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"/ give theft Books
for the. j 'oipiding nf ' a^CoOtge in .'his Colony"

•YAlUE-'VMPflHS^inrY- • _LKIBI_3_&IEir •

Gift of
Professor George Park Fisher
1907

APOLOGETICS :

A COURSE OF LECTURES

BY
HENRY B. SMITH, D.D., LL.D.

EDITED BY
WILLIAM S. KARR, D.D.,
Professor in the Hartford Theological Seminary.

NEW YORK:
A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON.
1882.

Copyright, 1881,
By ELIZABETH L. SMITH.

OTii C

PRE99 OF J. J. LITTLE & CO.,
M09. 10 TO 20 ASTOR PLACE, WEW YORK.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

THE pages of this book are drawn up from briefs
and notes made by Professor Smith in preparation
for his lectures on Apologetics, which were given in
Union Theological Seminary in the years 1874-5
and 1875-6. The lectures referred to were the last
work of this distinguished teacher, and consequently
the little volume now sent forth exhibits his final
judgment on the chief points in the conflict with
unbelief. On this account it is believed that the
outline of Apologetics which the following chapters
present will be valued by all who knew the author.
The projection of a work by him on a subject where
he was an acknowledged master is likely to give
intimations and clues which a complete volume by a
less accomplished mind could not furnish.
The editor would say that he has strictly confined
himself to giving forth what the author left. It has
been necessary to make out some utterances from
hints on scraps of paper which were originally meant
to be reminders to the lecturer in the presence of his
iii

iv INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
class. But, with this exception, nothing has been
added or changed. The fragment, as here issued,
could have been made more symmetrical by includ
ing extracts from the author's manuscript lectures
on the Introduction to Theology. But it has been
thought best to give in this volume only the au
thor's last survey of the field of debate between
Christianity and its adversaries. Yet it will be ob
served that the work now presented relates to the
three fundamental points of Apologetics, viz., the
question of the Supernatural in its various aspects,
the question, Can God be known ? and the question
of Miracles.*
With regard to the prospects as to the publication
of the lectures on theology, a word may perhaps
be expected. The editor of this volume has care
fully examined all that can be found of Professor
Smith's preparations for his course in theology, and
is of the opinion that a selection could be made
which would secure to our lamented teacher a place
of influence in American theology in some degree
worthy of him. His estimates of the chief New
England theologians, his strong grasp and masterly
summary of the debates upon the Atonement, and
the serene judgment which he maintained in the
midst of the speculations of the ablest German
* Evolution also is discussed in Appendix III.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. V
writers on the Person of Christ, could perhaps be
fairly indicated in a volume such as we have in
mind. If circumstances should permit, an outline
of Professor Smith's theological system, with com
plete presentation of the lectures on the points
named above, may, at no very distant day, be
issued. It should be added that Mr. William Allen Smith
has kindly undertaken the revision of the proofs.
Hartford Theological Seminary,
October, 1881.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE
APOLOGETICS  i
Chapter I. The Sphere of Apologetics. —
The Nature and Elements of the Conflict ... 3
Chapter II. Divisions of Apologetics.
§ I. General Divisions.
First : Fundamental Apologetics  9
Second : Historical Apologetics  10
Third : Philosophical Apologetics  10
§ 2. Fuller Distribution of the Subject.
First Division : Fundamental Apologetics.
Book A. The Underlying Religious Question  13
Book B. The Cosmological Question  13
Book C. The Anthropological Question  14
Book D. The Ethical Question  14
Book __. The question of Man's Immortality  14
Second Division: Historical Apologetics.
Book A. The Supernatural in History in general  15
Book B. The Special Forms of the Supernatural in
History  15
Book C. The Bible in History  15
Book D. Christ in History  15
Book E. The Church in History  15
Third Division : Philosophical Apologetics  15
§ 3. What is the place of Apologetics in the Encyclopedia of
Theology ?  16
vii

viii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
FJRST DIVISION.
Fundamental Apologetics. PAGE
Chapter I. Supernaturalism ... Anti-Supernaturalism  17
§.1. Nature (Idea) of the Supernatural  18
§ 2. The Reality of the Supernatural  23
I. It is a Necessity of Religion  24
2. It is a Necessity of Thought  26
3. It is confirmed by well-nigh Universal Testimony. 29
§ 3. On the Manifestation of the Supernatural.  35
§ 4. The Course and Conclusion of the Argument  38
Summary  ,  45
Chapter II. Can the Supernatural be Known ?  46
§1. Whatisit" To JCnow?"  47
§ 2. The various Theories which Mail can have as to the Knowl
edge of God  49
§ 3. Discussion of the Theories  53
I. Positivism and the Inductive Philosophy  53
II. The position that all knowledge is of the Relative 55
III. Is our knowledge of the Infinite and Absolute
merely negative ?  62
IV. The position that we can have an absolute knowl
edge of God  65
Pantheism  65
Chapter III. The sense in which we can be said to know
the Absolute and Infinite— God  70
§ 1. Explanatory. The question is, How can we know God?. . . 71

TABLE OF CONTENTS. ix
PAGE
§ 2. First point in the Ascensio Mentis ad Deum  75
I. Historical Evidence  77
II. Psychological Evidence  82
III. Philosophical Evidence  84
§ 3. The Shaping of the Argument  85
Chapter IV. The Supernatural as the Miraculous. The
Doctrine of Miracles  90
§ 1. The True Idea of the Miracle  93
§ 2. The Possibility of Miracles  106
| 3. The Probability of Miracles  109
§ 4. The Proof of Miracles (outlined)  Ill

APPENDIX I.
Sketch of the History of Apologetics. From an Article by
Prof. Smith in the Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Re
view, July, 1876  117
APPENDIX II.
Recent German Works on Apologetics. An Article by Prof.
Smith in the Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review,
October, 1876  139
APPENDIX III.
Outline of Professor Smith's Intended Ely Lectures on
Evolution  17°

APOLOGETICS

Within the limits of these lectures it will not be
practicable to go over all the ground which is indi
cated by this word. The attempt will rather be to
lay out a general scheme, and to discuss some of the
fundamental questions, especially the urgent ones of
the present day.. This branch of theology has been
developed into a system only in recent times, and
chiefly through the labors of German scholars. But
the materials for it are found running through the
whole history of the Church. There have always
been apologies. The earliest Christian literature of
the Church, especially the Western or Latin, was
preeminently apologetic. The present Christian lit
erature, in all civilized and Christian countries, takes
on the same general character. The same questions
about man, about each individual man, about the
world — whence is it, what is it, for what is it — have
always been agitated. They come up in new forms
for each generation, and with them comes the neces
sity for renewed, honest, and patient investigation
for every new age. The substance of the matter at
i i

2 APOLOGETICS.
issue remains the same, but the forms of attack and
the methods of defense constantly change.
Christianity has never been assailed so vigorously
and persistently, and from so many sides, as now.
Hence the special need of giving prominence to its
grounds and reasons, to its establishment and de
fense. The whole of human civilization is bound up
in the inquiry whether Christianity is to stand or
fall. Its fall would be the most disastrous moral
and spiritual wreck the world has ever known. Its
victory in such a contest is to be the sublimest vic
tory i'n the annals of time.

CHAPTER I.
THE SPHERE OF APOLOGETICS. — THE NATURE AND
ELEMENTS OF THE CONFLICT.
The term is derived from the old Greek word first
used by Justin Martyr. Its significance is not only
Defense against assault, but Vindication which is
completed in the counter-attack and dislodgment
of the adversary. In order to refute, Christian Apol
ogetics must assail in turn. For the Christian faith,
if it is anything, is everything, so far as man's high
est interest and welfare are concerned. To define
more sharply: Christian Apologetics is (i) Vindica
tion against assault ; (2) Vindication which establishes
the truth of Christianity and shows the falsity and
error of the opponents ; i. e., which not only defends
Christianity but attacks its foes. (3) It is a scien
tific vindication. It vindicates in a scientific way,
so as to include the apologies, so as to bring out the
ultimate general principles in the case. (4) It gets
from the whole course of conflict a brighter light in
which to exhibit Christianity as the absolute religion.
The development of the race — the development of
all truth — involves progress, but progress by and
through conflicts, by antagonisms working out into a
higher unity. The antagonisms with which we have
3

4 APOLOGETICS.
to do, the elements of the constant conflict in which
Christianity advances, arise chiefly from the follow
ing sources :
I. The dualism between the Natural and the Su
pernatural. Is human life to be understood sub
specie mundi alone, or sub specie ceterni also? Infi
delity tends to say this world is all. Its latest form
makes the height of wisdom to be contentment with
the present life. This element is in all infidelity.
The question here is as to the Reality of the Super
natural. 2. The dualism between the Natural and the Spir
itual. Is man essentially a body, or has he a spir
itual essence, allying him with the Infinite and the
Eternal ? If he is a spirit, then he is a moral being ;
he is subject to a moral law, and may have an eternal
destiny. Is there a dualism of Physical and Moral
Law, or can the one be resolved into the other?
Can mind be evolved from matter, and man from
the brute ?
3. The antagonism between Reason and Revela
tion, or Philosophy and Faith.
Both have their sphere and their rights. Both are
necessary to man ; neither is to be denied. Both,
too, are employed essentially about the same funda
mental questions — God, man, and the relation be
tween them. Both run back into the mystery of the
Infinite and the Eternal. The object of the contest
has been to secure the sole sovereignty of the one or
the other. The object of Apologetics must be to
put them in their true relation, from the general
point of view, that while Reason states the problems,

APOLOGETICS. 5
Revelation gives the true answer — the Ariadne's
clue. 4. The antagonism between Sin and Holiness.
Here we have a sliding scale, or a contrast. Every
thing in the contest which Apologetics has to meet
centers here : Is sin a reality, an abnormal condition,
or a stage of education, a process of development, a
lesser good? Wherever sin is, there will be opposi
tion to holiness. It is natural for sin to oppose
holiness, and to deny a holy God.
The felt reality of sin is necessary to the possibility
of redemption. Christianity is essentially a redemp
tive system. Incarnate love was crucified. A man
with no sense of sin must oppose Christianity, in its
doctrine of grace as well as of sin.
In this statement it is by no means asserted or im
plied that all objections to the Bible and Christianity
are only the signs and manifestations of man's inborn
and inbred corruption ; that historical, philological,
and doctrinal criticism come invariably from a sinful
unbelief — still less, that when reason thinks and
speaks, its utterances are to be set down to the ac
count of a godless rationalism. Far from it. There
are undeniable difficulties in respect to history and
science which must be investigated. There are signs
and wonders which would stagger any one, unless
the need of them and their historic reality can be
clearly evinced. Conscience and reason have their
rights. Science has its lawful sphere. We are to
prove (test, try) all things — even the Scriptures, even
the doctrines of our faith — and hold fast that which
is good.

