in the facts of life, rf^nant
its secret potencies, its mysterious limitations
in germ and seed, its magnificent unfoldings in
the process of development that we must seek
our comparisons for the Incarnation. And the
very search will bring us face to face with the
conviction that life in all its manifestations
transcends analysis without ceasing to be the
object of knowledge.
In the living world the boundaries of imagi- We know
.-,-,,.. » life but can-
nation are not coterminous with the limits ot not define it.
apprehension. We know many facts and
forms of life whose modes of becoming we
cannot imagine. It is just as impossible for
us to conceive how the life of the oak, root and
trunk and branch and leaf, form and colour
and massive strength, is all folded in the tiny,
colourless, unshaped seed, as it is to conceive

158 The Human Life of God
how the life of God is embodied in the man
Christ Jesus. But the difficulty of conceiving
the manner of this infolding, this embodiment,
does not destroy for us the reality of the life.
Indeed, if we could explain it entirely, if we
could trace it perfectly as in a diagram, if we
could observe it completely, as in one of those
beautiful models of flowers which a skilful
artist1 has recently made to illustrate his lect
ures on botany, we should know that it was not
life, but only a picture of it. The picture is
useful, but it is not vital. The metaphor has
its value, but it falls far short of the truth.
Self-beggary and self-emptying are but "words
thrown out towards " an unimaginable but not
unreasonable manifestation of the Divine Love
as life. The reality to which they point us is
the Son of God descending to live under all
the conditions and limitations of energy and
consciousness which are proper to the Son of
man : the Word made flesh and dwelling among
us. IV
The import- j^ would be hard to overestimate the signifi-
ance of this .......
view for the cance of this view lor the present age, and the
present age. importance of setting it forth as a living truth
1 William Hamilton Gibson,

The Human Life of God 159
in the language of to-day. It is the only view
which gives us any ground of reality for our
faith in the kinship of man with God. If the
Son of God, who is the image of the Father, by
laying aside the outward prerogatives of His
divine mode of existence, actually becomes
human, then, and only then, the divine image
in which man was created is no mere figure of
speech, but a substantial likeness of spiritual
being.1 There is a true fellowship between
our souls and our Father in heaven. Virtue
is not a vain dream, but a definite striving
towards His perfection. Revelation is not a
deception, but a message from Him who knows
all to those who know only a part. Prayer is
not an empty form, but a real communion.
" Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit
can meet :
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands
and feet."2
This view of the spiritual relation of man to The kinship
God cannot possibly have any foundation in °G'"d"n '"
fact, deep enough and strong enough to with
stand the sweeping floods of scepticism, unless
it builds upon the rock of a veritable Incarna
tion. The discoveries of modern science, en
larging enormously our conceptions of the
1 See Appendix, note 38. 2 Tennyson, The Higher Pantheism.

160 The Human Life of God
physical universe, have not only put man (as
we said in the first lecture) in a position to
receive a larger and loftier vision of the glory
of God, but they have made such a vision in
dispensable. And they have emphasized, with
overwhelming force, the form in which that
vision must come in order to meet our needs
and strengthen faith for its immense task. If
we are not to be utterly belittled and crushed
by the contemplation of the vast mass of matter
and the tremendous play of force by which we
are surrounded ; if we are still to hold that the
vital is greater than the mechanical, the moral
than the material, the spiritual than the physi
cal ; if we are to maintain the old position of
all noble and self -revering thought, that " man
is greater than the universe," — there is nothing
that can so profoundly confirm and establish
us, there is nothing that can so surely protect
and save us from "the distorting influences of
our own discoveries," as the revelation of the
Supreme Being in an unmistakably vital, moral,
spiritual, and human form.
The true Such a revelation at once rectifies, purifies,
and elevates our view of God Himself. For if
the Son of God can surrender omnipresence,
omniscience, and omnipotence without destroy
ing His personal identity, then the central

The Human Life of God 161
essence of the Deity is neither infinite wisdom
nor infinite power, but perfect holiness and
perfect goodness. And so from the very
lowest valley of humiliation we catch clear
sight of the very loftiest summit of theology,
the serene and shining truth that God is Love.
In the light of this truth we behold also the The supreme
highest perfection of man and the path which tove_
leads to it. Love is the fulfilling of the law,
and the supreme pattern of love is the example
of Christ. And whether we look at it from
the divine side as the supreme self-sacrifice of
God, or from the human side as the complete
obedience of man, everything depends upon the
genuineness and sincerity of this example. Un
less the Son of God truly became man, the In
carnation cannot be, as Bishop Westcott calls
it, "a revelation of human duties." What
strength could we draw from His victory over
temptation if He was not exposed as we are
to the assaults of evil ? 1 What consolation
could we draw from His patience if He was
not a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief ? " Jesus Christ," says one of the greatest
of French theologians, " is not the Son of God
hidden in the Son of man retaining all the
attributes of Divinity in a latent state. This
1 See Appendix, note 39.

162 The Human Life of God
would be to admit an irreducible duality which
would make the unity of His person vanish
and withdraw Him from the normal conditions
of human life. His obedience would become
illusory, and His example would be without
application to our race. No, when the Word
became flesh, He humbled Himself, He put off
His glory, being rich He made Himself poor,
and became as one of us, only without sin, that
He might pass through the moral conflict with
all the risks of freedom."1 When we see Him
thus, we know what it means to follow Him
and to be like Him.
The value of Finally, the whole value of the Atonement,
the atone-
ment. in its reconciling influence on the heart of man,
in its exhibition of the heart of God, depends
upon the actuality of the Incarnation. If He
who died on Calvary was a mere theophany,
like the angel of Jehovah who appeared to
Abraham, .then His death was merely a dra
matic spectacle. The body of Jesus was broken,
God suffers but God was not touched. But if the Father
truly spared not His own Son, but delivered
Him up for us all, then the Father also suf
fered by sympathy, making an invisible sacri
fice, an infinite surrender of love for our sakes.
1 De PressensS, Jesus-Christ (Paris, 1865), Book I., chap.
v., p. 254.

with and for
us

The Human Life of God 163
Then the Son also suffered, making a visible
sacrifice, and pouring out His soul unto death
to redeem us from the fear of death and the
power of sin. And this becomes real to our
faith and potent upon our souls only when we
see the human life of God, agonizing in the
garden, tortured in the judgment-hall, and ex
piring upon the cross. Then we can say
" Oh Love Divine ! that stooped to share
Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear."
Then we can look up to a God who is not im
passible, as the speculations of men have falsely
represented Him, but passible, and therefore
full of infinite capacities of pure sorrow and
saving sympathy.1 Then the dumb and sullen
resentment which rises in noble minds at the
.-, ,, /. TT . . -i'-i.-i • Doubts dis-
thought of a Universe in which there is so soiveinthe
much helpless pain and hopeless grief, created thought of
by an immovable Being who has never felt pathy_ V '
and can never feel either pain or grief, — that
sense of moral repulsion from the idea of an
unsuffering and unsympathetic Creator which
is, and always has been, the deepest, darkest
spring of doubt, fades away, and we behold a
God who became human in order that He
might bear, though innocent and undeserving,
all our pains and all our griefs.
1 See Appendix, note 40.

164 The Human Life of God
Thefinding Thus we stand before our doubting age, as
of the
human David stood before the disillusioned, downcast,
Christ. despondent Hebrew king, in Robert Browning's
splendid poem of " Saul." The word, sought in
vain among the glories of nature, among the
joys of human intercourse, the word of faith
and hope and love and life, comes to us, leaps
upon us, flashes through us.

' See the King — I would help him, but cannot, the
wishes fall through.
Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor
to enrich,
To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would — know
ing which,
I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through
me now !
Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst
Thou — so wilt Thou!
So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost
crown —
And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor
down *
One spot for the creature to stand in ! It is by no
breath,
Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue
with death !
As Thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be
proved
Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being be
loved I
He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall
stand the most weak.

The Human Life of God 165
'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for ! my flesh,
that 1 seek
In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it
shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like
to me,
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever; a Hand
like this hand
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee !
See the Christ stand I "

V

THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY IN
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

' But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time,
But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue,
But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love,
O perfect life in perfect labour writ,
O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, —
What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse,
What least defect or shadow of defect,
What rumour, tattled by an enemy,
Of inference loose, what lack of grace
Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's, —
Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee,
Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ?"
— Sidney Lanier, The Crystal.

V

THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY IN
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
Preach Christ, is the apostolic watchword The new
that rings to-day, with all the force and charm ment
of a new commandment, through the heart of
a Church, which has felt, more deeply than it
has yet confessed, the age-pervading chill of
a winter of doubt and discontent. The very
entrance of that mystic and reviving word has
already brought a glow of enthusiasm into the
Christian life, and caused new blossoms of hope
and love, manifold and beautiful activities of
help and healing, to appear in the earth. It
seems as if some fresh and secret tide of vital
ity were flowing through the veins of Christen
dom, and breaking everywhere towards the
light in deeds of charity and enterprises of
mercy. Hospitals, asylums, red cross societies,
rescue missions, salvation armies, spring into
existence as if by magic. Never has there
been a time when Christian men have tried to
169

170 The Source of Authority
The new (j0 so mucn for their fellow-men in the name
charity. and for the sake of Christ. Never has there
been a time when they have recognized so
clearly and fully that there was so much yet
to be done. It is an age of secular doubt, as
many other ages have been. But it is also an
age of Christian beneficence, as hardly any
other age has been. And this beneficence is
not self-satisfied and complacent. It is self-
reproachful, and, in its best expressions, nobly
discontented with all that has been accom
plished hitherto. It seeks, not always wisely,
but with splendid eagerness, for plans which
shall lead beyond the relief, to the prevention
of human suffering. It aims to bring about
not only the immediate mitigation, but also the
ultimate abolition, of war. It demands that
charity shall be translated into the terms of
national, as well as of individual life. It will
not be satisfied until in some real and palpable
sense the kingdom of this world is become the
kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.1
Christ is the Now this renewal, this splendid expansion of
Christian activities, evident by many signs to
all thoughtful observers, depends for its power
and permanence upon the setting forth of
Christ, vividly, personally, practically, as the
1 Rev. xi. 15.

fountain.

The Source of Authority 171
pattern of all virtue and the Prince of Peace
among men. The sense of absolute confidence
in Him as the perfect example of goodness, and
of thorough loyalty to Him as the Master of
noble life, is the hidden reservoir of moral
force. The organized charities of Christendom
are the distributing system. Not more instant
and more complete would be the water-famine
on Manhattan Island if the great dam among
the Croton hills were broken and all the lakes
and streams dried up, than the drought that
would fall upon the beneficence of the world if
there were a sudden break in the reservoir of
love and loyalty in Christian hearts to their
moral Master, or a stoppage of the myriad and
multiform feeders which keep it full by preach
ing Christ.
But in all this renewal and expansion of what The peril of
is well and proudly called practical Christianity, Christianity.
there is, if I mistake not, a danger, or at least
a serious possibility, of loss. The life of man
is not only practical, it is also intellectual. His
relations to his fellow-men are important, but
his relation to truth is no less important. He
cannot help acting ; neither can he help think
ing. When his thinking is divorced from his
acting, when he has one standard for truth and
a different standard for conduct, he is like a

172

The Source of Authority

What does
it mean
to preach
Christ?

house divided against itself. If the Christian
ity of to-day, by dwelling exclusively or too
much on the ethical side of the Gospel as a
beautiful and beneficent rule of conduct illus
trated by a perfect Example, tends to ignore the
intellectual necessities of man and fails to real
ize that it has a message to deliver in the realm
of truth as well as in the realm of righteous
ness, it will not and it cannot meet the deepest
wants of the present age. Indeed, it may even
aggravate those wants and make them more
painful. It may seem to give assent, by
silence, to the desperate assumption of scepti
cism that the unseen world is unknown and
unknowable, even to the most perfect of men.
It may foster the sad feeling that the reality of
religion is beyond our reach and that we must
content ourselves with the convenient dreams
of virtue. It may preach, in effect, a Christ
whose character and conduct are to be accepted
as infallible, but whose thoughts and convic
tions in regard to God and the soul and the
future life are mere fallacies and illusions.
Preach Christ, if it is to be a true watchword
for our ministry to the present age, must be
cleared and vivified and expanded in our con
sciousness. We must know what we mean by
it, and we must try to know what we ought to

The Source of Authority 173
mean. We must ask ourselves again and again
whether the thing that we do mean is always
quite, or even approximately, the thing that we
ought to mean when we use this precious and
powerful phrase. It was commonly employed,
say fifty years ago, to describe by way of dis
tinction a presentation of Jesus which dwelt
chiefly or entirely upon His death as the vicari
ous sacrifice for sin. It is frequently employed
now as if it meant little or nothing more than
the graphic description of Christ's life and
actions as the supreme type of virtue and love.
But surely to preach Christ exclusively in either
of these ways is to divide Him. It is not enough
to have a Christocentric theology. It is not
enough to have a Christocentric morality. We
must not only put Him at the centre; but we
must also draw the circumference so that it
shall embrace the whole of human life.
If Christ is the Lamb of God that taketh A gospel for
1 tt • i ii *^e whole
away the sin of the world,1 He is also the true cirde of
Light which lighteth every man that cometh human life.
into the world.2 If He is the fulfilment of all
dim prophecies of good, He is also the head and
source of a new unfolding of spiritual vision.
If He is the way and the life, He is also the
truth.3 If He is immortal love, regenerating
i St. John i. 29. 2 St. John i. 9. 3 St. John xiv. 6.

174

The Source of Authority

the affections, He is also immortal wisdom re
organizing the thoughts, and immortal power
strengthening the wills, of men. If His heart
is to be the norm of our feeling, His mind is
to be the norm of our thinking. If He is the
herald and founder of a new and celestial
dominion upon earth, He is also the source of
authority in the kingdom of heaven.

The king
dom of
heaven the
keynote of
Christ's
teaching.

The idea of the kingdom of heaven, as an act
ual reign of God over living men, in which all
ancient anticipations of good are accomplished
and a new state of virtue and blessedness is es
tablished on earth, was foremost and dominant
in the teaching of Jesus.1 It was the keynote
of His ministry. Everything that He said,
everything that He did, was in harmony with
this master, thought.
It is passing strange to see how often and
how utterly this keynote has been changed in
the variations which men have woven about the
1 The word " kingdom " is used in the Gospels more than
a hundred times to express the new condition of human life
which Christ came to announce and establish. In St.
Matthew's Gospel the favourite phrase is "the kingdom of
heaven." St. Mark and St. Luke use "the kingdom of
God."

The Source of Authority 175
original theme of Christianity ; and how far False inter-
,. , . .,ii i pretations.
we are, even yet, from hearing it clearly, and
sounding it with dominant fulness, in the
music of religion. At times the kingdom of
heaven has been identified with the visible
church as an outward embodiment of power in
the world. And surely this interpretation is
far enough away from the thought of Christ,
who taught expressly that the kingdom was
invisible and inward. At other times men have
removed their conception from the present to
the future, and looked for its realization in the
life of the redeemed after death, or in the second
coming of Christ to reign in millennial glory.
And surely this interpretation is equally remote
from Christ's teaching, at the very outset of His
ministry and all through its course, that the
kingdom of heaven was at hand, that it had
already come near to man, and was lying all
around them, close to them, pressing upon them
from every side so that many were already en
tering into it and dwelling within it.1
The unreality and incompleteness of these The idea
two opposite interpretations of the kingdom
produced their natural results. The idea fell
out of its true place in Christian thought. It
became obscure, subordinate, and was finally
1 See Appendix, note 41.

176 The Source of Authority
almost obliterated. No further illustration of
this statement is necessary than that which
may be obtained by consulting one of the most
popular aids to the study of the Bible : Talbot's
Analysis, revised by the Rev. Nathaniel West,
and again revised by the Rev. Dr. Roswell D.
Hitchcock, and set forth under the title of A
Complete Analysis of the Holy Bible; or, the
Whole Bible arranged in Subjects.1 In the in
dex to this work there is but one solitary
reference to the kingdom of God. When we
turn to look at it, we find eleven verses, under
the heading of " The Millennium ; the Growth of
the Kingdom of God." The kingdom of heaven
is dismissed with a general reference to the
Parables. To any one who is really familiar
with his New Testament, the insufficiency of
such a treatment of one of its controlling ideas
must appear evident and surprising.
The idea But it may be said that in very recent times
egvns to e ^here has been an intense revival of interest in
restored. this idea and an immense amount of good work
done in the study and explication of it. This
is true and it should be gratefully recognized.
Such books as those which Dr. James S. Cand
lish and Professor A. B. Bruce have written
1 Wilmore's New Analytical Reference Bible (New York,
1891).

The Source of Authority 177
upon " The Kingdom of God," are most valua
ble gifts to Christian literature.1 And yet I
will frankly confess that these books, and others
like them, seem to me rather to point the way
than to reach the goal. The fulness of the
conception of the kingdom of heaven is not
yet restored in current theology. Its regnancy
in all spheres of human life is not yet com
pletely rounded. There is still a great deal
of work to be done in this direction by the
Christian thinker and the Christian preacher.
The vision of the kingdom is obscured, the
proclamation of the kingdom is weakened, be
cause it is still presented too exclusively as
a kingdom of grace, and not with equal em
phasis as a kingdom of truth : it is set up too
partially as a standard for the character and
conduct of men, and not with equal clearness
as a standard for their thoughts and convic
tions. One reason of this one-sidedness, it seems to I( must be
. . ... . studied in
me, lies m the tact that we nave hitherto been anf0ur
looking almost entirely to the first three Gos- Gospels.
pels as the source of our knowledge of the true
1 The Kingdom of God, Biblically and Historically Con
sidered, James S. Candlish (Edinburgh, Clarks, 1884). The
Kingdom of God, or Christ's Teaching according to the
Synoptical Gospels, Alexander Balmain Bruce (New York,
Scribners, 1889).

178 The Source of Authority
meaning of the kingdom of heaven. But the
Fourth Gospel, if indeed it be, as the best
modern scholars say it is, "the most faithful
image and memorial of Jesus that any man
could produce," must be no less important, no
less significant in the light which it throws
upon this controlling idea of His mind. And
when we turn to study it with this aim in view,
we find at once that it gives us what we need.
It completes and rounds out the record of the
three other Gospels. It answers the ques
tions which they suggest. It keeps the prom
ises which they seem to make to our faith.
And it is only when Ave take the fourfold
narrative in its entirety that we begin to catch
sight of the satisfying and convincing fulness
of the idea of the kingdom of heaven.
The king- This idea underlies the whole Gospel accord-
dom in .
St. John. inS to St. John. It is no less fundamental, no
less necessary here than it is in the Synoptic
Gospels. It is presented in different forms,
because the type of the writer's mind and the
purpose of his book are different. But it is
the same idea. And this presentation of it is
essential to its completeness.
In the Synoptics we have the conditions of
entrance into the kingdom, a child-like spirit,1
i St. Matt, xviii. 3,

The Source of Authority 179
faith,1 repentance,2 and obedience.3 In St. John Compared
we have the spiritual birth by which alone synoptics.
those conditions are made possible.* In the
Synoptics we have the laws of the kingdom.5
In St. John we have the new life in which
alone those laws can be fulfilled.6 In the
Synoptics we have the parables and pictures
of the kingdom.7 In St. John we have the
inmost sense of those parables, spoken directly
to the soul, in words of which Christ Himself
says "they are spirit, and they are life."8 In
the Synoptics we have the new order of human
society in the imitation by the disciples of
Christ's obedience to the will of God.9 In St.
John we have the organizing principle of that
new order in Christ's revelation of Himself to
the disciples as the way, the truth, and the
life.10 In the Synoptics we have the supremacy
of Christ's example over men's hearts. In St.
John we have the supremacy of Christ's teach
ings over men's minds.
Of course, I do not mean to say that either
J St. Matt. ix. 22 ; St. Mark 7 St. Matt, xiii., xxi., xxv. ;
x. 52. St. Luke xiii., xvii., xix.,
2 St. Luke xiii. 3. etc.
» St. Matt. v. 20. 8 St. John vi. 63; viii. 12-51.
* St. John iii. 5. 9 St. Matt. xii. 50.
6 The Sermon on the Mount. 10 St. John xiv. 6.
6 St, John vi, 22-65.

180 The Source of Authority
Both views 0f these aspects of the kingdom is confined ex-
necessary. . ....
clusively to the source in which it is most fully
and clearly exhibited.1 But this is what I
mean. The Synoptics give us the first and
simplest description of the nature of the king
dom. St. John gives us the fullest and clear
est revelation of the mind of the King. We
cannot understand the former without the lat
ter. We cannot enter into the full meaning
of the initial proclamation of Jesus, when He
walked beside the Sea of Galilee crying " The
kingdom of heaven has come near," 2 unless we
go on with Him to the judgment-hall, and hear
Him give His final answer to Pilate : " Thou
sayest that I am a King ; to this end have I
been born, and to this end am I come into the
world, that I should bear witness unto the
truth ; every one that is of the truth heareth
my voice."3
When we stand at this point, when we ac
cept this declaration as the key to unlock and
open the inmost meaning of the manifestation
of the Father in the human life of the Son, we
1 See Bruce, The Kingdom of God, p. 185, on the personal
claim of Christ in the Synoptics. See R. F. Horton, The
Teaching of Jesus (New York, 1896) , pp. 219-233, on relation
between Synoptic doctrine of the kingdom and Johannine
doctrine of eternal life.
2 St. Matt. iv. 17. 3 St. John xviii. 37.

The Source of Authority 181
begin to apprehend the inexhaustible scope and The Mnff-
significance of our call to preach Christ to an as weU as 0f
age of doubt. It is a gospel not only for the grace.
affections, but also for the intellect. It takes
up His words as well as His works and makes :
them vital in the lives of men. It conceives
and proclaims the kingdom of heaven as some
thing more than " the reign of divine love ex
ercised by God in His grace over human hearts
believing in His love and constrained thereby
to yield Him grateful affection and devoted
service."1 It is also the reign of divine truth
exercised through a faithful witness over the
minds of men who submit to His guidance and
are led by Him into inward peace and unity of
thought.2 And the source of authority in this
kingdom of heaven, which is equally a realm of
truth and a realm of grace, is Jesus the' Christ,
whose doctrine, as well as His example, is ulti
mate and supreme. II
Let us observe in passing that we have pre- The King as
a tBctchcv
cisely the same basis to rest upon in our preach
ing of the doctrine of Jesus as in our preaching
of His character and life. If historical criticism
' Bruce, The Kingdom of God, p. 46.
2 See Appendix, note 42.

182 Tlie Source of Authority
gives us good reason to believe, as all candid
inquirers now admit, that the four Gospels con
tain a veritable picture of an actual personage
who once lived on earth, there is equally good
reason to believe that they have preserved for
us a trustworthy account of His teaching in its
substance and spirit. If we can justly claim
The doctrine that His character is so perfect and transcen-
ft ~f (~iJt i^i^t dent that no man of that age, however gifted or
learned, and least of all such men as the writers
of the New Testament, could possibly have in
vented it ; we can make the same claim, with
equal justice, for the body of doctrine which
is attributed to Christ. In its coherence, its
clarity, its sublimity, and its universality it
altogether surpasses the mental abilities and
the religious insight of the writers of the four
Gospels. Indeed, it is frankly confessed that
the disciples of Jesus were so far from being
able to invent His doctrine, that they actually
misunderstood and misinterpreted many of its
truths when they first heard them. It was
contrary to their prejudices and expectations.
They did not put it into His mouth. He re
vealed it to their minds. Their faith in it
rested upon His personal authority. And it
was only as they kept company with Him
and followed Him, receiving His word into

The Source of Authority 183
their souls and translating it into their lives,
that it became to them luminous and satisfy
ing and convincing.
We are entitled, or rather we are compelled, An objective
to regard the teaching of Jesus as an objective
fact just as much as His life and character.1
The record of it bears on its face the over
whelming evidence of verity. All the results
of literary criticism are squarely against the
supposition that such a doctrine as that which
is presented to us under His name in the four
Gospels, could ever have been pieced together
out of the thoughts and imaginations of widely
separated and divergent minds, and attributed
to an unknown and perhaps mythical Master.
It is not a mosaic ; it is a living unity. It is
not a creation of faith ; it is the creator of faith.
The hypothesis that four men agreed, or hap
pened, to gather together out of the Hebrew
prophets, and the heathen philosophers, and the
mysterious and inexplicable inner conscious
ness of the new-born Christian churches, cer
tain beautiful ideas in regard to God and the
soul and the future life, and ascribe them to
Jesus, utterly breaks down at the touch of real
ity. The central, unifying, formative quality
of the teaching of Christ is the one thing that
1 See Appendix, note 43.

184 The Source of Authority
is most evident in the record. It is empha
sized by all the phenomena of growth, of vital
development, of deepening power, which may
be traced from the sermon in the synagogue
at Nazareth to the discourse in the upper room
at Jerusalem. It shines out unmistakably
through all the living variety of impressions
which it made upon various minds, and
through all the consequent many-sidedness of
the report which is given of it. Not more
certainly did the character of Christ inspire
and unite the lives of His followers than
His doctrine illuminated and controlled their
beliefs. The only view which meets the facts
• is that Jesus really lived, and really taught,
thus and so, as He is presented to us in the
Gospels.
The form of This brings us at once to the most important
" ''""" feature in the record of His teaching. It is not
given to us in the form of an abstract system,
a treatise on theology, or a summary of doc
trine, written down by the hand of Jesus. He
Himself made no record of His words. Only
once do we see Him writing, — in the beautiful
episode which a later tradition has added to the
eighth chapter of St. John's Gospel. Histori
cal or not, the incident is profoundly sugges
tive. For Jesus wrote not with a pen upon

The Source of Authority 185
enduring parchment, nor with a stylus upon
imperishable brass : " He stooped
And wrote upon the unrecording ground." 1
He would not leave even a single line of manu
script where His followers could preserve it
with literal reverence and worship it as a
sacred relic. He chose to inscribe His teach
ing upon no other leaves than those which are '
folded within the human soul. He chose to
trust His words to the faithful keeping of
memory and love ; and He said of them, with
sublime confidence, that they should never pass
away.2 He chose that the truth which He
declared and the life which He lived should
never be divided, but that they should go down
together through the ages.3
And this is precisely what has come to pass, inseparable
The Church in past ages has often been inclined from ths
-1- ° character.
to abstract the doctrines of Christianity concern
ing the person and work of Christ from their
union with His human life, and to condense
them into a purely formal system of dogma for
the intellect. The Church in the present age
shows at least a tendency to separate the image
1 Katrina Trask, "A Night and Morning in Jerusalem"
(Haiper's Magazine, April, 1896).
2 St. Mark xiii. 31. 2 See Appendix, note 44.

186 The Source of Authority
of Jesus from the truths which He taught, and
hold Him up to men merely as an ideal of holi
ness and goodness. But the one barrier that
stands firm against both these false tendencies
is the marvellous narrative of the Gospels, in
which the life and the doctrine of Christ are
woven together, one and inseparable, now and
forever.
Words and How can we understand His grace, unless we
each other, accept His truth ? How can we appreciate His
truth, unless we receive His grace ? At every
step, His action is interpreted and explained by
His words.1 He trusts in Providence, and He
commands His disciples to trust, not merely be
cause submissive confidence is a beautiful and
happy thing, but because He knows and declares
that God is really a Father, worthy to be trusted.2
He prays, secretly and openly; secretly because
He is sure that God hears Him always, and
openly because He would fain give this as
surance to others.3 He seeks the sinful and
the lost, not merely because such a ministry is
lovely and gracious, but because He knows and
declares that it is the will of God, and that
there is more joy in heaven over one sinner
that repenteth than over ninety-and-nine just
1 See Appendix, note 45.
2 St. Matt. vi. 25-30. 8 St. John xi. 41, 42.

The Source of Authority 187
men that need no repentance.1 He cares for
the bodies of men and He relieves their wants,
but He cares infinitely more for their souls and
He teaches them to care more, because He
knows and declares that the soul is immortal
and more precious than all that this world can
give.2 He moves willingly and obediently to
the cross, not because it is inevitable, not be
cause resignation is the crown of virtue, but
because He knows and declares that this is the
sacrifice appointed for Him as the Christ, the
laying down of His life as a ransom for many,
the lifting up by which He is to draw all men
unto Himself.3 He goes down into death with
unshaken courage, not because it is a fine thing
to be brave, but because He knows and declares
that He is returning to the Father and that He
will bring those who love Him to be with Him
where He is forever.4
Now these are declarations of great truths. The doctrine
If we deny them, if we make them uncertain, DaSiSOfjjiS
the life which was built upon them has no conduct.
meaning, no substance, no power in it. It be
comes a splendid illusion, a heroic mistake.
1 St. Luke xv. 7.
2 St. John vi. 27; St. Mark viii. 36, 37.
8 St. Mark ix 12 ; St. Matt. xx. 28 ; St. John xii. 32.
* St. John xiv. 1-3.

188 The Source of Authority
But if we accept them, then, and only then,
that life becomes the rock of our confidence,
the substance of things hoped for and the evi
dence of things not seen.1 For it was on the
knowledge of these things that Jesus actually
founded His own character and His conduct.
It was by believing thus and so, and by living
up to His belief, that He was made perfect.
And it was by teaching His disciples to believe
thus and .so that He would bind them to follow
His example and inspire them to share His life.
" Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and
doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man
which built his house upon a rock."2 "Now
ye are clean through the word which I have
spoken unto you." "If ye abide in me, and
my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye
will and it shall be done unto you."3
1 " Nicht das Leben Jesu an sich in seinem geschichtlichen
Verlaufe, sondern die Auffassung der religiosen Bedeutung
desselben, auf welche die alteste N. T. liche Verkundigung
ruht, bildet den Ausgangspunkt fur die biblische Theologie.
Diese Auffassung war aber zunachst bedingt durch die Lehre
Jesu, sofern dieselbe die authentische Erlauterung iiber die
Bedeutung seiner Person und seiner Erscheinung gab, und
daher muss eine Darstellung dieser Lehre den grundlegenden
Abschnitt der biblischen Theologie bilden." — Bernhakd
Weiss, Lehrbuch der Biblischen Theologie des Neuen Testa
ments (2te Auflage, Berlin, 1873), p. 31.
2 St. Matt. vii. 24. 8 St. John xv. 3, 7.

The Source of Authority 189
hi
The importance which Christ ascribed to The
His words as the authoritative revelation of ai?„?" v„
of Christ s
unseen verities to the confused and darkened teaching.
minds of men, cannot be denied or overlooked
by any one who reads the Gospels candidly and
intelligently. It is true, indeed, that He ex
pressly disclaimed the idea that His doctrine
was created, or invented, or even discovered by
Himself. He said, "My doctrine is not mine
but His that sent me,"1 "All things that I
have heard of my Father I have made known
unto you."2 But it is equally true that He
claimed an absolute infallibility for the mes
sage which was revealed in Him, committed
unto Him, and delivered by Him. This claim
is made with equal force in the Synoptics and
in St. John. " No one knoweth who the Son
is, save the Father; and who the Father is,
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son
willeth to reveal Him."3 " We speak that we
do know, and bear witness of that we have
seen."4 This is not the language that an
honest and conscientious teacher would use to
describe his religious opinions or his spiritual
i St. John vii. 16. 8 St. Luke x. 22.
2 St. John xv. 15. * St. John iii. 11.

190 The Source of Authority
hopes. The wisest and the best of men have
always hesitated to assume this tone of cer
tainty in regard to their deepest reflections
upon the mysteries of being. But from first
to last this tone marks the teaching of Jesus.
" They were astonished at His teaching ; for
He taught them as having authority, and not
as the scribes."1
11 is It is evident that He intended to speak thus.
For nothing is more striking in the manner of
His teaching than the absence of all reliance
upon corroborative testimony or traditional
support.2 He did not seek to defend His posi
tions with a formidable array of great names.
He did not make a long catena of quotations
from learned sources. He gave out His doc
trine from the depth of His own consciousness
as a flower breathes perfume, fresh, pure, origi
nal, and convincing. He certainly felt a Divine
inspiration in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures.
The law and the prophets conveyed to Him the
i St. Mark i. 22.
2 " Avec une certitude sereine, qui ne semble pas terrestre,
il disait ces choses. II chantait, comme aucun prophete
n'avait su le faire, le chant des revoirs eternels qui a berce'
pendant des siecles les souffrances et les agonies. Et ce
chant-la, voici que de nos jours, au triste d^clin des temps,
les homines se ineurent de ne plus l'entendre." — Pierre
Loti, La Galilee (Paris, 1896), p. 94,

The Source of Authority 191
word of God. He used them on certain occa
sions to repel the assaults of evil, as in the temp
tation in the wilderness. He used them on other
occasions to convince and convict the Scribes
and Pharisees out of their own Scriptures.
But He never rested upon them as the sole and
sufficient basis of His doctrine. He was not a
commentator on truths already revealed. He Anew
was a revealer of new truth. His teaching was
not the exposition ; it was the text. And this
higher revelation not only fulfilled, but also
surpassed, the old ; replacing the temporal by
the eternal,' the figurative by the factual, the
literal by the spiritual, the imperfect by the
perfect. How often Jesus quoted from the Old
Testament in order to show that it was al
ready old and insufficient ; that its forms of
speech and rules of conduct were like the husk
of the seed which must be shattered by the
emergence of the living germ. His doctrine
was in fact a moral and intellectual day
break for the world. He did far more than
supply a novel system of conduction for an
ancient light. He sent forth from Himself a
new illumination, transcending all that had
gone before, as the sunrise overfloods the pale
glimmering of the morning star set like a
beacon of promise upon the coast of dawn.

192 The Source of Authority
it is self- jje (jj(j not reiy Up0n reasoning for the proof
evidencing. of His doctrine. He put no trust in the com
pulsion of logic, in the keenness of dialectics.
We look in vain among His words for an
exhibition of the "evidences of Christianity."
He did not endeavour to demonstrate the ex
istence of God or the immortality of the soul.
What He said was meant to be its own evi
dence. His method was not apologetic ; it
was declaratory.
" He argued not, but preached, and conscience did the rest."
The result of this is marvellous ahd magnifi
cent. His teaching is cleared and disentangled
from all that is temporary and transient in
human thought. If He had reasoned with
men, it must have been done upon the prem
isses and in the forms of philosophy current
in that age. Otherwise He could not have
reached their intelligence, His reasoning would
have been of none effect. But because He
passed by all these processes and left them on
one side while His doctrine moved simply, di
rectly, and majestically to the heart of the truth,
it comes to us to-day free and unencumbered
by any of those theories of physical science, of
psychology, of political economy, which the
growth of knowledge has changed, discredited,

The Source of Authority 193
or discarded. His teaching is neither ancient Disuni-
nor modern, neither deductive nor inductive,
neither Jewish nor Greek. It is universal,
enduring, valid for all minds and for all times.
There are no more difficulties in the way of
accepting it now than there were when it was
first delivered. It fits the spiritual needs of
the nineteenth, as closely as it fitted the
spiritual needs of the first, century. It car
ries the same attractions, the same credentials
in the Western Hemisphere as it carried in
the Eastern. It stands out as clearly from all
the later, as it did from all the earlier, philoso
phies. It finds the soul as inevitably to-day
as it did at first. And the men of this age
who hear Christ can only say, as His disciples
said long ago, " Lord, to whom shall we go ?
Thou hast the words of eternal life."1
And yet how few are those words, compared It is small
with the utterances of other teachers. How .
small in compass is the doctrine of Jesus as it
has come down to us. Eighty pages of a duo
decimo book will hold all of His recorded dis
courses and the story of His life. Other words
He must have spoken while He was on earth,
but I doubt not that they moved within the
same circle. For even in the present record
1 St. John vi. 68.

194

The Source of Authority

Itsfontalquality.

An unfail
ing source.

we find the same truths recurring again and
again, expressed in different language, arranged
in different sequence, as the evangelists re
trace, each from his own point of view, the
memory of the things which Jesus taught to
the multitudes and to His disciples. The lit
erature of the world holds no other doctrine
so limited in bulk, so limitless in meaning.
The teaching of Christ differs from that of
all other masters in its fontal quality. It is
comprised in a little space, but it has an infi
nite fulness. Its utterance is closely bounded,
but its significance is inexhaustible. The
sacred books of other religions, the commen
taries and expositions on the Christian religion,
spread before us a vast and intricate expanse,
like lakes of truth mixed with error, stretch
ing away into the distance, arm after arm,
bay after bay, until we despair of being able
even to explore their coasts and trace their
windings. When we come back to Christ, we
find, not an inland sea of doctrine, but a clear
fountain of living water, springing up into
everlasting life.
Calm, pure, unfathomable, it is never clouded
and it never fails. The inspiration of other
teachers rises and falls like an intermittent '
spring. To-day it is brimming full ; to-mor-

The Source of Authority 195
row it is empty and dry. But the truth that
flows from Jesus is constant and unvarying.
The Spirit always rests upon Him. The
Father is always with Him. Out of the deep
serenity of His soul, as from some secret vale
of peace high among the eternal hills, the vital
spring of truth wells up forever, and forever
the crystal stream runs down to refresh and
revive the souls of men.
New meanings come out of the teaching of Always
Jesus in every land and in every age. New renewe '
stars are mirrored in its depths. New flowers
blossom on its banks. New fields of love are
fertilized by its waters. It is not that each
succeeding century and race adds something of
its own to the doctrine of Christ. It is that
each finds in that source something which was
meant to become its own, and so to satisfy its
deepest needs. The old questions are repeated
in new words, and the new answer comes in the
old words.1 The truth as it is in Jesus does
not have to be changed and adapted to fit it for
a world-wide missionary enterprise. It needs
only to be purified from the things that men
1 " Socrates asked questions which his disciples tried to
answer ; Jesus provoked His disciples to ask questions which
He answered." — James Stalker, Imago Christi (New York,
Armstrongs, 1889), p. 270.

196 The Source of Authority
have mingled with it, restored to the simplicity
that is in Christ, and it proves itself as fresh, as
satisfying, as life-bestowing to the thirsty soul
in America or in the islands of the sea, as it did
in Galilee or on the hillsides of Judea.
The sim- When we ask ourselves why it is that the
\s?n Christ, doctrine of the Master has this enduring, self-
renewing, fontal character, I think we must
find the answer in the fact that it simply bears
witness, with a directness and inevitableness
altogether unparalleled, to the actual existence
of a spiritual world corresponding to the spirit
ual faculties and aspirations of men. It does
not turn aside to discuss metaphysical problems
or theological subtleties. The distinction be
tween the natural and the supernatural does not
even appear in the teaching of Jesus. There
may, or there may not, be such a distinction.
If there is, He at least does not think it impor
tant enough to speak of it. The one thing of
which He wishes to make men sure is that the
same God who sends His sunshine and His rain
upon the evil and upon the good, the same God
whose bounty feeds the birds of the air and
clothes the lilies of the field with beauty, hears
in secret the prayers of the penitent and believ
ing and rewards them openly. The question
of the how and the where of the life after death

The Source of Authority 197
is not even touched in the teaching of Jesus.
It matters little. The one thing that He de
clares with unfaltering certainty is the reality
of that life. The one thing that He presses
home upon the minds of men with calm inten
sity is the danger of losing it through sin and
unbelief. The one thing that He tenderly and
urgently pleads with them to do, is to make
sure of its immortal blessedness through faith
and love and obedience to Him. And so, at
every point, He passes by the non-essential to
touch the essential, He disregards the passing
curiosity to satisfy the real anxiety, He neglects
the shadows to reveal the substance of the
unseen world.
Teaching like this is the only kind of teach- Words of
ing that will always renew itself, always have
something more to bestow upon us. It cannot
grow obsolete. It cannot be drained of its sig
nificance. It is like life. Nay, it is life, and it
gives life. IV
Let us understand, then, that if our Christi- Loyalty to
anity is to satisfy our whole nature, if it is to teaching,
have its real and full meaning, and power to
bring in the kingdom of heaven, it must in
clude this element. We must be as loyal to

198 The Source of Authority
the teaching of Jesus as we are to His example.
We must count no pains too great to spend
upon the study of that teaching as it lies in
the records, and no effort too severe to make
in order that it may be restored in its integ
rity and entirety, rounded and harmonized,
within the very centre of our minds. And
then we must preach it, simply, sincerely, cer
tainly, as the only doctrine which can lead
men out of the intellectual anarchy of doubt *
into the peaceful realm of truth.
The age This is what the age is looking and longing
authority. f°r- I* can nn(l no joy ln the kingdom of
heaven unless it finds there a source of author
ity for the mind as well as for the heart. Au
thority is what the sociologist demands, in order
that he may have a sure basis for the precepts
of altruism. Authority is what the philosopher
seeks, in order that he may have a fixed point
of departure and certain limits of speculation.
Authority is what the poet craves, as he clings
to " The truths that never can be proved,
Until we close with all we loved
And all we flow from, soul in soul." 1
Men are crying lo here ! and lo there ! We
must find the source of authority in an in-
1 Tennyson, In Memoriam.

The Source of Authority 199
errant Book, or in an enlightened reason, or
in an infallible Church, or perhaps in all three ;
as if there could be three sources of one author
ity, or as if a channel could ever be rightly
called a source. Let us not hesitate to pass
through this confusion of tongues and of ideas,
serene and untroubled, with the message of a
more excellent way.
Christ is the Light of all Scripture. Christ Christ is the
is the Master of holy reason. Christ is the authority.
sole Lord and Life of the true Church. By
His word we test all doctrines, conclusions,
and commands. On His word we build all
faith. This is the source of authority in the
kingdom of heaven. Let us neither forget
nor hesitate to appeal to it always with un-
trembling certainty and positive conviction.
If Christ did not know and preach the truth,
then there is no truth that can be known or
preached. Unless we are sure of this, we
would better go out of business entirely. It
is inconceivable that the loftiest character in
history should be the most mistaken man that
ever thought about the real basis and meaning
of life. It is incredible that the noblest life
in the world should be founded upon a faith
that was vain. It is impossible that a supreme
devotion and a real likeness to Christ should

200 The Source of Authority
have been produced and perpetuated in the
world without a veritable apprehension of that
which He knew and taught concerning God
and man.
Our great To have this apprehension clearly formed
tCtsJc to ZfiQ7*?l
His creed. within us must be our ardent and joyful intel
lectual endeavour. We are not to rest content
with the study of single words and separate
phrases. The limitations of language, the con
ditions of transmission, will always expose us
to error if we follow that course. The truth
as it is in Jesus does not lie in fragments, but in
the rounded whole.1 We must get back to
the unity and integrity of the thoughts of
Jesus, the creed of Christ. The broad outline
of His vision of things human and divine, the
central verities which appear firm and un
changeable in all the reports of His teaching,
the point of view from which He discerned
and interpreted the mystery of life, — that is
what we must seek. And when we find it,
we must take our stand there as men who feel
the solid ground beneath their feet. Illustra
tions and confirmations we may gather from
science and history and philosophy. But the
rock of certainty is the mind of Jesus, ex
pressed in His living words and in His speak -
1 See Appendix, note 45.

The Source of Authority 201
ing life. Beyond this we need not and we
cannot go. Here is the ultimatum. This is
the truth, we say to men, because Jesus knew
it, and said it, and lived it.
But one thing we may not, we dare not, for- We must
get. The condition of apprehending, and how ^ ^mw 'His
much more of preaching, the truth revealed by doctrine.
Christ is that we abide in Him. The word of
Jesus in the mind of one who does not do the
will of Jesus, lies like seed-corn in a mummy's
hand. It is only by dwelling with Him and
receiving His character, His personality so
profoundly, so vitally that it shall be with us
as if, in His own words, we had partaken of
His flesh and His blood, as if His sacred
humanity had been interwoven with the very
fibres of our heart and pulsed with secret power
in all our veins, — it is thus only that we can
be enabled to see His teaching as it is, and set
it forth with luminous conviction to the souls
of men.
And if ever we ourselves become afraid of Return to
Jesus.
our own task, and shrink from it ; if the scep
ticism of our age appalls us and chills us to the
very marrow ; if we question whether a gospel
so simple, so absolute, as that which is com
mitted to us can find acceptance in such a
world, at such a time as this, — be sure it is

202 The Source of Authority
because we have gotten out of fellowship with
Him who is our Peace and our Hope, our Light
and our Strength. A Christless man can never
preach Christ. We have been anxious and
troubled about many things, and have forgot
ten the one thing needful. Peace we must have
before we can have power. Let us straight
way return, in prayer, in meditation, in trust,
in faithful simple-hearted obedience, to Him
who is the only centre of Peace because He is
the only source of authority.
" I have a life in Christ to live,
But ere I live it must I wait
Till learning can clear answer give
Of this and that book's date ?
I have a life in Christ to live,
I have a death in Christ to die ; —
And must I wait till science give
All doubts a full reply?
Nay, rather, while the sea of doubt
Is raging wildly round about,
Questioning of life and death and sin,
Let me but creep within
Thy fold, O Christ, and at Thy feet
Take but the lowest seat,
And hear Thine awful voice repeat
In gentlest accents, heavenly sweet,
Come unto Me and rest ;
Believe Me, and be blest." 1
1 John Campbell Shairp.

VI
LIBERTY

" But, perfect in every part,
Has the potter's moulded shape
Leap of man's quickened heart,
Throe of his thought's escape,
Stings of his soul which dart
" Through the barrier of flesh, till keen
She climbs from the calm and clear
Through turbidity all between
From the known to the unknown here,
Heaven's ' Shall be,' from Earth's ' Has been '?
" Then life is — to wake and not sleep,
Rise and not rest, but press
From earth's level where blindly creep
Things perfected, more or less,
To the heaven's height, far and steep,
" Where, amid what strifes and storms
May wait the adventurous quest,
Power is Love — transports, transforms
Who aspired from worst to best,
Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms.' "
— Robert Browning, Reverie.

VI
LIBERTY
Thebe are three points at which the teach- Three great

ing of Jesus comes into closest contact with the
needs of the present age. Three problems of
profound difficulty are pressing to-day upon all
thoughtful men: the psychological problem of
the freedom of the will; the theological prob
lem of the actual relation of God to the uni
verse ; and the moral problem of man's duty
to his fellow-men in a world of inequality.
Out of the depths of these problems dark and
multitudinous doubts are forever rising, like
the clouds of smoke and steam which issue from
the labouring bosom of Vesuvius, while sub
terranean thunder is muttering and rolling
underneath. Most of the intellectual perplex
ities and practical perils of our times come
directly from these questions, to which modern
scepticism gives an answer of despair, or at
best only a dubious and uncertain reply.
But the gospel of Christ, rightly appre
hended and interpreted, offers us a solution
205

problems.

206

Liberty

erty, sover
eignty, and
service.

Three great 0f these problems which is full of light and
hope and moral certainty. There is a breath
of the Spirit in His teaching, pure and strong,
pouring like a clean wind out of heaven, to
scoff away the obscuring vapours, and reveal the
changeless verities and glories of the spiritual
landscape. Three truths emerge in His doc
trine, and stand out clear and sharp as moun
tain peaks against the blue : the truth of
human liberty, the truth of Divine sovereignty,
and the truth of universal service. Of these
three truths we must never lose sight, if our
thinking is to be in accordance with the mind,
of Jesus. To these three truths we must bear
witness, unhesitatingly, faithfully, and joy
fully, if our preaching is to be a gospel for
this age of doubt.

Modern far
talism.

No one who has looked steadily upon the
face of modern life as it is reflected in popular
literature can doubt that it is " sicklied o'er "
with the dark shadow of fatalism. It is evident
in the writings of the learned and in the scrib-
blings of the ignorant. Everywhere there is a
tendency to explain the whole life of man as
the product of heredity and environment. The
student of physiology, tracing the strange and

Liberty 207
subtle correspondence between the processes of
consciousness and the changes and movements
of the nervous system, makes the enormous
assumption that the correspondence amounts to
identity. All the hopes and fears, all the affec
tions and aspirations, which glorify this mortal
life, are in their last analysis the result of cer
tain puckerings and tintinnabulations of the
gray matter of the nerves. The actions which
flow from them are as necessary as the fall of
an apple when the stem is broken. The caress
which a mother gives to her child, and the blow
with which a murderer strikes his victim dead,
are equally automatic and inevitable. They are
the motions of delicately constructed puppets,
and the triumph of modern investigation is the
discovery of the string which moves them and
the forces which pull it.
It is true that many of tho teachers who steer Materialism
-, -i , j ,, • -] disavowed
us, more or less openly, towards this conclu- 0uttaught
sion are careful to disavow the idea that they
are teaching materialism. The name is highly
unpopular at the present moment, and there
is hardly one of the men of science of to-day
who has not protested with indignation that
no one should dare to call him a materialist.
They have devised subtle theories of some
thing called "mind-stuff" which they hold,

208 Liberty
with W. K. Clifford, " is the reality which we
perceive as matter." They distinguish, with
Huxley, between matter and force, and a third
thing which they call consciousness and which
they admit cannot conceivably be a modifi
cation of either of the first two things ; but
they go on to say that "what we call the
operations of the mind are functions of the
brain, and the materials of consciousness are
products of cerebral activity. " 1 In short, they
give a materialistic explanation of the origin
and processes of thought, and then protect
themselves against the imputation of being
materialists, by solemnly averring that they
have not the slightest idea of what matter
really is, nor the slightest intention of sug
gesting that it has any resemblance to the
so-called mental operations which are prob
ably produced by one of its own forms of
activity.
Responsibii- A scheme like this certainly has no room for
ouU free-will or personal responsibility. It makes
a man's character and action entirely depen
dent upon the amount and quality of nervous
energy that has been transmitted to him by his
ancestors and developed by the circumstances
of his life. He lives, as Professor Tyndall
1 T. H. Huxley, in The Fortnightly Review, vol. xi., 793.

Liberty 209
says, in a realm of " physical and moral neces
sity," — though why he should be at pains to
say " moral," I can hardly conceive. One ad
jective would serve as well as two, when they
both mean the same thing. It requires but
a little exercise of this nervous energy on our
part, in the form of imagination, to trace it back
to its previous form of heat stored up in cer
tain hundredweights of food and appropriated
by digestion. From this point our cerebral
activity skips lightly and altogether without
volition along the various lines of animal and
vegetable life, of chemical and physical trans
formations of energy, until we arrive at the
idea of the sun. From this idea a certain un
controllable change in the gray substance of
our brain produces the further notion that
the arrangement of certain quantities of mat
ter and force which took place in some in
explicable way long before the birth of the
solar system was really the thing that settled
the question whether you and I should prefer
telling the truth to lying, — if we do. Indeed,
there never has been any question at all about
it; it was fixed from the beginning. We have
no more responsibility for it than we have for
the colour of our eyes or the shape of our
noses.

210

Liberty

" Thoughts
of an Au
tomaton."

I have found a brief and explicit statement
of the position to which this method of think
ing forces 'those who follow it, in an article
ironically entitled " Thoughts of a Human Au
tomaton" in a recent English periodical.1
" I am an automaton — a puppet dangling on
my distinctive wire, which Fate holds with an
unrelaxing grip. I am not different, nor do I
feel differently, from my fellow-men, but my
eyes refuse to blink away the truth, which is,
that I am an automatic machine, a piece of
clockwork wound up to go for an allotted time,
smoothly or otherwise, as the efficiency of the
machinery may determine. Free-will is a myth
invented by man to satisfy his emotions, not
his reason. I feel as if I were free, as if I were
responsible for my thoughts and actions, just
as a person under the influence of hypnotism
believes he is free .to do as he pleases. But he
is not ; nor^am I. If it were once possible for
a rational being to question this fact, the dis
coveries of Darwin must have set his doubts at
rest. . . .
" What is crime ? A crime is an action
threatened by the law with punishment, says
Kant; and freedom of action or free-will

x'Henry Beauchamp, in The Fortnightly Review, English
edition, March, 1892,

Liberty 211
is a legally necessary condition of crime. But
the law of heredity conclusively demonstrates
that free-will and freedom of action stand in
the category of lively imaginings. Therefore
crime, as the law understands it, is non-existent,
since no imputability can be recognized when a
man is not responsible for his actions. There
fore the law is not justified in inflicting pun
ishment. . . .
" Briefly to conclude. Religion can no more
mix with science than oil with water. Science
acknowledges no necessity for the existence of
religion, and finally severs the bonds between
morality and religion. Morality, altogether
independent of religion, is entirely based upon
self-interest. The supposed connection between
religion and morality is an illusion most per
nicious to the general welfare and advance
of mankind. Religion, as a superfluity, should
be excluded from all educational institutions.
Its place will be supplied by the creed of scien
tific philosophy — Determinism. The primary
principle of Determinism, namely, that a human
being is an automaton, and therefore not respon
sible for his thoughts or his acts, taken together
with its corollaries, more than suffices for every
intellectual need hitherto provided for by re
ligion. For the two great factors in the value

212 Liberty
of religion are its ethics and its sedative prop
erties, and in both these uses Determinism
displays overwhelming intellectual superiority.
Its ethics are more universal and its consolation
more assured ; for they both rest on irrefraga
ble scientific truth. The Determinist is con
sequently never harassed by doubts — the Rock
of Ages is fragile compared with the adaman
tine foundation of his creed."
The creed of This curious claim of an automaton to have
necessity. .
a " creed would be deliciously humorous, it
it were not so unutterably sad, and so detest
ably dangerous. For though, as a matter of
fact, there are few men who will make, even
under an assumed name, such a candid con
fession of faith in their own moral non-entity
as that which we have just read, there are many
men who are, consciously or unconsciously,
preaching the same black creed of Necessity
in the subtle forms of literary art, and multi
tudes who are silently accepting it as gospel
truth. Fatalism broods over modern fiction
and the modern drama like a huge, shapeless
spectre; and its influence is felt in all the
judgments and conceptions and unspoken but
clearly revealed sentiments of a society which
finds its chief intellectual pabulum in novels
and plays.

Liberty 213

Here is the famous French realist, Zola, of "The
Human Beast."

whose books it is said that enough have been
sold to build a pile as high as the Eiffel tower.
He writes a novel called La Bete Humaine, in
which he shows how unswervingly the lines of
evil run through the plan of life. He describes
seven inevitable murders, occurring within eigh
teen months in close connection with a certain
fated house, and closes his book with the descrip
tion of a railway train, crowded with soldiers,
dragged by an engine whose driver has been
killed, dashing at headlong speed into the mid
night. The train is the world ; we are the
freight ; fate is the track ; death is the dark
ness ; God is the engineer, — who is dead.1
Here is the leader of the Dutch Sensitivists, "Footsteps
Louis Couperus, who writes a romance called
Noodlot, " Destiny" in which four human lives
are tangled together in an inextricable and hor
rible coil. One of his characters pauses for an
instant in the shameful career to which he is
impelled. " He threw himself back in his chair,
still feebly wringing his hands, and the tears
trickled again and again down his cheeks. He
saw his own cowardice take shape before him.
He stared into its frightened eyes, and he did
not condemn it. For he was as fate had made
1 See Appendix, note 46.

214

Liberty

'Ghosts.'

The small
fatalists.

him. He was a craven, and he could not help
it. Men called such an one as he a coward ; it
was but a word. Why coward, or simple and
brave, or good and noble ? It was all a matter
of convention, of accepted meaning ; the whole
world was mere convention, a concept, an illu
sion of the brain. There was nothing real at
all — nothing ! "1
Here is the Norse dramatist, Ibsen, — the
new Shakespeare by the grace of heredity. He
writes a drama of life which he calls Ghosts,
and shows how every player is haunted by dead
ancestors who look through his eyes, speak in
his words, and act in his deeds. Echoes of
spent passion, shreds and patches of worn-out
sin, rags and tatters of the past, — that is the
stuff of which life is fabricated, like a piece of
shoddy cloth, in the great mill of circumstance
which stands on the banks of the river of time
and turns out the shabby lives of men and
women.2 Nor is this view of life confined to the great
foreign masters of realism. It pervades almost
all the minor schools of fiction ; it diffuses it
self insensibly through the work of the feeble
and fatuous imitators. A keen and wholesome

1 Louis Couperus, The Footsteps of Fate (New York,
Appletons), p. 65. 2 See Appendix, note 47.

Liberty 215
critic of our own literature, Mr. Charles Dudley
Warner, put his finger upon the fact when he
wrote : " It has come about that the novels and
stories which are to fill our leisure hours and
cheer us in this vale of tears have become what
we call tragic. It is not easy to define what
tragedy is, but the term is applied in modern
fiction to scenes and characters that come to
ruin from no particular fault of their own, — -
not even when the characters break most of the
ten commandments, — but by an unappeasable
fate that dogs and thwarts them. This is the
romance of fatality, and if it is tragedy, it is
the tragedy of fatalism." 1
It is not possible that such a theory of ex
istence should prevail without bringing sadness Melancholy
and heaviness into the hearts of men. The
modern melancholy of which we spoke in the
first lecture is largely the result of this gen
eral sense of a godless predestination. It is
Calvinism with the bottom knocked out. It
robs life of all interest, of all joy, of all en
thusiasm. Was it morphine that drove Guy de
Maupassant, the most brilliant of the younger
French novelists, to insanity? Or was it his
philosophy that drove him to morphine as a
refuge from the despair and ugliness of exist-
1 See Appendix, note 48.

marionettes

216 Liberty
ence ? Pessimism exudes from fatalism like
sepia from the cuttlefish.1 What could be
more dispiriting than to doubt the reality of
all effort, to deny the possibility of self-con
quest and triumph over circumstances, to find
heroism an illusion and virtue a dream? What
could break the spring of life more completely
than to feel that our feet are tangled in a net
whose meshes were woven for us by our ances
tors, and for them by tailless apes, and for them
by gilled amphibians, and for them by gliding
worms, and for them by ciliated larvae, and for
them by amoebse, and for them by God does
not know what ? 2 It does not help the case
in the least to do as some theologians have
tried to do and bring back into the theory by
the aid of certain misconstrued and very
much overworked passages of Scripture, the
idea of a supreme Deity who has constructed
the loom and devised the pattern of the net
and decreed the weaving of every loop. The
chain of Fate is not made less heavy by fasten
ing the end of it to the distant throne of an
omnipotent and impassive Creator. If our
false sense of freedom comes from such a Be
ing, who is Himself free, it is all the more a
cruel and bitter enigma. If moral responsi-
1 See Appendix, note 49. 2 See Appendix, note 50.

Liberty 217
bility has been imposed upon us by the same
hand which has bound us to an inalterable
destiny, it is all the more a crushing and mis
erable fraud. To baptize fatalism with a Baptized
Christian name does not change its nature.
To hold fast to the metaphysical conception of
God while accepting Heredity and Environment
as His only and infallible prophets is simply to
add a new ethical horror to the dismal delusion
of life, and to revolt to the pessimism of Omar
Khayyam. " We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes, that come and go
Round with this Sun-illumined Lantern, held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show ;
" Impotent Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Checker-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
" The Moving Finger writes ; and, having writ,
Moves on ; nor all your Piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it.
" And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,
Lift not your hands to It for help — for it
As impotently rolls as you or I."1
1 Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Rendered into English
verse by Edward Fitzgerald, with an accompaniment of draw
ings by Elihu Vedder (Boston, 1884), stanzas 72, 73, 75, 70.

218 Liberty

n
Is determin- ^ This is the solution which modern positivism,
christened or unchristened, offers for the prob
lem of the freedom of the will. Before we
turn to consider the very different answer
which Christ gives to the same question, let
us stay for a moment to ask whether this
current and popular solution is of the nature
of a demonstration, or of the nature of a doubt.
Is it so clearly proven that science forces us
to accept determinism ? Or is it an unveri-
fiable assumption, which is made under the
influence of a general scepticism in regard to
spiritual realities, and whicli leaves out of
view quite as many and quite as important
facts as those which it professes to explain?
Are we compelled to admit it ; or is it only one
of two alternatives, neither of which is scientifi
cally demonstrable, so that the choice between
them must rest upon other considerations ?
I do not hesitate to say that the whole weight
of sober and sane criticism inclines to the lat
ter conclusion. Determinism has not yet been
established either by physiological, psychologi
cal, or metaphysical argument.
Philosophy The common assumption that the abstract
" reasoning of Jonathan Edwards against the

Liberty 219
liberty of the will has never been and cannot
be refuted, is based upon ignorance of the facts.
An American philosopher, Mr. Rowland Haz
ard, has answered it with great clearness and
force. Professor George P. Fisher says : "The
fundamental point of Mr. Hazard's criticism
of Edwards is fully established. It must be
allowed that his confutation of that conception
of the will which underlies the reasoning of the
great theologian is sound and conclusive."1
The support which modern science is sup- Science says
posed to give to the theory of determinism
turns out, upon closer examination, to be alto
gether illusory. The soundest and most care
ful investigators utterly decline to commit
themselves to that metaphysical dogma, or to
bind out science as a maid-of-all-work in the
service of fatalistic theology.
The most distinguished of living English Free-will a
scientists recently said : " The influence of Miracle.
animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely
beyond the range of any scientific inquiry
hitherto entered on. Its power of directing
the motions of moving particles, in the demon
strated daily miracle of our human free-will, and
1 Rowland Hazard, Freedom of Mind in Willing (Boston,
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1889). Introduction by George P.
Fisher, p. xxxi.

220 Liberty
in the growth of generation after generation of
plants from a single seed, are infinitely dif
ferent from any possible result of the fortui
tous concourse of atoms. The real phenomena
of life infinitely transcend human science."1
The theory that consciousness is a function of
the brain breaks down completely when it
attempts to explain the phenomena of sleep.
Why should all the other functions of the
body be carried on without fatigue and with
out interruption while this alone demands rest
and admits of intervals of cessation ? If con
sciousness is a function of nerve-matter, sleep
abolishes it. How does it come back again
without losing the sense of personal identity?
Thought is Is it conceivable that the highest character,
the loftiest genius, is purely an intermittent
secretion of certain nerve-cells, and that dur
ing the hours of sleep, embracing one-third of
its entire histpry, it is absolutely non-existent ?
" Function," says an eminent neurologist, " is
a physiological term, and it is, I submit, im
proper to speak of states of consciousness as
being functions of the brain. ... It is not
the mind, but the physical basis of mind, which
is a product of physical evolution. It is the
1 Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thomson), in The Fortnightly
Review, March, 1892.

not a secre
tion.

Liberty 221
organ of mind, not the mind of itself, which
being an evolution out of the rest of the body
is representative of it." 1
The fact that the brain is a double organ, — The brain
that there are really two brains, only one of ^ mind. °
which is used, — cannot be explained on the
theory that consciousness is merely the result
of the vibration of nerve filaments, as the music
of the .iEolian harp is the result of the pas
sage of the wind over its strings. A distin
guished physiologist has cleverly shown that if
this were the case a double brain would mean
a double amount of thought, just as twice the
number of strings would mean twice the quan
tity of music.2 But the fact that this is not so,
points clearly to the hypothesis that the brain
is not an iEolian harp helplessly vibrating
under external impulses, but a double organ
with two sets of keys, and the mind is like the
player who can use either one of them to make
the music. And this corresponds closely with
our own sense of the process. For we are
conscious not only of passive thoughts and
1 Dr. J. Hughlings Jackson, "Lecture on the Comparative
Study of Diseases of the Nervous System" (British Medical
Journal, August 17, 1889).
2 Dr. William H. Thomson, Materialism and Modern
Physiology of the Nervous System (New York, Putnams,
1892), pp. 83 ff,

222 Liberty
feelings, evoked within us by external causes,
but also of thoughts and feelings voluntarily
directed and combined, woven together in crea
tive harmonies, and moving under the guidance
of chosen ideals towards a symphonic complete
ness. Even the sense of discord and conflict
which often rises within us is an evidence that
there is a player as well as an instrument. For
it is inconceivable that an iEolian harp, ill-
strung, should dislike its own bad music, and
endeavour, or think that it could endeavour, to
make a better, sweeter sound.
Heredity not Heredity is undoubtedly a real and power
ful force. It supplies the outfit of life. But
does it determine the use which we shall make
of it ? The very extension of the doctrine
by the investigations of science dissolves this
narrow and absolute conclusion. We inherit
from thousands, from hundreds of thousands,
of ancestors. The blood of many families and
tribes and races is mingled in our veins.
What is it that decides which of these many
lines we shall follow ? It must be either blind
chance or free choice. All the phenomena of
society, all the facts of consciousness, are in
favour of the latter supposition. We see men
whose heritage is of the lowest and the worst,
working their way up, by sheer strength of

Liberty 223
moral choice and effort, to a higher plane.1
We see men whose heritage is of the loftiest
and the best, declining "thro' acted crime,
Or seeming-genial venial fault,
Recurring and suggesting still," 2
to the very depths of infamy. It is true that
a man cannot bring out of himself anything
that is not already there. But it is true also,
by virtue of heredity, that there are many
potential men in every man, and which of them
is to emerge, he chooses for himself by a thou
sand silent moral preferences ; by yielding or
by resisting; by the cowardice and corruption,
or by the courage and purification of his own
free-will. Even those who write of human life from a Moral judg-
professedly naturalistic standpoint cannot get menU
c J jt o assume
rid of this conviction. Take Zola, for example, liberty.
If he were consistent, he would speak with
equal and impassive coldness of all his charac
ters, tangled together in the inextricable toils
of heredity. But he cannot help letting his
hatred and contempt for the selfish, the luxu
rious, the vicious, express itself in the very
accent with which he describes them. He
cannot help showing his admiration and affec-
1 See Appendix, note 51. 2 Tennyson, [TFiK.]

224

Liberty

The testi
mony of
modern
psychology.

tion for those who, like Denise and Doctor
Pascal, and Clotilde, rise out of the infamy
which envelops the family Rougon-Macquart.
Virtue and vice may be scientifically treated
as if they were merely natural products like
sugar and vitriol ; but when we come to talk
of them from a human and humane standpoint,
there is something within us which demands
that we shall recognize a merit in being virt
uous, and a shame in being vicious, — qualities
which can never belong to mere secretions,
whether of plants or of nerves, — qualities
which have no possible meaning unless there
is a free-will in man, capable of choosing be
tween the evil and the good.
Now that a free-will is possible, modern psy
chology assures us, as the result of its latest re
searches. It does not attempt to demonstrate
the existence of such a power by physiological
investigation. It confesses that this demon
stration is impossible with our present know
ledge. But it declares with equal candour that
the contrary attempt to show that the sense of
freedom is a delusion, is inconclusive. "The
last word of psychology here," says Professor
William James, "is ignorance, for the forces
engaged are too delicate and numerous to be
followed in detail." He points out the ex-

Liberty 225
tremely reckless and inconsequent nature of
the reasoning by which the determinists seek
to make mere analogies drawn from the course
of rivers, and reflex actions, and other material
phenomena, serve as proofs that the will is a
mechanical effect. He exposes the bold as
sumption by which they ignore the testimony
of consciousness in the presence of feeling and
effort. He shows that the utmost which any
argument for determinism can do is to present
a possible hypothesis, which a man who has
already determined to hold fast to the idea
that the whole universe is one chain of inevi
table causation may accept if he likes. But
meanwhile the other alternative stands equally
open. The moral arguments all point in that
direction. The only course, in such a situa- Free-will i
tion, is voluntary choice. "For scepticism it
self, if systematic, is also voluntary choice. If,
meanwhile, the will be indetermined, it would
seem only fitting that the belief in its inde-
termination should be voluntarily chosen from
amongst other possible beliefs. Freedom's
first deed should be to affirm itself. . . .
Thus not only our morality but our religion,
so far as the latter is deliberate, depends on
the effort which we can make. 'Will you or
won't you have it so ? ' is the most probing
Q

226 Liberty
question we are ever asked : Ave are asked it
every hour of the day, and about the largest
as well as the smallest, the most theoretical as
well as the most practical, things. We answer
by consents or non-consents, and not by words.
What wonder if these dumb responses should
seem our deepest organs of communication
with the nature of things ! What wonder if
the effort demanded by them should be the
measure of our worth as men ! What wonder
if the amount which we accord of it be the
one strictly underived and original contribu
tion which we make to the world ! " 1

in
Christ says Here, then, modern science, careful, exact,
real. V reverent, as distinguished from modern scep
ticism, leaves us before the two doors. And
here Christ comes to us, calling us to enter
through the door of liberty into the pathway of
eternal life. "Ask, and it shall be given you;
seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be
opened unto you."2 "If any man willeth to
do His will, he shall know of the teaching."3
1 William James, Psychology, vol. ii., p. 579. See Ap
pendix, note 52.
2 St. Matt. vii. 7. s gt, j0hn vii. 17.

Liberty 227
The whole life and ministry of Jesus is a The li-fe °f
Jesus, a
revelation of moral freedom.1 His entrance revelation of
into the world was voluntary. His continu- free-wlU-
ance in human life was voluntary. His death
was voluntary. At the first crisis of His life
He chose to go about His Father's business.
In the temptation He chose to resist the allure
ments of the Evil One. On the way to the
cross He chose not to call on God for the
deliverance which He knew would come in
answer to His call. He was, indeed, fulfilling
an appointed task, treading the path which
had been marked out for the feet of the
Christ ; but He was fulfilling the task freely;
He was walking in liberty because He loved
to do the will of God. The triumph of His
virtue lay in the freedom of His choice.
There was a singular propriety in the text of Thepreach-
His first public discourse. It was a declaration a gospei 0f '
of liberty, as well as of grace. It was an email- liberty.
cipation proclamation as well as a gospel of com
fort and help. " The spirit of the Lord is upon
me, because He anointed me to preach good
tidings to the poor; He hath sent me to pro
claim release to the captives, and recovering of
sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that
are crushed, to proclaim the acceptable year of
1 See Appendix, note 53.

228 Liberty
the Lord."1 And what was the oppressive
bondage from which He proclaimed release?
Was it not the tyranny of a false doctrine of
necessity over the minds of men, as well as the
enslaving influence of sin over their inert and
hopeless wills?
ThePhari- Here were the scribes and Pharisees teach-
Fate"^ inS ^a* ^he whole world was divided into
two classes, — the chosen and the not-chosen, the
righteous for whom salvation was secure what
ever they might do, and the sinners for whom
salvation was impossible whatever they might
do. Here were the outcast, the lost, the neg
lected, shut out, by no choice of their own, but
by their birth, by the occupations in which
they were engaged, by their ignorance, by the
very conditions of their life, from all part in
the kingdom of heaven as the scribes and
Pharisees conceived it ; not only the harlots
and the publicans, but also Am Haarez, "the
people of the land," with whom it was not fit
ting that a righteous person should have any
dealings ; 2 miserable souls, bound by inheri
tance to a desperate and unhallowed fate. Here
came Jesus, taking His way directly to these
lost ones, these outsiders, and telling them that
all this doctrine of inevitable doom was a chain
1 St. Luke iv. 18. 2 Bruce, Kingdom of God, 145.

Liberty 229
of lies, breaking the imaginary fetters from Jesus taught
Jyi*pp(ifiYY\
their souls and assuring them by His first
word that they were free, even though they
were ignorant of it. " Repent," He cried, "for
the kingdom of heaven has approached unto
you."1 "Except ye be converted and become
as little children, ye shall not enter into the
kingdom of heaven."2 And what is the signifi
cance of these words, "repentance" and "con
version," — their real significance, I mean, not
that which has been read into them by centuries
of false and formal theology? They are not
passive and involuntary words ; they do not rest
upon the idea of qualifications which may or
may not be in the possession of those to whom
Christ speaks. They are active words, — words
of inward movement and exertion. " Repent "
means change your mind; make that simple
effort of the soul for internal change which
is the ultimate act of the free will ; 3 put forth
1 St. Matt. iv. 17.
2 St. Matt, xviii. 3.
3 " Every intelligent being, capable of conceiving of higher
ethical conditions than he has yet attained, has in his own
moral nature for the exercise of his creative powers an infi
nite sphere, within which ... he is the supreme disposer.
... A man who does not want to be pure and noble, may yet
begin one step lower in the scale of moral advancement, with
the wish to want to be pure and noble ; and, here commenc
ing the cultivation of his moral nature, ascend from this lower

free.

230 Liberty
that power of fixed attention to the new motive
which is the central essence of liberty and the
creative force of the soul.1 "Be converted,"
as Christ spoke the word, is not passive ; it
expresses an action exercised by the soul within
itself ; it means simply " turn around " ; set
yourself in a new relation to God, to truth, to
Faith is virtue. The name of this relation is faith.
" Believe " is Christ's great word. It is the
'¦'open sesame" of the kingdom. "Believe in
God, believe also in Me." 2 " He that believeth
hath everlasting life." 3 "All things are possible
to him that believeth." i But it is never spoken
of as a mere intellectual opinion, or emotional
experience, an irresistible conviction wrought
by external evidence in the mind, or bestowed
without effort upon the soul. The Bible never
says that faith is a gift. There is a voluntary
element in it. It is something to be done by
the exercise of an inward power. It is a com
ing of the soul to Christ ; it is a following of the
point, through the want to be pure and noble, to the free effort
to gratify this want." — Rowland Hazakd, Freedom of
Mind in Willing, "Of Effort for Internal Change" (Bos
ton, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1889), chap. xiv.
1 "The essential achievement of the will when it is most
' voluntary,' is to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast
before the mind." — James, Psychology, vol. ii., p. 561.
2 St. John xiv. 1. 3 St. John vi. 47. 4 St. Mark ix. 23.

Liberty 231
soul after Him ; it is the first step in a long
course of spiritual activity. It is a deed. The
disciples said unto Christ, " What must we do
that we may work the works of God ? " Jesus
answered, " This is the work of God, that ye
believe on Him whom He hath sent." 1
Now there is not a hint in all the teaching of All may
Jesus that this first act of freedom is impossible
for any soul to whom He speaks. He has no
idea of an eternal predestination binding some to
belief and others to unbelief, a secret decree in
cluding certain men in the kingdom and exclud
ing others from all possibility of entering into it.
It is true that He says, " No man can come unto
Me except the Father draw him " ; 2 but what He
means by this drawing He tells us in the par
able of the Lost Son, where it is the simple
knowledge of the Father's abundant love that
draws the prodigal back from the far country
of sin ; 3 and in the parable of the Publican in
the Temple, 4 when it is the sense of the Divine
mercy and forgiveness that makes the outcast
man cry, "God, be merciful to me a sinner."
There is prevenient grace in the doctrine of
Jesus. But the grace is there. It has already
come. All that man has to do is to meet it, to ,
1 St. John vi. 28, 29. 3 St. Luke xv.
2 St. John vi. 44. 4 St. Luke xviii. 10-14.

232

Liberty

Christ is
God's call
tofaith.

No predesti
nation to
death.

put himself into the upward swing of it, that it
may lift and help him heavenward.
A calling and a choosing by God are neces
sary before any man can be saved. But Jesus
does not speak of this choosing and calling as
eternal. Christ Himself is the call, and all
who answer it are chosen. " If any man thirst,
let him come unto Me and drink." a " Him that
cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out."2
The heavenly invitation is set forth in all its
generosity and sincerity in the story of the
Marriage Feast.3 The bidding went out into
the highways and hedges, to the bad and to the
good; and all who heard and accepted it were
welcome. And if a single guest was turned
away, it was only because his own conduct
showed that he had not really taken the invi
tation honestly and accepted willingly all that
was provided for him.
There is not a single word in all that Jesus
said to suggest any other reason than this for
the exclusion of a single person from the bless
ings of the kingdom. " Ye will not come unto
Me that ye might have life."4 "How often
would I have gathered thy children together
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under

1 St. John vii. 37.
2 St. John vi. 37,

3 St. Matt. xxii. 1-14.
1 St. John v. 40.

Liberty 233
her wings, and ye would not."1 There is not
one statement that anything else but mercy
and grace has been eternally prepared by God
for any human soul. In that awful parable of
judgment which discloses the convincing picture
of the final separation of the evil from the
good, Christ says distinctly that the joy of
the blessed has been prepared for them from
the foundation of the world, but of the punish
ment of the cursed, He says with equal dis
tinctness that it was not prepared for them,
but for the devil and his angels.2 No one is
ever lost because he cannot do good, but only
because he will not do what he can.
As for the doctrine of heredity, while Christ
recognizes the truth that it contains, it seems
as if He purposely set Himself to expose, and
to ridicule with a Divine scorn, the falsehood of
its fatal extremes. He said to those who were
relying upon heredity to save them : " Think
not to say within yourselves, We have Abra
ham to our father; for I say unto you that
God is able of these stones to raise up chil
dren unto Abraham."3 He said to His dis
ciples when they foolishly, taking up tbe cant
of the day about inherited sin and inevitable
i St. Matt, xxiii. 37. 2 St. Matt. xxv. 34-41.
3 St. Matt. iii. 9.

Christ on
heredity.

234 Liberty
punishment, asked whether the blind man or
his parents had sinned that he was born blind,
"Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents,
but that the works of God should be made
manifest in him." 1 The true inheritance, the
deepest inheritance wliich Jesus recognizes in
the human race, is an inheritance from God ;
a nature made in the Divine image, spiritual,
free, responsible, and capable, though so sadly
marred, though so far astray, of returning to
communion with the Heavenly Father.2
The weak- Undoubtedly Christ perceived and taught
ness of man. the immense difficulty of being good; the in
firmity which long centuries of sin has wrought
into the very fibres of the soul; the awful
and almost inaccessible height of true holi
ness; the enormous obstacles which lie in the
way of attaining it. The gate is strait, and
we must agonize to enter in by it. The
road is steep, and we must toil to climb it.
" How hardly shall they that have riches enter
into the kingdom of God."3 And yet "the
kingdom of heaven suffered violence, and men
of violence take it by force."4 There is an
effort which succeeds even in this greatest
of all endeavours, not in its own strength,
1 St. John ix. 3. 3 St. Mark x. 23.
2 See Appendix, note 54. i St. Matt. xi. 12.

Liberty 235
but because it is sure of a Divine assistance. The grace
"With man it is impossible, but not with
God."1 To the human will, enfeebled and
corrupted, so that it is like a sick man, barely
able to turn himself upon his couch, and look
and long and cry for help, three great sources
of strength are always open and accessible.
The first is prayer. " Men ought always to Prayer.
pray, and not to faint."2 How sweet and
serene is the voice that rings through the vain
disputations and doubtful wranglings of the
scribes and Pharisees, and calls every sinful
soul to pray ! Pray ! you may not be able to
realize your own ideal, but you can ask God
to help you hold fast to it and struggle towards
it. Pray !
" More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of." 3
Pray ! For God is not deaf, nor sleeping, nor
gone upon a journey; He has not bound you
to an inexorable fate and bound Himself not to
interfere with it. Pray ! The liberty of your
own soul, and the liberty of God Himself, dwells
in that word ; for when you stretch your feeble
hand to Him, a Divine hand will meet it, and
1 St. Mark x. 27. 2 St. Luke xviii. 1.
8 Tennyson, The Passing of Arthur.

236 Liberty
break your fetters, and lift you out of darkness
and death into life and light.
The Holy The second source of strength is the Holy
Spirit. It is inconceivable, morally impossible,
that there should be such a Spirit, and yet that
His influence should be withheld from those
who need and implore it. " If ye then, being
evil, know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more shall your heavenly
Father give the Holy Spirit unto them that
ask Him."1
Christ our The third source of strength is Christ Him-
Helper. self. Does the sense of past guilt stand in the
way of future effort ? He says, " I have power
on earth to forgive sins." 2 Does the soul feel
dead and hopeless under the burden of evil
habits ? He says, " I came that they may have
life, and may have it abundantly."3 Do the
works of a true and vital righteousness seem
far beyond our, power ? He says, "Without Me
ye can do nothing ; " 4 but, " Lo, I am with you
alway, even unto the end of the world." 5 " He
that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall
he do also, and greater works than these shall he
do, because I go unto the Father."6 The whole
1 St. Luke xi. 13. * St. John xv. 5.
2 St. Mark ii. 10. 5 St. Matt, xxviii. 20.
3 St. John x. 10. « St. John xiv. 12.

Liberty 237
life of Christ is summed up in the words, " But
as many as received Him, to them gave He power
to become the sons of God." x
But this receiving, we need to remember and The way of
-. . . . , . . deliverance.
assert again and again, is not a passive thing.
It is an action of the soul, the opening of a door
within the heart, the welcoming of a heavenly
master. God does not save men as a watch
maker who repairs and sets a watch, but as a
King who recalls his servants to their duty, as
a Father who makes new revelations of His love
to draw His lost children back to Himself. The
dogmas of the schools in regard to the working
out of what they call the scheme of redemption
sound like the creak and rattle of some vast
machine. The doctrine of Christ is like the
soft breath of spring, evoking the songs of birds
and the unfolding of new life. No fiery chariot
of grace swoops down to snatch men to glory.
But a living Messenger comes forth from God
to ask men to turn and walk back with Him to
their soul's home. The invitation itself is a
guarantee of the power to accept it. With au
thority Christ commanded the winds and the sea
and they obeyed Him. But with gracious plead
ing He invited the hearts of men, and those that
were willing gladly heard and followed Him.
1 St. John i. 12.

238

Liberty

God helps
those who
help them
selves.

Christus
Liberator.

"If any man wills to come after Me," 1 — that is
the prelude of His message. He offers a leader
ship to men who can follow, a mastership to
men who can obey. Out of this first movement
He promises to guide and direct the whole de
velopment of the new life, — not a passive life
of retirement, of ascetic meditation, of reflec
tion upon secret truth, — but an active life of
service, of warfare against evil in the world, a
life which translates truth into conduct.
Contrast the religion of Jesus in this respect
with the Oriental religions, and with those
forms of Christianity which have borrowed the
garments of Buddha and speak with the accent
of Mahomet. They despise and slight per
sonality. Christ respects and emphasizes it.
They aim to reduce and evaporate responsi
bility. Christ aims to deepen and increase
it. They point forward to a blank Nirvana
in which the individual is lost and absorbed,
or a Paradise in which he is forever lapped in
sensual ease and pleasure. Christ speaks of
the perfecting of the individual through the
Divine communion and service on earth, and
his entrance in heaven upon a new stage of
the same communion, the same service, —
"not in a blessed idleness, but in an exalted
1 St. Matt. xvi. 24.

Liberty 239
kingly work and activity." And the entrance
to this kingdom on earth, the continuance in
its realm of liberty, the attainment of its final
glory, are all through an act of the will. The
freedom which originated in God is only to be
preserved by returning to God and abiding in
Him. " Our wills are ours, we know not how ;
Our wills are ours, to make them Thine." 1
That is the teaching of Jesus. That is the
truth which, when it comes to men, makes
them and keeps them free.

iv
It is impossible that we should be faithful The age
preachers of Christ to the present age, unless

message.

we preach this truth. There may have been
ages in which it was important to dwell upon
other sides and aspects of the manifold reality
of the spiritual world. But to-day this is the
important side ; this is the aspect which de
mands a clear recognition and an unfaltering
proclamation by those who mean to be true to
Christ and loyal to the needs of humanity. I
do not believe that there is a single passage in
the Old Testament which contradicts Christ's
1 Tennyson, In Memoriam, Proem.

240 Liberty
doctrine of the real liberty of the soul. But
if there were such a passage, I would leave it
forever alone, as belonging to that knowledge
which was in part, and which was done away
when that which was perfect had come. I do
not believe that there is a single word in the
St. Paul on writings of St. Paul which stands against this
doctrine of the real liberty of the soul. I
cut loose from the false interpretations which
men have read into his words. I take the
light of Christ's teaching in my hand, and I
go back to interpret by that light the teach
ings of the great Epistle to the Romans with
its glorious revelation of " the mystery which
hath been kept in silence through times eter
nal, but now is manifested, and by the Scriptures
of the prophets, according to the commandment
of the eternal God, is made known unto all
the nations unto obedience of faith."1 I hear
again the cr^ of the struggling, labouring, con
quering apostle : " To will is present with me,
but to do that which is good is not. ... O
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me
out of the body of this death? I thank God
through Christ Jesus our Lord;"2 and I know
that St. Paul also was a believer in the free
dom of the will, and that he received this
i Rom. xvi. 26. 2 Rom. vii. 18, 24, 25,

Liberty 241
gospel and the power to fulfil it, through the
proclamation of liberty in Jesus Christ.
" This matter of free-will," wrote one of the Free-will
most orthodox of theologians, but a few years question. "
before his death, " underlies everything. If
you bring it to question, it is infinitely more
than Calvinism. ... I believe in Calvinism,
and I say that free-will stands before Calvin
ism. Everything is gone if free-will is gone ;
the moral system is gone, if free-will is gone ;
you cannot escape except by Materialism on
the one hand or by Pantheism on the other.
Hold hard therefore to the doctrine of free
will."1 Yes, and we may say more than this. Not
only is the moral system gone, but the great
attraction of Christ is gone, the power of His
gospel to liberate men is gone, if free-will is
gone. The age has hypnotized itself. It is drift- The age has
ing steadily towards fatalism. It denies free- useif.
dom, and therefore it is not free. It is in
bondage to its own doubt. It is enslaved by
its own denial. If there is such a thing as
liberty, it can only be developed, as everything
else has been developed, by action, by exercise.
1 A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures on Theological Themes
(Philadelphia, 1887), p. 184,

242

Liberty

We must
proclaim liberty in
Christ.