6 APOLOGETICS.
If the Christian system cannot establish its claims
and authority in the view of reason and conscience
(their rights being carefully weighed and defined), it
will be in vain for Church or Pope to call upon the
nations to believe in their own infallible authority,
as settling all questions of right and wrong, truth
and falsehood, for time and for eternity. No; we
are in the conflict, and it is only by going through
it that we can get the victory.
5. The sense of sin and need of redemption lead
to another contrast and point of conflict: that be
tween the absolute revelation of God in Christ, and
any and all other revelations of God to man, in na
ture, in history, and in other religions. Now, as in
ancient times, the Christology of our system of faith
is made prominent, both in the attack and in the
defense. From the very necessity of the case there
has been a revival of Christology. Christian realism,
that which finds the reality of Christianity in the
facts that center in the person and work of Christ,
stands now in direct and fully developed opposition
to the nescience and the nihilism, which must else
be man's last word upon the vital question of his
destiny. 6. This revelation in Christ is gathered up, says
the Christian Church, in a final, inspired form in the
canonical books of the Old and New Testaments ; and
these, of course, have always been a central object of
attack and defense, entering largely, though not as
exclusively as some suppose, into the decision of the
great debate.
The full arguments on this point are exhibited in

APOLOGETICS. 7
the Introductions to the Old and New Testaments,
or, rather, in a history of them, showing their gen
uineness, authenticity, and credibility. It is neces
sary to note here only the chief points of present
attack. (i) In respect to History : (a) Of the Old Testa
ment, involving the palaeontological and prehistoric
discussions as to the primeval state of the world and
of man, and archaeological questions as to his pro
gressive culture (Egypt, Assyria, Chaldaea, and an
cient empires), (b) As to the New Testament, chiefly
upon the question whether it is authentic, bringing
under scrutiny the testimony as to the life and
character of Christ, and as to the life and course of
the Apostles (Strauss; Baur; Renan. The Gospels;
Paul's Epistles ; The Apocalypse). (2) In respect to
Science (modern). Astronomy, Geology ; the Origin
and Unity of the Race ; the Primeval History of
Mankind. In all a bias of evolution.
7. The highest antagonism — that as to the System
ofthe Universe. The fundamental question here is
between Monism and Theism. Monism has two
forms, the one asserting that all is God — Pantheism ;
the other, that all is matter — Materialism. Theism
asserts a duality of the Infinite and the Finite, of
the Creator and the Creature.
Is that which is Ultimate in Being an unconscious
force — call it Matter or Spirit — or an Intelligent and
Personal Power ?
Is the Finite from the Infinite by emanation, or by
the act of an Omnipotent and Wise Being ?
Hence upon the question of the system of the

8 APOLOGETICS.
universe three theories in opposition to Christian
Theism are advanced : Pantheism, Materialism, and
Pantheistic Materialism (evolution *).
* The power of evolution lies not in its details, but in its general
theory.

CHAPTER II.
DIVISIONS OF APOLOGETICS.
§ I. General Divisions.
OUR previous account of the elements and stages
of this intense spiritual conflict between Christianity
and its opponents — Christ and Anti-Christ — has in
dicated the general conclusion that all the lines and
forces are concentrating upon three decisive ques
tions : (a) a Personal God and his Moral Law and
Government : (b) a Living Christ and his Redemptive
Work: (.) the Christian System, Church, and Life as
the highest and best form of Religion — the absolute
Religion for man. Hence Apologetics embraces not
only the person of Christ and his testimony, but
also presupposes as a part of it a personal God and
a moral government, and likewise has to do with
what arises from and after Christ, the whole system
radiating from him to bless and save the race.
The materials of which Apologetics must make
use may perhaps be best distributed in the following
general scheme :
First: Fundamental Apologetics — comprising the
questions embraced in Natural Theology — the Being
and Nature of God and his relations to us ; the
spiritual and moral nature of man ; with an examina-
i* 9

IO APOLOGETICS.
tion of the Anti-Christian schemes of philosophy —
materialistic, pantheistic, or mixed.
SECOND: Historical Apologetics, comprising the
evidences of the divine origin and authority of the
Christian faith.
Third : Philosophical Apologetics, taking its ma
terials (i) from the Philosophy of Religion, proving
by the history of religion, and a comparison of its
various forms, that Christianity is the one absolute
religion ; (2) from the Philosophy of History, show
ing that Christianity is the key to the enigmas of
man's destiny ; (3) from the Nature (or Philosophy)
of Christianity itself, especially as compared with
philosophy in general : making it evident that Chris
tianity as a system of truth is higher and better than
any scheme of philosophy — is the sum of wisdom for
the human race.
These main divisions given in the idea of Apolo
getics as a science correspond also to the forms
which the assaults in our day are taking. These are :
first, the theory of naturalistic development — that
all things go on according to a fixed and necessary
order, without the breaking forth at any point of a
strictly creative power, or supermundane will. The
second is, from the sphere of historical criticism,
striving to show that the ancient documents of our
faith, Jewish and Christian, will not stand the test
of historical inquiry, but that both Jewish and Chris
tian history must be reconstructed, according to the
hypothesis of a simple development from lower to
higher forms, involving of course, the elimination of
all miraculous and prophetic elements. And the

APOLOGETICS. 1 1
third is, the presenting a system that is to be pan-
theistico-materialistic, which, it is claimed, is a more
complete and satisfactory system for the race, meet
ing all their wants, than that which is given us in
the Christian creed.
The main characteristic of the present attack upon,
and defense of, Christianity is, that it is all along the
line. Forces that have been gathering for centuries
are concentrating simultaneously. Systems of sci
ence and philosophy hitherto at war have made peace
with each other that they may attack the common
foe, viz., Christianity. History, in its process of re
covering all the records of the past, and of criticis
ing the Biblical records, is in many quarters trying
to undermine our historic basis : and many of the so-
called philosophies of history and civilization at
tempt to explain the whole course of human history
without God and Christ.* The followers of Strauss
and the school of Tubingen, and many critics of no
special philosophical school, are ransacking early
Christian and Pagan literature to disprove the Gos
pels and the Acts, and to explain the rise and growth
of Christianity without supernaturalism. Almost all
the sciences, in some of their representations, are
constructing a theory of the earth and the heavens,
of the origin and growth of all life, at war not only
with the Scriptures, but also with the first principles
of natural theology, of ethics, and of all rational
psychology — scouting not only the dogmas of faith,
but the very dictates of reason ; rejecting not theol-

* See Buckle, Lecky, etc.

12 APOLOGETICS.
ogy alone, but all metaphysics ; denying all final
causes, all consciousness, all intelligence in the first
cause of finite being, and leaving only a blind un
conscious force as the source of an unconscious de
velopment, whereby everything is educed out of an
inscrutable void in which all is to end. All efficient
and final causes being denied, matter and force are
feigned to produce vegetable and animal life and
organisms ; a blind principle of natural selection
takes the place of creation by a law and a lawgiver ;
the soul is a mode of matter ; thought is a secretion
of the brain ; the moral law is made by physical laws ;
ideas are generated out of sensations ; immortality
is true only of the race, and not of individuals ; there
is no hereafter for us — no judgment nor heaven nor
hell ; sin is a necessity, free-will a fiction, a personal
God a subjective delusion.
Against these Christianity has to vindicate the
reality of its revelation — the authority of its rec
ords — the completeness and harmony of its system
— its superiority to any other system of truth in its
individual doctrines — and its adaptation to man's
needs, man's conscience, man's reason, and man's
highest welfare. It has to show that it is the wisest
and best system for man — the true wisdom. It is to
do this, not by denying any truth of science or of
reason, but by appropriating every such truth, and
giving it its due place.
It is to show this comprehensively by proving that
the true —
Philosophy of Religion leads to and rests in Chris
tianity; and that the true —

APOLOGETICS. 1 3
Philosophy of all History can only be found in
that which forms the center and head of Christianity,
viz., That in the Person and Work and Church of the
Incarnate God all the vital problems of Human Na
ture and Destiny find their best and only real solu
tion — that Christianity is, in short, the one Absolute
System of Truth.
Such a vindication of Christianity forms the scope
of Apologetics.* § 2. Fuller Distribution of the Subject.
First DIVISION. — Fundamental Apologetics. Pre-
ambula Fidei, or Rational Theology.
This comprises the essential truths of Religion and
Ethics against the anti-religious schemes of specula
tion. Book A.— The Underlying Religious Question.
The Being and Nature of God as a Conscious Intel
ligence, personal and ethical, against anti-theistic
and anti-religious theories : Materialism, Atheism,
Pantheism. Or, the Being and Nature of God : with
the arguments a priori and a posteriori against the
objections of anti-theists. Here efficient and final
causes are to be vindicated.
Book B. — The Cosmological Question. Creation
by Fiat : its order and end.
* It is not to be expected that a complete vindication on all of
these points will be brought within any one course, or be given by any
one man. But this scope is forced on us by the present attitude of the
subject and of infidelity, in its last forms and battles — the real battle
of Armageddon and the true Anti-Christ.

14 APOLOGETICS.
Creation against anti-theistic Evolution and De
velopment — as emanation — development by matter
and motion.
Creation against the Infinite Series.
Successive Creations. There may be development
and evolution as well as fiat.
Book C. — The Anthropological Question.
Man's nature — as spiritual or only material.
Relation of man to nature and the brutes that
perish. Man as free agent.
Man as a religious being, essentially made for wor
ship. Chief end of man.
Book D. — The Ethical Question. (The aim and end
of what is set forth in Books B and C is in that
which is moral or spiritual. Nature and man have
a moral and religious end, and can only so be un
derstood.) The Reality of the Moral Idea and of Moral
Order. I. In relation to the Divine Nature and Govern
ment. 2. In relation to Man — a being essentially moral —
existing for moral ends.
Infer : Man as sinful, standing in conflict with the
moral law and order, and needing salvation. All
bearing on —
Book E. — The question of Man's Immortality. (Per
haps also Book F. The chief Anti-Theistic and Anti-
Christian schemes of modern speculation in their
relations to religion in general and Christianity in
particular.)