Life is self-change to meet environment. Lib
erty is self-exertion to unfold the soul. The
law of natural selection is that those who use
a faculty shall expand it, but those who use it
not shall lose it. Religion is life, and it must
grow under the laws of life. Faith is simply
the assertion of spiritual freedom ; it is the
first adventure of the soul. Make that ad
venture towards God, make that adventure
towards Christ, and the soul will know that it
is alive. So it enters upon that upward course
which leads through the liberty of the sons of
God to the height of heaven,
" Where love is an unerring light
And joy its own security." J
This is the truth with which we are to go
out a-gospelling in this age of doubt. We are
to tell men that though much has been deter
mined for them by causes beyond their control,
— their circumstances, their talents, their facul
ties, — one thing has not been determined, and
that is what they will do with them. Much has
been ordained before their birth, — their nation
ality, their family, their station in life, — but
one thing has not been ordained, and that is
whether they are to move from this starting-
1 Wordsworth, - Ode to Duty.

Liberty 243
point towards life or towards death. They
may be like men sunken in a nightmare dream
of helplessness, muttering in their sleep, " If I
am to be saved, I shall be saved ; if I am to be
lost, I shall be lost," — but we must cry to them
with the voice of the Spirit : " Awake, thou
that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and
Christ shall give thee light."

VII
SOVEREIGNTY

" I say to thee, do thou repeat
To the first man thou mayest meet
In lane, highway, or open street —
" That he and we and all men move
Under a canopy of love,
As broad as the blue sky above ;
" That doubt and trouble, fear and pain
And anguish, all are shadows vain,
That death itself shall not remain ;
" That weary deserts we may tread,
A dreary labyrinth may thread,
Through dark ways underground be led ;
" Yet if we will one Guide obey,
The dreariest path, the darkest way,
Shall issue out in heavenly day ;
" And we, on divers shores now cast,
Shall meet, our perilous voyage past,
All in our Father's house at last."
— Richard Chenevix Trench,
The Kingdom of God.

VII
SOVEREIGNTY
The questions about the world which science Theboun-
(To 7*1 pc /)f
considers and answers, all have to do with SCience.
secondary causes. Beyond that sphere she does
not need to go, and within that sphere her wis
dom is sufficient. We come to her like curious
children. We "want to see the wheels go
round." We want to know what the wheels
are made of. She tells us, and there she stops.
All that we have a right to ask of her is that
she shall be true to facts, and that she shall
confine herself to them. When the astronomer
Laplace was reproached for not mentioning God
in his treatise on the dynamics of the solar
system, he answered, " I had no need of that
hypothesis." And this reply was just, as Mr.
John Fiske has pointed out, because " in order
to give a specific explanation of any single
group of phenomena, it would not do to ap
peal to divine action, which is equally the
source of all phenomena. " J
1 Christian Literature, January, 1896, "The Everlasting
Reality of Religion," p. 306. 247

248 Sovereignty
The great But the moment we take this reasonable
questions lie , , .,. , , . , . .,
beyond anCl m°dest position (and it is a great pity
them. that theology has not been more ready to take
it), we perceive that curiosity in regard to
single groups of phenomena by no means satis
fies or exhausts the activity of the questioning
spirit in man. There is a deeper curiosity in
regard to the relation of these single groups
of phenomena to each other, and to ourselves,
and to the possibility of a meaning, a purpose,
an end, underlying all things and all their
workings. Out of this deeper curiosity rise
the questions which are most urgent and vital,
— questions which, when we consider them ab
stractly, are philosophical, and condition the
unity of our intellectual life ; but when we con
sider them personally, they are religious, and
upon their answer our spiritual peace and moral
action absolutely depend. How are we to think
about the things that we know ? What are we
to believe in regard to the things that science
tells us we cannot know, but which we still
feel are necessary conditions of all intelligent
and right conduct? Is there an invisible unity
beneath all the visible diversity of phenomena?
What is the nature of that unity, personal or
impersonal, conscious or unconscious? Is there
anything behind the mechanical working of

Sovereignty 249
the world, now so wonderfully explained, which
corresponds to what there is in us when we
make and use a machine or an instrument,
when we plant and cultivate a garden, or when
we select and train a noble race of animals?
Is there a final cause towards which things
work together, and a supreme power which
guides them to that end?
This is the question of sovereignty. We The ques-
can no more help asking it than we can help ^rdgnty.
thinking. We are in the world like voyagers on a ship.
We inquire what the ship is made of ; and
science tells us, — iron and wood. And what
makes it float ? The buoyancy of the air which
it contains. And what makes it go? Steam.
And what makes the steam ? The heat of the
furnace. Then, if we are sufficiently inter
ested, science takes us down into the engine-
room, and shows us all the condensers and
pistons and cranks and wheels, more fully than
they have ever been shown before ; and we are
amazed and profoundly grateful. We come up
again into the light of day. We look into the
overarching heaven, the home of sunshine and
storm, the deep mother of light and darkness.
We look out upon the great and wide sea,
full of mystery and terror. New questionings

250

Sovereignty

Has the
world a
captain?

Doubt
answers,No.

spring to our lips. Where is the ship going?
Is there a captain on board ? Does he know,
does he care, what is to become of it? Is he
wise, is he faithful, is he a good captain ? Can
he direct the vessel through tempests and dan
gers? Can he tell us how to work with him,
how to act in times of peril and perplexity?
Can we be sure of him, can we trust him?
Now to this questioning, scepticism gives a
reply of desperate uncertainty ; and positivism
answers with a stern and sullen, No ! The
world is a derelict vessel, and we are master-
less and lost mariners. This answer has been
expressed by a French poet in powerful and
pathetic verse.
" Jouet de l'ouragan, qui l'emporte et le mene,
Encombre' de tresors et d'agres submerges,
Ce navire perdu, mais c'est le nef humaine,
Et nous sommes les naufrages.
" L'equipage affole manoeuvre en vain dans l'ombre ;
L'Epouvante est a bord, le Desespoir, le Deuil ;
Assise au gouvernail, la Fatalite sombre
Le dirige vers un ecueil." J
But Christ gives a very different answer.
It seems as if His very words were chosen to
contradict this view of life as a helpless, hope-

1 L. Ackerman, Ma Vie, Poesies, etc. (Paris, 1885),
Cri," p. 180.

•Le

Sovereignty 251
less voyage, and humanity as a shipwrecked Christ
race. For what is it that He says to His Yes '
disciples as they look out upon the mystery of
existence ?
" Seek not what ye shall eat, and what ye
shall drink, neither be ye as a ship that is tossed
on the waves of a tempestuous sea (/u.j) fierecopi-
£eo-#e), for your Father knoweth that ye have
need of these things." 1
The vessel is not driving masterless over the
ocean. The Captain is on board. He is God.
He is also our Father. For all who trust and
serve Him, it is a sure voyage, a certain port,
a safe harbour.

The doctrine of the presence and sovereignty The
of God in His world, in one form or another, is 0y God J
essential to the validity of any reasoning which
attempts to go beyond the mere appearance of
things. Without it we find ourselves, as one
has well said, " put to permanent intellectual
confusion." Without it the world lies before
us, as Pope wrote in the first draft of his Fssay
on Man, —
" A mighty maze, and all without a plan."
1 St. Luke xii. 29.

252

Sovereignty

Christ's
view of it

Contrasted
with other
views.

And if we follow the poet in that cold philo
sophical deism which led him to revise his fa
mous line so that it now reads
" A mighty maze, but not without a plan," x
we are still in the dark, still confused and
hopeless, unless we go further and learn enough
of Him who made the plan, to trust Him even
when we cannot perfectly understand His work
ing, and to confide absolutely in "His most
holy, wise, and powerful preserving and govern
ing all His creatures and all their actions." 2
This is what Christ gives us : a view of God
in His world which requires faith to accept it,
but which when it is accepted, satisfies the rea
son and the heart better than any other view,
clears away many of the intellectual and moral
difficulties which beset us, and becomes the in
ward source not of doubt and distress, but of
certainty and peace.
This is not true, we must admit, of some of
the forms in which the doctrine of divine sov
ereignty has been preached in Christ's name.
They have often disregarded the facts of nat
ure. They have often outraged the moral
instincts of humanity. They have created
new obstacles to faith. They have driven men
1 Pope's Essay on Man, part i. , line 6.
2 The Shorter Catechism, question xi.

Sovereignty 253
back in dumb resentment to believe in the
positivist's " sombre Fatality ," rather than in
an absentee God who has foreordained, by one
and the same decree, all the evil and all the
good, all the sorrow and shame and suffering
that are in the world.
Not so with Christ's teaching. It is sane
and sweet. It allays resentment and begets
serenity. It gives a reconciling, harmonizing,
atoning view of God's sovereignty. And if
we can see it clearly and preach it faithfully,
it will be to-day, as it was in His day, one of
the great attractions of the gospel for an age
of doubt. n
Christ's doctrine of the divine sovereignty Christ's
,.,,, ¦¦ T. ii, ^ doctrine old
was both old and new. It was old because it and new
recognized the truth, uttered so magnificently
by prophets and psalmists, of God's right and
power to rule the universe which He has
made. "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and
ever."1 "The Lord hath prepared His throne
in the heavens and His kingdom ruleth over
all."2 "He doeth according to His will in the
army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of
the earth : and none can stay His hand, or say
unto Him, What doest Thou ? " 3
1 Psalm xiv. 6. 2 Psalm ciii. 19. 3 Daniel iv. 35.

254

Sovereignty

A simpler
revelation.

God in His
world.

But Christ's doctrine was new because it
revealed the presence of the sovereign God in
the physical universe more simply, more natu
rally, more intimately, than it had ever been
revealed before. How gentle, how plain, how
mildly luminous, is the language in which
Jesus expresses this truth, compared with the
flashing, rolling speech of the prophets ! He
uses the words of common life, transfigured
with emotion, — the language of lyric, rather
than of epic, poetry.
The manifestations of divine power in the
Old Testament appear chiefly as mighty works,
exceptional forthputtings of supernal force.
It seems sometimes as if they came from a
distance ; as if God had withdrawn from the
world and had been called back to it by the
peril and the cry of His people. But Christ
would teach us to feel that He has never gone
away for an, instant. He is always here.
Nothing that happens is hidden from Him.
Nor does He hide Himself from any who
would behold Him. We may see Him every
day, in the feeding of the birds, in the blos
soming of the flowers,
" And every wayside bush aflame with God."
In all the processes of nature He is present
and sovereign.

Sovereignty 255
This view of tlie relation of God to the ma- The divine
. , -, , . J , -. i-i immanence.
terial world is not external and mechanical.
It is inward and vital. God has not made the
world and wound it up and left it to run by
itself. He is in it, as really as a man is in the
house that he inhabits, and all the potencies
that move and animate it flow directly from
Him. The Jews thought that God had fabri
cated the universe in six days and sat down to
rest on the seventh, laying aside His work as
a clock-maker would put down a finished
clock. But Christ said, " My Father worketh
until now, and I work." 1 Creation is not
ended, it is going on all the time. Yesterday
was a creative day ; and so is to-day ; and so
to-morrow will be. The divine thought is
still weaving its beautiful garment on the
roaring loom of Time.
But God's activity in the world is not ca- The divine
pricious or disorderly. No one was more sen
sitive than Jesus to "the rhythmic element
in nature, — the flow of rivers, the procession
of stars, the antiphony of day and night, the
silent but inviolate order of the seasons."2 It
was He who expressed the law of growth :
i St. John v. 17.
2 H. W. Mabie, Essays on Nature and Culture (New York,
1896), p. 295.

256 Sovereignty
"first the blade, then the ear, and after that
the full corn in the ear."1 It was He who
suggested the analogy of natural law in the
spiritual world, applying the figure of germi
nation to His own death and resurrection :
" Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground
and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it
bringeth forth much fruit."2 The parables
which He used to describe the kingdom of
heaven were drawn from nature and based on
law. It was like "leaven which a woman
took and hid in three measures of meal until
the whole was leavened," or "like a grain of
mustard seed, which a man took and sowed
in his field ; which indeed is the least of all
seeds, but when it is grown it is the greatest
among herbs."3 He taught His disciples to
look upon the regular and steadfast ordinances
of nature as the proof that their Heavenly
Father was mindful of them and would take
care of them. You will not find any such su
perfluous phrase as " special Providence " in the
teaching of Jesus. His thought was of a gen
eral and universal Providence, wide enough
and deep enough to embrace the wants of all
creatures and provide for them. God's chil-
1 St. Mark iv. 28. 2 St. John xii. 24.
3 St. Matt. xiii. 32, 33.

Sovereignty 257
dren were not to trust in miracles and marvels
for their daily bread ; they were not to be
always looking . and calling for the extraordi
nary, — manna from the sky, water from the
riven rock. They were to rest rather upon
the course of nature in quiet confidence, and
work with it in cheerful joy, knowing that
He who clothes the grass of the field will much
more clothe them,1 — and bjr the same power
working in the same way.
Yet Jesus did not think of God as having Miracles not
exhausted all possible modes of His activity ^"^™e
in those which are familiar to us.2 His pres
ence in the world is of such a personal kind
that it necessarily brings with it the power of
direct, personal, infinitely varied action. Out
of this power spring those strange signs and
wondrous works which we call miracles. Jesus
never said that they were against nature. He
never even said that they were supernatural.
He claimed only that they were proofs of a
divine mission, because they were such works
as could only come from God. They were
signs, just as all uncommon and extraordinary Signs of
acts are signs. But signs of what? Of per- per 
sonality, of that power of choice in modes of
1 St. Matt. vi. 30.
2 See Appendix, note 55.

258 Sovereignty
action wliich is the essential attribute of a
free spirit. They were wrought in order
that men might believe, not in order that
they might be astonished; and just as truly
in order that they might believe in the order
of nature as in the Person who upholds it by
His presence.
The reign of "An energy," says Mr. Ruskin, "may be
God through , ¦-,,,• , it.
iaw_ natural without being normal, and divine
without being constant." Jesus did not teach
the reign of law. He taught the reign of God
through law. And in order that men might
be sure that the law did not bind God like a
chain, but freely expressed His sovereign will,
it was given unto Jesus to show men those
rare works, unique and transcendent, like
strokes of genius, which reveal, as if by flashes
of light, the true relation between the sover
eign God and the universe wliich He is mak
ing and ruling.1
The secret It is always to this personal God that Jesus
would direct the thoughts and confident affec
tions of men. How is it possible for any one to
miss His meaning, and translate it into some
thing entirely different, as Matthew Arnold
does in his misinterpretation of what he calls
"the secret of Jesus" ? It is not merely the joy
1 See Appendix, note 56.

Sovereignty 259
and peace of self-renunciation that Jesus sets
forth to His disciples. It is the inward qui- Trust in a
etude and rest of self-surrender to a loving j,\ltiier.
Father who is also the Mighty God. And it
is not from the sense of His resistless power,
but from the consciousness of His love, of
His Fatherhood, that peace comes. " Yea,
Father, for so it was well-pleasing in Thy
sight. " 1 " Father, all things are possible unto
Thee ; remove this cup from Me : howbeit
not what I will, but what Thou wilt."2
" Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit." 3
This is the secret of Jesus. He does not teach
bare sovereignty to which we must yield be
cause it is irresistible. He teaches sover
eignty of a certain kind, — the sovereignty
of a Father, who is as much better, as He is
more powerful, than all earthly parents or
rulers, and who will never forsake His world,
nor suffer His children to slip from His mighty
hand.

in

But sovereignty of this kind necessarily im
plies distinctions in the manner of its exercise.
It cannot possibly be conceived of in terms of
1 St. Matt. xi. 26. 2 St. Mark xiv. 36. s St. Luke xxiii. 46.

260

Sovereignty

The highest
kind of
sovereignlydiscrimi nates.

A lower
kind of
sovereignty
mechanical.

any single force or confined to any one mode of
operation. It must be flexible and discriminat
ing. It must include within itself as many
forms of rule as there are forms of being under
its dominion. What, for example, should we
say of a king who had but one way of dealing
with all his subjects, young and old, wise and
ignorant, loyal and disloyal, and who treated
his servants under precisely the same condi
tions as his horses and his chariots ? Or what
should we say of a father who attempted to reg
ulate and rule his children without reference to
their character, and who made no distinction
between them and the furniture of his house ?
Yet this, in effect, is the theory of the divine
sovereignty which has frequently been set forth
by theologians as if it were the only one which
did justice to the glory of God.
" The will of God," according to this theory,
" is the irresistible force. It is the source of
all things, all persons, all events. From it they
all proceed, under it they all act, by an invari
able necessity. This will has already deter
mined from all eternity everything that comes
to pass. Every character in the world, like
every rock and every plant, is just what God
willed it to be. Everything that happens, hap
pens because He willed it and precisely as He

Sovereignty 261
willed it. The life of mankind is far from
being in any sense a voyage, an adventure, a
probation. It is simply the process of printing
a history which has already been written and
set in type down to the last letter. The great
press is in motion. Our souls are the blank
pages. On one is printed a foreordained prayer.
On another a foreordained blasphemy. Death
is the folding knife. Judgment is the act of
binding, in which the fair pages will be pre
served and the foul pages rejected and burned.
The sovereignty of God is exercised in seeing
that the book goes through the press exactly as
it was written, without the addition or sub
traction of a single syllable of the foreordained
text." But surely, even if this theory were true and The lower
n ?H fl lp S *3
could be proved, it is not of a nature to give „iori0lls
aid and comfort to those who are zealous for
the glory of God. It does not really exalt and
magnify the divine sovereignty, but narrows
and degrades it. It does not call for the per
fect wisdom and unlimited resources of a potent
Ruler able to meet emergencies, to overcome
oppositions, to guide and direct intelligent and
free subjects like Himself, and to conduct a
high enterprise, through all the difficulties that
may arise, to a successful end. It calls for

262 Sovereignty
qualities of a lower kind and a strictly limited
scope ; the exact knowledge and the applied
strength of a skilful machinist ; not the broad
intelligence, the swift genius, the in-exhaustible
patience, and the triumphant personal influ
ence of a great Captain, a Master and Lord of
men.
Which kind it is conceivable, of course, that God might
has God . . . , TT.
chosen? have chosen to create a universe in wnicn His
sovereignty should be exercised in this one un
varying line of foreordained necessity. Being
supreme, He has both the right and the power
to make such a sphere, or spheres, for the rev
elation of His attributes as may please Him.
But it is not humanly conceivable that He
should have made this particular choice which
is ascribed to Him for His own glory. If He
had chosen this kind of a universe, so far as we
can see, it must have lowered and hidden His
glory. It rnust have left Him with a field in
which the highest qualities of personality could
not possibly be exercised. It must have made
all subsequent choice, and all approval or
disapproval, and all truly moral government
impossible. The existence of rewards and pun
ishments, the sense of merit or demerit among
the creatures of such a world, would be inex
plicable. Nay more, it would be a cruel delu-

Sovereignty 263
sion, which, since it must come like everything
else, according to this theory, from the will of
the Maker, would reflect a dark shadow of dis
credit upon His moral character. To claim
that this sense of responsibility, like all other
parts of the system, may be a necessity, a legal
fiction which is essential to the working of a
scheme far above our comprehension and there
fore above our judgment, makes it more awful,
but not more admirable. If there is any valid
ity whatever in our moral instincts, we need not
hesitate to say, that from our present point of
view, wliich is for us the only one attainable,
this theory of the absolute and unconditional
sovereignty of God, exercised by one law of
necessity over all creatures, is so far from being
for God's glory that it is apparently for His
shame and dishonour.
As a matter of fact, it has been, and still is, The di-B'1-
. . culties of
the most fertile mother of doubts. " A um- absolutism.
verse in which all the power was on the side of
the creator, and all the morality on the side of
creation, would be one compared with which
the universe of naturalism would shine out as a
paradise indeed. " 1 The idea of an irresponsible
God ruling by an eternal and inflexible fiat
over responsible men, is a moral nightmare,
1 Foundations of Belief, p. 326.

264 Sovereignty
under which humanity groans, and from which
it struggles to awake, even though it should
have to open its eyes upon the blank darkness
of an unsearchable night. Between the un
knowable God of agnosticism and the unlov
able God of absolutism, there is indeed little
to choose. But the choice, such as it is, lies
on the side of agnosticism. It is unspeak
ably better to doubt God's personality, His
supremacy, His very being, than it is to
doubt His eternal goodness and His moral
integrity.
Jesus de- But the teaching of Jesus is designed and
I'iVPt'S US
from them, fitted to deliver us, if we will accept it, from
both of these doubts. He reveals a God who
is not only Lord of all, but who exercises His
sovereignty in discretion, in justice, and in
love. He does not look upon all His creatures
with the same eyes. He discriminates, He
distinguishes, He has regard to their differ
ences of nature and character. The human
soul is of more value to Him than many spar
rows.1 How much is a man better than a
sheep ? 2 By so much as he is more like God,
spiritual, free, responsible, immortal. These
qualities, which God Himself has created, God
Himself respects. Every word of Jesus takes it
1 St. Matt. x. 31. 2 St. Matt. xii. 12.

Sovereignty 265
for granted that God is not an infinite Auto- God is a
... • 1 tt i ±. fair master.
crat, a hard master, reaping where He has not
sown, and gathering where He has not strewed,
but a fair and equitable Lord, who takes into
consideration all the conditions of His subjects
and renders unto all their dues. The forces of
nature obey His will inevitably, and for them
there is neither praise nor blame. The souls
of men are invited to love Him, and com
manded to serve Him, but they are left free to
choose whether they will obey or disobey, and
upon their choice the approval and blessing of
God depend.
Who can question for a moment that this is The divine
,, . - .-. ,.. ., i • , omnipotence
the view ot the divme sovereignty which un- seif.nm-ned
derlies all the parables of Christ ? The omnip- in action.
otence which He teaches is not sheer, absolute,
unconditioned. It is a self-restrained power.
It is able to limit itself, to act in such a way
and under such conditions as God chooses to
create. If He could not do this, He would not
be truly omnipotent. If there were but one
method in which He could manifest His will,
and that the method of necessity, He would be
forever shut out from personal relations, which
can only exist where there are different wills,
capable of agreement or disagreement, of co
operation or conflict, of harmony or discord.

266 Sovereignty
Jesus believed and taught that God has actu
ally chosen to limit the autocratic exercises of
His sovereignty by creating beings who have
the power of yielding to His will or of resist
ing it.1
The origin And from this resistance flow all the evil,
of evil not
in God. all the sorrow, all the misery of the world.
God does not ordain sin. God does not even
permit sin, in the sense that He allows it to
exist without opposition and condemnation on
His part. It may be a necessary feature of
a world of free choice and moral probation.
Jesus seems to imply as much when He says
"It must needs be that offences come." But
He adds at once, " Woe unto that man by whom
the offence cometh."2 That man is not doing
the will of God. He is a rebel, a traitor, an
apostate. Sin is a perversion of the heart from
its true purpose just as blindness is a perver
sion of the eye from its true function.3 When
the tares appear in the field, Christ does not
leave us to suppose for a moment that they
were planted by the same hand that sowed the
good seed. He says, " An enemy hath done
this."4 Satan, who is the embodiment of evil
and the leader of all who are opposed to God,
1 See Appendix, note 57. 3 St. Luke xi. 34-36.
2 St. Matt, xviii. 7. * St. Matt. xiii. 28.

Sovereignty 267
is the great enemy, the adversary not only of
souls, but also of the Divine will.
Turn for a moment to the narrative of the Sin is the
temptation of Christ.1 He was led up by the en(imy_
Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of
the devil. But did the same Spirit lead the
devil ? Was Satan acting under the divine
sovereignty in the same sense, in the same way,
that Jesus was ? Set aside, if you will, the
question of the personality of the evil one.
There was a suggestion of evil before the mind
of Jesus. Did that suggestion come from the
same source as the ho\j strength that resisted it,
— the all-creating, all-controlling will of God ?
Can the same fountain send forth sweet and
bitter waters? Why then should the one be
called cursed and the other blessed? Such a
view simply obliterates all moral distinctions.
It completely undermines and ruins the sig
nificance of Christ's life as a free obedience to
the will of God, and it utterly paralyzes His
gospel as a divine call to men to enter freely
into the same obedience.
Jesus teaches very distinctly that there are Two spheres
two spheres in which the sovereignty of God °sove°eignty,
is exercised, — in heaven and on earth.2 These
1 St. Matt. iv. 1-11.
2 Beyschlag, New Testament Theology, vol. i., pp. 84, 85.

268

Sovereignty

in heaven.

Militant
on earth

two spheres are not conceived locally but spirit
ually. They are realms in which the power of
God is working under different conditions. In
Triumphant iieaven tjie Divine will is unopposed, and there-
fore the empire of heaven is peace and holiness
and unbroken love. On earth the Divine will
is opposed and resisted, and therefore earth is
a scene of conflict and sin and discord. For
this reason the kingdom of heaven must come
to earth, it must win its way, it must strive
with the kingdom of darkness and overcome it.
God's sovereignty in heaven is triumphant.
God's sovereignty on earth is militant, in order
that it may triumph, — and triumph not in uni
versal destruction, but in the salvation of all
who will submit to it and embrace it and work
with it, — triumph not by bare force, as gravi
tation triumphs over stones, but by holy love,
as fatherly wisdom and affection triumph over
the reluctance and rebellion of wayward chil
dren. It must be admitted frankly that this view
of Divine sovereignty does not seem to be
consistent with the theory of absolute divine
foreknowledge of all volitions and all events.1
This has been urged as a fatal objection against
it. But the objection cannot be pressed because
1 See Appendix, note 58.

Divine
omniscience

Sovereignty 269
it lies in a region where our ignorance is so
great that dogmatism is, to say the least, unbe
coming. There may be some way of reconcil
ing the self -limitation of God's omnipotence
with the certainty of His foreknowledge, which
is beyond the reach of our logic. But whether
there be any such reconciliation or not, one
thing is clear : we have not the right to make
a logical statement of our ignorance of one
divine attribute a reason for refusing to accept,
frankly and sincerely, Christ's revelation of
the mode in which another divine attribute is
exercised. God knows everything. But when we say Foreknow-
that, we mean simply that He knows every- l^d°"^h
thing which can be the object of knowledge, thefacts.
He knows all things as they are. He does not
know them as they are not. The very perfec
tion of His knowledge consists in its exact
correspondence with the nature of its object.
If an event is certain, fixed, and foreordained,
then God knows it as certain, fixed, and fore
ordained. If it is contingent upon the free, self-
determining, preferential action of a human will,
then God knows that it is contingent, for He
Himself has foreordained that it should be so.
God waits to hear whether His children will God waits.
call upon Him in their distress ; and if they

270

Sovereignty

The proba
tion of men.

The Lord
of Hosts.

call, He hears and helps them. If Jesus teaches
anything, He teaches that prayer really in
fluences the purpose and action of God.1
God waits to see whether His husbandmen
will return to Him the fruits of His vineyard ;
whether they will receive and honour the mes
sengers whom He sends unto them ; and if they
are rejected, He sends other messengers ; and
last of all He sends His Son, saying, " It may be
they will reverence him." 2 But when this last
maybe does not come to pass, then judgment
falls upon the wicked husbandmen, not because
they have fulfilled the secret will of the King,
but because they have rebelled against Him.
This conception of God in His world, not as
the mere spectator of the fulfilment of His
own immutable decrees, but as the Lord of
Hosts, presiding over the great scene of con
flict between good and evil in the souls of
men who .can only attain to real holiness
through real liberty, and warring mightily on
the side of good in order that it may win the
victory, infinitely exalts and glorifies Him.
We see Him in the teaching of Jesus, as the
High Captain of the armies of love, working
salvation in the midst of the earth, pleading
with men to accept His mercy, warning them
1 See Appendix, note 59. 2 St. Luke xx. 13.

liberty.

Sovereignty 271
to escape from His judgments, sustaining the
good in their goodness, overthrowing the
wicked in their wickedness, bringing light
out of darkness and triumph out of defeat,
amid all strifes and storms maintaining His
kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy
in the Holy Ghost. His sovereignty embraces Sovereignty
human liberty as the ocean surrounds an island.
His sovereignty upholds human liberty as the
air upholds a flying bird. His sovereignty
defends human liberty as the authority of a
true king defends the liberty of his subjects,
— nay, rather, as the authority of a father
tenderly and patiently respects and protects
the spiritual freedom of his children in order
that they may learn to love and obey him
gladly and of their own accord. For this is
the end of God's sovereignty : that His king
dom may come ; that His will may be done
on earth, — not as it is done in the circling
of the stars or in the blossoming of flowers,
— but as it is done in heaven, where created
spirits freely strike the notes that blend in
perfect harmony with the music of the Divine
Spirit, where
" Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest ;
They also serve who only stand and wait."

272

Sovereignty

IV

Does this
create un
certainty ?

The reserve
of power.

Evil tran
sient, good
eternal.

But does not the acknowledgment that God
has thus limited the operation of His sover
eignty on earth by conditioning His actions
upon the character and conduct of other beings
than Himself, throw us back into confusion and
uncertainty? Does it not make the course of
the world insecure and the end of all things
doubtful ?
It would do so if it were not for the other
truth which Jesus reveals with equal clearness,
that God is in the world guiding, ruling, and
directing it, and that He has kept the suprem
acy in His own hands. His presence is the
talisman of creation. He is the master of the
ship ; His hand is on the helm ; and whether
the sailors obey or mutiny, He will guide the
vessel to her appointed haven.
The power of evil is a finite, transient, self-
destroying power. It disintegrates, it dies, it
passes away with the enfeeblement and de
struction of the soul that yields to it. But
the power of goodness is eternal and incor
ruptible, because it is of God. Satan is the
prince of this world, but his might is limited
to the perverted and enslaved wills that sub
mit to him. He is not the ruler of nature.

trust.

Sovereignty 273
God is the master of winds and waves and
earth and stars. The great battalions are on
His side and under His control. If for one
instant the cause of Christ were in real dan
ger, He could summon celestial hosts without
number to His assistance.1 But because He
knew this, He knew also that His cause was
never in danger. He knew that His kingdom
was an everlasting kingdom. He knew that
He had already overcome the world.
How serene and splendid are the words with God the
-, . , TT TT. ,. . , . , rock of our
which He reassures His disciples, again and
again! '¦'¦Fear not! Care not! Be not anx
ious ! 0 thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou
doubt? Have faith in God! Upon this rock
will I build my church and the gates of hell shall
not prevail against it ! Fear not, little flock, for
it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the
kingdom ! " How glorious is the vision of that
kingdom which Jesus unfolds as He looks for
ward to the new birth of earth and heaven in
the perfect fulfilment of the purpose of God !
How absolute is the confidence with which He
rests upon God's power to work out all that
may be needed to bring about that blessed
consummation. The unwavering faith of Jesus
in the permanence and world-wide diffusion and
1 St. Matt. xxvi. n:;.

274

Sovereignty

The inspira
tion of
heroism.

The secret
of courage.

ultimate triumph of His kingdom of truth and
holiness and love, is not the least — some
times I think it is the greatest — evidence
of His divinity and charm of His gospel.
Communicated by His divine influence to the
hearts of His disciples, this faith has been a
force of incalculable potency and inspiration in
the lives of men. The noblest deeds of hero
ism and self-sacrifice and liberation have been
wrought in the strength of it. The greatest
conquests over self and sin, the supreme vic
tories of righteousness and love and peace in
human hearts, have been won through this faith.
Deus vult — ¦ God wills it ! — is the war-cry that
rouses the human will to its highest endeavour.
Here is a man struggling against evil, long
ing and striving to rise to high and holy life.
And if he is alone in the struggle, what assur
ance has he, what promise or hope of success ?
He may fail, he may perish. But when the
great truth flashes into his heart that God is
with him in the fight, that God is "not will
ing that any should perish but that all should
come to repentance,"1 that God is the captain
of his salvation and the leader of his soul,
— then he is emancipated, then he triumphs,
then he is joined to the Invincible. He cries
i 2 Pet. iii. 9.

Sovereignty 275
with Paul, " If God is for us, who is against
us?"1 Here is a saint called to endure sharp and The
heavy trials, to drink the bitter waters of endurance.
affliction, to pass through the fires of pain, to
go down into the dark valley of the shadow.
Alone, it would be impossible ; human patience
could not endure it, human courage could not
face it, human wisdom could not solve the mys-
terjr of goodness called to suffer. But with
God, believing that He is sovereign, and that
He is love, — how different it is ! Now you
shall see the wondrous spectacle of a frail, gen
tle, mortal soul, strengthened by simple sub
mission to God's will, persecuted but not for
saken, cast down but not destroyed, trembling
but victorious. Such a soul cries : " The will
of God be done. It cannot be His will that I
should lose my faith. It cannot be His will
that I should deny Him. It cannot be His
will that I should be lost, for He is good, He is
my King, my Father, He will save me. It
may be His will that I should suffer trial for
the purifying of my faith, for a more perfect
fellowship with Christ, for a better reward in
heaven. Even so, Father, for so it seemeth
good in Thy sight. 1 Rom. viii. 31.

276 Sovereignty
" I welcome all Thy sovereign will,
For all that will is love ;
And when I know not what Thou dost,
I wait the light above."
God in How radiant and magnificent is that truth
history. as it appears in the history of the Church. The
people of God have often been persecuted and
oppressed, yet God has been on their side, and
no weapon that has been formed against them
has prospered. Here is Philip of Spain send
ing his great Armada to crush the Reformed
Church of England and destroy religious lib
erty in the cradle. Like a huge flock of vul
tures with outspread wings and fierce talons
and harsh innumerable cries of menace, that
most terrific company of war-ships that ever
darkened air and sea swoops towards its prey.
But the wrath of God meets it on the ocean,
and drives disorder through its serried ranks ;
the swift little ships of England pierce it, and
break its wings, and riddle it with terror ; its
onset is changed to flight, and as it flies, the angry
blasts of heaven and the wild waves of wrath
catch it again, and whirl it away, and scatter
on a hundred rocky shores and lonely beaches
the wrecks and fragments of the lost Armada.
How often has that wondrous history been
repeated ! How often has God proved His

God.

Sovereignty 277
sovereignty by preserving and rescuing and
delivering His people from overwhelming
perils ! Even when it has seemed to be other
wise, even when the Church has appeared for
saken and helpless, when the billows of perse
cution have rolled fathom-deep above her head,
when avalanches of falsehood have buried the
truth out of sight, it has only been for a time,
and the end has been the victory of the de
feated. The blood of the martyrs has been
the seed of the Church. The boastful shouts of Truth and
error have been the advertisement of the silent
truth. Error has had kings and generals,
philosophers and orators, empires and armies ;
truth has had God. Error has had swords and
spears, ships and cannons, fortresses and dun
geons, racks and fires ; truth has had God.
God and one make a majority. Unless the
Church doubts, she cannot fear. Unless the
Church denies, she cannot despair. In the dark
est days, when the confusion seems greatest,
the conflict most unequal, she can look out on
the great battle-field and cry
" History's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and
the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the
throne, —

278

Sovereignty

The victory
is sure.

The final
consummartion.

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim
unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above
His own." *
But is it for the Church alone, is it not for
the whole world that this truth of God's sov
ereignty shines ? To our eyes the conflict of
life and death, of good and evil, seems to be
undecided, and we think it may be perpetual.
The dust blinds us ; the uproar bewilders us ;
as far as our sight can pierce we see nothing
but the rolling strife, — sin always in arms
against holiness, the created will always resist
ing and defying the creator. But Christ sees that
the conflict is decided, though it is still in prog
ress. Christ sees that the victory is won,
though it is not yet manifest. On the hill of
the cross the captain of salvation met the cap
tain of sin and conquered him. Calvary is
victory. Through death Christ hath overcome
him that had the power of death, that is the
devil.2 Satan has received his mortal wound ;
and if he still fights more fiercely, it is because
he knoweth that he hath but a short time.3 The
day is coming when he must perish ; the day is
coming when sin and strife shall be no more ;
1 James Russell Lowell, The Present Crisis.
2 Heb. ii. 14. a Rev. xii. 12.

Sovereignty 279
the day is coming when Christ shall put all
enemies under His feet1 and shout above the
grave of death, ' ' O thou enemy, destructions
are come to a perpetual end " ; the day is com
ing when the great ship of the world, guided
by the hand of the Son of God, shall float out
of the clouds and storms, out of the shadows
and conflicts, into the perfect light of love, and
God shall be all in all. The tide that bears the
world to that glorious end is the sovereignty
of God. O mighty river, strong, eternal Will,
In which the streams of human good and ill
Are onward swept, conflicting, to the sea, —
The world is safe because it floats in Thee.
1 1 Cor. xv. 25-28.

VIII
SERVICE

" Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so proper as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves ; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 't were all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues ; nor Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor —
Both thanks and use." — Measure for Measure.

VIII
SERVICE
That strange and searching genius, Nathaniel This uneven
Hawthorne, in one of his spiritual phantasies
has imagined a new Adam and Eve coming to
the earth after a Day of Doom has swept away
the whole of mankind, leaving their works and
abodes and inventions, — all that bears witness
to the present condition of humanity, — un
touched and silently eloquent. The represent
atives of a new race enter with wonder and
dismay the forsaken heritage of the old. They
pass through the streets of a depopulated city.
The sharp contrast between the splendour of
one habitation and the squalor of another, fills
them with distressed astonishment. They are
painfully amazed at the unmistakable signs of
inequality in the conditions of men. They are
troubled and overwhelmed by the evidence of
the great and miserable fact that one portion
of earth's lost inhabitants was rich and com
fortable and full of ease, while the multitude
283

284

Service

The sense of
distress at
life's ine
quality.

The sympa
thy of the
age.

was poor and weary and heavy-laden with
toil.1 This feeling of sorrowful perplexity over the
unevenness and apparent injustice of human
life, which the prose poet puts into the heart
of his new Adam and Eve, is really but a reflec
tion from the tender and pitiful depths of his
own. Who is there that has not sometimes
felt it rising within his own breast, — this pro
found sentiment of inward trouble and grief,
this feeling of spiritual discord and wondering
repugnance at the sight of a world in which the
good things of life are so unequally distributed,
in which at the very outset of existence, before
the factor of personal merit or demerit, the
element of work and wages, enters into the
problem at all, so much is given to one man
and so little to another man that they seem to
be forever separated and set at enmity with
each other by the unfairness with which they
are treated?
This sentiment has been strangely deepened
and intensified in the nineteenth century by
innumerable causes, until it has become one of
the most marked characteristics of the present
Never before have men felt the sorrows

1 Hawthorne's Works, Riverside Edition, 1884 ; Mosses
from an Old Manse, p. 297.

Service 285
and hardships of their fellow-men so widely, so °
keenly, so constantly as to-day. In one sense
this is the honour and glory of our age. It is
an evidence of quickened moral sensibility, a
revival or renewal of the noblest capacities of
our human nature.
But in another sense it is the greatest peril A noble
of our age. For it has been seized by the spirit 3*ntane™t
of scepticism and transformed into an ally of madness.
annihilating doubt. It has been used as an
argument against the possibility of discovering
a moral order in such a "hungry, ill-condi
tioned world " as this. Man's inhumanity to
man has been employed to prove God's indiffer
ence or injustice to man. The feeling of sor
row and perplexity has been aggravated by
wild and whirling words into a passion of
resentment against the present conditions of
life. Rash and sweeping schemes for their
total destruction have been proclaimed as a new
gospel. Christianity has been first claimed as
a supporter of these schemes, and then de
nounced and repudiated as the chief obstacle
to their success. The cry goes up that the
whole world is out of joint. " Everything is
wrong and crooked and unfair : the race of
man has been deceived and maltreated and
oppressed by the creation of such an order of

286 Service
life as the present. If God created it, so much
the worse for God. But it is almost certain
that He did not create it, almost certain that
there is no God. The world of inequality is
man's mistake. There is but one thing to do,
and that is to break it all up, at once and
utterly, and begin anew. Create a new world
if possible. If not, then let the old wreck sink
and be blotted out, for it is worse, infinitely
worse, than the blank desolation of an uncon
scious chaos."
What shall This cry of anger and despair rings to
day in the ears of all earnest and thoughtful
men and women. The element of sincerity,
of truth, of justice, that thrills unmistakably
through its strange, fierce music, stirs our
hearts to the core. We are filled with per
turbation and distress and deep anxiety to
know the right and to do it, to understand the
meaning of this exceeding great and bitter cry,
and the duty to which it calls us. Is it indeed
the utterance of true equity and wisdom ? Is
it the voice of a new Adam, appearing after so
many ages of delusion, with open eyes to con
demn the old world, and with ruthless hand to
break it in pieces? Must we welcome him and
hearken to him and believe in him, as the true
judge and regenerator and leader of mankind ?

Service 287
The very form of the question points the Christ's
way to the only Master who can answer it. answerand
J •> example.
Hawthorne's picture of the second Adam was
a poetic dream. But the Apostle Paul uses the
same figure to reveal a historic truth. " The
first man Adam became a living soul. The last
Adam became a life-giving spirit. Howbeit
that is not first which is spiritual, but that
which is natural ; then that which is spiritual.
The first man is of the earth, earthy ; the
second man is of heaven." a The new Adam
has already come upon the earth, eighteen cen
turies ago. He was called Jesus. With pure
and perfect heart He entered into the world,
not desolate and depopulate, but thronged with
the myriads of toiling, suffering men. With
clear eyes He looked upon their different con
ditions, their manifold inequalities, their out
ward and inward joys and sorrows. With
steadfast heart He set Himself to the divine
task of beginning a new humanity and inaugu
rating the kingdom of heaven on earth.
He did not strive nor cry, neither was His His calm-
voice heard in the streets.2 He did not protest ness. and
L sanity.
against the moral government of the universe,
because one man was rich and another poor,
one strong and another weak, one happy and
1 1 Cor, xv, 45-47. 2 St. Matt. xii. 19.

288 Service
another wretched, one good and another evil.
He did not say that God must be unjust be
cause He has given, in things spiritual as well
as in things temporal, much to one and little
to another. He did not teach His followers
that the only way to help the world was to
rebel against this order, and refuse to submit
to it, and denounce it, and fight against it.
He did not even proclaim a social and political
revolution. He was the most peaceful, orderly,
obedient, loyal citizen of all that subject land of
Palestine ; rendering unto C<esar the things
that were Csesar's, discharging every duty of
His lowly lot with cheerful fidelity, and labour
ing patiently for His daily bread.
He knows He was not blind, nor dull of heart to feel
the secret. the troubles of life. The problem of inequality
lay wide open before Him. But it did not
agitate nor distract Him. He neither raved
nor despaired. He was serene and sane.
"He saw life clearly and He saw it whole."
He looked through the problem to its true
solution. He knew the secret which justifies
the ways of God to man. He knew the secret
by which an eternal harmony is to be brought
into the apparent discords of life. He knew
the secret by which men living in an unequal

Service 289
world, and accepting its inequality as the con
dition of their present existence, can still be
come partakers of a perfect, peaceful equity,
and citizens of an invisible, imperishable city
of God. That secret was none other than the
highest, holiest doctrine of Jesus, the divine
truth of election to service.

Before we set our hearts to take in the Christ's
meaning and the fulness of this truth, let us aospeifor the present
try to get them in tune for it by listening to world.
some of the other teachings of Jesus which are
meant to quiet and steady us in the contempla
tion of the unevenness of human existence.
And first of all He reminds us that our real
happiness in this world does not depend upon
our outward condition, but upon our inward
state. " The life is more than meat and the
body than raiment."1 "A man's life consist-
eth not in the abundance of the things which
he possesseth."2 The land of wealth is not the •
empire of peace. Joy is not bounded on the
north by poverty, on the east by obscurity, on
the west by simplicity, and on the south by
servitude. It runs far over these borders on
i St. Matt. vi. 25. 2 St. Luke xii. 15,
u

290 Service
every side. The lowliest, plainest, narrowest
life may be the sweetest. Most of the disciples
of Jesus were peasants, but they were as happy,
as contented, even in this world, as if they had
been princes. There was more gladness and
singleness of heart in that frugal breakfast of
broiled fish and bread beside the boats on the
shore of the sea of Tiberias,1 than in the
splendid feast in the house of Simon the Phari
see. Life has its compensations and its com
forts for all estates. Work means health.
Obscurity means freedom. The best pleasures
are those that are most widely diffused.
The secret of I do not mean to say that Jesus overlooked
the bitter hardships of toil under bad masters,
under false and cruel and oppressive laws. I
do not mean to say that He would not have
been full of pity and indignation at the sight
of the crushed and crippled state of great mul
titudes of human beings in our modern cities.
But I am sure that He teaches us to believe
that the real source of human misery is not in
poverty, but in a bad heart; that envy is not a
virtue, but a vice ; that life is a great gift to all
who will receive it cheerfully and contentedly,
even in a world where its. material things are
unevenly distributed ; and that the true beati-
1 St. John xxi. 1-13.

Service 291
tudes are not monopolies reserved for the few,
but blessings within the reach of all, and glori
ously independent of all outward contrasts in the
lives of men. Indeed it seems as if He would
go even beyond this, and remind us that some
of these blessings could not be ours except in a
world of contrast and temporal inequality. Of
the eight beatitudes which Jesus Himself pro
nounced, four at least, — the blessing of the
mourners, and of the meek, and of the mer
ciful, and of the peace-makers, — imply the
existence of differences and degrees among
men ; and one — the blessing of those who are
persecuted for righteousness' sake — is only
possible in a world where evil is sometimes
actually more powerful and prosperous than
good. I have not been able to find a single word of The compen-
Christ that looks forward to a time in which f !Ll0ns
life.
there shall be no more inequalities on earth, no
more rich and poor, no more masters and ser
vants, no more wise men, and no more babes.
But there are many words of His that pierce
with mild and gracious light through all these
outward distinctions to reveal the truth that
this kind of inequality is superficial and illusory,
that the babes rejoice in beholding those mys
teries which are hidden from the wise and pru-

292 Service
dent, that servants are often nobler and more
free than their masters, that the poor may
have treasures laid up in heaven which are
beyond all earthly reckoning, and that this is
the true wealth which brings contentment and
peace.
Peace on It is a great mistake to suppose that Jesus
preached a gospel which was melancholy and
depressing for those who received it in this
world. It is a great mistake to suppose that
He taught men that they must resign them
selves to earthly misery and make the journey
of life as a weary and mournful pilgrimage.
He came to cheer and brighten the hearts of
all who would accept His guidance and tread
the path of virtue with courage and fidelity and
hope. He came to give us rest in the midst of
toil, and that refreshment which only comes
from weariness in a good cause. He came to
tell us not to despair of happiness, but to re
member that the only way to reach it on earth
is to seek first usefulness, first the kingdom of
God, and then the other things shall be added.
He that loseth his life for Christ's sake shall
not lose it but find it,1 — find it in deep inward
contentment, " And vital feelings of delight,"
1 St. Matt. x. 39.

Service 293
which make up the true and incomparable joy
of living.
Jesus does not differ from other masters in The secret
that He teaches us to scorn earthly felicity.
The divine difference is that He teaches us how
to attain earthly felicity, under all circum
stances, in prosperity and in adversity, in sick
ness and in health, in solitude and in society,
by taking His yoke upon us, and doing the
will of God, and so finding rest unto our souls.
That is the debt which every child of God owes
not only to God, but also to his own soul, —
to find the real joy of living.
"Joy is a duty," — so with golden lore Joy is a
The Hebrew rabbis taught in days of yore. duty.
And happy human hearts heard in their speech
Almost the highest wisdom man can reach.
But one bright peak still rises far above,
And there the Master stands whose name is Love,
Saying to those whom heavy tasks employ
" Life is divine when duty is a joy."
The second point in the teaching of Jesus The world
which is meant to rectify our views of the un- come
evenness of the world, is His doctrine of a future a
life, — not a different life, but the same life mov
ing on under new conditions and to new issues. <
This world is not all. There is another world, a
better age, a more perfect state of being, in which

294

Service

The errors
of time call
for the
balance of
eternity.

the sorrows and losses of those who now suffer
unjustly will be compensated, and in which —
let us not hesitate to say it as calmly and as
firmly as Jesus said it — those who have un
justly and selfishly enjoyed their good things
in this world will suffer in their turn. It is
the fashion nowadays to sneer at such teaching
as this; to call it "other-worldliness"; to
declare that it has no real power to strengthen
or uplift the hearts of men. Jesus did not
think so. Jesus made much of it. Jesus
pressed home upon the hearts of men the con
solations and warnings of immortality. He
showed the miserable failure of the man who
filled his barns and lost his empty soul.1 He
bade His disciples, when they suffered and were
persecuted for righteousness' sake, " rejoice and
be exceeding glad, for great is your reward
in heaven."2
Let us not impoverish our gospel by flinging
away, in our fancied superiority, this precious
truth. It is impossible to justify the present
fragmentary existence of man if we look at it
and speak of it as the whole of his life. Earth
has mysteries which naught but heaven can
explain. Earth has sorrows which naught but
heaven can heal. Yes, and earth has evils,
1 St. Luke xii. 16-21. 2 St. Matt. v. 12.

Service 295
black and secret offences of man against man,
false and foul treasons against the love of God,
crimes which take a base advantage of His pa
tience and long-suffering and hide themselves
like poisonous serpents in the shelter of the
very laws which He has made for the good of
the world, sins all entangled with the present
structure of society and beyond the reach of
human law, undiscoverable iniquities, unpardon
able and unpunishable cruelties, — which naught
but hell can disclose and consume. The errors
of time call for the balance of eternity. Pa
tient labour, patient endurance, patient resig
nation in this present life shall be greatly
rewarded in the life to come. Now is the day
of toil and trial ; but the pay-day will surely
dawn. Much of the best that is done in this
world receives no earthly wages. Those to
whom it is done, — the poor, the maimed, the
lame, the blind, — " they cannot recompense
thee ; but thou shalt be recompensed at the
resurrection of the just."1
Thus Jesus teaches ; and He shows us that This un-
the present order of inequality, so far from equa ,
r i j ' our educa-
being an obstacle to this result, is the very tion for the
means by which it is to be accomplished. The *u we'
discipline of this uneven life is the education
1 St. Luke xiv. 14.

296

Service

Fraternitybetter than
equality.

by which alone we can be prepared for the
heavenly life. Jesus does not present Himself
as a rectifier of life's unequal conditions of
outward fortune. He distinctly refuses this
office. " Man, who made me a judge or a
divider over you 7"1 Jesus does not preach an
equality which is synonymous with life on a
dead level. He does not preach equality at
all. He preaches fraternity. And frater
nity implies differences, — older and younger,
stronger and weaker, higher and lower. The
elder brother is the heir ; all that the father
has is his ; but his sin lies in holding fast
to his inheritance selfishly, in shutting out
his younger brother, in forgetting and deny
ing that he is a brother at all.2 The distinc
tions of life are not meant to obscure, but to
reveal and to beautify its best virtues. Out of
dependence spring the sweet blossoms of grati
tude and lpyalty. Out of mastership flow the
refreshing streams of forbearance and justice
and mercy. The apostle tells us that the love
of money is a root of all kinds of evil.3
But Christ shows us the deeper truth that
the right use of money is a means of all
kinds of good. " It is more blessed to give
i St. Luke xii. 14. 2 St. Luke xv. 25-32.
3 1 Tim. vi. 10.

munism.

Service 297
than to receive."1 Every gift of Providence
to us is an opportunity and therefore a re
sponsibility, and the blessing does not come
with the gift until we recognize the responsi
bility, and use the opportunity. The mammon
of unrighteousness can only be destroyed by
a process of transformation which transmutes
it into the pure gold of the celestial treasury.2
The name of that process is charity. And the
translation of that name is wise and holy
love.3 Let us try to think distinctly. It is said Christianity
nowadays that Christianity means communism,
and that it is the duty of all Christians to
give away everything that they possess. It
is strange that Christ never proclaimed this
duty except to one man, and that man was not
a Christian.4 Of course it must be admitted
at once that this would be the duty of all
Christians if it could be shown that it would
be for the real good of their fellow-men. But
this never has been shown. On the contrary,
communism has always turned out badly. It
was tried in Jerusalem, in a limited way, when
the early Christians sold all that they had and
made a common purse ; but it led, in less
1 Acts xx. 35. 8 See Appendix, note 60.
2 St. Luke xvi. 19. i St. Mark x. 21.

298

Service

Love thy
neighbouras wisely
and well as
thyself.

than ten years, to confusion and strife, and
sank the Jerusalem church into a condition
of pauperism and dependence upon the other
churches, which had avoided the well-meant
but dangerous experiment. It was tried in
France, under atheistic auspices, and its fruit
was wide-spread misery and injustice. It was
tried to some degree in England, under a sys
tem of poor laws which were based upon the
idea that every man had a right to eat whether
he would work or not, and it resulted in such
disorder and demoralization that it had to be
discarded as a menace to society.
There is nothing in the teachings of Christ
which would make us blind to these plain
lessons of history. On the contrary, He de
sires and commands us to discover and do that
which will really bless and help our fellow-
men. " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy
self," 1 — the same kind of love, the same in
ward regard for the higher ends and aims of
life, which is the saving grace of the indi
vidual soul, is to be the saving grace of so
ciety.2 And what kind of love is that? It
is a wise and holy love, a love which puts
character first and comfort second, a love which
seeks to purify and bless and uplift the whole
1 St. Matt. xxii. 39. 2 See Appendix, note 61.

Service 299
man. Such a love may be shown by withhold
ing as truly as by bestowing. False charity
pampers self and pauperizes others. True char
ity educates self by helping others. The so-
called Christian who never gives is a false
Christian. The Christian who gives carelessly,
blindly, indiscriminately, however generously,
is a very imperfect Christian. The Christian
who gives thoughtfully, seriously, fraternally,
bending his best powers to the accomplishment
of a real benefaction of his fellow-men, bestow
ing himself with his gift, is in the true and
only way of the following of Jesus.
Preach this truth. Preach it home to the Every privi-
, . c .,, , . ., p . -, leqe is a call
hearts ot men, without tear or favour tor rich ,„*,„¦„„
or poor. Preach it home to your own heart
so close that it shall save you from the min
ister's besetting sins of spiritual selfishness and
cant. Tell the Lady Bountiful that she is not
called to discard her ladyhood, but to give her
self with all her refinements, with all her ac
complishments, with all that has been given to
her of sweetness and light, to the ennobling
service of humanity. Tell the Merchant-Prince
that he is not called to abandon his place of
influence and power, but to fill it in a princely
spirit, to be a true friend and father to all who
are dependent upon him, to make his prosper-

300 Service
ity a fountain of blessing to his fellow-men, to
be a faithful steward of Almighty God. And
then let us tell ourselves, as members of the
so-called " educated classes," to whom God has
given even greater gifts than those of rank and
riches, — privileges of knowledge, opportunities
of culture, free access to the stored-up wisdom
of the ages, — let us tell ourselves with un
flinching fidelity that God will hold us to a
strict account for all these things. If our salt
loses its savour it shall be trodden under foot
of men. If our culture separates us from hu
manity we shall be cast into the outer darkness.
Our light must shine or be shamefully extin
guished. Every faculty and every gift we
possess must be honestly and entirely conse
crated to the service of man, in Christ's name
and for Christ's sake.1 This is the gospel for
the present age, and for every age. This is
Social re- the way in. which the kingdom of heaven is to
generation. be established on earth. This is the way in
which the inequality of this mortal life is to
be transfigured and irradiated with a divine
equity. "What we look for, work for, pray
for, as believers, is a nation where class shall
be bound to class by the fullest participation
in the treasure of the one life ; where the mem-
1 See Appendix, note 62.

Service 301
bers of each group of workers shall find in their
work the development of their character and
the consecration of their powers : where the
highest ambition of men shall be to be leaders
of their own class, so using their special powers
without waste and following the common tradi
tions to noble issues : where each citizen shall
know, and be strengthened by the knowledge,
that he labours not for himself only, nor for
hi's family, nor for his country, but for GOD."1

n
Thus far the teaching of Christ leads us with Inequality
, ... -i.t i- , , t e in the spirit-
clear serenity m our understanding of the dit- ual *M
ferences among men in the distribution of the
goods of this present world. But the deeper
problem still remains untouched. There is an
apparent inequality in the bestowal of spiritual
blessings. In the life of the soul also, it seems
that much is given to one and little to another.
Some men are born very close to the kingdom •;
of heaven and powerfully drawn by unseen
hands to enter its happy precincts. Other men
are born far away from the gates of light, and
it looks to us as if all the influences of their life
were hindrances rather than helps to holiness.
1 B. E. Westcott, Bishop of Durham, The Incarnation
and Common Life (London, Macmillan, 1893), p. 82.

302

Service

The doctrine
of election.

The search-
ingquestion.

False answers.

There is an undeniable contrast in the religious
world which can only be interpreted as a divine
foreordination, — that is to say, an act by which
some men are set before others, given the pre
cedence, offered an earlier and apparently an
easier opportunity of spiritual life. If God is
sovereign, this act, by which the means of grace
are unevenly dispensed, must be the result of a
divine choice.
The formal recognition of this choice is the
doctrine of election. It is an inevitable doc
trine. It is founded upon facts which admit
of no denial. And it brings every thoughtful
and earnest soul face to face with the question
of questions, upon the answer to which the
nature and reality of religion depend.
Is God arbitrary, is God partial, is God unjust ?
Does He bless some of His children and leave
the rest under an irremediable curse without a
single reason which can be exhibited to human
faith and justified in perfect love ? In the last
and highest realm of life, the realm of the spirit,
does He make it more blessed to receive than
to give, and exercise His sovereignty in favour
itism, and establish heaven as a kingdom of
infinite and eternal and inexplicable inequality ?
It is an idle thing to answer this question by
an appeal to God's absolute right to dispose of

Service 303
all , His creatures as He will. For the very An arbi-
essence of true religion is the faith that He is '""'
such a God that He wills to dispose of all His
creatures wisely and fairly and in perfect love.
And the very essence of a true revelation, as
the message which calls religion into being, is
that it makes God's wisdom and fairness and
love manifest, and so helps us to understand
and adore and trust Him, not only for ourselves
but for the whole world.
It is an idle thing to answer this question by Anirrespon-
r-, , ¦ -, .... sible God.
saying that God is under no obligation to be
good to everybody, and therefore that He may
be good to whomsoever He pleases. The idea
of an irresponsible God is a moral mockery.
Poisonous doubt exhales from it as malaria from
a swamp. To teach that all men are God's
debtors, and that therefore it is right for Him
to remit the debt of one man, and to exact the
penalty from another to the last farthing, is to
teach what is logically true and morally false.
Our hearts recoil from such a doctrine. If
God has made us, and made us spiritual
paupers, utterly incapable of anything good,
we are not His debtors. Jesus teaches us that
God asks of us only to give as freely as we have
received.1 He demands only that which He
1 St. Matt. x. 8.

304

Service

A God
whose glory
is not
goodness.

Election
perverted in
human theology.

Himself has made us able to pay. And He
forgives like the good master in the parable,
with a free pardon which needs but the con
fession of helplessness and poverty to call it
forth.1 It is an idle thing to answer this question by
an appeal to ignorance, and to say that God
elects some men to be saved and leaves the rest
of mankind to be lost simply for His own un
searchable and inexplicable glory ! For God's
glory, as revealed by religion, is identical with
His goodness. Faith, true and joyful and up
lifting faith, answers only to a gospel which
makes that identity more clear and luminous,
and shows that the divine election in the realm
of grace is perfectly consistent with that wide
and deep love wherewith God so loved the
whole world that He sent His only begotten
Son that whosoever believeth in Him should
not perish but have everlasting life.2
Now it is because men have forgotten this
that they have found no answer, or a false and
misleading answer, to the problem of inequality
in the spiritual world. It is because they have
torn the doctrine of election from its roots in
the divine love, and petrified it with unholy
logic, that it has lost its beauty, its perfume,
1 St. Matt, xviii. 27. 2 See Appendix, note 63,

Service 305
its power of fruitfulness to everlasting life.
We must go back from the dead skeleton as it
is preserved in the museum of theology to the
living plant as it blossoms in the field of the
Bible. We must go back of Jonathan Edwards,
and back of John Calvin, and back of Augustine,
to St. Paul, and see how, under his hand, all
the mysterious facts of election as they are
unfolded in human history, break into flower
at last in the splendid faith that "God hath
shut up all unto disobedience that He might
have mercy upon all."1 We must go still
farther back, to Christ, and learn from Him
that election is simply the way in which God
uses His chosen ones to bless the world, —
the divine process by which the good seed is
sown and scattered far and wide and the
heavenly harvest multiplied a thousand-fold.
" I elected you," He says to His disciples and
to us, " I elected you, and appointed you, that
ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit
should abide."2
Christ's doctrine of election is a living, Christ's doc-
fragrant, fruitful doctrine. It is the most election to
beautiful thing in Christianity. It is the very service.
core and substance of the gospel, translated
1 Romans xi. 32 ; see Appendix, note 64.
2 St. John xv. 16.

306

Service

Christ as
the elect
servant.

The disciple
must be as
his Lord.

from the heart of God into the life of man. It
is the divine law of service in spiritual things.
It is the supreme truth in the revelation of an
all-glorious love ; the truth that God chooses
men not to be saved alone, but to be saved by
saving others, and that the greatest in the king
dom of heaven is he who is most truly the
servant of all.1
Is not this true of Christ Himself ? He is
the great example of what it means to be elect.
He is the beloved Son in whom the Father
is well pleased. And He says " Behold, I am
in the midst of you as he that serveth."2 Ser
vice was the joy and crown of His life. Service
was the refreshment and the strength of His
soul, the angel's food, the "meat to eat" of
which His disciples did not know.3
Was not this the lesson that He was always
teaching them by practice and by precept, that
they must be like Him if they would belong
to Him, that they must share His service if
they would share His election ! " I have ap
peared unto thee for this purpose," He said
to Saul, "to make thee a servant (yirr)peTT)v, a
rower in the ship), and a witness both of those
things which thou hast seen and of the things
1 See Appendix, note 65. 2 St. Luke xxii. 27,
8 St. John iv. 32,

Service 307
in the which I will appear unto thee."1 The
vision of Christ is the call to service. And if
Paul had not been obedient to the heavenly
vision could Saul have made his calling and
election sure ? But he answered it with a noble
faith. " It pleased God to reveal His son in
me in order that I might preach him among
the nations."2 Henceforward, wherever he
might be, among his friends in Cilicia, in the
dungeon at Philippi, on the doomed vessel
drifting across the storm-tossed Adriatic, in
the loneliness of his Roman prison, this was
the one object of his life, to be a faithful ser
vant of Christ, and therefore, as Christ was, a
faithful servant of mankind.3
How can we interpret Christ's parables, with- Parables of
out this truth? The parables of the Pounds pnV' ege.
± and serine.
and the Talents are both pictures of election
to service. They both exhibit the sovereignty
of God in distributing His gifts ; they both
turn upon the idea of man's accountability for
receiving and using them; and they both declare
that the reward will be proportioned to fidel
ity in serving. The nature and meaning of
this is explained by Christ in His great descrip
tion of the judgment, which immediately fol
lows the parable of the Talents in St. Matthew's
i Acts xxvj. 16. 2 Gal. i, 16. 3 2 Cor. iv. 5.

and service.

308 Service
Gospel.1 Many of those who have known Him
will be rejected at last because they have not
" served their fellow-men. Many of those who
have not known Him will be accepted because
they have ministered lovingly, though igno
rantly, to the wants and sorrows of the world.
Service, the Service is the key-note of the heavenly king- o
key-note of
the king- dom, and he who will not strike that note shall
dom. have no part in the music. The King in the
parable of the Wedding Feast2 chose and called
his servants, not to sit down at ease in the
palace, but to go out into the highways and
bid every one that they met, to come to the
marriage. And if one of those servants had
refused or betrayed his mission, if he had neg
lected his Master's business, and sat down on
the steps of the palace or walked pleasantly in
the garden until the supper was ready, do you
suppose that he would have found a place or a
welcome at the feast? His soul would have
stood naked and ashamed without the wedding-
garment of love. For this is the nature of
o God's kingdom, that a selfish religion abso
lutely unfits a man from entering or enjoying
it. Its gate is so strangely strait that a man
cannot pass through it if he desires and tries
1 St. Matt. xxv. 31-46.
2 St. Matt. xxii. 1-13.

sion.

Service 309
to come alone ; but if he will bring others with
him, it is wide enough and to spare.
Who seeks for heaven alone to save his soul,
May keep the path, but will not reach the goal ;
While he who walks in love may wander far,
Yet God will bring him where the blessed are.
How wonderfully all this comes out in the The prayer
great intercessory prayer of Christ at the last
supper.1 That prayer is the last and highest
utterance of the love wherewith Christ, having
loved His own which were in the world, loved
them unto the end. He prays for His chosen
ones : " I pray for them : I pray not for the
world but for those whom Thou hast given Me."
" Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which
Thou hast given Me, that they may be one even
as We are. For their sakes I consecrate Myself,
that they themselves also may be consecrated
in truth. Neither for these only do I pray, but
for them also that believe on Me through their
word ; that they may all be one, even as Thou,
Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also
may be in Us ; that the world may believe that
Thou didst send Me." How the prayer rises,
like some celestial music, through all the inter
woven notes of different fellowships, the fellow
ship of the Father with the Son, the fellowship
1 St. John xvii.

310 Service
of the Master with the disciples, the fellowship
of the disciples with each other, until at last it
strikes the grand chord of universal love. Not
for the world Christ prays, but for the disciples
in the world, in order that they may pray for
the world, and serve the world, and draw the
world to faith in Him. And so, in truth, while
He prays thus for His disciples, He does pray
for the whole world. Circle beyond circle, orb
beyond orb, like waves upon water, like light
from the sun, the prayer, the faith, the conse
crating power spread from that upper room
until they embrace all mankind in the sweep of
the divine intercession. The special, personal,
elective love of Christ for His own is not
exclusive ; it is magnificently and illimitably
inclusive. He loved His disciples into loving
their fellow-men. He lifted them into union
with God ; but He did not lift them out of
union with the world ; and every tie that
bound them to humanity, every friendship,
every fellowship, every link of human inter
course, was to be a channel for the grace of
God that bringeth salvation, that it might
appear to all men.1
Christ's This is Christ's ideal : a radiating gospel :
ideal. & s r
a kingdom of overflowing, conquering love ; a
1 Titus ii. 11.

Service 31 1
church that is elected to be a means of blessing
to the human race.1 This ideal is the very
nerve of Christian missions, at home and
abroad, the effort to preach the gospel to every
creature, not merely because the world needs
to receive it, but because the Church will be
rejected and lost unless she gives it. 'Tis not
so much a question for us whether any of our
fellow-men can be saved without Christianity.
The question is whether we can be saved if we
are willing to keep our Christianity to our
selves. And the answer is, No ! The only
religion that can really do anything for me, is
the religion that makes me want to do some
thing for you. The missionary enterprise is
not the Church's afterthought. It is Christ's
forethought. It is not secondary and optional.
It is primary and vital. Christ has put it into
the very heart of His gospel. We cannot
really see Him, or know Him, or love Him,
unless we see and know and love His ideal for
us, the ideal which is embodied in the law of
election to service.
For this reason the spirit of missions has Missions
rt p^^pnii at io
always been the saving and purifying power
of the Christian brotherhood. Whenever and ity.
wherever this ideal has shined clear and strong,
1 See Appendix, note 66.

Christian-

312

Service

emancipated the early
church.

Missionskeep the
gospel pure.

it has revealed the figure of the Christ more
simply and more brightly to His disciples, and
guided their feet more closely in the way of
peace and joy and love.
In the first century it was the spirit of for
eign missions that saved the Church from the
bondage of Jewish formalism. Paul and his
companions could not live without telling the
world that Christ Jesus came to seek and save
the lost — lost nations as well as lost souls.
The heat of that desire burned up the fetters
of bigotry like ropes of straw. The gospel
could not be preached to all men as a form of
Judaism. But the gospel must be preached to
all men. Therefore it could not be a form of
Judaism. The argument was irresistible. It
was the missionary spirit that made the Eman
cipation Proclamation of Christianity.
In the dark ages the heart of religion was
kept beaming by the missionary zeal and efforts
of such men as St. Patrick, and St. Augustine,
and Columba and Aiden, and Boniface, and
Anskar, who brought the gospel to our own
fierce ancestors in the northern parts of Europe
and wild islands of the sea. In the middle
ages it was the men who founded the great
missionary orders, St. Francis and St. Dominic,
who did most to revive the faith and purify

Service 313
the life of the Church. And when the Refor
mation had lost its first high impulse, and
sunken into the slough of dogmatism ; when
the Protestant churches had become entangled
in political rivalries and theological controver
sies, while the hosts of philosophic infidelity
and practical godlessness were sweeping in
apparent triumph over Europe and America,
it was the spirit of foreign missions that
sounded the reveilli to the Christian world,
and lit the signal fire of a new era — an era of
simpler creed, more militant hope, and broader
love — an era of the Christianity of Christ.
The desire of preaching the gospel to every
creature has drawn the Church back from her
bewilderments and sophistications closer to the
simplicity that is in Christ, and so closer to that
divine ideal of Christian unity in which all
believers shall be one in Him. You cannot
preach a complicated gospel, an abstract gos
pel, to every creature. You cannot preach a
gospel that is cast in an inflexible mould of
thought, like Calvinism, or Arminianism, or
Luther anism, to every creature. It will not
fit. But the gospel, the only gospel which is
divine, must be preached to every creature.
Therefore, these moulds and forms cannot be an
essential part of it. And so we work our way

314

Service

One mes
sage and
many ways
of preach
ing it.

back out of the tangle of human speculations
toward that pure, clear, living message which
Paul carried over from Asia to Europe, the
good news that God is in Christ, reconciling
the world to Himself.
This is the gospel for an age of doubt, and
for all ages wherein men sin and suffer, question
and despair, thirst after righteousness and long
for heaven. There are a thousand ways of
preaching it, with lips and lives, in words and
deeds ; and all of them are good, provided only
the preacher sets his whole manhood earnestly
and loyally to his great task of bringing home
the truth as it is in Jesus to the needs of his
brother-men. The forms of Christian preach
ing are manifold. The spirit is one and the
same. New illustrations and arguments and
applications must be found for every age and
every race. But the truth to be illuminated
and applied is as changeless as Jesus Christ
Himself, in whose words it is uttered and in
whose life it is incarnate, once and forever.
The types of pulpit eloquence are as different
as the characters and languages of men. But
all of them are vain and worthless as sound
ing brass and tinkling cymbals, unless they
speak directly and personally and joyfully
of that divine love which is revealed in

gospel.

Service 315
Christ in order that all who will believe in
it may be saved from doubt and sin and self
ishness in the everlasting kingdom of the lov
ing God.
This is the gospel which began to shine The only
through the shadows of this earth at Bethlehem,
where the Son of God became the child of Mary,
and was manifested in perfect splendour on
Calvary, where the Good Shepherd laid down
His life for the sheep. For eighteen centuries
this simple, personal, consistent gospel has been
the leading light of the best desires and hopes
and efforts of humanity. It is the one bright
star that shines, serene and steady, through the
confusion of our perplexed, struggling, doubting
age. He who sees that star, sees God. He
who follows that star, shall never perish. It has
dawned upon my heart so clearly and so con
vincingly that the one thing I have cared and
tried to do in these lectures is to make it plain
that this is the essence of Christianity, the only
gospel that is worth preaching in all ways to
all men, that Jesus Christ is God who loves us
in order that we may learn to love one another.
But if I have failed to make this view of reli
gion clear, if an imperfect utterance has be
clouded and obscured the message, at least let
this last word be plain, at least let nothing hide

The last
word.

316 Service
from your soul or from mine, this supreme,
saving truth of election to service.
The vision of God in Christ is the greatest
gift in the world. It binds those who receive
it to the highest and most consecrated life. To
behold that vision is to be one of God's elect.
But for our own souls the result of that election
depends upon the giving of ourselves to serve
the world for Jesus' sake. Noblesse oblige.
Believers Let us not miss the meaning of Christianity
the servants as it comes to us and claims us. We are
of God's love chosen, we are called, not to die and be saved,
to the whole . .
world. °ut to live and save others. Ine promise ot
Christ is a task and a reward. For us there is
a place in the army of God, a mansion in the
heaven of peace, a crown in the hall of victory.
But whether we shall fill that place and dwell
in that mansion and wear that crown, depends
upon our willingness to deny ourselves and take
up our crass and follow Jesus. Whatever our
birthright and descent, whatever our name
and profession, whatever our knowledge of
Christian doctrine and our performance of
Christian worship may be, — when the great
host is gathered in the City of God, with
tattered flags and banners glorious in their
bloodstained folds, with armour dinted> and
swords worn in the conflict, with wounds which

Service 317
tell of courage and patient endurance and
deathless loyalty, — when the celestial knight
hood is assembled at the Round Table of the
King, our name will be unspoken, our crown
will hang above an empty chair, and our place
will be given to another, unless we accept now,
with sincere hearts, the only gospel which can
deliver us from the inertia of doubt and the
selfishness of sin. We must enter into life by
giving ourselves to the living Christ who un
veils the love of the Father in a Human Life,
and calls us with Divine Authority to submit
our Liberty to God's Sovereignty in blessed
and immortal Service to our fellow-men for
Christ's sake.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

FORE-WORD
Note 1. — "Every living preacher must receive
his message in a communication direct from God,
and the constant purpose of his life must be to
receive it uncorrupted, and to deliver it without
addition or subtraction.
" It is a truism, but, I think you will all agree,
a neglected truism. If in our brief better moments
we see it, we constantly are tempted to, recede from
it. Not without some suspicion of what may be
involved in unflinchingly accepting it as true, we
are apt to take refuge in modifications, compro
mises, denials. Flesh shrinks, and the heart cries
out. Let some one else go up the rugged steep of
the mountain and see Him face to face. Let some
one else stand awestruck in the passing of the
Almighty. I will do some humbler task. Let me
read the lessons, or let me recite the creed, or let
me be a priest, clad in the robes of office which
are a discharge from personal fitness. On many
grounds and in many ways we disclaim our calling.
The truth remains as a truism, but we dare not
321

322 Appendix [Fore-word
grasp it ourselves. The world notices our dis
claimer, and accepts us on the level of our own
elected degradation." — Robert F. Horton, Ver
bum Dei (Macmillan, 1893), p. 17.
Note 2. — " So much of the preaching to-day
seems to be preaching to yesterday, or preaching
about yesterday. It does not touch as it ought
the contemporary life, and grapple with its prob
lems, its duties, its difficulties, its dangers. There
is, in consequence, a sense of unreality about it, a
foreignness, a far-away-ness ; and to men who are
of necessity preoccupied with the exigencies of con
temporary life, it is not helpful preaching. . . .
We should try to make them understand that there
is a heaven here in this world, and a hell here in
this world, and that those who at present are living
in this world are in this heaven or in this hell.
And Jesus comes as light, we should try to make
them understand, to show them how to get out of
the hell which is here, or the hell-fire which is here,
into the heaven which is here. . . . We should try
to teach men and women to-day that the way in
which to 1186 the light of another world shining in
Jesus Christ, is not to stand gazing up into heaven
and acquiring thus a kind of spiritual myopia, or
shortsightedness, which prevents them from seeing
clearly the forms of duty immediately about them,
but to walk on the earth in the light of that other
world which in Jesus Christ so brightly and beauti
fully appears." — David H. Greer, The Preacher
and His Place (Scribners, 1895), pp. 46, 47.

Lecture I] Appendix 323
"Pere Gratry says, 'It is not enough to utter
the mysteries of the Spirit, the great mysteries of
Christianity, in formulas, true before God, but not
understood of the people. The apostle and the
prophet are precisely those who have the gift of
interpreting these obscure and profound formulas
for each man and each age. To translate into the
common tongue the mysterious and sacred language
... to speak the word of God afresh in each age,
in accordance with both the novelty of the age and
the eternal antiquity of the truth, this is what St.
Paul means by interpreting the unknown tongue.
But to do this, the first condition is that a man
should appreciate the times he lives in. "Hoc
autem tempus quare non probatis. " ' " — Lux Mundi
(John Murray, London, 1890), p. viii.

LECTURE I
Note 3. Page 5. — "Je ne crois pas ehoncer
une verite bien neuve en affirmant que la Littera-
ture est un de ces elements, le plus important
peut-etre, car dans la diminution de plus en plus
evidente des influences traditionnelles et locales,
le Livre devient le grand initiateur. II n'est
aucun de nous qui, descendu au fond de sa con
science, ne reconnaisse qu'il n'aurait pas ete tout
a fait le meme s'il n'avait pas lu tel ou tel ouvrage;
poeme ou roman, morceau d'histoire ou de philoso-
phie. A cette minute precise, et tandis que j'ecris
cette ligne, un adolescent, que je vois, s'est accoude"

324 Appendix [Lecture 1
sur son pupitre d'e*tudiant par ce beau soir d'un
jour de juin. Les fleurs s'ouvrent sous la fengtre,
amoureusement. L'or tendre du soleil couche"
s'e"tend sur la ligne de l'horizon avec une deli-
catesse adorable. Des jeunes filles causent dans
le jardin voisin. L'adolescent est penche sur son
livre, peut-gtre un de ceux dont il est parle dans
ces Essais. C'est les Fleurs du Mai de Baudelaire,
c'est la Vie de Jesus de M. Renan, c'est la Sa-
lammbo de Flaubert, c'est le Thomas Graindorge de
M. Taine, c'est le Rouge et le Noir de Beyle. . . .
Qu'il ferait mieux de vivre! disent les sages. . . .
Helas! c'est qu'il vit a cette minute, et d'une vie
plus intense que s'il cueillait les fleurs parfumees,
que s'il regardait le melancolique Occident, que
s'il serrait les fragiles doigts d'une des jeunes
filles. II passe tout entier dans les phrases de son
auteur prefere. II converse avec lui de coeur a
coeur, d'homme a homme. II l'e"coute prononcer
sur la maniere de gouter l'amour et de pratiquer la
debauche, de chereher le bonheur et de supporter
le malheur, d'envisager la mort et l'au dela tehe"-
breux du tombeau, des paroles qui sont des revela
tions. Ces paroles l'introduisent dans un univers
de sentiments jusqu'alors apercu a peine. De cette
premiere revelation a imiter ces sentiments, la dis
tance est faible et l'adolescent ne tarde guere a la
franchir. Un grand observateur a dit que beaucoup
d'hommes n'auraient jamais e'te' amoureux s'ils
n'avaient entendu parler de l'amour." — Paul
Bourget, Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine
(Paris, 1895), p. vi.

Lecture I] Appendix 325
" It may be alleged that the popular opinion is
merely a reflection of the popular literature, and
that the truth of the assumption I am calling in
question is generally believed by the many who
read, simply because it is constantly asserted by
the few who write. This no doubt is accurate, and
up to a certain point is an explanation. There
exists now a kind of literature, already large and
of growing importance, produced by experts for
the benefit of those who desire to be 'generally in
formed ' ; which, unlike most ephemeral literature,
leads public opinion rather than follows it. Of
course the greater part of this, whether it consists
of handbooks or of review articles, has no bearing
whatever on the relation which ought to exist be
tween Religion and Science, or with the positive
evidence that may exist for either. But just as
popular accounts of chemistry, physiology, or his
tory appear in answer to the natural desire of an
educated but busy public for as much knowledge
as possible, about as many things as possible, with
as little trouble as possible; so there are easily
found eminent authors anxious to purvey for that
apparently increasing class of persons who aspire
to be advanced thinkers, but who like to have their
advanced thinking done for them." — A. J. Bal
four, A Defence of Philosophic Doubt (Macmillan,
1879), p. 308.
Note 4. Page 7. — " With sorrow and reluctance
it must be confessed that the majority of Oxford
and Cambridge undergraduates are without, or at

326 Appendix [Lecture I
least profess to be without, any religious beliefs
at all. There are, of course, many exceptions.
Exceptions, however, they remain ; certainly the
greater number are Gallios so far as the church
is concerned." — Article in The Nineteenth Century,
October, 1895, in "The Religion of the Under
graduate." Things are not quite so bad in the
United States, but in France and Germany they
are worse.
Note 5. Page 11. — Among these books, which
take a distinctly spiritual and religious view of
evolution, some of the most interesting have been
written in America. The Idea of God, and The
Destiny of Man, by John Fiske ; Agnosticism and
Religion, by President Schurman of Cornell Uni
versity; The Evolution of Christianity, by Dr.
Lyman Abbott; and Moral Evolution, by Prof.
George Harris of Andover, may be named as
works of great value to the student who wishes
to understand the deeper tendencies of modern
thought. One of the first of undoubtedly orthodox
theologian^ to assert that the theory of evolution
is not hostile to religion, was President James
McCosh of Princeton. The general course of the
argument as it is developing in the light of science
to-day, may be seen in the following extracts from
the writings of Dr. John Fiske.
"The Darwinian theory, properly understood,
replaces as much teleology as it destroys. From
the first dawning of life we see all things work
ing together toward one mighty goal, the evolu-

Lecture I] Appendix. 327
tion of the most exalted spiritual qualities which
characterize Humanity. The body is cast aside
and returns to the dust of which it was made.
The earth, so marvellously wrought to man's
uses, will also be cast aside. The day is to
come, no doubt, when the heavens shall vanish
as a scroll, and the elements be melted with fer
vent heat. So small is the value which Nature
sets upon the perishable forms of matter! The
question, then, is reduced to this: Are Man's
highest spiritual qualities, into the production of
which all this creative energy has gone, to dis
appear with the rest? Has all this work been
done for nothing? Is it all ephemeral, all a bub
ble that bursts, a vision that fades? Are we to
regard the Creator's work as like that of a child,
who builds houses out of blocks, just for the pleas
ure of knocking them down? For aught that
science can tell us, ¦it may be so, but I can see no
good reason for believing any such thing. On
such a view the riddle of the universe becomes a
riddle without a meaning. Why, then, are we
any more called upon to throw away our belief in
the permanence of the spiritual element in Man
than we are called upon to throw away our belief
in the constancy of Nature? The more thoroughly
we comprehend that process of evolution by which
things have come to be what they are, the more we
are likely to feel that to deny the everlasting per
sistence of the spiritual element in Man is to rob
the whole process of its meaning. It goes far
toward putting us to permanent intellectual con-

328 Appendix [Lecture I
fusion, and I do not see that any one has yet
alleged, or is likely to allege, a sufficient reason
for our accepting so dire an alternative." — John
Fiske, The Destiny of Man (Houghton, Mifflin,
& Co., 1895), pp. 113-116.
"As to the conception of Deity, in the shape
impressed upon it by our modern knowledge, I
believe I have now said enough to show that it
is no empty formula or metaphysical abstraction
which we would seek to substitute for the living
God. The infinite and eternal Power that is mani
fested in every pulsation of the universe is none
other than the living God. We may exhaust the
resources of metaphysics in debating how far his
nature may fitly be expressed in terms applicable
to the physical nature of Man ; such vain attempts
will only serve to show how we are dealing with a
theme that must ever transcend our finite powers
of conception. But of some things we may feel
sure. Humanity is not a mere local incident in
an endless and aimless series of cosmical changes.
The events of the universe are not the work of
chance, neither are they the outcome of blind
necessity. Practically there is a purpose in the
world whereof it is our highest duty to learn the
lesson, however well or ill we may fare in render
ing a scientific account of it. When from the
dawn of life we see all things working together
toward the evolution of the highest spiritual at
tributes of Man, we know, however the words may
stumble in which we try to say it, that God is in

Lecture I] Appendix 329
the deepest sense a moral Being. The everlasting
source of phenomena is none other than the in
finite Power that makes for righteousness. Thou
canst not by searching find Him out; yet put thy
trust in Him, and against thee the gates of hell
shall not prevail; for there is neither wisdom nor
understanding nor counsel against the Eternal."
— John Fiske, The Idea of God (Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., 1886), pp. 166, 167.
" So, as we look back over the marvellous life-
history of our planet, even from the time when there
was no life more exalted than that of conferva scum
on the surface of a pool, through ages innumerable
until the present time, when man is beginning to
learn how to decipher nature's secrets, — we look
back over an infinitely slow series of minute adjust
ments, gradually and laboriously increasing the
points of contact between the inner life and the
world environing it. Step by step in the upward
advance toward humanity the environment has
enlarged, from the world of the fresh-water alga,
with its tiny field and its brief term of existence,
to the world of civilized men, which comprehends
the stellar universe during aeons of time. Every
such enlargement has had reference to actual exist
ences outside. The eye was developed in response
to the outward existence of radiant light, the ear
in response to the outward existence of acoustic
vibrations. The mother's love came in response
to the infant's needs. Fidelity and honour were
gradually developed as the nascent social life

330 Appendix [Lecture I
required them. Everywhere the internal adjust
ment has been brought about so as to harmonize
with some actually existing external fact. Such
has been nature's method: such is the deepest law
of all life that science has been able to detect.
" Now there was a critical moment in the history
of our planet, when love was beginning to play a
part hitherto unknown, when the notions of right
and wrong were germinating in the nascent human
soul, when the family was coming into existence,
when social ties were beginning to be knit, when
winged words first took their flight through the
air. This is the moment when the process of evo
lution was being shifted to a higher plane, when
civilization was to be superadded to organic evolu
tion, when the last and highest of creatures was
coming upon the scene, when the dramatic purpose
of creation was approaching fulfilment. At that
critical moment we see the nascent human soul
vaguely reaching forth toward something akin to
itself, not in the realm of fleeting phenomena,
but in the eternal presence beyond. An internal
adjustment of ideas was achieved in correspond
ence with an unseen world. That the ideas were
very crude and childlike, that they were put
together with all manner of grotesqueness, is what
might be expected. The cardinal fact is that the
crude, childlike mind was groping to put itself
into relation with an ethical world not visible to
the senses. And one aspect of this fact not to be
lightly passed over is the fact that religion, thus
set upon the scene coeval with the birth of human-