APOLOGETICS. 1 5
Second Division. — Historical Apologetics. — (This
Division on historic grounds and the historic method,
as the FIRST was on rational grounds.
The appeal is to certified Fact).
The proof on historical grounds of the Divine
Origin and Authority of the Christian Faith.
Book A. — The Supernatural in History in general.
Idea and Need of a Specific Revelation to solve the
problems, left by what has gone before, of man as a
moral being. Revelation and Inspiration.
Book B. — The Special Forms of the Supernatural
in History. Especially —
1. In Prophecy — the Supernatural in Word.
2. In Miracle — the Supernatural in Act.
Place of Miracles in Evidences.
Truth proves Miracles, and converse.
Miracle and Natural Law.
Book C. — The Bible in History.
Its Inspiration, Unity, and Authority as a
Record.
Its Testimony.
BookD. — Christ in History. The Supernatural in the
Highest Personal Form and Authority. The Center
of Testimony : the Source of the new Spiritual Life.
Book E. — The Church in History : its perpetual
witness to the Truth; its world-wide Power; its
beneficent Working.
THIRD DIVISION. — Philosophical Apologetics. — (Con
tents already sufficiently noted.)
Book A. — Philosophy of Religion.
Book B. — Philosophy of History.
Book C— Philosophy of Christianity.

l6 APOLOGETICS.
In sum : The general object is to give the full proof
that Christianity is from God for man ; to defend the
system and its record against philosophical specula
tion and criticism ; to appropriate all truth found
elsewhere ; and to carry the war into the enemy's
camp, by showing that Christianity is, as far as we
know, the best and final system.
§ 3. What is the place of Apologetics in the Encyclope
dia of Theology ?
This is a thoroughly German question.*
Schleiermacher, Sack, and others assign it to the
First or Philosophic part ; Hagenbach, to Dogmat
ics ; others, to Practical Theology, inasmuch as it
leads to defense.
It is best to regard it as historico-philosophical
Dogmatics. It is the whole contents and substance
of the Christian faith, arrayed for defense and for
(defensive) assault.
Each part of doctrine must have a rational side
or relation, historical evidence, and an attitude of
defense. Hence, Apologetics is to be put, most conven
iently, though not strictly, under Dogmatics.
There are special difficulties to be met under each
head. Apologetics surveys the combined defense
and assault of the whole, while details are treated
under the subordinate divisions as these are un
folded. *See Appendix II., Recent German Works on Apologetics.

APOLOGETICS. 1 7
FIRST DIVISION.
FUNDAMENTAL Apologetics. — Preambula Fidei.
Rational Theology.
Vindication of the Essential Truths of Religion
and Ethics, against the Anti-Religious Schemes of
Philosophical Speculation. God and Man, and their
Relations on grounds of Reason and Conscience,

CHAPTER I.
SUPERNATURALISM vs. anti-supernaturalism.
The roots of Infidelity are doubtless in Sin and the
consequent blindness of man to spiritual truth.
But it is equally true that, in discussion and in
thought, there are certain theoretical positions about
God, man, nature, and a future life, which prevent
a believing acceptance of the religion of Christ : i. e.
if thinking be consistent. For example: that all
which we can know is the natural world (so called) ;
that the infinite and supernatural are not objects of
knowledge; that God cannot be known; that the
knowledge of God, of the supernatural, is negative ;
that all knowledge is relative ; that all science is
about phenomena, external and sensible ; that it is
all generalized sensations ; that the course of nature
is uniform, unbroken — natural law being all ; that
the supernatural rests on credulity, blind faith.*
* The subsoil of the Natural is in the Supernatural.
The subsoil of Anti-Supernaturalism is in the denial.

1 8 apologetics.
The particular objections to special truths and doc
trines run back into this general denial of the super
natural, e. g. the whole criticism on prophecy, mira
cles, the incarnation.
Order of the discussion*
§ i. Nature (Idea) of the Supernatural/.?- _"..
§ 2. Real Being (Reality) of the Supernatural.
§ 3. Possibility of its Manifestation.
§ 4. Possibility of our knowing and testing this
Manifestation. (The Proof of Manifestations coming
subsequently. Here discussion only of the a priori
possibility.) § 5. Objections.
§ 1. Nature {Idea) of the Supernatural.
The idea of the supernatural is differently grasped
and defined in different ages, and in different sys
tems. Rude tribes find it in meteors, eclipses,
portents and prodigies, ghosts and witches, the gen
eral idea being that of events which have a super-
* The following scheme is also proposed :
§ I. The Supernatural in its Eternal Being (Necessity).
§ 2. The Supernatural in the Possibility of its Manifestation.
§ 3. The Supernatural in its actual Manifestations in Historic Time.
(a.) The Creative Act (original transition from Infinite to Finite
— Absolute to Relative). This must have occurred, as all con
cede. Subordinate epochs of creation, new forces, etc.
These once introduced become a permanent order — the in
troduction is supernatural.
(..) Especial Manifestation in Man and his Endowments.
(..) In Revelation in General. Inspiration, Prophecy, Miracles.
(a7.) The Incarnation.
(..) The Church. Regeneration, Sanctification, and Final Victory.

APOLOGETICS. 19
human and super-mundane origin. In all its forms
it involves a belief in the reality of such a power, con
trolling the world and human destiny. Examples :
the Greek Fate above the gods; the East Indian
Buddha ; the American Indian's Great Spirit ; the
Creator, Incarnate God, worker of miracles of the
Christian Faith : the Materialistic Fate ; the Pan
theistic Substance or Spirit. In all forms of faith,
and almost all schemes of philosophy the supernat
ural is recognized, more or less dimly, more or less
definitely. In its highest and most abstract form of statement
it is defined, in comparison and in contrast with what
is called Nature — Naturalism.
By Nature is meant : the finite universe, with its
constitution, order, and laws (which, it is supposed,
can be detected and stated) — the finite, limited, de
pendent (interdependent) in a chain of effects and
causes. Hence the so-called uniformity of nature.
(a.) Meaning of the Supernatural per se.
By the Supernatural, in contrast and comparison,
is properly signified : what is before and above — in its
being and nature independent of — Nature ; the Ab
solute and Infinite ; what is above the sequences
(causes and effects) in Nature ; what is the cause or
source thereof ; the substratum and substantia of
Nature ; standing under and producing, so that the
natural has its ground in, and is caused by, the super
natural.*

* Natura naturans — natura naturata, is the like distinction under
the term Nature, which is here the equivalent of the Universe. But

20 APOLOGETICS.
(b.) Some, and Christian thinkers too, draw the
line upon a different point. They embrace in the
supernatural the human personality and will, all
that is truly spiritual, all that is not included in the
chain of causes and effects in the natural order.
Man's will is supernatural, because it can break
through and over the chain of causes and effects.
But the distinction here is not strictly between the
Natural and the Supernatural, but between Physical
Necessity and Moral Freedom, between Nature and
Spirit. This view says, in effect, all that is spiritual
is supernatural. Dr. Bushnell defines the Supernatural,* "what
ever it be that is either not in the chain of natural
cause and effect, or which acts on the chain of causes
and effects, in nature, from without the chain."
Dr. Hickok, on the Valid Being of the SouLf says,
" the facts of a comprehending — not merely conjoin
ing, nor connecting — power over nature, and of an
ethical experience, prove the soul to be super
natural." Remarks and Criticisms on the Soul as Supernatural.
I. The statements given in evidence establish the
valid being of the soul, as free and moral — above the
it is better to say, the universe is the whole, divided into thejntel-
ligible and the Material, the Ideal and the Natural, the Supernatural
and the Natural. This is the most comprehensive view and the fair
est statement of the case. Spinoza's division of the "universe" into
the productive and the produced is right, if the meaning of terms is
kept in view, but confusion results from making ' ' nature " the equiv
alent of all being.
* Nature and the Supernatural, p. 37.
f In Rational Psychology, pp. 540, 541.

APOLOGETICS. 21
control of physical necessity — of cause and effect as
seen and found in physical sequences. So much is
valid and valuable. Will, personality, free spirit,
cannot be explained by the laws of the physical
creation, in terms of matter, force, and motion.
2. The implication or tacit assertion that the su
pernatural and the spiritual are identical — that all
which is truly spiritual is also supernatural — that
moral freedom is, wherever found, also supernatural,
is the unproved and disputable position. If man be
essentially supernatural, how shall we distinguish be
tween God and man radically ? The barrier is broken
down, if every act of man's moral freedom be a
supernatural act. i
3. The position does not reach to the matter in
dispute : for the opponents of the supernatural say
they refer to something super-human and super-mun
dane. Is there such a mode of being? It is re
plied: Yes, because man is above nature. But, is
there not something above man too — essentially so ?
If not, then no argument is advanced by this posi
tion ; if there is, then the position contains no reply.
4. So that, besides saying that man can control
nature, we must also say that there is a supernatural
above man, in order to make any headway. It is not
enough to say : Man can comprehend and control na
ture, and hence God may. All that is thus proved
is an analogy, that man is like God ; the true and
real supernatural is not obtained.*
* The argument from man's will to the supernatural has another re
lation, viz. : If man's will can use the sequences of nature for other ends

22 APOLOGETICS.
5. The law of cause and effect does not break down
when applied to man's free will. If it did, then there
would be pure contingence, and the element of no-
law pervading the system. It is a universal law of
finite being, that every beginning or change must
have a cause. All that is finite is under this law.
If this is not a universal law, no Natural Theology
is possible; the basis of the whole argument is up
rooted. 6. The real question is this : Is there a Supernat
ural which is absolute, and absolute Power and Will,
at the basis and the source of all that is phenom
enal? To answer this we may be helped by the analogy,
but it can only be subsidiary.
It is easier to prove that there is an absolute su
pernatural, than that the human will is absolutely
supernatural. To attempt the latter would lead to
a long discussion with naturalism on a side issue —
whether the acts of man's will can be explained as
non-supernatural. The opponent would say : If that
is all the supernatural which you claim, my task is
easy. 7. Perhaps we may even go farther, and say that
the supernatural, in its manifestations, in its work
ings, is under the law of causation — not physical
causation, but real causation. The manifested super
natural is orderly, is successive, makes a system, a
historic system in fact, the whole of the Historic
than the mechanical, etc., a fortiori God may, and equally without
violating the uniformity of nature.