Lecture I] Appendix 331
ity, has played such a dominant part in the subse
quent evolution of human society that what history
would be without it is quite beyond our imagina
tion. As to the dimensions of this cardinal fact,
there can thus be no question. None can deny
that it is the largest and most ubiquitous fact con
nected with the existence of mankind upon the earth.
"Now, if the relation thus established, in the
morning twilight of man's career, between the
human soul and the world invisible and immaterial,
is a relation of which only the subjective term is
real and the objective term is non-existent, then I
say it is something utterly without precedent in
the whole history of creation. All the analogies
of evolution, so far as men have been able to
decipher it, are overwhelmingly against any such
supposition. All the analogies of nature fairly
shout against the assumption of such a breach of
continuity between the evolution of man and all
previous evolution. So far as our knowledge of
nature goes, the whole momentum of it carries us
forward to the conclusion that the unseen world, as
the objective term in a relation that has coexisted
with the whole career of mankind, has a real exist
ence; and it is but following out the analogy to
regard that unseen world as the theatre where the
ethical process is destined to reach its full consum
mation. " The lesson of evolution is that through all these
weary ages the human soul has not been cherishing
in religion a delusive phantom; but, in spite of
seemingly endless groping and stumbling, it has

332 Appendix [Lecture I
been rising to the recognition of its essential kin
ship with the everliving God. Of all the implica
tions of the doctrine of evolution with regard to man,
I believe the very deepest and strongest to be that
which asserts the everlasting reality of religion." —
Christian Literature. February, 1896. " The Ever
lasting Reality of Religion." p. 428.
Note 6. Page 17. — "It has been said that fic
tion is harmful not so much by what is put in it
as by what is left out. A few grains of wit, a
leaven of literary skill, and a little of fancy go far
to neutralize the septic properties of romance.
The most harmful of all are — at least for young
and unlearned people — the class usually styled
'harmless,' because the Seventh Commandment is
never mentioned in them. These, tossed aside by
mature readers, are read by the young in default
of better: these ruin mind and weaken imagina
tion, give false and sickly views of life, degrade
taste, and enervate both character and feeling." —
Article by " Maxwell Grey " in The Nineteenth Cen
tury. January, 1896. " The Influence of Fiction. "
Note 7. Page 24. — " At first sight it might seem
that these two kinds of pessimism, the popular and
instinctive, and the philosophic and reasoned, have
nothing to do with one another, and that no light
can be thrown on the latter by the earlier develop
ment. It is, no doubt, true that modern German
pessimism as a philosophy of existence must be
examined and estimated on its own grounds, and

Lecture I] Appendix 333
be accepted or rejected according as it shows itself
to be or not to be a consistent and well-reasoned
system of thought. At the same time, the full
significance of this speculative doctrine cannot be
understood except by a reference to pre-philosophic
pessimism. Systems of philosophy do not spring
from pure isolated intellect, but are the products
of concrete minds made up in part of certain emo
tional and moral peculiarities which mould and
colour in numberless particulars their intellectual
workmanship. It is at least a priori supposable
that the philosophic pessimists partake somewhat
of those habits of feeling and thought which under
lie the more popular type of pessimism." — James
Sully, Pessimism (Appleton, 1891), pp. 2, 3.
Note 8. Page 28. — "II y a d'abord dans Baude
laire une conception particuliere de l'amour. On
la caracteriserait assez exactement, semble-t-il, par
trois epithetes, d'ordre disparate comme notre soci-
ete. Baudelaire est tout a la fois, dans ses vers
d'amour : mystique, libertin, et analyseur. ... II
est libertin, et des visions depravees jusqu'au
sadisme troublent ce me\me homme qui vient
d'adorer le doigt leve de sa Madone. Les mornes
ivresses de la Venus vulgaire, les capiteuses ardeurs
de la Venus noire, les raffinC'es delices de la Venus
savante, les criminelles audaces de la Venus san-
guinaire, ont laisse de leur ressouvenir dans les
plus spiritualises de ses poemes. ... A travers
tant d'egarements, ou la soif d'une infinie purete"
se melange a la faim devorante des joies les plus

334 Appendix [Lecture I
pimente'es de la chair, I'intelligence de I'analyseur
reste cruellement maitresse d'elle-m§me. La mys-
ticite, comme le libertinage, se codifie en formules
dans ce cerveau qui decompose ses sensations, avec
la precision d'un prisme decomposant la lumiere.
Le raisonnement n'est jamais entame par la fievre
qui brule le sang ou par l'extase qui evoque les
chimeres. Trois hommes a la fois vivent dans
cet homme, unissant leurs sensations pour mieux
presser le coeur et en exprimer jusqu'a la derniere
goutte la seve rouge et chaude. Ces trois hommes
sont bien modernes, et plus moderne aussi est leur
reunion. La fin d'une foi religieuse, la vie a Paris,
et l'esprit scientifique du temps ont contribue a
faqonner, puis a fondre ces trois sortes de sensi-
bilites, jadis separees jusqu'a paraitre irreducti-
bles l'une a l'autre, et maintenant liees jusqu'a
paraitre inseparables, au moins dans cette creature,
sans analogue avant le XIX8 siecle franqais, qui
fut Baudelaire." — Bourget, Psychologie Contem-
poraine, pp. 5, 6, 8.
Note 9. Page 29. — " So hat Sudermann vor
wenigen Wochen auf dem litterarischen Congress
in Dresden unumwunden auf Ibsen, Tolstoi und
Zola als die eigentlichen Lehrmeister seiner Gen
eration hingewiesen. Welcher Meinung, Tiber die
Wahl dieser Muster man auch sein mag, gewiss ist
dass diese strengen und uberstrengen Richter Hirer
Mitmenschen ihren deutschen Jiingern nicht zu
geben vermochten, was ihnen selbst fehlte : innere
Harmonie. Ganz im Geiste ihrer Vorbilder gingen

Lecture I] Appendix 335
unsere Neuerer mit grausamer Freude den Schaden
und Schwachen unserer kranken Welt nach. Un-
bekummert um die welthistorischen Vorgange im
Zeitalter Bismarcks, fernab von jedem Versuch
oder Verdacht einer byzantinischen Litteratur
waren und blieben sie das bose Gewissen ihrer
Landsleute. Bald gab es kein verborgenes oder
offenes Laster der herrschenden Klassen, kein
kleines oder grosses Leid unserer Arbeiter und
Bauern, das uns nicht auf den Btihnen und in den
Buchern deutscher Naturalisten heimgesucht hatte.
Drama und Roman spielten sich auf das Wunder-
werkzeug hinaus, von dem ein feiner Humorist
getraumt und gescherzt hat : das Miserophon. Wie
der Apseolonius in Otto Ludwigs ' Zwischen Him-
mel und Erde' hatten unsere Neusten den Katzen-
jammer von den Rauschen, die sich Andere antran-
ken." — Anton Bettelheim, Cosmopolis, January,
1896, pp. 272, 273.
Note 10. Page 34. — " Karl Peters is undoubt
edly right, when he says of the systems both of
Frauenstadt and of Hartmann, that they represent
the transition to Theism without knowing it. ' I
maintain that the Philosophy of the Unconscious
represents the transition from Pantheism to Theism.
... As in Schopenhauer we have the transition
from an idealistic to a realistic, so in Hartmann
there is executed the transition from a pantheistic
to a theistic Weltanschauung. The former, indeed,
believed himself to stand on quite the other side,
and no doubt the latter also thinks that he is

336 Appendix [Lecture 11
planted on the opposite bank. But as Schopen
hauer could not prevent the historical development
from growing beyond his standpoint, so Hartmann
will seek in vain to guard himself against such a
breaking up of his system. . . . Ed. v. Hartmann's
Unconscious is an almighty and all- wise Providence,
raised above the world-process, which comprehends
and holds within itself the whole world-develop
ment.' " — James Orr, D.D., Tlie Christian View
of God and the World (New York, 1893), p. 457.
LECTURE II
Note 11. Page 46. — "Gradually one phenome
non after another of those discovered and attested
by De Puysegur, Esdaile, Elliotson, etc., has been
admitted into orthodox science under some slightly
altered name. Certain phenomena, rarer and more
difficult to examine, but attested by the same men
with equal care, are still left in the outer court of
the scientific temple. But when one has seen the
somnambulic state, the insensibility under opera
tions, etc., which were once scouted as fraudulent
nonsense, becoming the commonplaces of the lect
ure-room, one can await with equanimity the gen
eral acceptance of the thought-transference and
the clairvoyance which, from De Puysegur's day
onwards, have repeatedly occurred in the course of
those same experiments — experiments which some
times ruined the careers of those who made them,
but which are now recognized as epoch-making in
a great department of experimental psychology."

Lecture II] Appendix 337
" The time for a priori chains of argument, for
the subjective pronouncements of leading minds,
for amateurish talk and pious opinion, has passed
away; the question of the survival of man is a
branch of Experimental Psychology. Is there, or is
there not, evidence in the actual observed phenom
ena of automatism, apparitions, and the like, for
a transcendental energy in living men, or for an
influence emanating from personalities which have
over-passed the tomb? This is the definite ques
tion which we can at least intelligibly discuss, and
which either we or our descendants may some day
hope to answer." — F. W. H. Myers, Science and
a Future Life (Macmillan, 1893), pp. 34, 44.
Note 12. Page 47. — "Now it is surely not
unreasonable to surmise that there are limitations
in the nature of the universe which must circum
scribe the achievements of speculative research.
Every astronomer knows that there was only one
secret of the universe to be discovered, and that
when Newton told it to the world the supreme
triumph of astronomy was achieved. Whether
Darwin or some one else shall have disclosed the
other great mystery of the generation of life, it is
none the less certain that all future triumphs will
be insignificant by the side of the first luminous
hypothesis. Chemistry rests, when all abatements
have been made, on the atomic theory, and even if
future investigation enables us to forecast with
absolute precision what the result of combinations
hitherto unattempted will be, so that we can calcu-

338 Appendix [Lecture II
late in the study what is now worked out grop
ingly in the laboratory, that discovery would
hardly eclipse the merit of Dalton's contribution
to science. So it is in every department of
research. Even the greatest men are little more
than sagacious interpreters of thought and toil
which others have expended obscurely. The dis
covery of a new metal, a new star, or a new species
is now nothing to thrill us with wonder and awe.
We know that it has been worked up to by former
experiments or is the result of improved instru
ments, and is no more matter of wonder than that
this year's best steamship should make a knot an
hour more than was possible five years ago. Then
again, not only is science ceasing to be a prophet,
but in virtue of her very triumphs, precisely be
cause her thoughts are passing into the life-blood
of the world, is she losing visible influence as a
liberal educator. It is coming to be matter of
history that she has taught us to substitute law
for caprice in our conceptions of the Divine will;
that she has relegated the belief in secondary
causes and the belief in arbitrary interpositions of
the First Cause to the lumber-room of fable ; that
she has given us a broader and intenser view of
nature, while she has left us the fairyland of the
world's childhood for an appreciable treasure.
Other harvests have now been gathered in. The
prophet and leader is rapidly becoming a hand
maid. Her possibilities can be pretty accurately
summed up or forecast in a cyclopaedia; and having
delivered herself of her one imperishable protest

Lecture II] Appendix 339
against popular theology, she has no other great
moral truth to declare." — Charles H. Pearson,
National Life and Character (Macmillan, 1893),
p. 291.
" But in truth if (as is commonly assumed) our
discoveries are confined to the physical side of
things, there is no ground whatever for this san
guine hope. Admitting that the visible universe
is, in relation to our present faculties, practically
infinite, it by no means follows that our means of
scrutinizing it are capable of indefinite improve
ment. And, in fact, we find the true , pioneers
of science greatly more cautious in their prog
nostic. We begin to hear that telescopy and
microscopy (which in their brief existence have
suggested so many more problems than they have
solved) are already approaching ominously near to
their theoretic limit. We begin to recognize in
the length of the light-wave an irreducible bar to
that scrutiny of the 'infinitely little' which we
most urgently need. We begin to feel that the
sensitiveness of the retina, the percipient power
of the brain, however supplemented by sensitive
apparatus, must always be inadequate to the more
delicate tasks which we would fain assign to them ;
and in short that the human body, developed for
quite other purposes, must always be a rude and
clumsy instrument for the apprehension of abstract
truth. And more than this. Vast as is the visible
universe, infinite as may have been the intelligence
which went to its evolution, yet while viewed in

340 Appendix [Lecture II
the external way in which alone we can view it,
— while seen as a product and not as a plan, — it
cannot possibly suggest to us an indefinite number
of universal laws. Such cosmic generalizations as
gravitation, evolution, correlation of forces, con
servation of energy, though assuredly as yet unex
hausted, cannot in the nature of things be even
approximately . inexhaustible." — Science and a
Future Life, p. 72.
Note 13. Page 48. — " Here terminated the first
part of our inquiry. Its general result is to show
(1) that from the particular knowledge obtained
by observing the phenomena of a world assumed
throughout this part of the essay to be persistent,
no scientific conclusions could be drawn; and (2)
that even if we suppose these phenomena to be
part of a world governed by causation, we were not
much advanced, and that, therefore, (3) some
further principles or modes of inference have need
to be discovered before Science is placed on a
rational foundation. Of these 'further principles,'
since their nature is altogether unknown, no more
notice has been taken.
" Assuming then that the arguments attacked are
fairly representative of English Philosophy at the
present time — as is, I think, the case — and assum
ing, as I am bound to do, that the answers here
given to those arguments are effective, we may say
that Science is a system of belief which, for any
thing we can allege to the contrary, is wholly
without proof. The inferences by which it is ar-

Lecture II] Appendix 341
rived at are erroneous; the premises on which it
rests are unproved. It only remains to show that,
considered as a general system of belief, it is inco
herent: and this task is undertaken in the two
chapters which together form the Third Part.
"The first of these (namely, Chapter XII.) is
devoted in the main to showing that there is a
discrepancy between the facts which Science asserts
to be its (particular) premises and the facts which
it puts forward as its ultimate conclusions. But
besides this principal contention, it is shown inci
dentally that the universe, as it is represented to
us by Science, is wholly unimaginable, and that
our conception of it is what in Theology would be
termed purely anthropomorphic.
"The chief argument of Chapter XII. is, how
ever, only indirectly connected with this subject,
its principal end being to contrast the world as it
appears with the world as Science assures us that it
is, and to show that the scientific reasoning which
makes our knowledge of the second depend logically
upon our knowledge of the first, is inadmissible.
"The fact that the two are in contradiction, is
flagrant and undeniable — as any one may see who
considers that while perception gives us immediate
knowledge of the existence of coloured objects,
Science tells us that this appearance is really due
either to the vibration of uncoloured particles, or
to reflection from uncoloured surfaces. It is also,
I imagine, evident that no integral part of a sys
tem can contradict the premises of that system
without introducing confusion and incoherence

342 Appendix [Lecture II
into the whole; and finally, it must be admitted
that since our actual scientific system does rest
upon the data given in perception, and since its
conclusions are in contradiction with these data, it
must be regarded as incoherent and confused." —
Arthur James Balfour, A Defence of Philo
sophic Doubt (Macmillan, 1879), pp. 284, 285,
287-289. Note 14. Page 52. — "With the growth of
knowledge Theology has enlarged its borders until
it has included subjects about which even the most
accomplished theologian of past ages did not
greatly concern himself. To the Patristic, Dog
matic, and Controversial learning which has
always been required, the theologian of to-day
must add knowledge at first hand of the complex
historical, antiquarian, and critical problems pre
sented by the Old and New Testaments, and of
the vast and daily increasing literature which has
grown up around them. He must have a sufficient
acquaintance with the comparative history of reli
gions; and„in addition to all this, he must be com
petent to deal with those scientific and philosophical
questions which have a more profound and perma
nent bearing on Theology even than the results
of critical and historical scholarship." — Arthur
James Balfour, The Foundations of Belief (Long
mans, 1895), p. 1.
"What manner of man must he be, who is to
give epoch-making expression to the new con-

Lecture II] Appendix 343
sciousness of Christ, it is not difficult to imagine.
He must know the method of physical science, and
be in sympathy with its great generalizations ; he
must be at home in the kingdom of thought,
familiar with the noble and fruitful ideas in phi
losophy, a companion of the imperial thinkers of
the race; he must have at his tongue's end the
salient facts of Christian history, and the funda
mental conceptions and distinctions of historic
theology ; he must be a master of the new biblical
learning, widely and deeply versed in the classical
literatures of the world, and able to work in the
consciousness of the true interpretation of the re
ligions of the world; and, in addition to all this,
he must have original power. For this apparatus
of learning is but the introduction to such work as
to-day needs to be done." — George A. Gordon,
The Christ of To-day (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
1896), pp. 31, 32.
Note 15. Page 55. — "All human language, all
human observation, implies that the mind, the 'I,'
is a thing in itself, a fixed point in the midst of
a world of change, of which world of change its
own organs form a part. It is the same yesterday,
to-day, and to-morrow. It was what it is when its
organs were of a different shape, and consisted of
different matter from their present shape and mat
ter. It will be what it is when they have gone
through other changes. I do not say that this
proves, but surely it suggests, it renders probable,
the belief that this ultimate fact, this starting-

344 Appendix [Lecture II
point of all knowledge, thought, feeling, and lan
guage, this 'final inexplicability ' (an emphatic,
though a clumsy phrase), is independent of its
organs ; that it may have existed before they were
collected out of the elements, and may continue to
exist after they are dissolved into the elements.
The belief thus suggested by the most intimate,
the most abiding, the most wide-spread of all
experiences, not to say by universal experience,
as recorded by nearly every word of every lan
guage in the world, is what I mean by a belief in
a future state, if indeed it should not rather be
called a past, present, and future state, all in one,
a state which rises above and transcends time and
change. I do not say that this is proved, but I do
say that it is strongly suggested by the one item
of knowledge which rises above logic, argument,
language, sensation, and even direct thought, that
one clear instance of direct consciousness in virtue
of which we say 'I am.' This belief is that there
is in man, or rather that man is that which rises
above words and above thoughts, which are but
unuttered words ; that to each one of us, 'I' is
the ultimate central fact which renders thought
and language possible." — Sir James Fitzjames
Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Quoted by
Hutton, Contemporary Thought and Thinkers, I.,
p. 114.
Note 16. Page 56. — " Now personality is the
inevitable and necessary starting-point of all
human thought. For we cannot by any conceiv-

Lecture II] Appendix 345
able means get out of it, or behind it, or beyond
it, or account for it, or imagine the method of
its derivation from anything else. For, strictly
speaking, we have no knowledge of anything else
from which it can have been derived. If we are
told that it is the product of pure reason, or uncon
scious will, or mere matter, or blind force, the
answer is obvious — that we know of no such
things. For, when spoken of in this way, reason
and will and matter and force are only abstrac
tions, and abstractions from my personal experi
ence; that is to say, they are parts of myself,
separated from their context and then supposed to
exist in the other world; or, to put the same thing
in another way, they are phenomena of the outer
world, which are supposed to resemble parts of
myself taken out of their context. But it is only
in their context that these parts of me have any
real existence. Will, in the only form in which
I know it, is determined by reason and desire.
Matter, in the only form in which I know it, —
that is, in my own body, — is informed by reason
and desire and will. Reason, as I know it, is
inseparable from desire and will. And when in
my own case I speak of my 'reason' or my 'will'
apart, I am making abstraction of a particular
aspect of myself, which, as such, has only an
ideal or imaginary existence. Consequently, names
which are given to phenomena in virtue of their
resembling or being supposed to resemble these
abstract aspects of myself, must be equally ideal
and imaginary in their denotation. And I cannot

346 Appendix [Lecture II
in any way conceive a living and complex whole,
like myself, to be derived from anything outside
me which can only be known and named because it
resembles one of my elements ; when the element
in question must be artificially isolated and, so to
speak, killed in the process, before the resemblance
can be established. Abstractions must be less real
than the totality from which they are taken, and
cannot thus be made levers for displacing their
own fulcrum. Personality, therefore, is ultimate
'a parte ante.'" — J. R. Illingworth, Person
ality Human and Divine (Macmillan, 1894), pp.
41-43. "The comparative failure of metaphysical think
ers in the past has been due simply and entirely, I
take it, to their having adopted false starting-points
and worked with false methods. Metaphysics, like
charity, should begin at home. Though it must be
metempirical in the sense of being concerned with
what is not 'reducible to sensation,' it need not,
and should not, be metempirical in the wider sense
of the term experience, which embraces the whole
of consciousness. The true beginning of meta
physics is personality, or the existence of an ego.
Here we may find an immovable foundation. If it
can be shown that feeling could not exist without
an ego, then it is absurd to maintain, as the Posi
tivists do maintain, that the ego cannot exist
because it is not a feeling. . . .
"The denial of Personality is the denial of
knowledge. Without a metaphysical ego there

Lecture II] Appendix 347
could be neither memory nor sensation. The
attempt to disprove the existence of such an ego
is only rendered apparently successful by that
existence being throughout assumed. Its very
negation is tantamount to its affirmation; for
without this principle of permanence the concepts
employed in its denial could not possibly have
been formed. In other words, the personality,
which should be the beginning of metaphysics,
is essential to the conception and statement of
every anti-metaphysical argument." — Alfred
Williams Momerie, Personality, the Beginning
and End of Metaphysics and a Necessary Assump
tion in all Positive Philosophy (Blackwood, 1889),
pp. 23, 132.
Note 17. Page 58. — "Christianity is histori
cal in its antecedents. It is the fulfilment of
Judaism, which was in its very idea definitely
prospective, and only really intelligible through
the end to which it led. The Covenant with
Abraham included the promise of which the later
religious history of 'the people,' working through
out for and in 'the nations,' was the gradual
accomplishment. The call of Abraham was the
beginning of the universal life of Faith. For as
Christianity was the goal of the revelations of the
Old Testament, so it was also the answer to the
questions of the whole prae-Christian world,
the satisfaction of the aspirations of the 'many
nations ' with whom in the order of Providence
the 'people ' was brought into contact.

348 Appendix [Lecture II
" Christianity is historical in itself. It is not a
code of laws ; it is not a structure of institutions ;
it is not a system of opinions. It is a life in
fellowship with a living Lord. The Work and
the Person of Christ, this is the Gospel, both as
it was proclaimed by the Lord Himself, and as it
was proclaimed by His Apostles: the revelation,
the gift, the power, of a perfect human life offered
to God and received by God, in and with which
every single human life finds its accomplishment.
The laws, the institutions, the opinions, of Chris
tendom are the expression of the life which works
through them. In Christianity the thoughts by
which other religions live are seen as facts.
" Christianity is also historical in its realization.
All human experience must be a commentary on
the perfect human Life. The new life which was
communicated to men requires for its complete
embodiment the services of all men. The fuller
meaning of the Faith in Him Who is the Way and
the Truth and the Life is slowly mastered through
the ages by the ministry of nations and by the
ministry of# saints and heroes through which the
thoughts of the nations are interpreted. Such a
process must go on unhastingly, unrestingly, irre
versibly to the end of time ; and if anything can
make us feel the nobility of life, it must be that
in Christ we are enabled to recognize in the whole
course of history a majestic spectacle of the action
of Divine love in which no failures and no wil
fulness of men can obliterate the signs and the
promise of a Presence of God." — Brooke Foss

Lecture II] Appendix 349
Westcott, Bishop of Durham, The Gospel of Life
(Macmillan, 1892), pp. 255-257.
Note 18. Page 59. — "Thus far our task is
accomplished; however briefly and hastily, the
outer conditions of the life of Christ have been
spread before us. But it would be an unpardon
able omission, if even here special attention were
not invited to the fact that these are utterly irrec
oncilable with the vaunted mythical theory. The
ablest expositor of this theory, while admitting a
certain basis of historical truth in the Christian
Gospels, denies altogether their authenticity as
histories, and maintains that the life which they
delineate, like the ancient mythologies of Greece
and Rome, is fabulous rather than historical.
What seem to be facts he pronounces myths, shad
owing forth certain spiritual truths, and these he
labours to show were the very truths most firmly
believed by the nation in connection with the
expected Messiah. His avowed purpose is to
prove that by the aid of their imagination the
writers of the Gospels wrought up the scanty
materials which they possessed into a series of
fables, each containing a spiritual meaning, and
that meaning always in harmony with their tradi
tionary ideas, and even suggested by them.
"With the utmost confidence we can defy con
tradiction when we assert that these principles are
incapable of being applied to that series of facts
which has formed the subject of the short review
we have just finished. With whatever plausibility

350 Appendix [Lecture II
they may be brought to bear upon other parts of
the evangelical narrative, it will baffle the most
dexterous criticism to adjust them to this portion
of it: 'The corrupt and debasing influences amid
which Jesus grew up in the village of Nazareth ; '
the shortness of His earthly course, and its
' ignominious close ; ' — ' His poverty, His humble
trade as a carpenter, and His want of education
and of worldly patronage, ' — these are the things
which we have put forward as the outer conditions
of Christ's life. These were not only not in har
mony with the Messianic ideas of the Jews at that
time, or indeed at any time, but they were dia
metrically opposed to them. We make bold to
maintain that they were the very last things
which a Jew would ever have dreamed of connect
ing with the life of his Messiah. They are not
Messianic; the most unscrupulous ingenuity can
never construe them into myths, or make them
harmonize with national and traditionary fancies.
Whatever be fable, these are certainly facts, and
would have been eagerly concealed, if they had not
been received and undeniable facts ; and these facts
are all that are now demanded, as the basis on
which to found an argument for the true divinity
of Christ.
" Jesus was a resident in the village of Nazareth
till He was thirty years of age. He died in com
parative youth, when He was only thirty-three
years old. He was a working carpenter; poor,
unknown, untaught, inexperienced, and unbe-
friended. We shall go to some obscure hamlet

Lecture II] Appendix 351
of our land, known chiefly for the extreme prof
ligacy of its inhabitants; we shall go to the
workshop of a carpenter there, to a young man at
the bench, earning his bread by the labour of his
hands, remarkable only because, amid the sur
rounding vice, he has preserved himself uncon-
taminated; we shall go to this youthful artisan,
not yet thirty years of age, born of humble
parents, brought up in a condition of poverty,
associating only with the poor, in no way con
nected with the rich, the learned, the influential,
or receiving assistance, or even countenance from
them; we shall go to this poor young man, who
has had no intercourse with cultivated society, no
access to books, no time for reading and study, no
education but the commonest, and no outward
advantages of any kind above others in his humble
station, from his birth till that time. Such, in
simple historical truth, such exactly was Jesus of
Nazareth; and these were the very conditions un
der which He developed His future character, and
rose to His future position." — John Young, The
Christ of History (Robert Carter & Bros., 1855),
pp. 52-54.
Note 19. Page 62. — "The argument to the
Divinity of Christ from his claim, has been re
cently put afresh, as part of a personal experi
ence, in An Appeal to Unitarians, by 'A Convert
from Unitarianism ' (Longmans, 1890), pp. 41-51.
' If it is not superhuman authority that speaks to
us here, it is surely superhuman arrogance.' It

352 Appendix [Lecture II
has, however, been chiefly brought home to men's
minds, in recent times, by Pere Lacordaire (Jesus
Christ, Conf. 1) and Dr. Liddon." — Charles
Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God (Scrib-
ners, 1891), p. 266.
Note 20. Page 65. — "The Church is a unit
under the lordship of Christ. This thought is
most fully developed in First Corinthians, where
the apostle sets it in contrast with the party-spirit
which prevailed at Corinth, and in Ephesians,
where it is introduced as a corollary of the
supreme headship of Christ over the Church.
The unity and harmony of all Christians in the
Church are illustrated by various figures. One of
the most common is that of the members as consti
tuting one body: 'We, who are many, are one
body in Christ, and severally members one of
another ' (Rom. xii. 5) ; ' For as the body is
one, and hath many members, and all the mem
bers of the body, being many, are one body; so
also is Christ' (1 Cor. xii. 12); that is, 'just as
the case stands with the body, that its many mem
bers make up its unity, so also does it stand in
like manner with Christ, whose many members
likewise constitute the unity of His body ' (Meyer
in loco). In Ephesians the headship of Christ
over the Church as His body is yet more explicitly
asserted in contrast to modes of thought which
degraded Christ from His pre-eminent position,
and which had become rife in the churches in Asia
Minor, although the apostle does not here draw

Lecture II] Appendix 353
out the practical lessons regarding the function of
each member of the body which are so fully devel
oped in 1 Cor. xii. 12-31. Here it is a doctri
nal interest regarding the nature and dignity of
Christ's person, while there it was a practical con
cern for the harmony and peace of the Corinthian
Church, which determined the course of His
thought. It is the divine purpose 'to sum up
all things in Christ ' ; that is, to unite all things
under one head, in union with Christ (Eph. i. 10).
Christ is the unifying bond of all saving powers
and processes. God 'hath put all things under
His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things
to the Church, which is His body' (i. 22). It
results from Christ's position and work that man
kind, who were before divided into Jews and
Gentiles, are now united into one body by the
reconciliation which Christ has accomplished by
His death (ii. 16). It follows that it is the duty
of the Christian man to fulfil the function of a
member of Christ, and so to promote the strong
and healthy growth of the body (iv. 16; Col. ii.
19), or, disregarding the figure, to grow in like
ness to Christ, to approach ever nearer to the
standard of His perfectness (Eph. iv. 13, 15)."
— George B. Stevens, The Pauline Theology
(Scribners, 1892), pp. 321-323.
Note 21. Page 74. — "In character, in spirit
ual insight, in knowledge of man, and of what all
men feel must be the truth of God ; in ability to
see into the very heart of 'human life's mystery '
2a

354 Appendix [Lecture II
and to penetrate the depth of humanity's need;
in ability to speak the word which His own age
needed and all ages since have needed, this Gali
lean peasant, whose youth and young manhood
were filled with monotonous toil; who had never
travelled; who knew few if any books; who had
no teacher but a sweet and gracious mother, — has
surpassed all the ideal heroes. In a public min
istry of only a few months He transcended the
wisdom of the philosophers, the intellectual and
spiritual forces of the universities, and, more than
any other, led men — all men, men of the most
diverse tastes and prejudices — toward God. It
is impossible for me to think that nature, even
as glorious as that in which His youth was spent,
taught Him all these lessons. No great poet or
artist ever came from the midst of such scenery.
If He is explained by natural environment, the
question remains, Why has nature produced no
successor to Jesus? Switzerland and Thibet have
contributed no names to the list of the world's
intellectual and spiritual leaders, or even to that
of her great artists and poets. Natural environ
ment influences the body, not much the intellectual
and spiritual environment. But around this Man
the Oriental and the Occidental alike gather, and
each seems to find in Him a brother, a teacher, and
a friend. " There have been many attempts to explain the
character and personality of Jesus. My object is
not to add another to that list, but rather to show
that the data do not exist which warrant any one

Lecture II] Appendix 355
in attempting to classify Him with other men as a
product of heredity and environment. He seems,
indeed, to have been without father and without
mother. Whoever He was, and whatever the
explanation of His presence on this earth of ours,
He was an exception among men; not in such a
sense as to break the continuity of humanity, but
clearly to make it impossible to account for Him
as we account for heroes and men of genius." —
Amory H. Bradford, Heredity and Christian Prob
lems (Macmillan, 1895), p. 266.
Note 22. Page 75. — " But there is another
form of satisfaction which He has rendered which
is even deeper and more intense than this. Jesus
Christ has satisfied humanity in the relief which
He has brought to it under the consciousness of
sin. There is really no experience which can
compare in intensity with the experience of sin.
The reality of sin is not to be confused with the
experience of it. The reality is universal, the
experience is unequal. Some know what sin is
by its bitter fruits in their own souls and bodies,
or in the souls and bodies of those yet dearer to
them than their own; others know what sin is
only in principle, through the selfishness which
has some lodgment in every heart. Now, as the
experience of sin is unequal, so the satisfaction
which Christ brings to sinning men is unequal.
And no one may argue from any knowledge which
he may have of sin, short of the experience of it,
how great that satisfaction is which Christ can

356 Appendix [Lecture II]
render. For he who would satisfy humanity
under the consciousness of sin must be able to
meet it in its lowest conditions and in its extreme
possibilities. But the fact which bears its con
stant witness to the power of Christ is, that when
the lowest conditions are reached, and the most
extreme possibilities are realized, then the satis
faction is most complete. The saying of Paul
is verified a thousand times with every day.
'Where sin abounded grace did abound more
exceedingly. '
" It is not to our present purpose to say how this
result is brought about. If it were, it might not
be possible. No theory is as wide as the fact. No
philosophy of the atonement can altogether explain
the process by which the sacrifice of Christ finds
its sure result in purity and inward peace in the
heart of a penitent and believing sinner. All that
we can do is to watch the phenomena which attend
the method of Jesus. We know that His approach
to sin is through His own sinlessness. We can
see that His purity wins its way where anything
short of that would falter and fail. We know
something of the power of His passion for sinners,
— how irresistible at times it is, working against
the love of sin by 'the expulsive power of a new
affection. ' And we know that the method of Jesus
is always sacrificial, in its deepest sense vicariously
sacrificial, life for life, the cross the standard and
the measure of the satisfaction which He imparts
to a sinner. So much of the process we can see —
and then the result." — The Divinity of Jesus Christ,

Lecture III] Appendix 357
by the authors of Progressive Orthodoxy (Hough
ton, Mifflin & Co., 1893), pp. 215-217.
LECTURE III
Note 23. Page 87. — " The life of the religion,
then, lies in the person of its founder; all that it
has done for the race is but a form of His action
within and through it. He has given actuality to
its theistic beliefs, has been the motive, impulse,
and law to all its beneficences. The sense or
consciousness of His abiding presence constitutes
His Church ; the emotions He awakens determine
all its worship and all its desires. Even where
this seems most concealed, it is yet present as the
veritable seat and principle of life. The Virgin
may seem to hold the first place in what may be
called the more vulgar Roman worship; but she
does it not as woman, but as mother; she stands
there not in her own right, but by virtue of her
Son. The opposite fault has been committed in
many an evangelical sermon ; the Son has been so
preached as to hide the Father, or to deny Him by
absorbing those ethical qualities which are most
distinctively Divine. But here, too, the Son
could not be without the Father, or the Father
without the Son; both were needed to the being
of either; and so the emphasis on one was only a
crude way of expressing their unity. The his
torical fact then remains — the person of Christ
has given reality to the life of the Christian relig
ion, and actuality both to its belief in God and

358 Appendix [Lecture III
to the God it has believed in." — A. M. Fairbairn,
The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 381.
Note 24. Page 90. — "The Christian religion is
one phenomenon, a totality, a whole, of which the
New Testament is only a part. We of to-day are
in actual contact with a living Christianity, which
has persisted through nineteen centuries of human
chance and change; and though hindered, now as
ever, by schism, treachery, hate, flattery, contempt,
presents the same essential features which it pre
sented nineteen centuries ago; miracles of peni
tence, miracles of purity, miracles of spiritual
power; weakness strengthened, fierceness chast
ened, passion calmed, and pride subdued; plain
men and philosophers, cottagers and courtiers,
living a new life through the faith that Jesus
Christ is God. . . . Now to construct out of the
Gospels an imaginary portrait, of One who neither
worked wonders nor claimed to be Divine, is to
invalidate their worth, for it is to tear them liter
ally into shreds. The conception of Christ, as
superhuman, is too completely incorporate in their
substance, too subtly inwoven into their tissues,
too intimately present in their every line, to be
removed by any process short of their destruction
as a whole. Moreover, if there were an unknown
Christ behind the New Testament, a Christ whom
its writers unanimously misrepresented or mis
understood, it would not be on this unknown
Person, but on His misrepresentation that Chris
tianity is built. For the absolutely central doc-

Lecture III] Appendix 359
trine round which Christianity has always moved,
and which has been the secret of its unique hold
upon the hearts and consciences of men, is not
simply the loving Fatherhood of God, but the
proof that He has given of His loving Fatherhood,
by sending His only-begotten Son into the world.
Faith in the Incarnation, with all that it involved,
has been the sole and exclusive source of our his
toric Christianity. Yet if Christ were merely
man, this was precisely the one point on which
either He or His reporters were profoundly wrong.
The case therefore is narrowed to a simple issue.
Christianity cannot be due to the goodness and
wisdom of a man, marred by a pardonable element
of error; for it is simply and solely on the sup
posed element of error that it rests ; and its mis
sionaries, its martyrs, its holy and humble men of
heart, all of strongest that human souls have done,
all of saintliest that human eyes have seen, will
have derived their inspiration either from folly or
from fraud." — Personality Human and Divine,
pp. 196-199.
Note 25. Page 94. — " Of itself Son of Man in
Hebrew and Aramaic simply means child of man,
that is, man, — with perhaps a certain poetic tinge,
and with a subordinate conception of dependence
and weakness. The expression is frequent in the
Old Testament in this sense, and appears in the
plural, just as in Mark iii. 28. But though this
fundamental meaning could never be lost in any
further defining of the conception, it cannot be

360 Appendix [Lecture III
sufficient in the case of Jesus. As we have already
said, Jesus had no need to assure any one in the
days of His flesh that He was a child of man; and
the view that He desired — as in the Old Testa
ment phrases, thy servant, thy handmaid (instead
of I) — to paraphrase His ego in this way, is
destroyed by the twofold consideration that He
must then have said this Son of man, and that
Jesus, as the Gospels show, did not avoid the
simple I. For if, in certain cases, He makes use
of the name Son of man instead of the simple I,
He manifestly wishes in some way to mark what
is peculiar to Himself. . . . Among all the pas
sages in the Old Testament in which the expres
sion Son of man appears, there is only one (Dan.
vii. 13) in which it has a Messianic sense: 'I saw
in the night visions, and, behold, one like tbe Son
of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came
to the Ancient of days, and they brought Him near
before Him. And there was given Him dominion,
and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations,
and languages, should serve Him; His dominion
is an everlasting dominion, which shall not be
destroyed.'' That this passage from Daniel must
lie at the basis of Jesus' enigmatic self -designation
is now recognized, not indeed universally, but by
ever-increasing numbers. And really — when the
Book of Enoch, that Jewish, and in part Jewish-
Christian Apocalypse of the century of Jesus, has,
in virtue of this passage of Daniel, directly
stamped the name Son of man as the name of
Messiah; when our canonical Apocalypse twice

Lecture III] Appendix 361
applies Daniel's phrase (I. 13, xvi. 14) to the
glorified Christ, and Jesus Himself on two occa
sions unmistakably refers to Dan. vii. 13, when
He speaks (Matt. xxiv. 30, xxvi. 64) of the Son
of man coming in the clouds of heaven — it is
difficult to conceive how any one can object to that
origin. The fact lies clearly before us, that the
same passage of the Book of Daniel, a book much
read and highly honoured in our Lord's day, fur
nishes the conception of the kingdom of heaven,
— the eternal kingdom to be received from God in
the clouds of heaven, — and the conception of the
Son of man, as the receiver and bearer of this
kingdom. The mutual relation which we per
ceive, in all the declarations of Jesus, between
His character as Son of man and His calling as
bringer of the kingdom of God, lies before us
originally in that passage of Daniel. And there
with the whole riddle is at bottom solved. The
Son of man is the God-invested bearer of the
kingdom that descends from above, that is to be
founded from heaven; it is He who brings in the
kingdom of God." — Dr. Willibald Beyschlag,
New Testament Tlieology (T. & T. Clark, 1895), Vol.
I., pp. 62, 63, 64.
Note 26. Page 99. — ¦ " As regards the apostolic
testimony, the ground is happily cleared in modern
times by the large measure of general agreement
which exists among impartial exegetes as to the
nature of the doctrines taught in the several
books. The old Unitarian glosses on passages

362 Appendix [Lecture III
which seemed to affirm the Divinity of Christ are
now seldom met with; and it is freely admitted
that the bulk of the New Testament writings
teach a doctrine of Christ's Person practically as
high as the Church has ever affirmed. For in
stance, it is no longer disputed by any competent
authority that, in Paul and John, it is the super
natural view of Christ's Person that is given. As
to John, — using that name at present for the
author of the Fourth Gospel and related Epistles,
— his doctrine of Christ is of the highest. This
is admitted by the most negative critics, e.g. by
Dr. Martineau, who says that the phrase 'Son of
God,' applied to the pre-existing Word in the
Fourth Gospel, leaves all finite analogies behind.
'The oneness with God which it means to mark is
not such resembling reflex of the Divine thought
and character as men or angels may attain, but
identity of essence, constituting Him not godlike
alone, but God. Others may be children of God
in a moral sense ; but by this right of elemental
nature, none but He; He is, herein, the only Son;
so little separate, so close to the inner Divine life
which He expresses, that He is in the bosom of
the Father. This language undoubtedly describes
a great deal more than such harmony of will and
sympathy of affection as may subsist between
finite obedience and its infinite Inspirer; it de
notes two natures homogeneous, entirely one; and
both so essential to the Godhead that neither can
be omitted from any truth you speak of it. It
was one and the same Logos that in the beginning

Lecture III] Appendix 363
was with God, who in due time appeared in human
form, and showed forth the Father's pure perfec
tions in relation to mankind, who then returned to
His eternal life, with the spiritual ties unbroken
which He brought from His finished work. ' " — The
Christian View of God and the World, pp. 253, 254.
Note 27. Page 106. — " What fresh characteris
tics, then, has this new revelation to add to the
Old Testament teaching about God? He is still
One, the only God. He is perfect Righteousness,
yet, as even the old religion knew, a God of loving-
kindness and tender mercy, 'Who wills not the
death of the sinner. ' But more than all this, He
is now revealed to man as Infinite Love, the One
Father of humanity, whose only begotten Son is
Incarnate and 'made man that we may be made
God. ' Not one jot or tittle of the old revelation
of God, as a God of Righteousness, is lost or can
celled. The moral teaching is stern and uncom
promising as ever. God's love, which is Himself,
is not the invertebrate amiability, or weak good-
naturedness, to which some would reduce it. 'The
highest righteousness of the Old Testament is
raised to the completeness of the Sermon on the
Mount.' 'The New Testament,' it has been said,
' with all its glad tidings of mercy, is a severe
book.' For the goodness and the severity of God
are, as it were, the convex and the concave in His
moral nature. But what seized upon the imagina
tion of mankind as the distinctive revelation of
Christianity was the infinite love and tenderness

364 Appendix [Lecture III
and compassion of this Righteous God for sinful
man. It was this which shone out in the char
acter of Christ. He was Very God, with a Divine
hatred of evil, yet living as man among men,
revealing the true idea of God, and not only real
izing in His human life the moral ideal of man,
but by taking human nature into Himself setting
loose a power of moral regeneration, of which the
world had never dreamed." — Lux Mundi (John
Murray, London, 1890), pp. 75, 76.
Note 28. Page 107. — " The constructive thought
of Paul starts with the historical person of Jesus,
and his primary postulate may be said to be its
truth and reality. This historical Person is to
him the one and only Messiah. In the Gospels
Jesus is a personal, but Christ an official, name,
and the two are never interchanged or confounded;
but in the Pauline Epistle Christ has become as
personal a name as Jesus — i.e. the Person so con
stitutes the office and the office is so incorporated
in the Person that distinction has ceased to be pos
sible. . . . Now, it is the distinction of Paul that
he made this unity, with all it involved, articulate,
and it is also characteristic that the determinative
idea in the system which he elaborated with so
much dialectical passion came from the personality
of Jesus and not from the Messianic office. That
idea was His filial relation, His Divine Sonship.
What was to him the primary fact in the con
sciousness of Jesus became the constitutive factor
of his own thought. By the revelation of the Son

Lecture III] Appendix 365
in him he was made a Christian and an Apostle.
His Gospel concerned the Son of God, who is
God's own Son, His beloved, the Son of His love.
This Sonship did not begin with His historical
existence, but preceded and even determined it.
God sends forth His Son, who exists before He
can be sent forth, and comes that He may create
in man the spirit of the sonship He Himself has
by nature. He, though rich, yet for our sakes
becomes poor. He comes out of heaven, descends
from above that He may ascend with man re
deemed. Hence there follows a twofold conse
quence, the one affecting the Son, the other the
Father. As to the Son, a place and an eminence are
ascribed to Him that involve rank and honour. . . .
But so to construe Christ is to modify the whole
conception of God. Abstract monotheism ceases,
and is replaced by a theism which finds within the
one Godhead room for both Father and Son. It
is the characteristic of the Pauline theology that
it is a theology of the Fatherhood which is through
the Sonship. Neither can be without the other;
both must be together, or neither can be at all.
The ideas exist in what we may term a spontaneous
rather than an explicated and formulated unity,
but they exist and are co-ordinated. The divinity
of both Father and Son was affirmed ; later thought
must determine how their unity could be conceived
and expressed. The great thing gained was,
Fatherhood and Sonship were as immanent essen
tial to Deity." — • The Place of Christ in Modem
Theology, pp. 306, 307, 309.