APOLOGETICS. 23
Revelation, which is a sublime manifestation of
power and intelligence, of cause and effect on the
widest scale.
8. Though the human will be not directly super
natural, yet the highest form of the Supernatural is
doubtless in Will, viz., Absolute Personality, which
implies will and moral perfection. (But this is only
stated here, not proved : it is the result of the whole
argument on the Being and Nature of God.)
It may be also said, that the Human Personality,
the Human Will, is the highest manifestation of the
Supernatural in the natural world (not including
miracles, the incarnation, etc.). Here, chiefly, man
is in the image of God.
9. But the true real Supernatural, in its essence, is
the Absolute, the Divine.
§ 2. The Reality of the Supernatural.
(References for American theological students.
The Denial of the Supernatural. Tayler Lewis, in
Vedder Lectures, 1875. Ref. (D.) Board.
The Sensible, the Extra-Sensible, the Super-Sensi
ble. Lewes. Problems of Life and Mind, 229-
253- Van Oosterzee. Dogmatics, i. 160.
Dr. Dabney. The Sensualistic Philosophy, etc.
Philosophy and the Supernatural. 1875.
"'McCosh. The Supernatural in Relation to the
Natural. 1862.
Bushnell. Natural and Supernatural.
Hickok. Rational Psychology. Appendix.)

24 APOLOGETICS.
Having considered the Nature (True Idea) of the
Supernatural, we come now to the Real Being of it,
with which is involved its Necessary Being.
The Real and Necessary Being of the Supernat
ural may be evinced from various sources of evidence.
I. It is a necessity of Religion (and if man was made
for religion, it follows that he was made to stand in
relation to the Supernatural).
2. It is a necessity of Thought.
3. It is confirmed by a well-nigh universal testi
mony ; there are exceptions, but these are about as
numerous relatively as those of thinkers who deny
an external world. Only those who deny reality to
anything but immediate experience through sensa
tion deny the Supernatural.
1. The evidence for the Necessity of the Super
natural is to be viewed in connection with the evi
dence for the Necessity of Religion : they cover the
same ground.
There can be no religion without an underlying
sense of the reality of the super-human and the
super-sensible. From the highest religion to the
lowest this is the one universal and common ele
ment. Take this away, and all religion vanishes ; accept
it, and religion is possible, however vague the form
of faith or feeling may be.
Take this away from the history of the race ; just
eliminate the sense of worship — the dependence on
an Unseen yet Real Presence — and the history of
the world becomes a vain show, without inward
truth or rational basis or moral end ; it is a chapter

APOLOGETICS. 25
in the laws of motion, an appendix to the physiology
of the senses. It leaves man without a solid past or
a valuable future — in a condition worse than that of
the Stoics, of whom it is said their philosophy is
above suicide-mark, and yet continually dropped
below it.
Just as far, then, as there is evidence from history
and consciousness that man is a religious being
(even animal), that religion is a necessity of his
spiritual nature as truly as air is vital to his physical
growth and being — so far forth, conterminous with
this at every point, is the evidence to man of the
necessity of the supernatural.
To disprove this it is necessary to disprove and
undermine the deepest faith of the race, its pro-
foundest conviction.
Even where there is nothing left of religion but a
vague sentiment, an undefined aspiration, an unintel
ligent impulse ; still, so far forth as this goes, so far
is the, need of a belief in the supernatural recognized,
dimly, it may be, but really.
Even those thinkers who have yielded themselves
to an intense and all-absorbing intellectual scep
ticism, confess the moral and spiritual necessity of
religion, and their scepticism makes the reluctant con
fession all the more impressive. Denying all present
religions, they look for another, higher, because they
feel the native majesty and authority of the Super
natural.* * E. g., Comte, Tyndall, Huxley, and, in an eminent degree, Mill.
The whole spirit of Mill's Inductive Philosophy was, to say the least,
2

26 APOLOGETICS.
2. The Supernatural viewed as a Necessity of
Thought. In relation to thought, the only alternative here is
a denial of the possibility of any ultimate Truth — or
rather any basis of Being — of any inherent reality in
the universe. This alternative is Nihilism in respect
to being, Nescience in respect to knowledge, Pes
simism in respect to the end of being. It is saying,
change is all ; the flow of time and events is all ; the
stream of events in time has no beginning ; casualty,
not causality, rules ; there is no order, no law, phys
ical or moral ; for as soon as you say, law, uniformity,
you have something above the flow directing it. As
between Fate and Chance, it says, Chance; for Fate
has in it a principle and a method. To deny real
and absolute Being is to deny the very essential
ideas of reason itself. We take this ground — in
respect to which we do not now argue, but claim —
that all minds believe and must believe in the Super
natural, unless they proclaim all Truth and all Being
to be a mockery and a delusion.
Discernment upon this fundamental point depends
upon the invaluable mental habit of seeing things as
they are — not seeing words instead of things — not
non-religious (Sir James Stephens says that Mill's Logic has done
more for atheism than any other book of the century). But in his last
essay on Theism he confesses that " in the present state of our knowl
edge the adaptations in nature afford a large balance of probability in
favor of causation by intelligence.'' Three Essays, pp. 16S-70. (Even
in his " Logic " he allows the possibility of miracles.) In Christianity
he finds the high service of "inculcating the belief that our highest
conceptions of combined wisdom and goodness exist in the concrete,
in a living being, who has his eyes on us and cares for our good."

APOLOGETICS. 27
the vestigia nor the simulacra nor the larvae of things,
but the actual realities. All the "idola" of Bacon
stand in the way of this immediate vision of the
reality ; yet it is the first condition of all true knowl
edge. We speak of Thought and of what is involved in
the Necessity of Thought. All thought, every prop
osition, affirms or denies ; it affirms Being or some
thing about it. Fundamental, metaphysical, necessary
thought is affirmation of being. I am. Space is.
Time is. The world is. Phenomena are. Substance
is. The testimony of consciousness is absolute and
final. Sensations, imaginations, conceptions, ideas,
feelings — all states and modes of the mind are. The
ego, self, also is. Here is absolute certainty. " Only
subjective certainty," it may be said. That may be,
but the suggestion is an afterthought — a reflected
thought. The contents of consciousness, to us,
simply are. In its primary affirmations there are no
distinctions. The essence of knowledge consists :
(1) In the affirmation of Being.
(2) The analysis into subject and object, thought
and being. How far we have certainty of the latter.
(3) The union of the two.
Further: (a) There is Thought; (b) there is the
Necessity of Thought (our minds must view things
under certain rational principles ; mental action must
proceed in accordance with these principles, or it
must be suppressed altogether) ; (c) these rational
principles enforce that our thinking and discernment
of Being shall be thus and not otherwise, and thus

28 APOLOGETICS.
we have also enforced the Necessity to Thought of
the Supernatural.
The principles referred to are such as these :
(a) The radical belief in a universal being — being
unlimited and unconditioned.
(_¦) The universality of the law of cause and effect
(viz., a sufficient cause for all the changes, every
change implying a previous and adequate cause).*
(_•) The category of the substantial and phenomenal.
(d) The practical (rational) necessity of choosing
between order and chance ; and the fact that reason
is " informed " and " ensouled " only by order, law.f
(e) Even on the development theory, a sufficient
ground or source for the development must be as
sumed — the law of Ground and Consequence.
(/) The undeniable idea and law of motion, change,
and a Primum Mobile, as in Aristotle.
* Under this, too, the argument from design. See Mill's Conces
sions, and even Comte's.
f The knowledge of Reason consists of the vision (intuition) of the
absolute Idea in the beginning — of the absolute Ideal at the end.
Herein, if anywhere, lies man's intellectual likeness to God and the
prepledge of his immortality. Gazing with open eye upon the In
finite and Eternal, full of awe but full of knowledge (and of love),
constitutes the fullness of our being. The idea of Pure Being, of an
Infinite Kosmos, is the object of profound wonder to every great
thinker or sage. This is evident in all the schools from East to West,
and the sentiment underlies all our scientific researches to day. It is
also the elemental idea of the Christian "new-birth" — the "new
simple idea " of Edwards — yet here more concrete, viz. , the knowledge
of God face to face — the sense of the Supreme Reality. It is a per
petual possession of the religious mind, avouched by all experience,
and of it no scepticism can rob the believer. And more than this :
the glory of God shines in the face of Jesus Christ our Lord — the
knowledge of God Incarnate is real knowledge.

APOLOGETICS. 29
As man must think under these conditions, and as
the conditions presuppose a Supernatural Power —
so it follows that the Supernatural is a Necessity of
Thought. It may be added that as all truth is the con
formity between thought and being (which con
formity is ascertained by a variety of inter-measur-
ings), so what is necessary to our thought in the
supernatural is attested, and becomes .the object of
new conviction, by our examination of it under dif
ferent points of view and different relations.
What is truth ? How do we reach certainty ?
There is — being.
There is — thought.
As is thought so is being — as is being so is
thought ; the equation of the two, duly ascertained,
gives certainty, constitutes truth.
We find that whatever is necessary to thought
in the sphere of the natural has its correspondent
¦reality in being ; whatever is necessary to thought
in the supernatural has a similar reality, as we should
justly infer ; and testing the supernatural as we do
the natural (not by the same tests but by real tests),
we find all the signs of the equation between being
and thought, and arrive at truth, at certainty.
3. The reality of the supernatural element is con
firmed by the history of thought in all the schools
of philosophical speculation.
This statement applies not only to all the ancient
and accredited systems and schools, but also — and in
a marked way — to the most modern schools of anti-
theistic and even materialistic speculation.

30 APOLOGETICS.
The Supernatural is in them all more or less — ex
pelled with a fork, it ever forces itself back.
The law of gravitation might seem to be defied
when a column of water is thrown up into the air —
until it all flows back again to its source, and it is
evident that the same law governed the discharge
and the return, that the law was served by the seem
ing violation. And so the very necessities of thought
which seemed to lead to a denial of the Supernatural
and the Eternal bring it back again in some other
form, as resistlessly as the air rushes in to fill a
vacuum. Mr. J. S. Mill, in a remarkable passage in his Three
Essays,* says : " Science contains nothing repugnant
to the position that every event which takes place
results from a specific volition of the presiding power,
provided that power adheres in its particular volition
to general laws laid down by itself."
Elsewhere \ he says : " One only form of belief in
the supernatural, one only theory respecting the ori
gin and government of the universe, starts wholly
clear, both of intellectual contradiction and of moral
obliquity. It is that which, resigning irrevocably the
idea of an omnipotent Creator, regards nature and
life, not as the expression throughout of the moral
character and purpose of the Deity, but as the pro
duct of a struggle between continuing goodness and
an intractable material, as was believed by Plato, or
a principle of evil, as was the doctrine of the Mani-
chasans." * Posthumous Papers, 136.
f Essays on Religion, pp. 116, 117.