366 Appendix [Lecture III
Note 29. Page 108. — " It is remarkable that
the Apostles seem to have experienced no intel
lectual difficulty in regard to this Trinity in the
Godhead. I suppose this is to be accounted for, by
the fact that difficulties in logic do not trouble us
at all where facts of experience are in question.
Thus we are often ludicrously at fault in attempt
ing to give a logical account of quite familiar
experiences, for example, of the inner relations of
those three strangely independent elements of our
own spiritual being, will, and reason, and feeling,
or of the relation of mind and body. But our in
ability to explain facts logically goes no way at all
to alter our sense of their reality. Now the Apos
tles lived in a vivid sense of experienced inter
course, first with the Son, then with the Father
through the Son, later with the Holy Ghost, and
with the Father and the Son through the Holy Ghost.
This vivid experience, outward and inward, made
logical formulas unnecessary. When the formula of
the Trinity — three Persons in one Substance — was
developed in the Church later on, through the cross-
questioning of heresies, it was with many apologies
for the inadequacy of human language, and with a
deep sense of the inscrutableness of God. The
formula was simply intended to express and guard
the realities disclosed in the person of Jesus Christ,
and great stress was laid on the divine unity.
The three Persons are not separable individuals,
so that it could be argued that what one of the
sacred three does, another does not do, as we com
monly argue about persons amongst ourselves, re-

Lecture III] Appendix 367
garding each person as separate and exclusive of
others. God in three is inseparably one. Thus if
He creates, it is the Father through the Son by the
Holy Ghost; if He redeems, it is the Father who
is the fount of redemption through the Son, by the
Holy Ghost; if the. Spirit comes, He brings with
Him in His coming the Son and the Father, for in
eternal subordination and order, the three are one
inseparable God." — Gore, Tlie Incarnation of the
Son of God, pp. 144, 145.
" If there is a true historical sense in which the
clear definition of the doctrine of the Divinity of
Jesus Christ must be assigned to the Councils of
the fouth and fifth centuries, yet it would be a
great historical blunder to state or imagine, as
inference, that till then the doctrine was only held
partially or with imperfect consciousness in the
Catholic Church. The Church did not, as a result
of those controversies, develop the consciousness
of any new doctrine ; the development of her con
sciousness was rather in respect of the shallow but
tempting logic which would deform, or the delu
sions which might counterfeit, her doctrine, and
of the perils to which these must lead. It may be
a question, indeed, how far the words implicit and
explicit do, or do not, represent the distinction
between the dogmatic consciousness of the Apos
tolic and the Conciliar ages. The difficulty in
determining depends solely on this, that the words
themselves are used with different meanings.
Thus, sometimes men are said to hold implicitly

368 Appendix [Lecture III
what they never perhaps suspected themselves of
holding, if it can be shown to be a more or less
legitimate outcome, or logical development, of their
belief. If such men advance inferentially from
point to point, their explicit belief at a later time
may be, in many particulars, materially different
from what it had been at an earlier; even though
it might be logically shown that the earlier thought
was, more or less directly, the parent of the later.
Now in any such sense as this we shall stoutly
maintain that, from the beginning, the Church
held dogmatic truths not implicitly, but explicitly
and positively. They who baptized into the three
fold Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost; whose blessing was 'The grace
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and
the communion of the Holy Ghost ' ; who, living
in the Spirit, lived in Christ; whose highest wor
ship was the Communion of the Body and the
Blood of Christ, and whose perfectness of life was
Christ; they, so living and worshipping, did not
hold the Godhead of Jesus Christ implicitly; they
did not hold something out of which the doctrine
of the Trinity might come to be unfolded. On the
other hand, you may use the same contrast of
words, meaning merely that you have, through
cross-questioning or otherwise, obtained a power
which you did not possess, of defining, in thought
and in words, the limits of your belief, and distin
guishing it precisely from whatever does not belong
to it. You hold still what you always meant to
hold. You say still what you always meant to

Lecture III] Appendix 369
say. But it is your intellectual mastery over your
own meaning which is altered. Like a person
fresh from the encounter of a keen cross-exami
nation, you are furnished now, as you were not
before, with distinctions and comparisons, with
definitions and measurements, — in a word, with
all that intellectual equipment, that furniture of
alert perception and exact language, by which you
are able to realize for yourself, as well as to define
to others, what that meaning exactly is, and what
it is not, which itself was before, as truly as it is
now, the very thing that you meant.
" Take, for example, the doctrine of the Holy
Trinity. Intellectually it is, of course, antecedent
to the doctrine of the Incarnation and the Atone
ment. But it will be observed that it is made
known to us not antecedently, but as a consequence
of our previous conviction of the Incarnation.
Moreover, when it is made known, it is made
known rather incidently than directly. Even
though it is, when revealed and apprehended, the
inclusive sum of our faith, yet there is, in the
revelation, no formal unfolding of it, as of a mys
terious truth set to challenge our express contem
plation and worship. There is nothing here to be
found in the least corresponding with the explicit
challenge, 'Whom say ye that I am' or 'On this
rock will I build my church ' ; but rather indi
rectly, so far as our contemplation of the Incarna
tion and its abiding consequences requires for its
own necessary interpretation to our understanding,
that we should have some insight into the mystery
2b

370 Appendix [Lecture III
of the distinction of Persons in the Godhead, so
far, and in reference to that purpose, the mystery
of the Holy Trinity grows gradually into clearness
of revelation to our consciousness." — Lux Mundi,
pp. 238, 239, 245, 246.
"Through all the fierce theological and conse
quently political controversies that disturbed the
Church for nearly three centuries after the Great
Council, the Nicene Creed survived. It is still
the creed of the whole vast Greek Church; with
some modifications it is also the creed of the Latin
Church ; and in its original form and stripped of
its condemnatory clauses, it is substantially the
creed of universal Christendom. Under the influ
ence mainly of Augustine, the Latin theology soon
dominated the Western Church and gradually ex
cluded or suppressed the nobler and richer thought
of the Greek Fathers. The Latin theology to some
extent obscured, and while seeming to affirm,
almost denied, the fundamental and structural
doctrine of the Incarnation, the enunciation and
persistent defence of which was the chief merit
of Athanasius. That doctrine, however, survived
through all strife, and now, amidst the changes
and even the wreck of creeds, it still survives. In
its real essence, it is not an arithmetical threeness
of persons inexplicably inhering in one substance,
so that we have the impossible conception, — three
equals one, — as it so often appears in dogmatic
theology; but it is the reality of God in Christ, as
the revelation and archetype of God in humanity,

Lecture III] Appendix 371
and the pledge of the perfect fulfilment of man's
life by his perfect union with the divine, 'being
filled with all the fulness of God.' It is the
supreme doctrine of Christianity, — the Incarna
tion, the immanence of God in the realm of per
sonality as well as in the realm of nature." —
Philip S. Moxom, From Jerusalem to Niccea (Bos
ton, 1895), pp. 442 ff.
Note 30. Page 117. — " So far, as it seems to
me, the Christian doctrine simply takes up, extends,
illuminates, the great natural Law of Evolution.
" But, as yet, we have not viewed it as distinctly
Christian ; we have not asked what is the bearing
in this aspect of the Manifestation in the fulness
of the time of the Son of God, as Son of man.
" The truth itself of that Manifestation — • let us
again put this clearly before ourselves, and pro
claim it to the world — is the Divine mystery of
mysteries, a secret of the Will and Nature of God,
revealed only to faith in the word of Him who
said, 'I came forth from the Father and am come
into the world; again I leave the world and go
unto the Father. ' We should hardly dare to bring
it into analogy with the lower manifestations of
God to man, if we did not remember that in all
analogy the higher reality necessarily transcends
the lower, and that our Lord Himself in His Para
bles taught us to shadow out by comparison with
earthly things His Kingdom of Heaven. From
these lower manifestations, who could have con
ceived beforehand — who can even now comprehend

372 Appendix [Lecture III
— the Personal Incarnation of Godhead in human
ity? If it may perhaps be foreshadowed by the
recognition of the power of God, as immanent in
all creation, and more visibly immanent (so to
speak) in humanity, yet how dim this foreshadow
ing, compared with the brightness of the reality !
"But in what way is its actual working in the
world represented to us? It is, as we have already
seen, described as a ' new Creation ' — the begin
ning of a new spiritual Order — which yet does not
break continuity with the past, but, while it brings
in a Divine spiritual force before unknown, takes
up and subordinates to its higher purpose all the
forces of the old Creation. Clearly in this repre
sentation there is a striking analogy to all that has
gone before. By what is actually in effect a new
Creation — whether it be connected or disconnected
with the old — we have seen at each step the intro
duction into the world of a new power, as we pass
from the Inorganic realm of lifeless Nature to the
realm of Organic Life, from the realm of Organic
Life to the realm of Humanity. Now that natural
progress is shown to us as carried on to a Supernat
ural perfection by the bringing in of a new Divine
Life — at once the Light and the Life of men — enter
ing into the humanity which is the crown and cul
mination of the old development, in order to raise it
to unity with the Divine Nature itself. This new
Creation is set forth to us as an integral element,
as the highest element, of the whole Divine Order;
foreordained before the foundation of the world;
in some way coexisting with the lower elements

Lecture III] Appendix 373
in anticipatory power before its actual Mani
festation; prepared for under God's Providence
through all 'the fulness of time.' The Manifesta
tion, being in a Personality at once Divine and
human, is necessarily complete in itself, unique,
unapproachable, begun in the visible life of Christ
on earth, continued still in its completeness in the
invisible life of heaven. From the nature of the
case, its relation to the human personality, as a
living power, is a thing supernatural, transcending
the analogy on which we are now dwelling. But
yet in its effect both on the individual and on the
collective life of all mankind, it is clearly (to use
our Lord's own comparison) a seed sown in the
spiritual soil of humanity — a leaven infused into
its threefold nature — a germ to be developed
through the ages of a new dispensation, which is
to last till its work shall come to the full possible
perfection, and then to give place to a higher dis
pensation still, 'that God may be all in all.'
" So every way there comes out to us the concep
tion of the development of the Life of Christ in
humanity, as the supernatural crown of the great
Order of Evolution; and, if this be so, Science,
which has traced this order in its lower forms,
thus becomes, or should become, the mxiSaywyos to
lead us to the highest in Christ Himself. It is a
part of this analogy, that in this highest sphere of
the great Order there should be manifested a Law
and a Power peculiarly its own. For in the vari
ous provinces of being, which show themselves to
us as distinct, the one ' God fulfils Himself in many

374 Appendix [Lecture III
ways. ' In one sphere Evolution is ordered through
Matter and the physical' forces which pervade it;
in another there is added in combination with these
the new force of Life, with its inner capacity of
assimilation and growth; in a third there comes
with both and above both the infused life of human
personality, with reason, conscience, love, and free
dom of will to use them. Closer and closer in each
successive phase there is revealed to us, in relation
to created being, the Personality of God, — not His
attributes, but Himself. So in this the supernat
ural sphere of the great Order, the new and domi
nant Force should by analogy be, as indeed it is,
distinctly Supernatural, in harmony with the lower
forces, but distinct from all. For it is the comple
tion of that relation of true personality — all the
number numberless of human souls being drawn to
the Personality, at once Divine and human, of the
Eternal Son, in a communion wrought out by the
Eternal Spirit of God, and restoring us to the son-
ship of the Eternal Father."' — -Alfred Barry,
Some Lights of Science on the Faith (London,
Longmans, 1892), pp. 128-131, 135, 136.
Note 31. Page 121. — "Lose out of faith the
sense of the Eternal in Christ, fail to recognize in
Him the presence of the Absolute, miss the fact
that His nature is rooted in the Deity and is part
of the nature of God, and we let go the sole ade
quate support for belief in the consubstantiation of
humanity with divinity, and the consciousness that
Jesus is the moral ideal for mankind. The Christ

Lecture III] Appendix 375
who embodies the deepest in God, who incarnates
the Eternal Filial in the Infinite, is essential to
hold for the world the great convictions of the
kinship between man and his Maker, and the pres
ence in Jesus of the true and final standard of
human life. If the difference in Christ to human
ity is the difference of the very God, then we can
believe that the identity in Christ to our race is
the identity of the very God. But if the contrast
in the Lord to mankind does not reach to the being
of God, if it is not the manifestation of the Eternal,
if it is only individual idiosyncrasy, the mere
separate, high-coloured envelope in which His
humanity comes into the world and preserves its
secrets from the vulgar crowd with whom it must
be thrown together, then it follows inevitably that
the kinship of Christ to His brethren does not
carry us to the heart of the universe, does not go
beyond the bounds of space and time. Only a
Christ whose antithesis to humanity means the
presence of the very God can by His union with
humanity assure us of union with God. Discredit
the infinite difference, and we must doubt the sub
lime identity. This contention will be self-evident
to those who see that we owe our faith in the
humanity of God and in the divinity of man, not
primarily to philosophy, but to the power of the
historic process. Revelation is ever through life
the apprehension of the Infinite Personality through
the finite; philosophy comes afterwards and finds
her task. If we take Christ out of the historic
process of revelation, we decapitate faith in the

376 Appendix [Lecture III
humanness of God and the divineness of man. We
must remember the rock whence our belief was
hewn, the pit whence it was dug. It was not in
the world prior to Christ except in the form of
intermittent prophetic dream, limited religious
intuition, or vague, ineffectual philosophic fancy.
It was not here as the ruling force in human civili
zation. The consubstantiation of man with God is
the accepted and moulding belief of Christendom
to-day because of the revelation of the nature both
of God and man made through Jesus Christ." —
Gordon, The Christ of To-day, pp. 119-121.

LECTURE IV
Note 32. Page 128. — " The history of art shows
us numbers of artists who, grouped around some
greater man, imitate his processes, as in the full
belief that all there is of art is process, or what is
sometimes called technique. The greater man has
made the dress he wears as the birds make their
plumage. The imitator imitates the dress." —
John La Farge, Considerations on Painting (Mac
millan, New York, 1895), p. 26.
Note 33. Page 131. — "Being thirty years old
when He came to be baptized, and then possessing
the full age of a Master, He came to Jerusalem, so
that He might be properly acknowledged by all as
a Master. For He did not seem one thing while
He was another, as those affirm who describe Him

Lecture IV] Appendix , 377
as being a man only in appearance ; but what He
was, that He also appeared to be. Being a Mas
ter, therefore, He also possessed the age of a
Master, not despising or evading any condition of
humanity, nor setting aside in Himself that law
which He had appointed for the human race, but
sanctifying every age, by that period corresponding
to it which belonged to Himself. For He came to
save all through means of Himself, — all, I say,
who through Him are born again to God, — infants,
and children, and boys, and youths, and old men.
He therefore passed through every age, becoming
an infant for infants, thus sanctifying infants; a
child for children, thus sanctifying those who are
of this age, being at the same time made to them
an example of piety, righteousness, and submis
sion ; a youth for youths, becoming an example to
youths, and thus sanctifying them for the Lord.
So likewise He was an old man for old men, that
He might be a perfect Master for all, not merely
as respects the setting forth of the truth, but also
as regards age, sanctifying at the same time the
aged also, and becoming an example to them like
wise. Then, at last, He came on to death itself,
that He might be 'the first-born from the dead,
that in all things He might have the pre-eminence, '
the Prince of Life, existing before all, and going
before all." — Iren^jus, Ante- Nicene Library, Vol.
I., p. 199.
The one error against which Ignatius was most
careful to warn Christians was the obscuration of

378 Appendix [Lectore rv
Christ's humanity. "Stop your ears therefore
when any one speaks to you at variance with
Jesus Christ who was descended from David, and
was also of Mary; who was truly born and did eat
and drink. He was truly persecuted under Pon
tius Pilate ; He was truly crucified and truly died,
in the sight of beings in heaven and on earth and
under the earth." — Epistles of Ignatius to the
Trallians, Chap. LX.
Note 34. Page 140. — "In His mother's womb
the body of Christ was also already omnipresent;
when He went anywhere, He was in His humanity
properly there already; risen from the grave He
was in His humanity still in the grave ; whilst He
hung upon the cross, He was also in Athens, and
ruled omnipresently the world. Thus the birth
of Christ, His movements, His resurrection and
ascension, became only an epideictic action, a
Docetism which threatens to dissolve completely
the condition of humiliation, the learning and
growth. At the same time, in order to preserve
the truthfulness of the sufferings of Christ, they
would speak also of a growing, suffering, and
exalted humanity of Christ alongside of one that
was from the beginning omniscience, omnipo
tent, and omnipresent. Thus this very energetic
striving after the unity of the Person of the
God-man ended rather in a double humanity of
Christ, a dualism, which renewed all the prob
lems and absolutely rent asunder again the unity
of the Person." — Dorner, History of Protes-

Lecture IV] Appendix 379
tant Theology (T. & T. Clark, 1871), Vol. I.,
p. 365.
Note 35. Page 145. — "The Jesus who lived,
suffered, and died as a real man ou earth is the
same personality who was before, as the Logos of
God, with the Father, and was God, and by whom
all things are made. This is the marvellous prob
lem which has for eighteen centuries exercised the
minds of believers.
" The Logos of God, to whom the Father gives
to have life in Himself even as He has, is, as such,
eternal ; His self -consciousness is therefore eternally
clear, His knowledge eternally perfect, His will
eternally fixed and holy, and His life eternal
bliss. " The man Jesus on earth, however, so certainly
as His development was really human, was as an
embryo and newly born infant without self-con
sciousness. By degrees His self-consciousness is
awakened. When He sleeps it is suspended, or, at
all events, reduced to a state of obscurity. And
when He dies, commending His spirit into the hands
of His Heavenly Father, He again loses His self-
consciousness, till the moment when the Father
quickens Him as to the spirit who was dead as to
the flesh (1 Pet. iii. 18). Again, as Jesus was a
real child, He was childlike in every respect. He
acquired His knowledge gradually (Luke ii. 52, 40).
Whenever He fell asleep, His knowledge of God and
the world was veiled. Nor was His knowledge of
the affairs of the kingdom unlimited, as He Himself

380 Appendix [Lecture IV
testifies during the very last days of His life (Mark
xiii. 32). In fine, it is a matter of course that in
the hour of death He lost His knowledge together
with His self -consciousness.
"The development of His will was likewise
gradual. His purposes were developed gradually;
His will becoming by degrees subject to, or rather
identified with, that of His Heavenly Father. He
learned obedience (Heb. v. 8). He was, indeed,
never disobedient, even in His sorest trials, but on
every new trial and suffering He resigned His
natural will afresh. This He did even in the final
struggle of Gethsemane. At the close of each
period of His life He had attained a higher degree
of holiness, but not till the close of His earthly
career did He attain that perfection of holiness
which admits of no further progress.
"The life of Jesus alternated between feelings
of joy and grief; His soul was sometimes shaken
to its very profoundest depths. Thus, after His
entrance into Jerusalem, it required a struggle for
Him to regain His equanimity (John xii. 17). His
anguish in the garden caused Him to sweat blood;
and on the c*ross He gave vent to His feelings in a
loud complaint. Now this is the same person, the
omniscient, eternally holy and blessed Logos or
Jesus, who thus alternates between self -conscious
ness and unconsciousness, who learns by degrees,
who now rejoices in spirit (Luke x. 21), and anon
is exceedingly troubled.
" Again, the Logos, having life in Himself even
as the Father, is omnipotent, and has shown His

Lecture IV] Appendix 381
omnipotence by creating and governing the world;
but Jesus, as a real man on earth, is not omnipo
tent, but a helpless babe in His mother's womb and
on her breast; when a full-grown man requires
food and those things to sustain life which are fur
nished by the air, the earthly elements, the light
of the sun, etc. ; in the hour of His sorest trial
requests His disciples to pray with Him; works
even His miracles in His Father's power ; lives by
the Father, as the disciplejs.live by the glorified Son ;
and is, finally, laid in the grave as a helpless
corpse. And yet this omnipotent Logos and this
humanly dependent Jesus are one and the same
person." — Reubelt, Scripture Doctrine of the Per
son of Christ, based upon the German of W. F.
Gess' (Andover, Draper, 1871), pp. 318-320.
"This testimony of Jesus concerning His true
humanity, given by His submitting to John's bap
tism, is directly confirmed by God Himself, the
Holy Ghost descending and abiding upon Him
(Matt. iii. 16; John i. 32). If the incarnate
Logos had not been really and truly man, he would
not have been in need of this unction with the
Spirit and power of God (comp. Acts x. 38). It
was this Spirit poured out upon Him after His bap
tism which showed Him the ways and times of His
Messianic ministry and sufferings, which led Him
after His baptism into the wilderness (Matt. iv. 1 ;
Luke iv. 1), and in whose power He went from the
wilderness to Galilee (iv. 14). By His forty days'
fast in the wilderness also He confesses the reality

382 Appendix [Lecture IV
of His humanity; for only as a real man did He
need to count the cost of the tower to be built by
Him, preparation for victory over such an enemy
proceeding only from fasting and prayer (Matt.
xvii. 21). Again, the temptation of Jesus by the
devil rests on the (abstract) possibility of his sin
ning; if it had been absolutely impossible for Him
to fall like other men, Satan's temptation would
have been an act of folly, not worth recording by
the evangelists. And how could Matthew repre
sent this temptation as in keeping with the designs
of the Divine Spirit (iv. 1) if Jesus absolutely
could not sin? For one who cannot fall, it is mere
play to be tempted. Yea, even the miracles of
Jesus are confessions of His dependence ; for before
He healed the deaf-mute, He looked up to heaven
and sighed (Mark vii. 34), and at the grave of
His friend Lazarus He ascribed His miracles posi
tively to the efficacy of His prayer (John xi. 41,
etc.). "With this fully agrees His declaration: 'The
Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him all things
that Himself doeth ' (John v. 20) ; and again,
'Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents, but
that the works of God should be made manifest in
him ' (ix. 3) ; 'Believe the works, that ye may know
and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him '
(x. 38); 'The Father, that dwelleth in Me, doeth
the works ' (xiv. 10). Jesus was, then, not Himself
the source from which His miraculous powers flowed,
but He obtained them from the Father in answer to
His always accepted prayer (comp. what Peter says

Lecture IV] Appendix 383
in Acts x. 38 : 'God was with Him, whereby He was
able to do good and heal all that were oppressed of
the devil '). — Ibid., pp. 246, 247.
Note 36. Page 147. — (1) "The Incarnation of
the Son of God was no mere addition of a manhood
to His Godhead; it was no mere wrapping around
the divine glory of a human nature to veil it and
make it tolerable to mortal eyes. It was more than
this. The Son of God, without ceasing to be God,
the Son of the Father, and without ceasing to be
conscious of His divine relation as Son to the
Father, yet, in assuming human nature, so truly
entered into it as really to grow and live as Son of
man under properly human conditions, that is to
say, also under properly human limitations. Thus,
if we are to express this in human language, we
are forced to assert that within the sphere and
period of His incarnate and mortal life, He did,
and as it would appear did habitually, — doubtless
by the voluntary action of His own self-limit
ing and self -restraining love, — cease from the
exercise of those divine functions and powers,
including the divine omniscience, which would
have been incompatible with a truly human
experience. " (2) Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnate,
was and is, at every moment and in every act, both
God and man, personally God made man ; He is as
truly God at His birth or death as now in His
glory, and as truly man now in His glory as for
merly in His human birth and mortal life, but the

384 Appendix [Lecture IV
relation of the Godhead and manhood is not the
same throughout. Now in His glory we must con
ceive that the manhood subsists under conditions
of Godhead, 'the glory of God ' ; but formerly dur
ing His mortal life and within its sphere, the
Godhead was energizing under conditions and
limitations of manhood. The Son of God really
became and lived as Son of man." — Charles
Gore, Dissertations, pp. 94, 95.
Note 37. Page 151. — " Christ Himself expresses
His transition from the state of glory, which He had
with the Father before the foundation of the world,
into this earthly life, in these words: 'The Father
has sanctified [set apart and consecrated to reveal
the divine life] and sent Me into the world ' (John
x. 36; comp. iii. 16, etc.); and again thus : 'I came
forth from the Father, and am come into the world '
(xvi. 28); 'I have come down from heaven' (vi.
38; iii. 16). The apostles also give prominence
now to the one and now to the other of these points
of view. Thus John: 'God has sent His only-
begotten Son into the world ' (1 John iv. 9), but in
another place: 'The eternal life, which was with
[toward] the Father has appeared unto us ' (1 John
i. 1, etc.), 'The Logos became flesh' (i. 14), 'Christ
has come in the flesh' (1 John iv. 2), and thus Paul:
'God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, in the
similitude of sinful flesh ' (Gal. iv. 4; Rom. viii. 3),
but also : ' God [who] was made manifest in the flesh'
(1 Tim. iii. 16), 'Jesus Christ became poor for our
sakes ' (2 Cor. viii. 9), 'He has divested Himself,

Lecture iv] Appendix 385
and taken upon Him the form of a servant ' (Phil.
ii. 7). His Incarnation is thus both His own act,
and in compliance with the will of His Father.
The two points of view are connected in Heb. x.
5-10, where the Son is represented as saying at
His advent, ' Lo ! I come to do Thy will, 0
God!' " The Scriptures moreover inform us what took
place in the Logos while doing the will of His
Father. When Christ says, ' I came forth from
My Father, and am come into the world ' ; again,
'I leave the world and go unto the Father; and if ye
loved Me, ye would rejoice because I said, I go unto
the Father ' (John xvi. 28; xiv. 28), He declares
that He has abandoned His intimate intercourse
with His Father, and His relation to the Father has
undergone a change. And when He says, 'I am
come down from heaven ' (John vi. 38 ; iii. 13),
He expresses thereby the fact of His having made
Himself lower. This is both confirmed and more
fully developed by Christ's prayer, 'And now, 0
Father, glorify Me with thine own self, with the
glory which I had with Thee before the world was '
(John xvii. 5); here Christ declares as pointedly
and plainly as language can do it, that at that time
He no longer had His ante-mundane glory, and on
comparing His declarations in Mark xiii. 32 and
John xi. 41 with Mark vii. 34, there is no longer
any doubt that the glory with the Father which the
Son laid aside at His Incarnation, means, not only
His Divine form of existence, or His blessed life in
light, but also His omnipotence and omniscience,
2c

386 Appendix [Lecture IV
" Of the passages from the apostolic writings let
us consider in the first place John i. 14: 'The
Logos became flesh.' If every kind of becoming is
excluded in the Logos, John certainly chose a very
awkward expression. Why did he not rather say :
He took upon Himself flesh and blood? John cer
tainly knew what he was about when he expressed
this central point of his faith, and thought he made
no blunder in the selection of his terms. He wished
to say that the Logos in His Incarnation did not
remain as He had been before, but that with His
assumption of human nature there was a change,
introducing 'days of the flesh,' i.e. day of need,
weakness, and the possibility of suffering (comp.
Heb. v. 7; 2 Cor. xiii. 4). This agrees with Christ's
own words, that His coming from heaven was a
coming down, a going forth from the Father, or
from that intimate life-union with Him which He
had sustained from all eternity." — Reubelt,
Scripture Doctrine of the Person of Christ, pp.
329-331. " Eternity must not be conceived of as excluding
all change. It is only an arbitrary and poor phi
losophy that seeks eternity by a flight from time.
The eternity of the Father is conditioned by His
aseity, that of the Son and Holy Ghost by the
freedom of their life, which streams from out of
the Father and is yet identical with that of the
Father. The Son divests Himself of His Divine
life, of His breathing of the Spirit, and of His
government of the world, not because He is invol-

Lecture IV] Appendix 387
untarily drawn into subjection to time, but because
He freely loves sinners. And after He has accom
plished His work of love for us, He regains that of
which He divested Himself. This His free entrance
into time, in order to return again into eternity, is
therefore a triumph of eternity over time, an exhi
bition of the Eternal as the king of time, which
must serve Him even while He enters into its ser
vice, and which cannot retain Him after He has
accomplished His work. To dispose, as a king, of
time, so that it does not sustain to the super-tem
poral the relation of an unapproachable something,
but is serviceable to it as a form, — this is God's
highest revelation of His superiority to time." —
Ibid., p. 430.
Note 38. Page 159. — " The truth that man was
'made in the image of God ' admits of two distinct
developments. It may be viewed (a) in regard to
the individual, or (6) in regard to the race. In
both respects man was created to gain a Divine
ideal. It is true indeed that neither the race nor
the individual can be properly considered apart;
each is dependent upon the other for the attain
ment of its perfection. But much is gained both
in clearness and fulness of view by considering
them separately.
"(a) It is wholly unnecessary to inquire in
what exact sense man was ' made in the image of
God.' We have no faculties for the investigation.
There is, however, no authority for limiting the
image to any particular part of his nature. For

388 Appendix [Lecture Iv
us the individual man in his complex being is one ;
and as man he was made in God's image to gain
His likeness.
" In this work he had constant need of Divine
help. As he was made he was not at once capable
of union with God. To reach this consummation
he required discipline and training. In the Divine
order men are 'first made men and then afterwards
gods.' " If then man had fulfilled the law of his being,
he would still, so far as we can see, have stood in
need of a Mediator through whom the relation of
fellowship with God might have been sustained,
and deepened, and perfected. Nor is it easy to
suppose that this fellowship could have been made
stable and permanent in any other way than by the
union in due time of man with God, accomplished
by the union of man with Him who was the Medi
ator between God and man, and in whose image
man was made.
" Irenseus has given a striking expression to this
truth. He starts indeed from the consideration of
man as fallen, but his argument passes into an
absolute form. Speaking of the necessity of the
Incarnation, he says: 'If man had not conquered
the adversary of man, the enemy would not have
been justly conquered. And again, if God had
not bestowed salvation, we should not have pos
sessed it surely. And if man had not been united
to God, he could not have partaken of incorrup
tion. For it was necessary that the Mediator of
God and men by His own essential relationship

Lecture IV] Appendix 389
with both should bring together into friendship
and concord, and on the one hand present man
to God and on the other make God known to
man.' " Moreover, if we regard the predestined human
ity of the Son of God as the archetype of humanity,
light is thrown upon the doctrine of the Atone
ment. It becomes in this case in some degree
intelligible how Christ could fitly (if we may so
speak) take man's nature upon Him, and suffer for
man, inasmuch as He took upon Himself a nature
which was not alien in its idea, but one which
in some mysterious sense was in its propriety
partially an image of His own, though it had
fallen. " So far, then, the essential constitution of man
suggests at least the belief that the Incarnation,
by which we understand in this case the taking of
sinless and perfected humanity into God, was part
of the Divine counsel in creation.
"(6) These considerations which apply to the
individual man obtain greater weight if they are
extended to the race. We cannot but believe that
under any circumstances, and wholly apart from
the Fall, there would have been a progress in the
race, as well as in the individual, towards the
gradual fulfilment of the idea of humanity. All
that was potentially included in man in his various
relations to being would have been realized in many
parts. In this way the whole conception of human
ity would have been broken up and distributed, so
to speak, through countless personalities. There

390 Appendix [Lecture IV
would then have been need of some power by which
at last all the scattered elements of manhood should
be brought together into a personal unity. In
other words, the endeavour to follow out the normal
development of the human race leads us to look for
that which answers to the Incarnation, by which
the completed body might be brought into a final
unity in fellowship with God.
"For Christ, as we are taught, supplies that
which gives a common life to all the members.
He is the Head of the Body. All the differences
of men, so far as they correspond with a true
growth, are reconciled in Him, and shown to be
contributory to the manifestation of His perfec
tion. "In this respect the argument which was drawn
from Eph. v. 31 ff., by several early writers, de
serves more consideration than we are at first
inclined to give to it. The main idea in the pas
sage seems to be that the Church, the representa
tive of perfected humanity, of that which the race
would in the end have been if sin had not inter
vened, is related to a Head, just as in the typical
record Of Creation woman is related to man. The
Church and woman are severally regarded as de
rived, and yet belonging to, the completeness of
that from which they are derived, and so destined
finally to be restored to perfect fellowship with it.
Man ideally is not man only, but man and woman;
Christ, such appears to be the thought, however un
familiar it may be to us, unites with the Godhead
the ideal of perfected humanity, and that not acci-

Lecture IV] Appendix 391
dentally but essentially. The personal relation of
sex regarded, in typical individuals, represents, as
we should express the view, beyond itself a cor
porate relation which exists in respect to the race.
Just as the individual union is necessary for the
fulfilment of the idea of woman, so the corporate
union is necessary for the fulfilment of the idea of
humanity. Christ is the true Adam : the Church
is the true Eve. And both these relations, the
individual relation and the corporate relation, are
independent of the Fall. The Fall has disturbed
and disordered each, but it was not the occasion
for the first existence of either. . . .
,"So far we have regarded man only, the indi
vidual and the race. We venture to go yet fur
ther, and to look upon man as the representative
of Creation. This thought appears to be dis
tinctly suggested in the records of the Creation,
and of the Fall, and of the new Creation. The
dominion of man (Gen. i. 28) was such that his
realm shared the consequences of his sin (Gen.
iii. 17). His destiny therefore has not yet been
accomplished (Ps. viii.; Heb. ii. 5 ff.). But in its
promised fulfilment lies the hope of the material
world. For that something is in store which
answers to the redemption of man's body (Rom.
viii. 22 ff.).
" It will at once be obvious how this wider view
of the relations of man to Creation tends to con
firm what has been already said of the inherent
fitness of the Incarnation in relation to the plan of
Creation, as we are enabled to look upon it. In

392 Appendix [Lecture IV
all parts of the natural order, and not in humanity
only, in the very course of progress, there is con
stant division, dispersion, differentiation, of ele
ments ; and at the same time clearer glimpses are
opened of a unity to which all the parts appear to
tend. This separation, this unity, as far as we can
see, belong alike to the essence of things. The
separation has been, it is true, influenced by the
Fall, but, as a condition of growth, it is not due to
it. The idea of the Incarnation therefore satisfies
the aspiration towards the vaster unity to which
the full development of Creation points. The
restoration of unity to man carries with it the
promise of the restoration of unity to all finite
being." — Westcott, Commentary on the Epistles of
John, essay on "The Gospel of Creation," pp.
306-310. Note 39. Page 161. — " For wherein fought He?
In that He took man's nature upon Him. Take
away His birth of a virgin, take away that He
emptied Himself, 'taking the form of a servant,
being made in the likeness of men, and found in
fashion as a man ' ; take away this, and where is
the combat? where the contest? where the trial?
where the victory, which no battle has preceded?
'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God. All things
were made by Him, and without Him was nothing
made.' Could the Jews have crucified this Word?
Could those impious men have mocked this Word?
Could this Word have been buffeted? Could this

Lecture IV] Appendix 393
Word have been crowned with thorns? But that
He might suffer all this, 'the Word was made
flesh ' ; and after He had suffered all this, by rising
again He 'overcame.'" — St. Augustine, Nicene
Fathers, Vol. VI., "Sermons on New Testament
Lessons," XLVIIL, p. 412.
Note 40. Page 163. — " Theology has no falser
idea than that of the impassibility of God. If He
is capable of sorrow, He is capable of suffering;
and were He without the capacity for either, He
would be without any feeling of the evil of sin or
the misery of man. The very truth that came by
Jesus Christ may be said to be summed up in the
passibility of God.
"To confine the idea of sacrifice to the Son is
to be unjust to His representation of the Father.
There is a sense in which the Patripassian theory
is right; the Father did suffer, though it was not
as the Son that He suffered, but in modes distinct
and different. The being of evil in the universe
was to His moral nature an offence and a pain, and
through His pity the misery of man became His
sorrow. But this sense of man's evil and misery
became the impulse to speak and to help ; and what
did this mean but the disclosure of His suffering
by the surrender of the Son? But this surrender,
as it was the act, represented the sacrifice and the
passion of the whole Godhead. Here degree and
proportion are out of place ; were it not, we might
say the Father suffered more in giving than the
Son in being given. He who gave to duty had not

394 Appendix [Lecture IV
the reward of Him who rejoiced to do it. Though
we speak but in the limited language of our own
conditions, yet, may we not ask, must not the act
by which the Son emptied Himself have affected
and, as it were, impoverished the Godhead? The
two things are coincident and inseparable; here,
pre-eminently, one member could not suffer with
out all suffering. The humiliation of the Son
involved the visible passion and death, but the
surrender by the Father involved the sorrow that
was the invisible sacrifice.
"And this is the Biblical doctrine : 'God so loved
the world that He gave His only-begotten Son';
'He spared not His own Son, but delivered Him
up for us all'; 'herein is love, not that we loved
God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be
the propitiation for our sins.' But what do these
verses mean, if not that the essence and act of
sacrifice was the surrender of the Son by the
Father? It was the measure alike of His love to
man and the suffering He endured to save. And so
we may say, without the Fatherhood there could
be no Atoner and no Atonement; but with the
Fatherhood the Atoner and the Atonement could
not but be. By their means He, as it were, invited
man to come and see sin as He saw it, and judge
its evil by beholding through the eternal Son the
suffering it cost the eternal Father." — Fairbairn,
Tlie Place of Christ in Modern Theology, pp. 483-
485.

Lecture V] Appendix 395

LECTURE V
Note 41. Page 175. — "I cannot but agree with
those who think that the Kingdom of God, in
Christ's view, is a present, developing reality.
This is implied in the parables of growth (mustard
seed, leaven, seed growing secretly) ; in the repre
sentations of it, in its earthly form, as a mixture of
good and bad (wheat and tares, the net of fishes) ;
in the description of the righteousness of the king
dom (Sermon on the Mount), which is to be realized
in the ordinary human relations; as well as in
many special sayings. I do not see how any one
can read these passages and doubt that in Christ's
view the kingdom was a presently existing, slowly
developing reality, originating in His word, contain
ing mixed elements, and bound in its development
to a definite law of rhythm ('first the blade, then
the ear,' etc.). On the other hand, the idea has
an eschatological reference. The kingdom is not
something which humanity produces by its own
efforts, but something which comes to it from
above. It is the entrance into humanity of a new
life from heaven. In its origin, its powers, its
blessings, its aims, its end, it is supernatural and
heavenly. Hence it is the kingdom of heaven, and
two stadia are distinguished in its existence, — an
earthly and an eternal ; the latter being the aspect
that chiefly prevails in the Epistles." — James
Orr, The Christian View of God and the World,
pp. 405, 406.