APOLOGETICS. 3 1
Herbert Spencer says : " That which persists un
changing in quantity, but ever changing in form under
these sensible appearances which the universe pre
sents to us, transcends human knowledge and concep
tion ; is an unknown and unknowable power which
we are obliged to recognize as without limit in space,
and without beginning or end in time.
" The sincere philosopher alone can know how high
— we say not above human knowledge, but above
human conception — is the universal power, whereof
nature, life, thought, are manifestations.*
" Our knowledge of noumenal existence has a cer
tainty which our knowledge of phenomenal existence
cannot approach ; in other words, in the view of logic
as well as of common sense, realism is the only
rational thesis ; all the others are doomed to fall." f
Of Matter and Spirit, Spencer says : % " The one
no less than the other is to be regarded as but a sign
of the Unknown Reality which underlies both."
G. H. Lewes distinguishes ; § " the sensible, the
extra-sensible, and the super-sensible." (The extra-
sensible is real and may be known, e. g., ether). The
super-sensible is the domain of theology and " Metem-
pirics," which is " closed against the method of sci
ence, but is open to faith and intellectual intuition." \
With Lewes the cardinal point of the Positive Phi
losophy is its ignoring of what is beyond the method
* Spencer on Education, p. 109 (new edition).
t Spencer on Principles of Psychology (new edition), 32.
% Spencer on First Principles, p. 503.
§ Lewes' Problems of Life and Mind, i. 229.
|| Lewes' Problems of Life and Mind, i. 243.

32 APOLOGETICS.
of science. He designates all this as " The Metem-
pirical." Yet "admits much that is called Meta
physics," viz. : the highest generalizations of the sev
eral sciences ; though " it excludes the problems of
Matter, Force, Cause, Life, Mind, Object and Sub
ject," as " insoluble, metempirical." *
He allows " efficient causes," and says we "know
essences," etc., properly understood, i. e., as far as
they come into manifestation or experience. So, too,
in ontology we may know much.f A metaphysician
may have a knowledge of being as certain as the
mathematician's knowledge of magnitude, or the
chemist's knowledge of affinity, the biologist's of
life, the sociologist's of society — and this knowledge
may be gained in the same way4
The position taken by Positivism, as to a First Cause,
is thus stated by Littre, in a discours at his reception
in the Masonic Lodge, Paris : § " Que faut il penser
de la notion de cause premiere, de causalite supreme?
Aucune science ne nie une cause premiere, n'ayant
jamais rien rencontre qui la dementit ; mais aucune
ne l'affirme, n'ayant jamais rien rencontre qui la lui
montrat. Toute science est enfermee dans le relatif ;
partout on arrive a des existences et a des lois irr_-
ductibles, dont on ne connait pas 1'essence."
With these impoverished abstractions of matter

* Problems, etc., p. 57.
f Problems, etc., p. 60.
X This is emphatically true. In both cases the knowledge is ulti
mate. Magnitude is — magnitude. Being is — being.
§ Quoted in Rev. Chret., by de Pressense, 1875, Sept., p. 359.

APOLOGETICS. 33
(and physics in general), compare the lofty ideal, e. g.,
of Plato — which is profounder, which is truer?
He asserts the reality of the eternal ideas. He
speaks of rising out of " the sea of change " to the sea
of beauty ; * of " participating in ideas ; " of rising to
the highest by abstracting, stripping off the finite till
the real is left.f The idea of the good is the highest
and last. " The idea of the good, last of all, is seen,
and, when discerned, it is as the universal author of
all things beautiful and right — parent of light and
law of light in this world, and the source of truth and
reason in the other.:): This is the First Great Cause,§
which he must behold who would act reasonably,
either in public or private life." | It "gives truth to
the object and knowledge to the subject."
With Plato the ethical, the good, is the source of
all — no abstract substance, no undefined force. " Can
we ever believe that motion, and life, and mind, are
not present with absolute being?" \ Protagoras said :
" Man is the measure of all ; " Plato, " God is the
measure of all." **
With Plato, the Perfect One is the only intelligible
reality (that can be truly known), and matter — the
phenomenal — is unintelligible. With modern science

* Banquet, 210.
t Republic, x. 597.
X In Rep., Bks. vi. vii.
§ "Not personal in Plato's view," it is said. But the question is
not up.
|| Rep., vii. 517.
T Sophist, 249.
** Laws, ii. 715.
2*

34 APOLOGETICS.
matter and its changes comprise all that we can
know or understand. Pure Being is " inscrutable,"
negative. Aristotle affirms that nothing is moved by chance:
movement must always have a principle. In order
that it may energize (produce) it must have another
principle eternally acting. There must then be that
(something) which moves without being moved —
eternal being, pure essence, pure actuality. The un-
movable mover is necessary being, and because nec
essary, it is the good, and hence a principle.*
Aristotle's principle is,f that all transition, KivrfGiS,
from the potential to the actual depends on an actual
cause (not merely potential). As every particular ob
ject demands an actual moving (efficient) cause, so the
world as a whole demands an absolutely first mover
to shape (give form to) the passive matter4 This
first mover is pure energy — eternal, pure, immaterial
form — without parts — absolute spirit, mind (vovs),
which thinks itself, and when thought, therefore, is
the thought of thought. It is the cause of motion —
the good per se — the end to which all tends — it acts
by virtue of the attraction which the loved exerts
upon the loving— it is the etemalprius of all develop
ment. Thought, which is the mode of its activity,
constitutes the highest, best, and most blessed life.§
" The world has its principle in God, and this prin
ciple exists not merely as a form immanent in the

* Others assume two principles— (i) inertia, matter, (2) sufficient rea
son of movement (not matter) — God.
t Met., ix. 8. X Met., xii. 6. § Met., xii. 7.

APOLOGETICS. 35
world, like the order of an army, but also as an ab
solute self-existent substance, like the general of an
army'' *
There is no need to multiply instances. The real
ity of the ultimate, absolute Being is affirmed in all
the schools, ancient and modern, excepting the purely
materialistic and casual, and, as we have seen, with
many partial recognitions and concessions of it here.
Even if it is declared to be unknowable, still it is
recognized. Bacon, Des Cartes, Leibnitz lay it at the basis.
Kant builds upon the Ding-an-sich — as existing —
necessary to thought, even though not demonstrated
as being.
We find it in all the Pantheists — in Spinoza's Sub
stance, Fichte's absolute Ego, Schelling's Idealism,
Hegel's Idea and Being.
§ 3. On the Manifestation of the Supernatural.
There is hardly need of arguing this point, after
what has been already said about the nature of the
supernatural. If the supernatural be, and be what
we have indicated, there can be no doubt, not only
that it may, but that it must be manifested.
The supernatural is the ground and source of the
natural : so that in one sense all the natural is but
its manifestation.
The position that it cannot be manifested (even if
it exist) is irrational and illogical. It may be the
unknowable, but it still must issue forth in know-
* Ueberweg on Aristotle. History of Phil., i. 162-3.

36 APOLOGETICS.
able forms and relations. The a priori impossibility
of its manifestation, which some assert, is wholly
groundless. The supernatural, in general, is what is before,
above, in its being and nature independent of nature
— what produces the natural and sustains its being
and going. It may, however, be manifested in and
through nature (such manifestation originating not
in nature — found in it, but not of it).
The supernatural, it is claimed by supernaturalists,
can manifest itself in and through the finite, but it
is the influx of a new power into the flow of time —
it is the incoming of a new force, to modify, elevate,
transform the finite for some higher end or purpose.
The distinguishable cases of manifestation are
three. (a) Cases where the supernatural comes and stays
as the natural.
What thus comes in may afterward become per
manent in the finite — as, e. g., life among the lifeless.
What is here claimed is that this life cannot be ex
plained or deduced from any finite forces or forms
that went before, but requires (to explain its origin)
the incurrence or inflow of a higher power than has
as yet been seen or known. For instance, man with
his endowments above the animals ; the materials
may be found in nature, and may be used, but they
are transformed by a higher power and for a higher
use. (b) Cases where the supernatural comes and goes.
For example, when a prophecy is uttered, the
means and instrumentalities are found in nature — a

APOLOGETICS. 37
man, a speech, a people — but the words show an
omniscience which was not before there, and require
a supernatural source or origin. Here the prophecy
abides, but the power in which it was uttered is not
inherited. While (above, in the case of life) the life
once imparted goes on and becomes natural, yet its
source is supernatural (i.e., above all the nature there
was there).
So with miracles : they come and are not perpetu
ated. (.) Cases where the Supernatural is both staying
and going* (Operating upon a system?)
For example, revelation, the inspiration of Scrip
ture. Here truths are revealed, not known before.
They are not to be explained by, or as growing out
of, what is before known. They have a supernatural
source. The Bible remains. The supernatural in it stays
— as natural, it may be said. But its truths are ever
upheld and applied by the same omniscient power that
first announced them — to illumine and to sanctify man
kind. Christ is in the incarnation and in the church.
God acts in regeneration and in sandification. There
are revivals in the religious sphere. And thus there
is a system of supernatural operations where what has
once been revealed is revealed anew, and is carried
out by supernatural agency to its practical design. f
* /. .. , returning.
f See McCosh, Nature and the Supernatural, Chapter II. "The
System of the Supernatural. " Also Bushnell. Nature and the Super
natural, Chapter IX. " The Supernatural Compatible with Nature
and subject to Fixed Laws. "

38 APOLOGETICS.
Note. — How do we know anything about this su
pernatural Being ? Is it not all unknowable and in
cognizable ? This is thought to be the question of
questions, and enough to silence anybody. But it
just begins the debate. How does any one know
aught about anything? In two points or stages.
(a) He knows, somehow, that it is. (b) He knows,
further, what it is, by its manifestations, its phenom
ena, and does not and cannot know in any other
way. § 4. The Course and Conclusion of the Argument.
1. The heart of the question, the first point to be
established is, the Valid Being (Reality) of the Su
pernatural, i. e., some mode of being (call it force,
substance, the absolute, or what one will), above and
controlling all events, phenomejia, in time and space.
All religions agree in this, and all philosophies, ex
cepting only that form of philosophy which is essen
tially materialistic, knowing only phenomena, sensa
tions, their possibilities and their inductions, a mere
mathematically infinite (indefinite) flow of events as
successive ; or, which denies the existence of any
thing infinite, eternal, absolute.
Even those who deny that we know of such being,
but grant that there is something incognizable (still
saying that it is), are not excluded ; for they concede
an element of the supernatural in conceding the
existence of what is incognizable.
All others * recognize more or less clearly the real
* The class of absolute sceptics, Nescients and Nihilists, are to be

APOLOGETICS. 39
Being of what is above and beyond mere nature —
mere succession of phenomena in time. This being
conceded and established —
2. The next point is, that in this supernatural
mode of being, whatever it may be, and however we
may define it, we have and must have, by an irresist
ible logic (the law of cause and effect is conceded by
all in some form), the ground, the cause, the original
of all phenomenal and temporal being. We ask not
yet how, but affirm that, be it by emanation, logic,
or fiat.
That is, the Supernatural does and must manifest,
unfold itself in the phenomena and processes of the
finite universe, under the law of cause and effect.
Even if it be only a universal Force, or an aboriginal
Substance, it does this, whenever and however a
transition is made into the realm of time and history.
So that we have not only the Supernatural, but the
•manifestation of it — as necessary fact and truth —
which must be conceded as real.
Not only the real being of the Supernatural, but
the real manifestation of it, in the initial act of pro
cession — call it creation or emanation — is necessary.
Get rid of all miracles, and the one great miracle of
creation or self-manifestation of the Absolute remains
necessary on any rational theory of the universe.
The possibility of such a manifestation must be con
ceded by all who hold to Evolution, Development,
Progress, in any form, or else these words have no
met in the proper place on their special grounds. But they are exceed
ingly sparse, and of no real weight.

40 APOLOGETICS.
meaning : Evolution — of what ? Development — of
what ? Mere evolution and development in the ab
stract is nothing but a name for a possibility. A law
of cause and effect, when there are no substances,
real existences, to which it is applied, is sterile— an
abstract method.
So we have not merely the possibility of a manifes
tation (self-revelation) of the Supernatural, but also
its reality, as an underlying fact — for all the theories
of the universe — of evolution, of development, or
however they may be named. They all take this for
granted. This must hold good for philosophers as
well as for theologians, for science as well as re
ligion.* This cuts the roots of the theory that the Super
natural is simply something in itself inscrutable,
remote, isolated — an unintelligible abstraction — for
we have obtained not only the Supernatural itself, as
a datum of reason and philosophy, but also the Su
pernatural manifested, as necessary to any evolution,
development, progress, or construction of a universal
system.
" * As to the manifested Supernatural, three points may be stated.
(a) The Supernatural produces the natural. Gioberti : "Ens creat
existentias— the formula of creation.'' This production — if not crea
tion — is recognized in all systems which allow anything but the finite.
This is the first miracle. (.) The Supernatural abides in the natural;
the First Cause in second causes — the primal force in all secondary
forces. (.) All that revelation adds is, the Supernatural may, and
does at times, enter by a new illapse or influx into the natural, pro
ducing forms, forces, modes of manifestation before unknown. E. g.
Man — in nature ; Moses, a prophet — among men ; Christ, the Son of
God — among all things.

APOLOGETICS. 41
3. Thus, and only thus, is the ground cleared, arfd
common ground found for both religion and philos
ophy, in respect to the question about
the Supernatural in manifestation,
or Miracle in history.*
All historic time, whether of the visible heavens or
of the earth, of the earth or of man, must begin with
a manifestation or act which is essentially super
natural — in short, a miracle — an act the most stupen
dous and wonderful we can conceive ; or, if not con
ceive, which we can know and see to be necessary,
logically, or in the logic of fact.
And, if it may and must be so, what sufficient
reason can be assigned for denying that it may so go
on, that the Supernatural may still continue its man
ifestations, at other points and junctures, according
to the exigencies of the vast unfolding plan of Crea
tion and Providence ? Why may there not be a pro
gressive unfolding and revelation, in which the same
Supernatural shall manifest itself afterward as at
the beginning ? For the Supernatural still remains
what and as it is : it is its nature to go forth, pro
ceed, reveal (whether as force or as love) ; and who
can set to it limits, or say that it must proceed ac
cording to a uniform succession of blind natural
causes called matter, energy, and motion ? t
* The distinction between the Supernatural in itself and its man
ifestation is to be emphasized. Usually only the last, the Supernatural
in history, is discussed. But we have aimed to go to its roots, and to
find the fulcrum for the lever — the pou sto — in the nature and necessity
of the case.
f We have the first great manifestation of the Supernatural in the

42 APOLOGETICS.
4. The only doctrine or theory that stands in the
way of accepting the supernatural in history (on the
ground of adequate testimony) is this : viz., that all
things continue as from the beginning ; or the uni
formity of nature, expressed by the further theory,
the conservation of forces, the law of evolution, and
the principle of natural selection.*
This theory will come up for consideration at
various points hereafter. Here it is necessary only
to indicate the way to clear the a priori ground, and
make fair place and verge for the testimony to the
miraculous. All we now want to claim or argue is
that there is no a priori impossibility of the manifes
tation of the Supernatural in history. Three points
may be noted :
(a) The uniformity of nature is no ultimate law.
All it means is, that the same causes, acting under
the same conditions, produce the same results. If a
new cause comes in, there is nothing in the uniformity
of nature to prevent its producing its proper effects,
as even Mill grants.
(b) The laws of nature give no real principle, they
are only names for modes of action. These laws are
very being, production, of nature itself, in creation (sit venia verbo) ;
for if any act be essentially supernatural, it is the creation. Hence
the miracle of the incarnation does not stand alone : it is the sequence
of creation, and the one is as supernatural as the other. It is signifi
cant that in the theology of Christianity the Logos is both in crea
tion and in the incarnation (Proem of John's Gospel). The miracles
in the system of redemption are easier to grasp and believe if we ac
cept the primal miracle of creation. Deny the one — and either one —
and the other logically goes.
* This last is simply a regulative principle.

APOLOGETICS. 43
flexible ; the higher control the lower ; man subdues
the earth.
(.) In the theory of the conservation (and correla
tion) of force, there is a fallacy. If force be all there
is in the universe, the theory is true : but that in
cludes the supernatural fountain ; if the term is used
of any finite forces, the theory is not proved : these
may be changed and dispersed, and they do pass
away (as Herschel said of vis viva). This theory
only holds good as there is supposed to be Infinite
and Absolute Force, ever reinforcing finite waste,
change, and decay.
Hence, if the theory includes under force the su
pernatural fountain, it proves nothing to the pur
pose ; if it is restricted to finite forces, it stands un
proved and disproved.
5. All the theories about the universe, except that
of the Nihilists and Nescients, turn upon the ques
tion of the transition from the primal essence to the
forms of space and time, from the supernatural to
the natural, the infinite to the finite. With the ex
ception of Nescience, which denies all possible
thought in respect to the matter, all theories may be
brought into the following scheme :
(1) Rude Materialism. Lucretius, in " De Na
tura Rerum," is the best exponent of this. Atoms
and motion given, all things may be engendered,
in time enough and with chances enough. An'
atom is an impenetrable point in space, and with
motion to set it going, it will in time produce the
universe. But what is an atom ? No scientist can tell us.

44 APOLOGETICS.
And how does motion come to be mated with atoms?
Neither can be gotten out of the other.
(2) More refined Materialism. Here physical force
is taken as primary. From this force matter is in
some way developed. Pile up forces enough, and in
some way atoms are produced. Perhaps a diffused
ether in oscillation is the nearest to the conception.
(3) The theory of some mode of being, inscruta
ble, but which can be stated, which is neither matter
nor force, but from which matter and force come, or
in which they are, or forms of which they are — as
the inside and outside of a bowl. This is what Tyn-
dall and Huxley have been seeking. Just as we are
beings partly spiritual and partly material, produced
from that which can produce both. Mill's theory, in
general, comes here. He was too wise a man to con
struct the universe, but he says that as far as we can
go in our thoughts we come to this. We have sensa
tions, and refer them to an outer world. Before we
had sensation there was a possibility of sensation, and
in the world there was a possibility of producing sen
sation. So he says, Spirit is that in me which gives
the possibility of sensation, and the world is that
outside of me which has the power to produce sensa
tion in me. This is his ultimate theory.
(4) The theory that spirit, as abstract and unde
fined, is primary, and from this the universe is de-
'rived by emanation, in successive grades. The East
Indian Pantheism.
(5) Spirit is primary, not as abstract and undefined,
but as thought, with logical law, law of logos or gen
eral reason. The development of this spirit by logi-

APOLOGETICS. 45
cal laws gives the universe. This is the Pantheism
of Hegel. „
(6) Spirit as will is the basis, but as unconscious
will, producing the universe. This is the latest Ger
man philosophy.
(7) Spirit as personal will and intelligence, produc
ing the finite universe by an act. Schelling's philos
ophy in its latest form. This contains the essential
points of the Theistic theory of the universe.
All have the same problem. All grant, in some
sense, a supernatural, a.prius to creation — some mode
of primal being, even if unknown. All philosophy
raises an altar to the unknown God. Whom ye
ignorantly worship Him declares Christianity to you.
" He hides himself behind eternal laws,
Which and not Him, the sceptic, seeing, exclaims
There is no God :
And never did a Christian's adoration
So praise Him as this sceptic's blasphemy. " *
Summary :
By this line of argument the following points are
made :
(1) An irresistible (necessary) belief in the reality
of the supernatural — the absolute.f
(2) As a necessary consequence, a belief in the
possibility of its being manifested. The alleged a
priori impossibility of its being manifested is baseless.
(3) A belief, equally irresistible and equally univer-
* Schiller. Don Carlos, Act iii. Sc. X.
f In all recent physics there is a metaphysical background. This
is seen in Huxley, Spencer, Tyndall.

46 APOLOGETICS.
sal, that the supernatural, so far as it is manifested,
is known, and cannot but be known : so far forth,
and that is enough.

CHAPTER II.

can the supernatural be known ? or (expressed
more concretely — not as exactly equivalent,
but nearly enough so), can god be known ?
This is the second chief introductory topic, before
considering the proof of the Being of God.
References :
(These include what belongs to the involved ques
tions : Is all knowledge relative ? Is all our knowl
edge only from and by Induction ? Can faith and
knowledge be sundered in this matter? The differ
ence between absolute knowledge and knowledge of
the absolute.)
Mansel's Limits of Religious Thought. 1859.
Mansel, in Contemporary Review.
Goldwin Smith's Rational Religion. 1861.
Mill's Review of Hamilton.
McCosh, Supernatural and Natural. 1867.
Hamilton's Theology of Knowledge (American
Theol. Rev., Jan., 1861).
Hamilton on the Unconditioned.
Dr. Hickok in Bibl. Sacr., Jan., i860.