396 Appendix [Lecture V
Note 42. Page 181. — "But we are met on the
threshold by a modern objection to this provisional
conception of the matter. Is doctrine, even in this
sense, really the essential content of the Bible?
Is not its content, above all, fact and history? As
for Christianity in particular, is it not a life in
God mediated through Jesus Christ, rather than
a doctrine of divine things? The friends of Bibli
cal theology have no wish to deny the truth which
underlies these statements ; but it is a half truth,
and therefore liable to be misunderstood. To say
nothing of the apostles, who, at any rate, taught
something concerning Christ, or of Paul, who was
certainly one of the greatest teachers in the world's
history, the statement that 'Jesus Christ brought
no new doctrine, but presented in His person a
holy life with God and before God, and in the
strength which He drew from that spiritual life
He devoted Himself to the service of His brethren
in order to win them for the kingdom of God, ' is,
with all the truth which it contains, one of those
misleading statements that oppose things which
are not mutually exclusive. No one can deny that
Jesus was known by His contemporaries as a
' Master, ' that is, as a Teacher. His preaching
was hailed as a new doctrine (Mark i. 27), and He
Himself was conscious that it was His special
mission to convey a knowledge of God which was
unheard of before Him, and which could not be
obtained without Him (Matt. xi. 27). Certainly
this knowledge is only the abstract side of the life
in God which He unfolds in order to communicate ;

Lecture V] Appendix 397
but this new life is anything but an unconscious
one ; nor is it imparted by magic, but clothes itself
in idea, word, and preaching, and thus becomes
essentially and necessarily a new doctrine of divine
things. Nor is it otherwise with the content of
Holy Scripture as a whole. No doubt that content
is above all things testimony, the attestation of
facts of divine revelation; but in the testimony
there is thought, in the fact there is idea. What
God reveals of Himself is truth to be thought about
and to be proclaimed ; that is, of course, doctrine,
or doctrinal content." — Dr. Willibald Bey-
schlag, New Testament Theology (T. & T. Clark,
1895), Vol. I., pp. 2, 3.
Note 43. Page 183. — " Preaching being the char
acteristic feature of the life of Christ, no true
understanding of His mission can be had without
a knowledge of what He preached as the truth of
God. The Gospels which give us the record of
His life contain also a Gospel which He preached ;
and this Gospel comprises not only the rules of
practical morality, the lessons and precepts of
humanity and religion, but the Doctrines of a
Positive Theology. It is sometimes alleged that
Christ taught personally none of those doctrines
which are commonly set forth by the Church in
her creeds as distinctive of the Christian faith,
but directed His teachings to practical life, incul
cating the virtues, graces, and charities that would
reform, adorn, and bless society, and elevate man
kind ; that the doctrines of regeneration and atone-

398 Appendix [Lecture V
ment, of the divinity of Christ and the personality
of the Holy Spirit, were woven out of His sayings
by speculative minds among His followers, after
Jesus had finished His personal testimony of truth
and goodness ; that such doctrines owe more to St.
Paul and St. Augustine than to Christ, and belong
not to the original substance of the Gospel, but to
a philosophical theology that has grown up around
it. This notion is somewhat favoured by a common
method of teaching theology — stating doctrines in
technical terms and with scientific nicety, tracing
their development in the history of the Church and
of schools of philosophy, and finally authenticating
them by citations from the Scriptures used mainly
as proof-texts. For this purpose the writings of
Paul, as the logical expounder of the Christian
faith, are drawn upon more largely than other
portions of the New Testament — the Pauline con
ception being taken as the basis of the Christian
dogmatics, and the words of Jesus being used to
verify the statement of His doctrines in the form
of theological propositions. To reverse this method
is to derive the Christian Theology primarily and
directly from the words of Christ — • a process in
which we have to do not with the creeds of the
Church nor the formulas of the theologians, but
simply with the principles of interpretation. So
far as the very words of Christ have been pre
served, these form the essence of Christianity, just
as the original sayings of Socrates as preserved by
his disciples are the substance of the Socratic wis
dom. To the first preacher of Christianity must

Lecture V] Appendix 399
we look for the freshest, truest, best conception of
the system. In His words we find a proper the
ology, — 'not formulated, indeed, nor systematized,
yet expressed in doctrines to be severally believed,
— doctrines set forth with a certain gradation of
time and thought, or in a certain order of develop
ment, and these doctrines interwoven with the
whole texture of the precepts and promises of the
Gospel." — Joseph P. Thompson, The Theology of
Christ from His Own Words (New York, Scrib-
ners, 1871), pp. 2, 3.
Note 44. Page 185. — "His teaching, therefore,
from the very first, has for its background a unique
self -consciousness, the incomparable significance of
His person, and from the beginning was directed
towards something that must be more than teach
ing, that must be work and deed, viz. the founding
of God's kingdom. And this founding was finally
accomplished, not by His teaching as such, but by
His personal devotion to and completion of His
life-work, by His death and resurrection. Does
His teaching thereby lose its original fundamental
significance, and sink down to a mere introduction
to New Testament revelation? It must be said
that little as the teaching of Jesus in itself, apart
from the conclusion of His life, could have called
into existence the kingdom of God, as little could
that ending of His life have called it into being
without the foregoing doctrinal revelation. This
doctrinal revelation first induced that end to His
life, and gave it meaning; and it alone collected

400 Appendix [Lecture V
that community of disciples who were able to grasp
and propagate that meaning. And therefore His
doctrine is not indeed His life-work itself, but the
ideal reflection of it, the evidence of what He
wished, what He was conscious of being and doing.
His teaching, therefore, is that in His appearance
and active life which is necessary to make that
life intelligible to us, and without which the apos
tolic teaching about Him would only be a sum of
dogmatic utterances which we could not compre
hend, and whose truth we could not prove, — a
result not a little awkward for that view which
contrasts the 'teaching of Jesus ' as Christianity
proper with the apostolic 'teaching about Christ.' "
— Beyschlag, New Testament Theology, Vol. I.,
pp. 28, 29.
"Hat sich in der Erscheinung Jesu die voile
Gottesoffenbarung vollzogen, so muss dieselbe sich
auch als solche der Welt verstandlich gemacht
haben. Es liegt im Wesen der Offenbarung, dass
dieselbe nicht nur in gewissen Thatsachen bestehen
kann, sondern dass sie zugleich die wesentlich
richtige Auffassung von der Bedeutung dieser
Thatsachen von vornherein sicher stellen muss,
und dieses kann bei der in Christo erscheinenen
Gottesoffenbarung nur durch das seine Erscheinung
begleitende Selbstzeugniss Jesu (im weitesten
Umfange) geschehen sein. Auf diesem Selbst
zeugniss Jesu ruht aber selbstverstandlich und
geschichtlich die Auffassung seiner Erscheinung
in der altersten N. T. lichen Verkundigung. . . .

Lecture V] Appendix 401
Die Lehre Jesu war vielmehr ihrem wesentlichen
Kern nach selbst nichts anderes als eine Lehre von
der Bedeutung seiner Person und seiner Erschei
nung und musste in dieser Beziehung grundlegend
sein fur die urspriinglichen Vorstellungen der N. T.-
lichen Schriftsteller von derselben. Jemehr man
die Lehre Jesu in dieser ihrer geschichtlichen
Bedeutung and damit in ihrem eigentlichen Offen-
barungscharakter auffasst, urn so einfacher erledigt
sich die Frage nach dem Verhaltniss der Biblischen
Theologie zu den Thatsachen des Lebens Jesu.
Soweit die Lehre Jesu nemlich auf diese That
sachen zuriickweist, um ihre wahre Bedeutung
erkennen zu lassen, oder soweit sie dieselben zu
ihrem Verstfindniss voraussetzt, werden sie auch fur
die Biblische Theologie in Betracht kommen und
derselben durch die Ueberlieferung, aus welcher sie
die Lehre Jesu schopft, dargeboten sein. Immer
aber wird nur die Lehre Jesu den Ausgangspunkt
fur sie bilden, weil in ihr die Auffassung der
altesten Verkiindiger des Evangeliums von der
Bedeutung Jesu und seiner Erscheinung wurzelt
und damit die Grundlage fur das Verstandniss ihrer
religiosen Vorstellungen und Lehren gegeben ist."
— Bernhard Weiss, Lehrbuch der Biblischen Theo
logie des Neuen Testaments (2te Auflage, Berlin,
1873), pp. 33, 34.
Note 45. Page 200. — " The philosophers and
religionists of old saw truth, but they saw it in
detached forms and not as a system; they also
failed to connect it with a personal, divine source,
2d

402 Appendix [Lecture V
and hence had no ground of inspiration and no
sufficient motive to duty. In other phrase, they
were without the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
Compare, for example, Abraham and Zeno; the
latter had an immeasurably wider culture and
range of thought, but he could not elaborate a
vital system. Abraham, on the contrary, with his
one idea of a spiritual, personal God, and his one
principle of obedient trust, inaugurated an order
that instantly became vital and endures still as
eternal truth. He did not look as widely, perhaps
not as directly, at life, as the Stoic, but he looked
in truer directions. No truth, unless it happens
to be an all-embracing truth, and no number of
truths, however clearly seen, have any inspiring or
redeeming power until they are grounded in an
eternal Person. Mozley, in one of his sermons,
asks, 'Have we not, in our moral nature, a great
deal to do with fragments?' Yes, and it is the
weakness of human nature when it undertakes to
teach moral truth that it has only fragments to
deal with. It is because Christ did not see truth
in a fragmentary way, and because there was in
Himseli nothing fragmentary, that He teaches with
power. There is no capability in man of resisting
perfect truth; when it is seen, it conquers. The
main thing, therefore, is to see, but men love dark
ness, and even when they begin to see, it is in a
half -blind way." — T. T. Munger, The Freedom of
Faith (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., New York, 1884),
pp. 163, 164.

Lecture VI] Appendix 403

LECTURE VI
Note 46. Page 213. — " Si l'on demandait a un
lecteur d'intelligence moyenne, qui aurait lu les
dix-huit volumes de l'histoire naturelle et sociale
d'une famille sous le second Empire, ce qu'il pense
de cette fameuse thebrie de l'he'redite, il serait cer-
tainement dans un grand embarras : ' J'ai vu, nous
dirait-il, une vingtaine de personages qui ne se
ressemblent en rien, entre lesquels on m'affirme
qu'il y a un fil commun que je n'apercpis pas ; dont
les uns sont honngtes, les autres interesse"s, celui-ci
criminel, celui-la ivrogne, par suite d'une m§me
nevrose originelle. En somme, cette famille m'in-
teresse fort, parce qu'elle reproduit en diminutif
l'image du monde, infiniment diversifie ; mais je ne
parviens pas a me faire une idee a peu pres claire
de ce qu'elle est en tant que famille ; et je ne vois
pas beaucoup plus de rapports entre ses divers mem-
bres et les premiers Rougon-Macquart qu'on m'a
presentes qu'entre vous, moi, quelques autres et nos
premiers parents, Adam et Eve.' Mais peut-etre
bien que si l'on poussait notre homme a la reflexion,
on en tirerait autre chose ; peut-gtre que, en pro-
cedant selon la methode socratique, de question en
question, on l'amenerait a dire: 'Ah! je vois encore
ceci, par exemple ! C'est que tous ces gens sont ce
qu'ils sont de par une force etrangere, sur laquelle
ils ne peuvent rien, qui les gouverne et les dirige.
Us sont de simples marionnettes : je vois leurs
mouvements, et je sais que ces mouvements ne

404 Appendix [Lecture VI
dependent pas d'eux, mais de la ficelle qui les agite
et de la main qui tient la ficelle. Et je n'apercpis
pas la ficelle, et je n'apercpis pas la main. lis
ne sont pas libres, j'en suis sfir; de quel tyran de-
pendent-ils ? Je n'en sais rien.' Et notre homme
aurait resume, au point de vue qui nous occupe, tout
ce qu'on peut dire de l'oeuvre de M. Zola : elle n'est
pas scientifique et ne nous apporte aucun renseigne-
ment sur la doctrine de l'he're'dite ; mais elle est
litteraire et fait penetrer en nous les consequences
de cette doctrine, qui sont la negation radicale de la
liberte et de la responsabilite humaine. En sorte
que M. Zola a detruit des croyances positives qui
n'e"taient peut-etre que des prejuges, mais n'a au-
cunement justifie, ni explique, ni prouve les croy
ances negatives qu'il s'applique a leur substituer.
Le christianisme qu'il repousse, et la science qu'il
prend pour religion ont entre eux ce point de res-
semblance, que leur base est egalement incertaine,
en dehors de l'observation. Pour croire a l'heredite
de la famille Rougon-Macquart, il faudrait un acte
de foi pour le moins egal a celui qu'exigent les
dogmes .de la Trinite ou de l'lnxmaculee-Concep-
tion; et, apres l'avoir accompli, on serait peut-gtre
moins avance." — Edouard Rod, Idies Morales du
Temps Prhent, pp. 80-82.
Note 47. Page 214. — "Heredity is his hobby
horse, which he mounts in every one of his pieces.
There is not a single trait in his personages, a
single peculiarity of character, a single disease, that
he does not trace to heredity. In A Doll's House,

Lecture VI] Appendix 405
Dr. Rank's 'poor innocent spine must do penance
for " his " father's notions of amusement when he
was a lieutenant in the army.' . . . Helmer ex
plains to Nora that 'a misty atmosphere of lying
brings contagion into the whole family. Every
breath the children draw contains some germ of
evil. Nearly all men who go to ruin early have had
untruthful mothers. ... In most cases it comes
from the mother; but the father naturally works in
the same direction. ' And again : ' Your father's low
principles you have inherited, every one of them.
No religion, no morality, no sense of duty.' In
Ghosts, Oswald has learned from the extraordinary
doctor in Paris who told him he had softening of
the brain, that he had inherited his malady from
his father. Regina, the natural daughter of the
late Alving, exactly resembles her mother. . . .
"In Rosmersholm, Rebecca's nymphomania is ex
plained by the fact that she is the natural daughter
of a Lapland woman of doubtful morals. 'I believe
your whole conduct is determined by your origin, '
Rector Kroll says to her. Rosmer never laughs,
because 'it is a trait of his family.' He is 'the
descendant of the men that look down on us from
these walls.' His 'spirit is deeply rooted in his
ancestry.' Hilda, the step-daughter of the 'Lady
from the Sea' says: 'I should not wonder if some
fine day she went mad. . . . Her mother went
mad, too. She died mad. I know that. ' In The
Wild Duck nearly every one has a hereditary mark.
Gregers Werle, the malignant imbecile, who holds
and proclaims his passion for gossip as an ardent

406 Appendix [Lecture VI
desire for truth, inherits this craze from his mother.
Little Hedwig becomes blind, like her father, old
Werle. "In the earlier philosophical dramas the same
idea is constantly repeated. Brand gets his obsti
nacy, and Peer Gynt his lively, extravagant imagi
nation, from the mother. Ibsen has evidently read
Lucas's book on the first principles of heredity,
and has borrowed from it uncritically. It is true
that Lucas believes in the inheritance even of
notions and feelings as complex and as nearly
related to specific facts as, e.g., the horror of doc
tors, and that he does not doubt the transmission
of diseased deviations from the norm, e.g., the
appearance of blindness at a definite age. Lucas,
however, whose merits are not to be denied, did
not sufficiently distinguish between that which the
individual receives in its material genesis from its
parents, and that which is subsequently suggested
by family life and example, by continuous exist
ence in the same conditions as its parents, etc.
Ibsen is the true 'man of one book.' He abides
by his Lucas." — Max Nordau, Degeneration, pp.
350-352. Note 48. Page 215. — "It has come about that
the novels and stories which are to fill our leisure
hours and cheer us in this vale of tears have be
come what we call tragic. It is not easy to define
what tragedy is, but the term is applied in modern
fiction to scenes and characters that come to ruin from
no particular fault of their own, — not even when

Lecture VI] Appendix 407
the characters break most of the Ten Command
ments, — but by an unappeasable fate that dogs and
thwarts them. Ugliness and suffering and misfort
une unrelieved make a modern tragedy, and there
has come an opinion that tragedy of this sort is the
highest type of literature. . . . This situation has
much of the tragic in it. It is nothing else than
tragic to see a rosy-cheeked or spectacled young
woman whose life has been mainly guarded from
evil and surrounded by the sunshine of family and
social affection, or a young man of considerable
culture and considerable promise, whose enjoyment
of life is scarcely at all abated by cigarettes and a
sceptical philosophy, sit down with an inkstand and
a steel pen, and on white paper sketch the blackness
of life, the misery of humanity, the wretchedness of
a world of damnable complications, of which neither
of them can have had more than the slightest expe
rience. . . . But the young only follow more ex
perienced and skilful leaders in this — leaders who
are supposed in their melodramatic tales to touch
the height of ancient and dignified tragedy in
literature. These writers bring together a half-
dozen human beings of feeble will and strong pas
sions, ignorant, or half-educated, or aesthetically
educated, who have an assortment of good and bad
qualities, who cannot tell a lie, but who can break
any marriage tie they have sworn to, who can
murder in a helpless sort of way, who break all
the social conventions of decency but have convic
tions of their own about morality, who violate all
the laws of thrift and order and of conduct ex-

408 Appendix [Lecture VI
pressed by Moses or by the state, and pass their
lives in misery, and are defeated in every transient
aspiration for a better life, and come altogether to
a pitiful and squalid end. And for this misery
and this end they are in no wise to blame. They
could not help themselves, poor things; they do
not know that in half the cases it was the novelist
who would not let them help themselves, but kept
them grinding along in his circle of cruel complica
tions. . . . This is the romance of fatality, and if
it is tragedy, it is the tragedy of fatalism.
" If we are permitted to turn to what used to be
called in literature tragedy, we find that the Greek
dramatists have another conception of it. In the
dramas of JSschylus we see the impassioned pres
entation of humanity in action, and humanity in
action on the basis of the poet's ethical conception
of the divine government of the world. Not a
mechanical fate, but a providential Nemesis, had
been the lesson of Homer and the lyric poets ; and
this was the ruling motive of Greek tragedy, — the
sense of a righteous power, the Hebraic idea of an
offended holiness punishing pride and vice to the
children's children, but showing mercy to the peni
tent. It set forth the moral law, and the tragedy
flowed from its disobedience. This had the faint
est relation to the Fatality of the Orient and of the
modern novelist." — Charles Dudley Warner,
Harper's Magazine, March, 1896, "Fatalism in
Modern Fiction."

Lecture VI] Appendix 409
Note 49. Page 216. — " There is, however, an
other series of speculations, which has probably
contributed as much as anything to modern pes
simism. If the State Socialist is trying to com
press impulse and will in political society, the
physiologist is fighting the old battle against free
will in the individual, with what seems for the
moment asbolute success. In a sense, of course,
we did not need Mr. Galton and his compeers on
the Continent to teach us the doctrine of heredity.
Its main facts have never been overlooked, and
modern science might take for its epigraph, ' The
fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's
teeth are set on edge. ' Still, there is the greatest
possible difference between a wise man's aphorism,
the precise value of which is not easily calculable,
and a scientific demonstration, which shows the
whole region occupied by a particular law. Fifty
years ago a man's chance of extricating himself
from family failings seemed an extremely fail-
one. The mother's influence might counteract the
father's; and the man whose parents were of
dubious worth might hark back to an older and
better stock; or the influences of education might
neutralize the inherited evil quality. All these
considerations remain as true as they were, but we
see more clearly than we did that everything which
has once been in the race endures as a permanent
influence modifying it, and that family types are
apt to remain scarcely alterable for generations.
Even if a particular man can flatter himself with
reason that he has escaped or conquered a vicious

410 Appendix [Lecture VI
tendency, he knows that he is doomed to see it
reappear in his children. Now, the fatalism of
science in this direction seems of a more hopeless
kind than the old theological doctrine of predestina
tion to life eternal or death eternal. In Calvinism
the doomed man does not know his fate. Occasion
ally he fancies he does, and is overpowered by the
horror of the situation, but, as a rule, he acts on
the assumption that he may be one of the elect.
On the other hand, every man knows that the furies
of past generations are behind him ; and that he is
bound to inherit the passions and the impotencies
as well as the nobler qualities of his ancestral line.
In Calvinism the man's life upon earth is not neces
sarily affected. He may be a very excellent man
to current acceptation. Besides the ordinary obli
gation to live well which he recognizes, he is deeply
interested in his own success, as his works are a
slight indication that he may have been called.
The modern thinker, however, who has taken up
the teaching of heredity as a faith, may easily
come to look upon himself as nothing more than a
compound of experiences. He is visited at every
critical-moment by the doubt whether it is really
possible for him to escape from the character that
he inherits as he inherits physical type. " — Charles
H. Pearson, Fortnightly Review, "The Causes of
Pessimism." Note 50. Page 216. — "The 'religion of human
ity ' runs back the genealogy of man, with all his
powers, with all his equipments, to the dust of

Lecture VI] Appendix 411
the earth. I hold in my hand a genealogy which
I wish you to compare with the genealogy of Luke.
It is not a satire, it is not an irony. I have taken
it from the pages of Ernest Haeckel. It is true, I
have condensed it from perhaps a dozen pages, but
in that condensation I have followed precisely the
line traced by the atheistic philosopher. What is
omitted is simply the detailed description of the
several species in the genealogy. Let me read it :
'"Monera begat Amoebae, Amoebae begat Syn-
amrebas, Synamoebse begat Ciliated Larva, Ciliated
Larva begat Primeval Stomach Animals, Primeval
Stomach Animals begat Gliding Worms, Gliding
Worms begat Soft Worms, Soft Worms begat Sack
Worms, Sack Worms begat Skull-less Animals,
Skull-less Animals begat Single-nostrilled Animals,
Single-nostrilled Animals begat Primeval Fish,
Primeval Fish begat Mud Fish, Mud Fish begat
Gilled Amphibians, Gilled Amphibians begat Tailed
Amphibians, Tailed Amphibians begat Primeval
Amniota, Primeval Amniota begat Primary Mam
mals, Primary Mammals begat Pouched Animals,
Pouched Animals begat Semi-apes, Semi-apes begat
Tailed Apes, Tailed Apes begat Man-like Apes,
Man-like Apes begat Ape-like Men, Ape-like Men
begat Men.'" — Lyman Abbott, Christian Thought,
1887, Article on "The Religion of Humanity."
Note 51. Page 223. — "Men do actually antag
onize and overcome their vital inheritance, defy
their environment, and, without dependence upon
either, choose to live as if they were the children

412 Appendix [Lecture VI
of a virtuous ancestry and subject only to refined
conditions. These truths are apparently contra
dictory, and yet one is as evident as the other.
Two boys are the children of drunken parents;
their home is one room of a tenement in which a
dozen other persons eat and sleep; their school is
the street. All that bad blood and evil conditions
can do for them is done. Some day the elder in a
fit of drunken fury strikes a murderous blow. He
is arrested, arraigned, tried, condemned, executed;
he alone, though at the bar of God he has many
accomplices. Equally, and possibly still more,
culpable are the society which makes it possible
for such degraded creatures to be born; the State,
wliich allows saloons on every corner, and permits
such wretched tenements as the childhood home
of these boys ; and the men who own those build
ings, anxious rather for rent than for the welfare
of human beings. The other boy, however, son of
the same drunken parents and brought up amidst
the same vileness, is no longer there. His evil
heritage has been overcome, and his circumstances
changed; he is a gentleman of wealth, of culture,
of real and unaffected goodness. What has made
the difference? Not society, for the surroundings
of the lads were alike bad. The younger may have
received from his ancestry certain good tendencies
that his brother did not; but so far as can be traced
the legacy has been the same. What shall we think
about this remarkable and impressive contrast? I
know no answer except this : in every man there is
an untainted power, something which passes from

Lecture VI] Appendix 413
generation to generation untouched by change, and
that in this ultimate essence of personality rests
the power of choice, which may be shut in by evil
conditions and tied to a thousand evil tendencies,
but which is in its nature free, and is rarely, if
ever, entirely denied expression. At least it may
be said that no fact in the physical series militates
against the doctrine of human freedom which may
not immediately be met and fully balanced by a
fact in the spiritual series." — Amory H. Brad
ford, Heredity and Christian Problems, pp. 89, 90.
Note 52. Page 226. — "Under these circum
stances, one can leave the question open whilst wait
ing for light, or one can do what most speculative
minds do, that is, look to one's general philosophy
to incline the beam. The believers in mechanism
do so without hesitation, and they ought not to
refuse a similar privilege to the believers in a spir
itual force. I count myself among the latter, but
as my reasons are ethical they are hardly suited for
introduction into a psychological work. The last
word of psychology here is ignorance, for the
'forces ' engaged are certainly too delicate and nu
merous to be followed in detail. Meanwhile, in
view of the strange arrogance with which the wild
est materialistic speculations persist in calling
themselves 'science,' it is well to recall just what
the reasoning is, by which the effect-theory of atten
tion is confirmed. It is an argument from analogy,
drawn from rivers, reflex actions, and other mate
rial phenomena where no consciousness appears to

414 Appendix [Lecture VI
exist at all, and extended to cases where conscious
ness seems the phenomenon's essential feature. The
consciousness doesn't count, these reasoners say ; it
doesn't exist for science, it is nil; you mustn't
think about it at all. The intensely reckless char
acter of all this needs no comment. It is making
the mechanical theory true per fas aut nefas. For
the sake of that theory we make inductions from
phenomena to others that are startlingly wnlike
them; and we assume that a complication which
Nature has introduced (the presence of feeling and
of effort, namely) is not worthy of scientific recog
nition at all. Such conduct may conceivably be
wise, though I doubt it; but scientific, as con
trasted with metaphysical, it cannot seriously be
called." — William James, Psychology (New York,
Henry Holt & Co.), Vol. I., p. 454.
" The most that any argument can do for deter
minism is to make it a clear and seductive concep
tion, which a man is foolish not to espouse, so long
as he stands by the great scientific postulate that
the world must be one unbroken fact, and that
prediction of all things without exception must
be ideally, even if not actually, possible. It is a
moral postulate about the Universe, the postulate
that lohat ought to be can be, and that bad acts can
not be fated, but that good ones must be possible in
their place, which would lead one to espouse the
contrary view. But when scientific and moral pos
tulates war thus with each other and objective proof
is not to be had, the only course is voluntary choice,

Lecture VI] Appendix 415
for scepticism itself, if systematic, is also volun
tary choice. If, meanwhile, the will be determined,
it would seem only fitting that the belief in its
determination should be voluntarily chosen from
amongst other possible beliefs. Freedom's first
deed should be to affirm itself. We ought never
to hope for any other method of getting at the
truth if indeterminism be a fact. Doubt of this
particular truth will, therefore, probably be open
to us to the end of time, and the utmost that a
believer in free-will can ever do will be to show
that the deterministic arguments are not coercive.
That they are seductive, I am the last to deny;
nor do I deny that effort may be needed to keep the
faith in freedom, when they press upon it, upright
in the mind." — Ibid., Vol. II., pp. 573 ff.
Note 53. Page 227. — " First, the humiliation of
our Lord, including His Incarnation, is represented
as a continuously voluntary act. His determina
tion to become incarnate, and the act of becoming
so, are certainly represented as voluntary. Its
whole moral value is described as consisting in the
freeness with which it was done. It thus became
the act of self-sacrifice and self-humiliation that
it was. 'He who was rich became poor.' 'He
thought not equality with God a matter for grasp
ing, but made Himself of no account, and took the
form of a servant.' The point, however, to which
I call attention is that, after the act of incarnation
had been accomplished, the incarnate life of humili
ation on earth is represented as still a continuous

416 Appendix [Lecture VI
act of voluntary lowliness. Thus, in Philippians,
He not only took the form of a servant and became
in the likeness of men, but, being found in fashion
as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient
unto death. His subjugation to law is here de
scribed as a continuously voluntary act and as the
continuation of the same purpose and personal
determination by which He became man. So in
the Epistle to the Hebrews we read: 'Forasmuch
as the children are partakers of flesh and blood,
Himself also in Uke manner [irapairXrjo-iux;, " in every
respect"] partook of the same.' Both the act of
incarnation and all His experimental identity with
man were parts of one plan of voluntary self-
humiliation." — Rev. George T. Purves, The
Incarnation Biblically Considered, p. 78.
Note 54. Page 234. — "The whole of Jesus'
preaching of the kingdom of heaven is a procla
mation of grace, a doctrine of salvation, and it is
united with the doctrine of righteousness in the
manner of the Augustinian 'Domine, da quod jubes,
et jube quod vis. ' Not as though Jesus had deprived
man of'moral freedom. On the contrary, — and the
ethical conception of his doctrine just rejected is
quite right in this, — the presupposition that man
is incapable of doing the will of God on account of
sin is unknown to Jesus. He demands of men
throughout the doing of His commandments, the
doing of the divine will. He credits them through
out with the power to repent, that is, to change
their mind, and become of that mind, in virtue of

Lecture VII] Appendix 417
which one can only truly do the commandments of
God in detail. And He not only credits them with
this freedom, on the authority of His Word and
Gospel, but also on the authority of the words of
the Old Testament, the law, and the prophets. It
is by no means meant ironically when He directs
the scribes to the two great commandments (Luke
x. 23 f.), 'Do this, and you will live '; or the rich
young man (Matt. xix. 17), 'If thou wilt enter
into life, keep the commandments.' It is said of
the brethren of the rich man (Luke xiv. 29), 'They
have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them '
(viz. in the interest of their own conversion). The
poor Lazarus, in the same parable, has heard Moses
and the prophets, and in their school has developed
an inner life which could bear him at death on
angels' wings into paradise; and Abraham, the
patriarchs, the prophets, according to Luke xvi.
22, Matt. viii. 12, have arrived there." — Bey-
schlag, Neio Testament Theology, Vol. I., pp. 131,
132. LECTURE VII
Note 55. Page 257. — "This new conception of
God, as immanent in nature, is necessarily accom
panied by a new conception of law and miracles.
Rather, we are going back to the New Testament
conception and definition of miracles. They are
no longer regarded as violations of natural law, or
even as suspensions of natural law. Indeed, in
strictness of speech, in the view of this philoso
phy, there are no natural laws to be violated or
2e

418 Appendix [Lecture VII
suspended. There is only one Force, that is God;
law is but the habit of God's action; miracles are
but the manifestation of His power and presence in
unexpected actions, demonstrating the existence of
an intelligent Will and Power superior to that of
man. I say that this is a recurrence to the New
Testament conception and definition of miracles;
for the writers of the New Testament knew noth
ing about nature and the supernatural, nothing
about natural causes and the violation or suspen
sion of natural laws. The words they used to
characterize what we call miracles indicate their
apprehension of these events. Four words were
used by them: 'wonders,' 'powers,' 'works,' and
'signs' or 'miracles.' Any event attracting atten
tion and compelling wonder, exhibiting unusual
or more than human power, accomplishing a real
work, usually beneficent, and serving as the sign of
a special messenger and an authentication of his
message, is in the conception of the writers of the
New Testament a miracle. As the New Theology
believes that 'all power belongs to God,' that God
is immanent in the universe, and that there is no
real distinction between the natural and the super
natural, that the only dualism is the material or
physical and the immaterial or spiritual, it has no
difficulty in believing that the control of the physi
cal by the spiritual, and therefore of the universe
by its God, is sometimes manifested by unexpected
or unusual acts of power and wisdom for spiritual
ends. These are miracles." — ¦ Lyman Abbott,
Tlie Evolution of Christianity, pp. 112, 113.

Lecture VII] Appendix 419
"It is not of course that there is any spiritual
parsimony in God, but that it is only through the
comparative rarity of the gleams of light, through
their contrast to common experience, that they
teach us the true lesson of that common experi
ence. If they were much more frequent, — we
being what we are, — we should lose the meaning
of the lesson through that frequency; just as in
countries where life is excessively precarious,
death does not enhance half so much as in other
countries the value of life. In a land where every
one was original, originality would lose its power,
and perhaps become a great danger; its value being
to explain the limitations of ordinary habit, not to
dissolve ordinary habit. So spiritual influence is
the divine comment on ordinary human wants and
desires, and miracle the divine comment on law —
neither of which would have the same value, if the
subject of the comment were not worked into the
very substance of our minds before the comment
came. Miracle teaches the divine meaning of per
manent law ; and owes all its impressiveness to the
comparative fixity and permanence of the phenom
ena which it interrupts. Miracle forces upon us
personality, but would not force it upon us unless
it were so exceptional in its mode of occurrence as
to open a new mental relation between us and the
Author of Nature. It is a mistake to take the uni
formity of the laws of Nature as the measure of
God's purposes, just as it is a mistake to take the
every-day habits even of a human being as the
measure of his aims. You cannot tell what they

420 Appendix [Lecture VII
really mean — they are too wide for interpretation
— till you get some light on them from the occa
sions on which the man himself breaks through
them, and you see the reasons he assigns for doing
so. And so with the laws of Nature — they are far
too big for moral interpretation, too vast for our
survey, till at some one point we see the reason
why they are modified, and, then, that first really
tells us the reason why they were ever fixed. It
is not that miracle is half as wide as Nature; on
the contrary, it is just because it is so much nar
rower, that it lets the gleam of the personal Spirit
shine through it, and so throws a light on the
whole structure." — R. H. Hutton, Contemporary
TJiought and Thinkers, Vol. IL, pp. 119, 120.
Note 56. Page 258. — " They were talking about
miracles, and the young Doctor said: 'You know
as well as I do, Stephen, that everything in this
world moves in regular order. The laws of nature
are what we all have to depend on, and they never
change. It's certain that if you plant potatoes
they won't come up pumpkins. Neither you nor
any man here ever saw a miracle. You never
heard of one in your life in these parts. You
never heard of pumpkin vines growing from pota
toes. It stands to reason and common sense that
when no man in this town ever saw anything hap
pen that wasn't in the regular course of natural
law, anything supernatural, it isn't likely such
things are going to happen here.'
"I looked at Stephen, as the Doctor called him.

Lecture VII] Appendix 421
He was an elderly man, hard-featured and sun
burned. There was a shrewd twinkle in his eye,
but he looked at the stove and not at the Doctor,
and there was a silence for a moment while he
pondered. Then he spoke in a mild, inquiring sort
of way, which contrasted with the Doctor's some
what self-opinionated tone.
" ' I don't know much about the laws of natur',
but I suppose you mean something like this — ¦ that
when I let go that jack-knife it'll fall on the floor; '
and he stretched out a long arm holding an open
knife by the blade between his thumb and finger.
"'Exactly,' said the Doctor; 'that's the law of
gravitation. '
"'And it's sure to fall, and I can bet my money
on it, and I needn't be afraid of a miracle? Look
here, Doctor, where did the law that binds it to
fall come from? What made that particular law?'
"The Doctor was honest; that was evident from
his reply. 'The learned men who have investi
gated the laws of nature have not found the origin
of the laws. They will in time. It's only in
recent years that science has made its great dis
coveries in the laws themselves. -Heat, light,
colour, electricity, all the great characteristics of
the changing world and of matter itself, have
never been understood as they are now.'
"'And you can't tell me what made the law that
binds that jack-knife to fall down? '
"'No, I can't. It's enough to know as certain
that it will fall. Just let go, and you'll see the
certainty. '

422 Appendix [Lecture VII
"'No chance of anything supernat'ral; any
miracle? '
"'Miracle be hanged. Let go the blade.'
" Stephen's thumb and finger separated and stood
stretched out wide apart. The jack-knife was not
on the floor. It was hanging to the wooden ceiling
overhead, its blade buried a half-inch in the soft
pine. For about ten seconds no one spoke. Ste
phen was looking at the Doctor.
"'Suthin' supernat'ral happened, didn't it?' said
Stephen. "'You jerked the knife up yourself.'
'"Well, that warn't nat'ral, war it?'
"The Doctor hesitated. 'Now see here, Doctor,'
said the old man, 'just tell me how old is your law
that the jack-knife's got to fall down.'
"'Millions of years old. Just as old as there
has been anything to fall.'
" 'And how old was the law that said that jack-
knife must go up there and stick its blade in that
white-pine ceiling? Just three minutes and a half
old by the clock. Now what I want to know is
where did your law that it must go down come
from. You say you don't know. Well, it stands
to sense, then, and you can't deny that it may
come from some one that makes it go down just as
I made it go up. If your science is worth a sneeze,
it oughtn't to deny what it don't know nothing
about. And if that's so, it's always just as like as
not whoever made the thing go down will make it
go up, without you or I or any one else knowing
what made it go, any more than you know what

Lecture VII] Appendix 423
made me jerk that knife up yonder. You tell me
that if I plant potatoes they won't come up
squashes, but you just tell me what plants pota
toes, or what makes me plant 'em, anyhow. If I
don't plant 'em, there ain't going to be any pota
toes nor squashes. It's according to reason that
if potatoes come up because I planted potatoes,
squashes don't come up from them, because some
one else takes care of that part of the business. I
don't believe in your argiments that laws always
may be depended on, when you tell me yourself
that you don't know where the laws come from
and how long they're goin' to last. Your science
is all right, Doctor, just as long as it talks about
what it knows about. But when your science says
a knife's bound to fall down, and don't take into
account that something supernat'ral may interfere
that science don't know nothing about, sich as my
sudden making up my mind to jerk it up, why your
science ain't wuth any more than a last year's
almanac to tell a fellow what the weather's goin'
to be.'
"By this time Stephen's tone and style had
changed. He was no longer humble and inquir
ing, but decidedly aggressive. There were some
strong words, not exactly profane, adjectively ap
plied to science in the last sentence, which I have
omitted. He talked rapidly and vehemently and
with pointed logic. Is logic one of the distin
guishing characteristics of humanity? There are
men, exceptions, sometimes men of eminence, who
do not seem to have any idea of logic, but by the

424 Appendix [Lecture VII
vast majority of men, however uneducated, logical
sequence seems instinctively appreciated, and the
most illiterate are very sure to detect failure in
argument. "As he talked he rose and stood up, six feet
two, — a mighty frame, fit for tremendous work, —
and he poured out a storm of plain and unanswer
able philosophic truth, ending up in this wise:
'No miracles, but only jest steady laws? Well,
accordin' to law that jack-knife will stick there
till the wood rots or the steel rusts. Make your
prophecy if you dare. Say what it'll do. Is there
any law that'll tell you what'll come of it? or
whether Sam or Timmy won't have it down and
pocket it as soon as I'm gone? You don't know?
Well, I do. There's just such a law, and I made
it;' and so saying he reached up his long arm,
seized the knife, and strode out of the door, growl
ing as he went." — W. C. Prime, Along New Eng
land Roads (New York, Harpers, 1892), "A
Village Discussion," pp. 35-39.
Note 57. Page 266. — "It is objected to the be
lief that God is personal, that personality implies
limitation, and that, if personal, God could not
be infinite and absolute. 'Infinite ' (and the same
is true of 'absolute') is an adjective, not a sub
stantive. When used as a noun, preceded by
the definite article, it signifies, not a being, but
an abstraction. When it stands as a predicate, it
means that the subject, be it space, time, or some
quality of a being, is without limit. Thus, when I

Lecture VII] Appendix 425
affirm that space is infinite, I express a positive
perception, or thought. I mean not only that im
agination can set no bounds to space, but also that
this inability is owing, not to any defect in the
imagination or conceptive faculty, but to the nat
ure of the object. When I say that God is infinite
in power, I mean that He can do all things which
are objects of power, or that His power is inca
pable of increase. No amount of power can be
added to the power of which He is possessed. It
is only when the 'Infinite ' is taken as the syno-
nyme of the sum of all existence, that personality
is made to be incompatible with God's infinitude.
No such conception of Him is needed for the satis
faction of the reason or the heart of man. Enough
that He is the ground of the existence of all beings
outside of Himself, or the creative and sustaining
power. There are no limitations upon His power
which He has not voluntarily set. Such limitation
— as in giving being to rational agents capable of
self-determination, and in allowing them scope for
its exercise — is not imposed on Him, but depends
on His own choice." — George P. Fisher, The
Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief (New
York, Scribners, 1883), pp. 69, 70.
"A physical law has nothing wherewith to resist
God, who can as easily make or do a thing in an
other way than that of law, as by that law. A
physical law is as nothing, regarding it as pre
venting God from acting in any special way. If
this law acts, it acts ; but if it does not act, some

426 Appendix [Lecture VII
other mode does for the occasion. But it is a dif
ferent thing when we come to the actual wills of
real beings. The will of man is admitted (with
that reserve which, as ignorant creatures, we must
fall back upon in such mysterious statements), as
that which has the power of resisting the will of
God. Free-will is claimed as a real attribute of
man — power to do or not to do. The will can
resist God's will, and can stop the progress of a
work of God. Is this an intricate view of Divine
dealings, and does putting Divine power under such
checks and conditions as a progressive revelation
implies seem radically to interfere with the attri
bute? This is an objection which, if it be of any
force at all, does not apply to a progressive revela
tion specially; it applies to the whole idea of a
Deity, as compatible with human free-will. Human
free-will is an internal modification of the idea of
God, which is only prevented from interfering
injuriously with the idea, by the intervention of
our resort to ignorance. As ignorant creatures we
are not entitled to say that apparent limitations of
the Divine power are real ones, because they may
be only 'such as the mathematical consistency of
truth itself imposes; that is, only verbal restric
tions upon power, and not real ones. To the intel
lectual conception, however, the idea of God is thus
an idea with checks and conditions in it ; and those
who would simplify it absolutely, would establish
an idol and not a God. If we invent an idol, all
is plain enough; there are no enigmas in an idol;
there are no reasons why individuals cannot be

Lecture VII] Appendix 427
converted in an instant, and why the human race
cannot be enlightened in an instant by an abstract
Omnipotence. But if we suppose the Deity to be
the Being we represent Him in our sermons, our
popular treatises, our exhortations, who cannot do
some things, and cannot change man without his
own concurrence, this is a Deity who cannot give
enlightenment or implant a revelation in man by
an instantaneous act." — -J. B. Mozley, Ruling
Ideas in Early Ages (London, Rivingtons, 1889),
pp. 249, 250.
Note 58. Page 268. — " And this respect of God
for His creatures is seen most of all in His relation
to man. He never indeed allows human freedom
to disturb the main course of the world's develop
ment; to tolerate that would be to abandon the
providential government of the world. But within
such an area as allows man to exercise a real,
though limited, freedom — to such a degree as at
least may involve considerable disturbance in the
divine order for the sake of the value- of free, as
distinct from mechanical, service — God stands
aloof and respects that free nature which He has
created, that image of His own freedom which He
has, as it were, planted out in the heart of the
physical creation. God respects His creature man.
His power refrains itself. But is there, in order
to leave room for man's freedom of choice, a limi
tation, not only of God's power, but of His fore
knowledge? Is the old controversy as regards
human freedom and divine foreknowledge to be

428 Appendix [Lecture VII
solved in part by the suggestion that a limitation
of divine foreknowing accompanies the very act of
creating free agents? The idea has commended
itself to some very thoughtful minds: to Origen,
as has already incidently appeared in this discus
sion, and to Dr. Martineau in modern times. The
accurate examination of the meaning assigned to
divine 'foreknowledge ' in the Bible tends to shake
the traditional belief that God is there revealed as
knowing absolutely beforehand how each individual
will act. Nevertheless, it is at least as difficult to
reject this belief as to admit it. But, whatever be
our relation to it, at least we must admit that the
method of God in history, like the method of God
in nature, is to an astonishing degree self-restrain
ing, gradual, we are almost driven to say, tenta
tive. And all this line of thought — all this way
of conceiving of God's self-restraining power and
wisdom — at least prepares our mind for that
supreme act of respect and love for His creatures
by which the Son of God took into Himself human
nature to redeem it, and in taking it limited both
His power and His knowledge so that He could
verily live through all the stages of a perfectly
human experience and restore our nature from
within by a contact so gentle that it gave life to
every faculty without paralyzing or destroying
any." — Charles Gore, Dissertations (New York,
Scribners, 1895), pp. 223, 224.
Note 59. Page 270. — "We must distinguish
between the intelligence of Deity and His intellect-

Lecture VII] Appendix 429
uality. His intellectuality, His capacity to know,
is perfect, without any deficiency or weakness ; it
is an element of His necessary existence, and,
therefore, is wholly subjective. But His intelli
gence is the knowing, and is the result of the
exercise of His intellectuality. Intelligence is
derived from intuition, from consciousness, from
inference, and from observation. Intelligence
derived from intuition and necessary conscious
ness can never be increased or decreased. Intelli
gence derived from inference and observation must
be derived from objectivity, but objectivity is the
realm of the contingent. Intelligence of the con
tingent can never exist until the contingencies
exist, because a nonentity can have no objectivity.
That which is a present conceivable nonentity may
become an actual entity. But the apprehension
of a possible entity is theory, but not knowledge.
We must distinguish between the intelligence of
entities and the apprehension of possibles, between
God's consciousness of necessary existences, and
His intelligence derived from His inference and
from His observation of unnecessitated things.
" Failing to make this discrimination, men infer
that God's intelligence of contingencies is just as
immutable as His intelligence of necessities. In
the realm of necessities all God's thoughts are
immutable from everlasting to everlasting; but in
the realm of contingencies He can at pleasure will
worlds into existence. If He will new worlds into
being, He can will new conceptions, new plans, new
enterprises into existence. Having the power to