APOLOGETICS. 47
Is God Unknowable ? by Father Dalgairus, Cont.
Rev., Oct., 1872.
Herbert Spencer, First Principles.
Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind.
Princeton Rev., Oct., 1861 ; Jan., 1864.
B. P. Bowne, Philos. of Herbert Spencer. New
York, 1874.
Prof. B. N. Martin,* Meth. Quarterly, January and
July, 1875.
Prof. Fisher, New Englander. 1859.
Dorner, Jahrbiicher d. Theol. 1858.
Hodge's Theol., vol. i.

§ 1. What is it " To Know? "
It is the affirmation of being in some form which
is in relation to our knowing capacities. These
capacities are various, and so the different kinds of
knowledge are thus determined ; as,
(a) What is in immediate consciousness.
(b) What is perceived by and through the senses ;
and (c) What is derived by induction or by inference.
(d) What comes under the categories of cause and
effect, of substance and phenomena, etc. We know
* He argues against Spencer, on the ground of Spencer, viz., the
Absolute or Unknowable is beyond classification (». . . , by parts and
whole, genera and species). Better ground is : There is _ knowledge
of being, of truth (objective), which is above and beyond this, viz.,
what is universal and necessary, per se — Causa sui; and that Spencer
himself is a witness to this in his Doctrine of Force and its Persist
ency.

48 APOLOGETICS.
there must be causes and substances, even if we can
not grasp them.
(e) What stands as universal and necessary ; what
is known in and of itself, and not merely as con
joined, or as deduced by any process. Under this :
(i) Axiomatic certainties — as those of mathematics:
(2) Intuitions, which are irresolvable. Space and
time. Being as infinite and absolute. The affirma
tion of ultimate fact, ultimate truth, ultimate being.
Or, knowledge may be viewed in its elements and
forms. The Elements. — 1. What is in distinct conscious
ness.
2. Sensible perception. An-
schauungen.
This is knowledge elementary.
The Forms of Knowledge as completed.
A. Knowledge by processes. The cognitive un
derstanding. 1. Knowledge by induction and deduction from
the facts or data of consciousness and sensations.
2.  by Categories : cause and effect, substances
and phenomena. Abstraction, generalization, etc.
B. Knowledge in its wholeness and unity. All
phenomena (a) from one source, (b) one in many
(substance, force), or (c) under one law — of evolution,
development. This knowledge is only of the reason : reaching to
Unity of Being; Unity of Law ; Unity of Thought
— and Being.
Or, in still another light, The Constituents of all
Knowledge are :

apologetics. 49
I. The affirmation of fact, or being, or thought
(positive or negative).
2. The joining of subject and predicate in either
(a) an analytic or (b) a synthetic judgment.
§ 2. The various Theories as to the Knowledge which
Man can have of God.
I. Absolute knowledge is claimed, as in the Pan
theistic schools. We know God because we are a
part of God. This, however, is simply a knowledge
of abstract being.
2. Absolute knowledge is claimed at the other ex
treme. We have no knowledge of God because we
have no faculties by which we may know Him. All
we can know is that which comes through sense, and
the inferences from it. The whole process of knowl
edge is induction. This is the ground of Positiv
ism. 3. We know God as an innate idea ; by immediate
intuition of his being — of his personal being — as we
know nature by the senses, and space by reason. A
sub-mystic view.
4. The mystic view : God is supersubstantial, vnep-
OVGlOS* 5. In no way can we attain to a knowledge of God,
"by the intellect, by the reason or by reasoning. Logic
and metaphysics lead only to contradictions — to (a)
Negative knowledge ; (b) Relative knowledge. But
we may and must lay hold of Him by faith — may
and must believe in Him and obey Him.
* See Anselm in Monologue, 26.

50 apologetics.
We can never know the Absolute and Infinite One ;
we fall into antinomies ; we are baffled by lack of ca
pacity ; reason lands us in contradictions.
6. To know is not equivalent to, or limited to,
(a) Absolute knowledge,
(_>) Immediate intuition, or,
(c) Definite conception.*
In order to know God truly we do not need to
claim a knowledge of the essence of being ; nor an
innate idea — as complete and finished ; nor to define
him so as to limit him.
There is a knowledge of reason as well as of sense
and the understanding. We may know that, with
out knowing what ; may know quality without know
ing quantity ; may have a true knowledge, as far as
it goes, though it is inadequate as to the full meas
ure of being ; we may have yvcoffi?, though not
Hard\?i<f>is ; f we may know by revelation (natural
in us), when we do not grasp the unrevealed essence ;
and also by a special revelation (God in his word,
God in Christ), while the essence lies beyond us.J
Also, we may attain full knowledge and conviction

* Des Cartes. " Comprehendere enim est cogitatione complecti; ad
hoc autem, ut sciamus aliquid, sufiicit, ut illud cogitatione attin-
gamus." We know God " eodem modo quo montem manibus tangere
fossumus, sed non ut arborem, aut aliam quampiam rem brachiis nos
tris non majorem amplecti."
| So John of Damascus. " Neither are all things unsaid, nor is all
said ; neither are all unknown, nor are all known."
X Aquinas. " Comprehendere Deum impossibile est cuique intel-
lectui 'creato ; attingere vero mente Deum qualitercumque magna
est beatitude"
Leibnitz (Theod. Pref.). " Les perfections de Dieu sont celles de

apologetics. 51
by the combination of the different modes of knowl
edge in one result. E. g. Intuitions and universal
truths combine and harmonize with the results of
experience. Induction and deduction coincide —
— where ontological and a posteriori proofs com
bine;
— where proofs from all the sources converge to
one result;
— where the subjective idea and the objective law
correspond —
As when — Newton deduced gravitation and ap
plied it ;
As when — Leverrier deduced Neptune and found it;
As when — by ontology we are led to the idea of
pure being, and find it verified in the order and har
mony of the universe — thought standing over against
being — binding all in one — so that the infinite and
finite make up one system.
In one respect Aristotle has greatly troubled spec
ulation — in his doctrine that the v\t} is the ground
of all potentiality and finiteness, while the eidos,
the principle of form, is divine and eternal ; the
two together making up the individual (avvoXov).
(The assertion respecting the _._"o. places Aristotle
— with Socrates and Plato — among the idealists, as
distinguished from the old Greek materialists.) * The
nos ames, mais il les possede sans bornes ; il est un ocean, dont nous
n'avons recu que les gouttes ; il y a en nous quelque puissance, quelque
connaissance, quelque bonte ; mais elles sont enti.res en Dieu."
* All philosophy lies between the flux and chaos of Heraclitus
(Ionic) and the Absolute One of Parmenides (Eleatic). Plato's " ideas"
came between.

52 APOLOGETICS.
philosophy which is evolved by the Christian view,
viz., all that is not God has its substance (vXrf as
well as eidos) from God ; * all creatures must come
irompotence to act j; (or be brought). God alone is
under no category — being actus purus ; he cate
gorizes all that is finite. All that is finite must be
under categories, and so can be known. Of God,
only an analogous knowledge can be obtained ; be
cause the universe is not of his nature, but is only an
analogy of the divine being.
(Cf. Prof. Katzenberger of Bamberg, in Theol.
Quartalschrift, 1864, pp. 168-174.)
Can we think that which is not in its essence a
thought ? This is the question in Pantheism of the
logical, Hegelian kind, the assertion underlying, that
the essence of thought (idea) and being are one — and
that idea precedes.
But : Is not being before thought — logically and
in fact ? Does not a thinking — an activity — presup
pose a being? If so, then the laws of being may be
more and other than the laws of thought.
(Laws of thought :
1. Judgment, subj. pred. copula.
2. Contradiction, negativity.
3. Inference.
Laws of being :
1. Being is- — existence affirmed ; and has move
ment — activity — development — a process.
* Augustine : " Omnis substantia, qu_3 Deus non est, creatura est."
f This statement involves a reference to the Aristotelian distinc
tions as to being. See F. Brentano (a pupil of Trendelenberg), Die
mannigfache Bedeutung des Seienden nach Arist., 1862.

APOLOGETICS. 53
2. Law of process — development by antagonisms.
3. Issue — end — ad quern.
How far agree — and disagree ?)
§ 3. Discussion of the Theories.
(In this discussion the theory that God is known
as an Innate Idea will not be considered. It can
not be reasoned about. It states no process which
can be apprehended. If a man says he has it, and
can give no account of it, there is no more to be
said.) I. Positivism and the Inductive Philosophy.
The inductive theory says that all knowledge
comes by observation of phenomena (sensations) and
by generalizing those phenomena ; in other words,
putting into a general statement what is true of a
particular case, and affirming that this is true of all
similar cases.
This is the root of Nescience in respect to God.
If we can only know sensations and generalize them,
of course we cannot come to the cause of those sen
sations. All beyond must be pure zero.
Not to anticipate subsequent discussions, some
general objections to the above view are here stated.
(1) In sensation itself there is given more than
mere sensation. There is a material impact, and also
a feeling of resistance, not material, but conscious —
a resisting self, a person, an Ego — involved (whether
or not this is given in the sensation itself is not ma
terial, it is certainly implied). And this conscious
knowledge cannot be derived from the external phe
nomena, but is a distinguishable state of the ego.

54 APOLOGETICS.
The ego cannot be derived from the non-ego. It is
Mill's confession that " a series of sensations, con
scious of itself, is the ineffable mystery." The in
ductive philosophy gives account of the successive
sensations. But that something whereby we know
them cannot come out of these sensations. Leibnitz
says: " Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in
sensu, nisi intellectus ipse. "
The fact is, that in our knowledge, after all, we
know mind by the First Intention, and matter only
derivatively. (2) The process of Induction — from particulars to
a whole or wholes — is not a sensation, but a purely
mental process, not to be derived from any forces or
forms of matter. There is nothing in nature cor
responding to an induction from particulars to gen
erals. The facts are in nature, but the process is in
the mind ; it is a procedure in thought-knowledge,
which has its own laws.
(3) Still more emphatically must we make this
statement when we apply mathematics (the prin
ciples involved in our necessary ideas of space and
time — geometry and arithmetic) to the matters
brought under induction. In doing this we bring
all the shifting phenomena of sense under invariable
laws (inviolable laws, some are fond of saying, when
ever a question of the supernatural comes in). As
tronomers, from observing certain phenomena, con
cluded that a disturbing cause must be found in a
planet never yet seen, because they held the uni
formity of nature. What observation of mere sense
ever led to such a conclusion ?