430 Appendix [Lecture VII
will new thoughts into existence, He has the power
to originate new creations, new purposes for the
glorification of His intelligent creatures, for the
adornment of His material universe and the illus
tration of His own glorious perfections. His con
sciousness derived from necessities must be different
from His consciousness derived from actual contin
gencies. " In these views of the divine nature I am grati
fied in being supported by Dr. Dorner, of the Uni
versity of Berlin, one who stands in the foremost
rank of living Protestant divines. In a recent
number of the Bibliotheca Sacra he says: 'Any
view of the divine nature that excludes all distinc
tion, movement, and change from God is incom
patible with the idea of creation. The world, as
a thought, was a determination given to his mind
by God. He must have conceived the world as
changeable, or He would not have willed it thus to
be. In the divine omniscience there must be an
element of growth. If there be free beings, there
must be free determinations. God may have a
prior knowledge of them as mere possibilities, but
He cannot have a knowledge of them as actuali
ties. This knowledge of human acts must be
acquired gradually as they come to pass. This
knowledge He draws from history, and it is condi
tioned by the action of the causalities which He
has brought into existence. In His counsels, in
His knowledge, and in His volitions with respect
to the world, in His relations to time and space,
God is not unchangeable. In these regards He

Lecture VII] Appendix 431
undergoes movement and change, and suffers Him
self to be conditioned. ' " — L. D. McCabe, Divine
Nescience (New York, Phillips & Hunt, 1882),
pp. 25-27.
"The doctrine of God's perfect foreknowledge
is not only unphilosophical, but also unscriptural.
The Bible exhorts us to the deepest earnestness in
prayer — to downright importunity — and encour
ages us to believe that the fervent prayer of the
righteous man availeth much. No petitioner can
plead with any genuine unction unless he believes
that he can actually effect some change in the pur
poses existing in the divine mind at the time his
prayer is offered. If he were convinced that every
thing had been prearranged from all eternity; that
his tears and sighs and passionate words of longing
had been present in God's mind always; that they
never had exerted, and never could exert, any in
fluence, effect any change, as there could never be
a time when they would first arrest God's atten
tion, — how could he wrestle, agonize, in prayer?
It would seem but empty show to him, that he was
merely playing a part. Every word he uttered
would fall back dead. If he believes in God's
foreknowledge, he must, while he prays, if he
prays as the Bible commands, utterly forget his
belief and fall into the temporary delusion that
the matter is yet undetermined; that God's heart
is tender, can be moved; that His purposes can be
changed. He must forget his belief, must go ahead
just as if foreknowledge were not true. Think you

432 Appendix [Lecture VII
God would force His children to such straits, to
such mental stultification? . . .
"I am now ready to answer the question, How
can we reasonably hope by our petitions to effect a
change in the divine purposes, and why should we
plead importunately, why kindle our souls into such
intensity of fervour? The Scriptures in enjoining
earnestness need not be understood as favouring
attempts to coax and tease God, as we too fre
quently do our earthly parents, to act against His
better judgment out of some weak, short-sighted
sympathy. If that be our purpose, we may be cer
tain of flat failure. Our prayers will never induce
Him to deal any more generously with us. He has
always stood with outstretched arms, with over
flowing sympathy, waiting impatiently to bless us.
What untold wealth of deep inventive thought,
what untold aeons of slowly passing years, He has
already lavished in His preparations for our com
ing, for our maintenance, for our unfolding, for
our permanent weal ! While our prayers will not
make Him any more kindly disposed, will not
noticeably increase His sympathy for us, they
will in most marked measure increase His sym
pathy with us, will profoundly change our attitude
toward Him and multiply our capacity for blessing
ten thousand fold. Indeed, so radical is the change
wrought, that what would have been poison before,
becomes medicine now. We thus furnish God new
facts upon which to act — ¦ facts of mental attitude,
the unforeseen outputs of our sovereignty. That
attitude is one of Christ-like love, manifesting it-

Lecture VII] Appendix 433
self in five forms, — that of willing obedience, of
self-sacrificing service, of sense of divine depend
ence, of restful confidence, and of intensest long
ing. Until that attitude is attained in all these
its prime essentials, God, if He should interfere
by stepping outside His general providence, in
which the evil and the good are served alike, to
confer special favours, would be doing violence to
His conceptions of fitness and of true beneficence,
would work His children a most positive injury,
placing a premium on qualities that stand over
against these forms of love, thereby countenancing
a spirit of rebellion, selfishness, self-sufficiency,
distrust, and ignoble apathy. It is the fervent
prayer of the righteous man that availeth much.
He must be righteous and his righteousness must
be on fire to fulfil the Scripture conditions. That
availing power is something more than retroac
tive ; it moves the arm that moves the world. As
this is a moral state of the soul within the circle of
its sovereignty, the product of its absolutely free
choice, there cannot be, as I have shown, any
sure prophecy of its coming. But when it comes,
all barriers are burned away. Reserve gives jjlace
to closest, sympathetic intimacy. What more nat
ural, when the spirits of father and son thus meet
and mingle, than that the son, care-cumbered it
may be, or broken with grief, or baffled in pur
pose, though battling still, should pour out in most
impassioned utterance his deep and noble longings?
Love itself would so prompt; for love casteth out
fear, is the very essence of liberty. Cautious re-
2 F

434 Appendix [Lecture VIII
serve cannot live in its atmosphere of holy confi
dence. All curtains of concealment fall instantly
at the magic touch of sympathy. He could not
keep his longings back. His father's tender look
and tone would break the seals of silence, would
touch his lips with coals of fire. The thought of
trying by coaxing to melt down his stern reluc
tance is utterly foreign to such a scene, repugnant
to such a state, and was never contemplated in the
Gospel. What more natural than that God's heart
should be deeply stirred by the fervid outflow of
such a passion of love and longing, and that He
should by direct will-power supply the deficiencies
of His general providence, or by timely suggestions
reveal its resources, and place them in reach to meet
the needs of such a soul in such an hour?" — Wil
liam W. Kinsley, Old Faiths and New Facts (New
York, Appletons, 1896), pp. 81, 90-92.
LECTURE VIII
Note 60. Page 297. — " We can make this clear by
considering that property, private property, is the
condition of the best social order. The best social
order results from the social union and co-opera
tion of the highest type of men and women ; and
the highest type of manhood and womanhood can
only be produced when men and women have the
free use of property. Property is, indeed, the raw
material for the development of character. It is
in property, Hegel says, that my will is made real
for me as a personal will. Property is the concen*

Lecture VIII] Appendix 435
trated form of power, and it is in the exercise of
power that my will is trained and disciplined.
" It is in the realm of property rights and obliga
tions that my personality is largely shaped. Until
I have learned to use property conscientiously and
beneficently, I have not equipped myself for the
highest service of my fellow-men. In making it
the instrument of promoting human welfare, more
than in any other possible way, I socialize my own
will, and prepare myself to enter into helpful rela
tions with my fellow-men. I cannot learn this
lesson in the use of property which I hold in com
mon with my fellows. It must be my own ; I must
be free to express my own will in dealing with it;
I cannot be unselfish in the use of that which is
not mine; the most direct and effective discipline
in unselfishness is that which is gained in using
private property beneficently.
" The fundamental assumption of socialism seems
to be that if men possess private property they
will use it selfishly; therefore, the socialists say,
we will have no private property. The remedy
would not be effectual. It is rather difficult to
abolish all vestiges of private property. Hands
and feet and eyes and tongues are possessions and
instruments not easily alienated, and those who
would use money or machinery selfishly would be
quite sure to go on using all their personal powers
in the same way after they were divested of money
and machinery; claws and fists and elbows and
teeth would still be private property, and a very
unsocial use might be made of them. Unless the

436 Appendix [Lecture VIII
will has been socialized, unless men have learned
how to use all their powers and possessions for the
common welfare, the society in which they live will
bear very little resemblance to heaven, no matter
how small their personal belongings may be." —
Washington Gladden, Ruling Ideas of the Present
Age (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., 1895), pp.
76-79. Note 61. Page 298. — " Love seeks the true good
of the person loved. It will not minister in an
unworthy way to afford a temporary pleasure. It
will not approve nor tolerate that which is wrong.
It will not encourage the coarse, base passions of
the one loved. It condemns impurity, falseness,
selfishness. A parent, we say, does not really
love his child if he tolerates the self-indulgence
and does not correct or punish the faults of the
child. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Love
discriminates. It admires only that which is
worthy of admiration. It cannot consent to, much
less approve, anything unworthy of the loved one.
The more love the more condemnation of that
which is unlovely. What has been said of the
divine love is true of human love :
' The very wrath from pity grew,
From love of men the hate of wrong.'
Love has a high ideal of the person loved, and
is devoted to the attainment of that ideal. Love
seeks righteousness, and is satisfied with nothing
less and nothing other than that.
" Should not one be seeking the same things for

Lecture VIII] Appendix 437
himself that he seeks for others? Should he not
have the same ideal for himself? Is not the good
ness he would promote in a friend the very good
ness he should be striving to promote in his own
character? If I love another, I seek his perfec
tion. But I should seek my own perfection.
Therefore I should love myself. In fact, the very
best way to promote the goodness of another is to
cultivate my own goodness. To be of the right
character gives the power and the only power of
loving and serving others. Example is the best
service love can render. If one is seeking the
wrong things for himself, he cannot be seeking
the right things for his friend, except as he dis
approves his own wrongness, and is a warning to
his friend. Now we understand self-love. The
representation of love as including self is by no
means a far-fetched and circuitous way of think
ing. In the complete summary of moral law, a
summary which is almost universally accepted,
two great principles are laid down, one of which
gives as much importance to self-love as to love
for others, and even makes self-love the rule and
type of love to others. ' Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself,' is the second of two great
commandments on which hang all the moral pre
cepts of law-givers and prophets. The comparison
has respect, not to quantity, but to quality. It does
not mean that one is to love his neighbour as much
as he loves himself, that he is to give just as much
time, thought, care, service, to his neighbour as he
gives to himself, in as equal division as possible.

438 Appendix [Lecture VIII
It means that one is to love his neighbour in the
same way as he loves himself, in the same manner,
after the same fashion, with the same objects in
view, like as he loves himself. It is not the 'as '
of degree but the 'as ' of kind. As thou lovest
thyself so shalt thou love thy neighbour. The
soul's goods one seeks for himself are the soul's
goods he should seek for his neighbour. Therefore
one must love himself aright in order to love his
neighbour aright. According to this comprehensive
precept, self-love is not derived from love to others,
but love to others gets its pattern and therefore its
measure from love to self. This is as distinct a
declaration of self-love as could possibly be made,
and certainly on the best authority. The somewhat
similar precept which is found both in Christian
and in Confucian ethics, — to do unto others as
you would that, they should do unto you, — indi
cates the right every one has that others should
seek his good, as well as his duty to seek their good,
and so objectifies self as needing love and service.
If one is entitled to the efforts of others for his
good, he certainly is required to serve himself as he
would have others serve him and as he ought to serve
them." — George Harris, Moral Evolution (Bos
ton, Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., 1896), pp. 138-141.
Note 62. Page 300. — " For, college or school, uni
versity or institute, the beneficiaries of every en
dowed seat of learning or of art are by their very
relation constituted the heirs and the almoners of
a great fiduciary trust.

Lecture VIII] Appendix 439
"Ability is answerability — everywhere and all
ways. Private possession, all possession is a public
trust ! Accountability cannot be escaped.
"There are two sorts of souls. Those who seek
for themselves the advantages of things as they
are, and those who seek to give themselves to the
advantage of things as they ought to be, and there
fore may be made to be; those who accept ad
vancement, and those who confer it; those who
would exploit the world, and those who would save
it, — benefactors and malefactors, — Christ and the
thieves !
" Each one of us, to the extent of that endow
ment which God gives him, is a legatee that he
may be a steward. It is the common law of all
trusts that they cannot be delegated. They must be
executed or defaulted. In the court of the supreme
surrogate, many a will constitutes an indictment.
" And what is true in the stewardship of crass
material wealth is also true in the stewardship of
mental and administrative ability. Who can, must.
" The sybarite who uses an elegant and fastidious
leisure in purveying to mere literary taste, who is
dainty in mere editions, a glutton in books, and
who in the seclusion of a library ignores or dis
dains the woe of the world, makes of his know
ledge a toy and not a tool. He, too, is but a miser.
"This strenuous age, wherein still the 'people
are destroyed for lack of knowledge,' demands of
us our all and our best.
"If shadows are to fall from the truth, and
falsehood die, the times challenge and demand

440 Appendix [Lecture VIII
souls who shall be filled with the instinct of help
and wear on helmet and brow Ich Dien, souls ablaze
with that love which ever 'seeketh not her own,'
and who, trained for resolute, aggressive, and
undaunted leadership, are exemplars in interpret
ing every least task by the largest ideals." — M.
W. Stryker, Hamilton, Lincoln, and Other Ad
dresses (Utica, 1896), "The Stewardship of Know
ledge," pp. 96, 97.
Note 63. Page 304. — " It was held that a Chris
tian should have such a desire for the glory of God
that he should be willing to be condemned ever
lastingly if it would promote it. The futility of
such a supposition is seen when it is put in the
form of this question, 'Can a man so love God as
to be willing, for any end, everlastingly to hate
Him? ' These are such unnatural issues that it
would be hard to prove God could ever propose
them to intelligent creatures, or intelligent creat
ures realize them as possible, except in the over-
refinement of speculation." — John Ker, Sermons
(Edinburgh, Douglas, 1885), pp. 103, 104.
Note 64. Page 305. — "These chapters of the
Epistle to the Romans have been, by scholastic
theology, put to uses for which they were never
intended. They are not a contribution to the
doctrine of the eternal predestination of individu
als to everlasting life or death. Their theme is
not the election of individuals, but of a people.
And the point of view from which the principle

Lecture VIII] Appendix 441
of election is contemplated is historical. The
writer treats of divine choices as they reveal them
selves in this world in the career and destiny of
nations. But still more important is it to note
that in these chapters election is not conceived of
as an arbitrary choice to the enjoyment of benefits
from which all others are excluded. Election is
to function as well as to favour, and the function
has the good of others besides the elect in view.
As the Jews, according to the Hebrew Scriptures,
were chosen to be a blessing eventually to the
Gentiles, so, according to the apostle, the Gentile
no-nations were chosen in turn to be God's people,
for their own good, doubtless, but also for the spir
itual benefit of the temporarily disinherited Jews.
It is unnecessary to point out that this view is in
accordance with the uniform teaching of Scripture,
and very specially with the teaching of Christ, in
which the elect appear as the light, the salt, and
the leaven of the world. It is a vital truth
strangely overlooked in elaborate creeds large
enough to have room for many doctrines much
less important, and far from sufficiently recog
nized, as yet, even in the living faith of the
Church, though the missionary spirit of modern
Christianity may be regarded as an unconscious
homage to its importance." — Prof. A. B. Bruce,
St. Paul's Conception of Christianity (New York,
Scribners, 1894), pp. 321 ff.
Note 65. Page 306. — "Whatever else may or
may not be taught in the New Testament, the

442 Appendix [Lecture VIII
twofold law of love is there given as the great
commandment of the old dispensation, and enforced
by the obedience of Christ as of like rank in the
new; as authoritative for him and for all his.
The obligation to love God is stated explicitly
enough. The command to love our neighbour, like
to the other in its binding force, has for its inter
pretation the lifelong sacrifice by which Christ
gave for the world's welfare all that He had to
give. His whole business on earth was to express
that perfect love for God's creatures which is the
obverse of His perfect love for God. As if to
guard the duty of beneficence against misappre
hension or neglect, He not only taught human kind
ness as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, but
in a passage of prophecy which might well be in
the ritual of every church, He made the dread
decisions of the judgment to turn not on doc
trine but on conduct, not on the moral law in
general but on the law of beneficence in particu
lar. This is the style of His teaching who went
about doing good. Well might Paul sing the
psalm of 'Charity,' and John declare that God is
love. "If the law of love has such implications and
such tremendous sanctions, there seems to be no
escape from the proposition that every man ought
to do his absolute utmost for the well-being of his
fellow-creatures." — James P. Kelley, The Law
of Service (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1894),
pp. 4, 5.

Lecture VIII] Appendix 443
"In practice under the law we have set forth,
one serves God and himself, by serving his
fellow-creatures. Worship, like the expression
of filial affection, is natural and spontaneous.
Its public forms, like the decorous customs of
the household, are determined by fitness and use
fulness. Its architecture and accessories are not
according to the wealth and social position of
the worshipper, but, again, are for fitness and
use, and are limited by the economies of ser
vice. Service of fellow-creatures is the one
business and study of life; service of self is inci
dental or indirect. Giving of mind, body, and
estate is the normal process, the daily joy of life ;
inability or failure to give it its chief distress.
Self-indulgence beyond rational use is disrepu
table ; private display is both ungenerous and vul
gar. Public spirit, with all that it implies, is the
natural atmosphere of the life of service; public
misfortune a personal grief, public disgrace a per
sonal shame. The welfare of the nation, not as a
jealous competing neighbour of other states, but as
a generous and beneficent member of the common
wealth of nations, is the glory and pride of the
Christian citizen.
" The world is grievously afflicted. The church
has doctored the symptoms of its ailment empiri
cally, in an intermittent and emotional way.
According to the law of service, we are to deal
scientifically with the disease itself by radical and
constitutional treatment. The springs of human
life must be cleansed, its processes made normal

444 Appendix [Lecture VIII
and vigorous, its activities reformed. We have
reckoned on selfishness as the motive of human
action; let us have the faith and courage to reckon
on love. Self-seeking competition is war with all
its miseries ; generous service is peace with all its
blessings." — Ibid., pp. 142, 143.
Note 66. Page 311. — "Christ chose a small
body of disciples to be in close contact with Him
self, to share His work, and to receive His deeper
teaching. This will not surprise us after the
analogies of the prophets, the poets, the artists of
the world. The saints, too, may be few, and God
may lend their spirits out for the good of others.
But, moreover, in the first formation of the Church
we are able to watch the process of limitation,
as historically worked out; and we see that it
aris.es not from any narrowness, any grudging of
His blessings, on the part of Christ, but from the
narrowness, the limitations in man. Man is
'straitened' not in God, not in Christ, but in
his own affections. God willed all men to be
saved; Christ went about doing good and calling
all to a change of heart, to a share in the kingdom
of Heaven ; but such a call made demands upon His
hearers; it required that they should give up old
prejudices about the Messianic kingdom, that they
should be willing to leave father and mother and
houses and lands for the truth's sake, that they
should lay aside all the things that defile a man,
that they should aim at being perfect, that they
should not only hear but understand the word,

Lecture VIII] Appendix 445
that they should trust Him even when His sayings
were hard. And these demands produced the limi
tations. The Pharisees preferred the glory of men
to the glory which came from God; the masses in
Galilee cared only for the bread that perisheth;
many of the disciples turned back; and so He
could not commit Himself unto them, because He
knew what was in man. Not to them, not to any
chance person, but to the Twelve, to those who had
stood these tests, to those who had, in spite of all
perplexity, seen in Him the Son of the Living
God, to them He could commit Himself; they
could share His secrets; they could be taught
clearly the certainty and the meaning of His com
ing death, for they had begun to learn what
self-sacrifice meant; they could do His work and
organize His Church; they could bind and loose
in His name; they could represent Him when He
was gone. These are the elect; they who had the
will to listen to the call; they who were 'magnani
mous to correspond with heaven ' ; to them He
gave at Pentecost the full conscious gift of the
Holy Spirit, and so at last formed them into the
Church, the Church which was to continue His
work, which was to convey His grace, which was
to go into the whole world, holding this life as a
treasure for the sake of the whole world, praying
and giving thanks for all men, because the unity
of God and the unity of the mediation of Christ
inspires them with hope that all may be one in
Him."— Lux Mundi, pp. 372, 373.

INDEX

Abbott, Lyman, Christian
Thought, 410 note ; The
Evolution of Christianity,
417 note.
Absolutism , difficulties of, 263.
Ackerman, L., Ma Vie, quoted,
250.
Acts, The, of the Apostles, 62.
Adam, a new, 286.
Adams, Professor, 1:2.
Aiden, 312.
Altruism, 37, 38.
Ambrose of Milan, 101.
America, the new crusade in,
37.
Ananias, 100.
Antoninus Pius, 104.
Aquinas, Thomas, 50, 141.
Aristotle, 73.
Arius, 110.
Armstrong, Prof . A. C, Jr., 34.
Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 19.
Art, Christ in, 128; early
Christian, 128.
Atonement, the value of the,
162.
Authority is what the age de
mands, 198.

Balfour, Hon. A. J., A De
fence of Philosophic Doubt,
48, 325, 340, 342 notes ; Foun
dations of a Belief, 52.
Baptized fatalism, 217.
Barry, Alfred, Some Lights
of Science on the Faith, 68,
371 note.
Baudelaire, Charles, 18, 29.
Baxter, Richard, 50.
Beauchamp, Henry, Thoughts
of an Automaton, 210.
Beaumout and Fletcher, 73.
Berthelot, M., 13.
Bettelheim, Anton, Cosmopo-
lis, 334 note.
Beyschlags, New Testament
Theology, 62, 359, 396, 399,
416 notes.
Bible : bending the Bible to fit
definitions, 132.
Biblical scholarship (modern),
143.
Boniface, 312.
Bourget, Paul, Psychologie
Contemporaine, 5 note, 17,
28, 30, 324 note, 333 note;
Cosmopolis, 17.

447

448

Index

Bradford, Amory H., Hered
ity and Christian Prob
lems, 74, 353 note, 411 note.
Brain, the organ of the mind,
221.
Brainerd, David, 79.
Brooks, Bishop, 54 ; Sermon
for Trinity Sunday, 112.
Browning, Robert, 33; Saul,
quoted, 164.
Bruce, Prof. A. B., St. Paul's
Conception of Christianity,
440 note; The Humiliation
of Christ, 134 ; Kingdom of
God, 176, 181.
Bushnell, Horace, The Divin
ity of Christ, 125.
Butler, Bishop, 7, 8 note, 50.
Byzantine art, 130.
Calvary is victory, 278.
Calvin, John, 50, 73, 305.
Calvinism, 241.
Candlish, Dr. James S., King
dom of God, 176.
Carlyle, Thomas, 16; Heroes,
86 note.
Catacombs, pictures of Christ
in, 129.
Cayley, Professor, 12.
Chalcedon, 155.
Charity, the new, 170; true,
299.
Chillingworth, William, 50.
Christ, Gospel of, 54 ; the per
son of, 58 ; the reality of,
58; was his own Gospel, 60;
the life of the Church flowed
from, 62; the influence of
Christianity came from, 64 ;
the magic of His name 64 ;

the personal power of Christ
continues, 66; the central
figure of Christianity, 66;
the mystery of, 69; the
effect of His presence, 70;
unique, 72 ; solitary in his
tory, 73; sinless, 74; the
power of His cross, 76; to
know Him the one thing
needful, 78; the answer to
sceptics, 87; the creator of
Christianity, 88; who then
is Christ, 89 ; the historic
answer, 90 ; Godhead slowly
revealed, 90 ; a supreme au
thority ^to judge the world,
95; the Son of God, 96; the
new theology, 105 ; a per
sonal revelation of the Di
vine Being, 106; His life
without admitting His di
vinity, 118 ; divine love, 120 ;
is God with us, 121 ; hu
manity, 126 ; in art, 128 ;
portraits of, 129; portrait,
Byzantine, 130; hiding the
face of, 132 ; manhood a vest
ure, 138 ; of the Gospels,
144; of the Epistles, 145;
the new study of, 154 ; find
ing of the human Christ,
164 ; teaching, the kingdom
of heaven the keynote of,
174; the doctrine of, 182;
record of His teaching, 184 ;
words and life interpret each
other, 186; teaching, the
authority of, 189; teaching,
the originality of, 190;
teaching, universal, 193 ;
doctrine small in compass,

Index

449

193; doctrine never fails,
194 ; the simplicity that is in
His teaching, 196; loyalty
to His teaching, 197 ; the su
preme authority, 199; our
great task to learn his creed,
200; says liberty is real, 226;
His preaching a Gospel of
liberty, 227 ; is God's call to
faith, 232; on heredity, 233;
our helper, 236 ; doctrine of
election, 305 ; parables, 307 ;
ideal, 310.
Christhood, what is meant by
the, 92.
Christian leadership, need
of, 38 ; belief, the new line
of, 92; doctrine aud the
Deity of Christ, 108; view
of God and world, 361
note ; preacher, the duty
of, 316.
Christianity and Christ, 59;
the rock of, 119; practical,
171 ; evidences of, 192 ; and
communism, 297.
Christians despised for wor
shipping Christ, 104.
Christless man can never
preach Christ, 202.
Christology, modern examples
of false, 136.
Clarke, Samuel, 50.
Clerk-Maxwell, Professor, 12.
Clifford, W. K., 15, 30, 208.
College settlements, 38.
Columba, 312.
Conscience, the indomitable,
35.
Couperus, Louis, Destiny, 213.
Crassus, 73.
2o

Creed, The, of Christ, 200 ; of
necessity, 212.
Crispi, Signor, 34.
Crosby, Howard, The True
Humanity of Christ, quoted,
155.
Cross: power of the cross of
Christ, 76.
Crusade against scepticism, 37.
Cudworth, Ralph, 50.
Darwin, the testimony of a
doubter, 67.
Deity of Christ, the strength
of the Gospel, 122.
De Pressense, Jesus Christ, 162.
Desjardins, Paul, 18, 27, 36.
Determinism proved, 218.
Devout men of pure science,
12.
Disciple, The, must be as his
Lord, 306.
Discrimination, 260.
Divine, The, Orderliness, 255 ;
immanence, 255 ; omnipo
tence self-limited in action,
265 ; omniscience, 268.
Divinity of Jesus Christ, The,
355 note.
Doctrine of Christ, the basis of
His conduct, 187 ; attacked,
7.
Dogmas darken the view of
Christ, 131.
Dogmatic theology and mod
ern doubt, 50.
Dogmatics, renaissance of, 51.
Dorner, History of Protestant
Theology, 378 note.
Doubt not a crime but »
malady, 23.

450

Index

Doubting age, 6.
Du Bois, Reymoud, 13.
Du Maurier, George, 18.
Earth, militant on, 268.
Edwards, Jonathan, 50, 218,
305.
Election, the doctrine of, 302 ;
perverted in human theol
ogy, 304.
Eliot, George, 17, 25.
Emerson, 16.
Endurance, strength of, 276.
English sceptics, 25.
Ephrem Syrus, 101, 133.
Epistles, The, of Paul, 62.
Erasmus, quoted in Gore, 142.
Everlasting, The, Reality of
Religion, 329 note.
Evil, origin of evil not in God,
266; power of, 272; strug
gle against, 274.
Fairbairn, A. M., The Place
of Christ in Modern The
ology, 51, 153, 357 note, 364
note, 393 note.
Faith not changed but en
larged, 10 ; sorrow of losing,
25 ; the renaissance of, 33 ;
n starting-point for, 53 ; the
original process of, 91 ; three
vital points made plain to
faith, 151 ; these points de
fended, 152.
False interpretations of
Christ's teaching, 175.
Fatalism, modern, 206.
Felicity, the secret of, 293.
Ferrers, Professor, 12.
Fiction, gloomy, 17.

Fisher, Prof. G. P., 219;
Grounds of Theistic and
Christian Belief, 62 note,
424 note.
Fiske, John, 247; Destiny of
Man, 326 note ; Idea of God,
327 note.
Fitzgerald, Edward, Rubdiydt
., of Omar Khayyam, quoted,
217.
Flaubert, 29 ; Madame Bovary,
17.
Foreknowledge, 269.
Foster, John, 5.
France, new crusade in, 36.
Fraternity better than equal
ity, 296.
Free-will, 219; is possible, 225.
French sceptics, 27.
Froude, 16.
Gibbon, Edward, Roman Em
pire, 83.
Gilder, Richard Watson, quo
tation, 79.
Gladden, Washington, Ruling
Ideas of the Present Age,
434 note.
God seen through Christ, 107 ;
a personal, 117 ; the true
view of, 160 ; is love, 161 ;
suffers with and for us, 162 ;
helps those who help them
selves, 238; the Father, our
Captain, 251 ; in His world,
254; reign of God through
law, 258 ; is a, fair master,
265; the rock of our trust,
273; in history, 276; and
truth, 277 ; is God unjust, 302.
Godet, 154.

Index

451

God's sympathy, doubts dis
solve in the thought of, 103 ;
sovereignty, two spheres of,
267.
Goodness, power of, 272.
Gordon, Charles, 79.
Gordon, Dr. George A., The
Trinity the Ground of Hu
manity, 112; Christ of To
day, 52, 342 note, 374 note.
Gore, Canon CO., 135, 136;
The Incarnation of the Son
of God, 134, 351 note, 366
note ; Dissertations, 384
note, 427 note.
Gospel, The, of u, Person,
43; message clear as light,
53; of a fact, 55; of a
force, 59; of a Saviour,
75; of the Incarnation
adapted to this age, 113;
A., for the whole circle of
human life, 173 ; the fourth,
178.
Gospels: the four Gospels
must be studied, 177.
Greer, David H. , The Preacher,
322 note.
Gregory the Great, 102.
Hadrian, Emperor, 104.
Happiness depends upon our
inward state, 289 ; the secret
of, 290.
Hardy, Thomas, 17; Jude the
Obscure, 30.
Harris, S., The Self-Revela
tion of God, 51.
Harris, George, Moral Evolu
tion, 436 note.
Harrison, Frederic, 15.

Hartmann, 24, 33; Religions-
philosophie Selbstersetzung
des Christenthums, 33;
Philosophic des Unbewuss-
ten, 34.
Havelock, Henry, 79.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 283.
Hazard, 230.
Hazzard, Rowland, Freedom
of Mind in Willing, 219.
Heathen, testimony of the,
103; writers, 103.
Heaven, triumphant in, 268.
Hebrews, the epistle to the,
149.
Hennell, Charles, Inquiry
Concerning the Origin of
Christianity, 25.
Heredity not final, 222.
Hilary of Poictiers, 101.
Historical Christ, 58.
Hitchcock, Rev. Dr. Roswell
D., A Complete Analysis of
the Holy Bible, 176.
Hodge, Charles, 50.
Hodge, A. A., Popular Lect
ures, 241.
Holy Spirit, The, 236.
Homoousia, 155.
Hooker, Richard, 50.
Horton, R. F., Verbum Dei,
322 note.
Human, The, Life of the
Father, 81; Life in God,
125.
Humanity, a new relation to,
94.
Hutton, R. H., 27; Contem
porary Thought and Think
ers, 417 note.
Huxley, T. H, 15 ; quoted, 208.

452

Index

Hymns of the Greek Church,
101 ; the testimony of, 101.
Hypnotized, the age, 241.
Ibsen's plays, 27 note ; Ghosts,
214.
Ignatius, Epistles of, to the
Trallians, 377 note.
Illingworth, J. R., Personality
Human and Divine, 344
note, 358.
Incarnation, The, 114, 115 ; his
torically consistent, 118 ;
satisfies the human heart,
120; old definitions inade
quate, 156.
Inequality in the spiritual
world, 301.
Influence of Fiction, 332 note.
Inspiration of heroism, 274.
Irenseus, quoted, 94, 376 note.
Jackson, Dr. J. Hughlings, .Dis
eases of Nervous System, 221 .
James, William, Psychology,
224, 230, 413 note, 414 note.
Jesus, search after, 141 ; secret
of, 258 ; the new Adam, 287.
Jesus Christ's doctrine small
in compass, 193.
John, 100.
Jonson, Ben, 73.
Joy is a duty, 293.
Judas, 99.
Justin Martyr, First Apology,
quoted, 104; Dialogue with
Trypho, 65 note.
Kant, 210.
Kelley, James P., The Law of
Service, 441 note, 443 note.

Kelvin, Lord (Sir William
Thomson), 12, 220.
Kempis, Thomas a, 79; Imi
tation of Christ, 66.
Kenosis, the, 147.
Kepler, 12.
Ker, John, Sermons, 440 note.
Kidd, Mr. Benjamin, Social
Evolution, 34.
Kinship of man to God, 159.
Kingdom, The, of heaven the
keynote of Christ's teach
ing, 174.
Kingsley, Charles, 79.
Kinsley, William W., Old
Faiths and New Facts, 431
note.
Knowledge, the expansion of,
11.
Lacordaire, Pere, 53.
La Farge, John, Considera
tions on Painting, 376 note.
Laplace, 247.
Latham, Henry, Pastor Pas-
torum, 61.
Lentulns, Epistle of, 129.
Lesson of encouragement in
sufferings of doubt, 24.
Liberty, sovereignty, and ser
vice, 206.
Liberty, 207.
Liddon, Canon, 53 ; Divinity
of Our Lord, 138.
Life, sad aspect of, 27 ; the
regnant idea, 157; the un-
evenness and apparent in
justice of human life, 284;
the compensation of, 291.
Lightfoot, Bishop, Supernat
ural Religion, 62 note.

Index

453

Lincoln, A., 118.
Lisle, Leconte de, 18.
Literature as an index of life,
4 ; mirror of, and the shad
ow of doubt, 15.
Littre, Emile, 22.
Liturgies, testimony of early,
102.
liturgy of Protestant Episco
pal Church, 103.
Lombard, Peter, 134, 141.
Lombroso, 45.
Lord, The, of Hosts, 270.
Loti, Pierre, La Galilee, 73
note, 190.
Love, Christ's divine love,
120; is the example of
Christ, 161 ; thy neighbour
as thyself, 298.
Lowell, James Russell, The
Present Crisis, quoted, 278.
Loyalty to Christ's teaching,
197.
Lucian, 104.
Luther, 73.
Lux Mundi, 323 note, 363,
367, 444 note.
Mabie, H. W., Essays on Nat
ure and Culture, 255.
McCabe, L. D., Divine Nesci
ence, 428 note.
McCheyne, Robert, 79.
Man, meanness of, 28; to God,
kinship of, 159; weakness
of, 234.
Man's inhumanity to man, 285.
Marcus Aurelius, 104.
Martyn, Henry, 79.
Materialism disavowed but
taught, 207.

Maupassant, Guy de, 17,
215.
Maurice, F. D., 23.
Melancholia, 30.
Melancholy marionettes, 215.
Melancthon, 73.
Metaphysical negation, 14.
Mill, J. S., Essays on Religion,
72 note.
Miracles not against nature,
257.
Misery, source of human, not
in poverty, but in a bad
heart, 290.
Misoneism, 45.
Missionary zeal, 312.
Missions essential to Chris
tianity, 311 ; and the early
church, 312; keep the Gos
pel pure, 312.
Momerie, A. W., Personality,
346 note.
Moody, Dwight L., 54.
Moral problem, 205; judg
ments assume liberty, 223.
Morley, John, 16.
Moxom, Philip S., From Jer
usalem to Nic&a, 370 note.
Mozley, J. B., Ruling Ideas in
Early Ages, 425 note.
Mulf ord, The Republic of God,
51.
Miiller, Julius, 153.
Munger, T. T., The Freedom
of Faith, 401 note.
Myers, F. W. H., 26, 46; Sci
ence and a Future Life,
337 note, 339 note.
Napoleon, 73.
Newton, 12.

454

Index

Nordeau, Max, Degeneration,
45, 404 note.
Novels, modern, 5; of natu
ralism, 17.
Offices of the Church, 63.
Oriental religions, 238.
Orr, James, The Christian
View of God and the World,
34, 51, 336 note, 395 note.
Our great task to learn His
creed, 200.
Owen, John, 50.
Pagan poets, 33.
Pain, 24; gives argument to
hope, 31.
Paley, Dr., 10.
Parables of Christ, 307.
Pascal, 28, 36.
Patience, rewarded in the life
to come, 295.
Patteson, Coleridge, 79.
Peace on earth, 292.
Pearson, C. H., The Causes of
Pessimism, 409 note ; Na
tional Life and Character,
337 note.
Personal equation of the age, 3.
Personality the foundation of
all sensatio*, 56.
Personal responsibility, 208.
Pessimism, 21.
Peter, 100.
Pharisees, The, taught fate,
228.
Philosophy, the value of, to
Christian preacher, 49.
Physiognomy of the age, 6.
Plato, 73.
Pliny the Younger, 86, 103.

Poetry, despondent, 18.
Pompey, 73.
Pope's Essay on Man, quoted,
252.
Portraits of Christ, 129.
Prayer, 235; of intercession,
309.
"Preach Christ," 169; what
does it mean, 172.
Preacher, The, who wishes to
speak to this age must read
many books, 6 ; how can he
serve the present age, 43;
first and greatest duty to
preach Christ, 55.
Preachers of Christ, the needs
of, 239 ; to proclaim liberty
in Christ, 242.
Preaching with power, 53 ; the
Gospel for an age of doubt,
314.
Predestination, 232.
Prime, W. C, Along New Eng
land Roads, 420 note.
Probation of men, 270.
Problematische Naturen, 17.
Psychical research, 46.
Psychological romances, 17 ;
problem, 205.
Psychology, testimony of mod
ern, 224.
Purves, Rev. G. T., The In
carnation Biblically Con
sidered, 415 note.
Questioning spirit of to-day, 8.
Rationalism, thorough-going,
48.
Reading, value of general, 5.
Redemption, 237.

Index

455

Reformation, spirit of, 142.
Religion of the Undergradu
ate, 326 note.
Renan, 16, 29, 39.
Resurrection of Christ, 98.
Reubelt, Scripture Doctrine of
the Person of Christ, 379
note, 381 note, 384 note, 386
note.
Revelation, a new, 191.
Robertson, Frederick, 79.
Rod, M. Edouard, 34; IdCes
Morales du Temps Present,
403 note.
Romanes, George John, 12
note, 34, 114.
Routh, Professor, 12.
Ruskin, John, 258.
Russian sceptics, 30.
Rutherford, Samuel, 79.
Saints, Anselm, 50; Athana
sius, 109; Augustine, 32,
50, 111, 305, 312 ; Sermons
on the New Testament
Lessons, 392 note.
Bernard, 79.
Chrysostom, 53 ; the prayer
of, 103, 133.
Clement, First Epistle of,
quoted, 107.
Dominic, 312.
Francis of Assisi, 53, 79,
312.
James, liturgy of, 102.
John, 53; the kingdom in,
178; Gospel of love, 181.
Mark, liturgy of, 102.
Patrick, 312.
Peter, 53.
Paul, 53, 78, 307; view of

Christ, 146; Epistle of
Christ's brotherhood, 148 ;
on freedom, 240.
Saints called to endure heavy
trials, 274.
Salmon, Dr., Introduction to
the New Testament, 62 note.
Saul of Tarsus, 99.
Savonarola, 53.
Scepticism, causes of, 9; at
tributed to the growth of
our conception of the phy
sical magnitude of the uni
verse, 11 ; in modern litera
ture, 24.
Sceptic's account of the spread
of Christianity, 83.
Scherer, 16.
Schopenhauer, 24.
Science and religion, 9; not
hostile to religion, 9; arro
gance of, falsely so-called,
12 ; the boundaries of, 247.
Scott, Sir Walter, 6.
Scudder, Vida D., The Life of
the Spirit in Modem Eng
lish Poets, 33.
" Sea Dreams," by Tennyson,
quoted, 20.
Sermons, lay, 15.
Sermon on the Mount, 93.
Service, 283; the keynote of
the kingdom, 308.
Shairp, John Campbell, quota
tion, 202.
Shakespeare, 73.
Shedd, Dr. W. G. T., 50; Dog
matic Theology, 137.
Shelley, quoted, 16, 25.
Signs of reaction, 33; of the
times, 39.

456

Index

Simplicity, The, that is in
Christ, 196.
Sin is the work of an enemy,
267.
Sinlessness of Christ, 74,
Social regeneration, 300.
Socrates, 73.
Source, The, of Authority,
167.
Source, The, of authority in
the kingdom of heaven, 169.
Sovereignty, 247 ; the ques
tion of, 249; mechanical,
260; embraces liberty, 271.
Spielhagen, 17.
Spirit, the questioning, 7.
Stalker, James, Imago Christi,
195 note.
Stendhal, Rouge et Noir, 29.
Stephen, the martyr, 99.
Stephen, Sir J. Fitzjames, Lib
erty, Equality, and Frater
nity, 55, 343 note.
Stevens, George B., The Paul
ine Theology, 65 note, 100,
352 note.
Stokes, Sir George, 12.
Strauss, David Friedrich, 32
note.
Stryker, M. W., Hamilton,
Lincoln, and other ad
dresses, 438 note.
Sully, James, 24 note ; Pessi
mism, 332 note.
Sympathy with doubt, 22 ; of
the age, 284.
Synoptics, The, 178.
Taine, 29.
Tait, Professor, 12.
Talbot's Analysis, 176.

Tennyson, quoted, 19, 33 ; The
Higher Pantheism, quoted,
159.
Theological fortification, 49;
problem, 205.
Theology, the future of, 51;
current theology at fault,
150 ; has lost sight of Christ's
humanity, 126.
Thomson, James, The City of
Dreadful Night, 31.
Thomson, Dr. W. H., Material
ism and Modern Physiology
of the Nervous System, 221.
Thompson, Joseph P., The
Theology of Christ from
His own Words, 397 note.
Three great problems, 205 ;
great truths, 206.
Todhunter, Professor, 12.
Trask, Katrina, A Night and
Morning in Jerusalem, quot
ed, 185.
Trinity, 111 ; the doctrine of,
108.
Truth, a new power to reveal,
93.
Tyndall, Professor, 15, 208.
Unbelief, respectful, 8.
Universe, the magnitude of, 11.
Unveiling, The, of the Father,
83.
Van Dyke, Henry, Poetry of
Tennyson, 33.
Virgin Mary, worship of, 140.
Wagner, Charles, 13 note.
Ward, Mrs. Humphry, Robert
Elsmere, 17, 30.
Warner, Charles Dudley, 215 ;

Index

457

Fatalismin Modern Fiction,
408 note.
Weiss, Bernhard, Lehrbuch
der Biblischen Theologie
des Neuen Testaments, 188,
400 note.
Wesley, John, 53.
Westcott, Bishop, 161; The
Incarnation and Common
Life, 301; The Gospel of
Life, 347 note ; Commentary
on the Epistle of St. John,
387 note.
Whitfield, George, 53.

Wilberforce, Archdeacon, Tlie
Doctrine of the Incarnation,
136.
Wordsworth, 73 ; Ode to Duty,
quoted, 242.
Words of eternal life, 197.
World, The, that is to come, 293.
Young, John, The Christ of
History, 349 note.
i
Zeitgeist, 3.
Zola, Emile, 17, 223; La Bete
Humaine, 213.

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