APOLOGETICS. 55
(4) If induction be all, we are involved at the end,
by the process itself, in inconceivable ignorance even
of what we do know. The theory is that we know
only antecedents and consequents, and know the
consequents only as modes of the antecedents. Scien
tific knowledge is the knowledge of these differing
modes. Suppose then that we trace back to the utmost
point within our reach the last inspected consequences ;
these can be known " only as we know the antece
dents," only as " modes of the antecedents." Then
they cannot be known at all, for by the supposition
we cannot reach their antecedents.
Hence, the whole process of knowing fails at the
end. Not knowing the ultimate antecedent, all our
seeming knowledge becomes a chain of total igno
rance. It is a chain which is all hanging, and no
where hangs. The invisible things being unknown,
we cannot and do not know the visible. Without
the noumena there are no intelligible phenomena.
(5) In- all induction, too, theory leads. No great
discovery takes place without anticipation — a mental
process. A sense of unity, law, power, order, pre
sides over all the special investigations.
(6) With induction alone no knowledge of ulti
mate law, truth, being, is possible. Induction cannot
conclude, beyond its sphere. If all facts are of sen
sible phenomena, no conclusion can be reached to
anything beyond time and space. Universally ap
plied, the " Inductive Method " must be atheistic.
II. The position that all knowledge is ofthe Relative,
and hence we cannot know the Absolute.

56 APOLOGETICS.
The Absolute and Infinite, being out of all rela
tions, cannot be an object of knowledge : * Man is,
on every side, in relations, and can know only what
he is and what he is in. The relative contradicts the
absolute ; God cannot be both relative and absolute.
Remarks —
(i) Upon the terms Unconditioned, Absolute, In
finite (especially in Hamilton's usage of them).
Hamilton uses " infinite " in the sense of that which
never can be completed, "absolute" in the sense of
that which is complete in and of itself, and is also
unrelated. God then cannot be absolute and infinite
at the same time.
This is peculiar to Hamilton's theory. It is not
warranted by previous usage of terms.
A better definition of the Absolute is : that which
is complete in and of itself, having no necessary de
pendence upon, or relation to, any other thing ; and
of the Infinite — that which never can be completed
by finite terms or increments (Hamilton's infinite is
the mathematical infinite — the infinite series, infinite
time and space). The proper positive sense of the
* Sir Wm. Hamilton: "To think is to condition." "We can
know only the limited," and " the conditionally limited." "We can
not know the unconditionally unlimited = the Infinite ; nor the un
conditionally limited = the Absolute." In other words, " uncondi
tional negation of limitation = the Infinite ; unconditional affirmation
of limitation =_ the Absolute." " All that we can know i_ only known
as 'won from the void and formless infinite.' "
Hamilton's views are wonderfully well put ; his work is a triumph
of citation and application. But it is, nevertheless, one of the most
puzzling of questions what Hamilton and Mansel really mean by
" Relative," " Knowledge of Relations," etc.

APOLOGETICS. 57
term is : There is something in the nature of the In
finite which prevents its being completed by any
finite additions. The Infinite is not to be contrasted
with the Absolute : it is the Absolute, brought into
relation to (standing over against) the Finite.
It is to be noted also that these words, Infinite,
Absolute, Unconditioned, are adjectives, not sub
stantives. They have meaning only when some such
proposition as the following is understood : All being,
all substances may, must be analyzed into absolute
and relative (being), infinite and finite (being), un
conditioned and conditioned (being, etc.). It is a
pantheistic conception which takes these terms by
themselves and puts abstractions at the basis of the
universe. In fact, it is the radical defect of Hamilton
and Mansel that they have taken definitions from
Pantheism and applied them to theistic views. Be
cause we cannot grasp the Absolute by itself, there
fore we cannot know the absolute God.
It should be observed also that while Hamilton
asserts that the knowledge of the Absolute and In
finite is a blank, he nevertheless proceeds to dis
tinguish them. Denying that there is anything posi
tive in our knowledge of the Infinite, he yet makes
definitions in that field.
(2) As to the sense of Relative and In Relation.
(Hamilton argues upon these at length, but the
final sense which he would give to them cannot be
extracted from his writings.)
(a) Of their possible meanings.
(a') They may mean that all things in the universe
are in relation among themselves, so that if we are

58 APOLOGETICS.
to know them truly, we must know them as they
exist in those relations.
This is indisputably true.
(_¦') The meaning may be, that as we are related
to other things (and all things), we cannot know
them unless as and thus related to them.
This is also true. We cannot know anything un
less we have such a relation to it that we can know
it. Anything out of all relation to us we cannot
possibly know.
(c1) It may be meant that the Absolute and In
finite are out of all relations to us and to anything
else, and hence we cannot know them.
But such an Absolute does not exist. The term, as
has been said, is an adjective. God is not, cannot
be such a being. Whatever He may have been in
the beginning, He certainly is not such a being now.
Even the pantheist does not claim this.
(d1) Because we are relative and related beings,
we cannot in any way know anything about the Ab
solute and Infinite Spirit.
This is the real point of debate, and on this we
join issue.
(b) The force and propriety of the terms as defined.
(This will be considered in relation to Dr. Mansel's
exposition, as that is the clearest and fairest.)
The fundamental and fallacious maxim involved
in Mansel's position is: Quantum sumus scimus ;
Simile simili cognoscitur.*
* Less definitely, Boethius, who is approved by Hamilton : "Omne
quod cognoscitur non secundum sui vim, sed secundum cognoscentium
potius comprehenditur facultatem."
One of the Neo-Platonists (Plotinus?) said : " He that sees the sun

APOLOGETICS. 59
This is thought to lead to the conclusion that if we
can know God, we are a part of Him, and if we are
not a part of him, we cannot know Him. Pantheism
or Nescience : it is on this alternative that Hamilton
and Mansel have discussed the question, and capitu
lated to the pantheist.
This must be affirmed to be a radically vicious
theory of knowledge, with just enough truth in it to
make it seem plausible. Knowledge does not depend
on identity of nature. If we can know only what we
are, how can we know the external world? We can
certainly know the non-ego. Further, we know that
space is boundless ; but does this show that we are
boundless ?
The true doctrine is the Christian doctrine — that
because man is made in the image of God, he may
therefore know something of Him. He is spiritual,
like God; and may know and worship God as spirit
— which is denied to brutes. But this does not make
him to be one with God, " of the same substance,
power, and glory." *
Knowledge requires a capacity — a kinship, not an
identity. Man, as spirit, knows matter, not because
he is material. The ego knows the non-ego. The
holy knows the sinful. God, in knowing man, does
not un-deify himself.
(c) The argument from " Consciousness."
Mansel gives four conditions of all consciousness :

must be solar." This answers to, "A triangle would conceive of God
as triangular."
* This, in the Creed, marks off Christ from the creature.

6b APOLOGETICS.
(i) In all consciousness there is a distinction between
one object and another, (2) there is a relation of sub
ject and object, (3) there is succession and duration
— time between different ideas, (4) personality. All
these, he says, are to be denied of the Infinite and
Absolute ; and as they limit our Consciousness, it fol
lows that "the Infinite and Absolute cannot be
known in our consciousness."
But this again imposes the conditions of conscious
ness on the objects of consciousness. Those condi
tions are inconsistent with our being absolute and
infinite, but not with our knowing the reality of the
Absolute and Infinite.*
(d) We must argue against this theory of the rela
tivity of knowledge, on the ground that we cannot
know relations, without some adequate knowledge
of the things related.

* The theory applies, likewise, as we have seen, to the knowledge
of space and time, as unending and illimitable. It applies also to
the ideas of substance, first cause, and personality. Mansel gives up
even the personality of God, on the ground that He cannot be both
absolute and personal. (He accepts God's personality on grounds of
"faith," but his position on grounds of reason is perilous in the ex
treme.) He applies the theory to morality also, saying that in God's mind
moral ideas, laws, and truth may be utterly different from the things
of the same name in us. "Morality," he says, "consists essentially
in our obligation to obey a superior being." But, against this, (1)
though morality is obligation, it is obligation to be right and do right.
Unless the idea of right comes in; there is no moral obligation, only
physical; (2) morality is " obligation to the will of a superior being,"
but the superior being must have in himself (and there must be in our
knowledge of him) a moral quality, appealing to the "categorical im
perative" within us. " Be ye holy, for I am holy."

APOLOGETICS. 6 1
Only as far as we know the things can we know
the relations.
Relatives, relations — are copulas of discourse. We
cannot understand the copula without knowing the
subject and predicate (e. g., the sun, earth, moon — if
we did not know something about them, we should
have a very vague knowledge of the solar system
and astronomy — the tides, eclipses, etc.). God and
man — what can we know of their relations, if we do
not know them? The relations are made by the
beings and things and facts related. A relation is
an abstract phrase, without sense or contents, until
we know the related objects.
(e) The most difficult and obscure part of our
knowledge — where we in fact know the least — is in
the relations of being, of the parts of the universe to
each other. E. g. The relations of God to man ; of
the infinite to the finite ; of eternity and time ; of
space and its parts ; of soul to body ; of matter to
mind ; of sensation to consciousness. The mystery
of things is chiefly here.
(f) The advocates of this doctrine affirm, not
withstanding the position they take, the possibility
of a rational " faith " in God ; but in fact the doc
trine annuls the possibility of faith in God as truly
as of the knowledge of Him.
For (i) faith is limited by consciousness, equally
with knowledge. All the reasons equally apply.
Faith cannot transcend consciousness. (2) Faith
must have an apprehended object — a discerned,
known object. Else it is vain.
(g) The theory restricts knowledge unduly.

62 APOLOGETICS.
It says : Knowledge is (i) something of which we
have a clear finite conception ; or, (2) it is the pro
duct of the image-making power, and does not in
clude all that we are convinced of ; or, (3) it must be
a grasping of all the causes and conditions of phe
nomena — which is absolute knowledge.
(h) The theory leaves for the sphere of Chris
tianity (and all religion) mere feeling, sentiment, or
a blind impulse. This would drive Christianity out
of the field, with all cool heads and consecutive
thinkers. III. Is our knowledge of the Infinite and Absolute
merely negative ?
(1) The idea of " negative " is superficially favored
by the form of the word Infinite = non-finite ; but
take the parallel case of the word .^mortal, where
the meaning is certainly positive.
Kant (Logic, Introd., c. 8) says : " Negative notions
guard us from error. They are not needed in cases
where it is impossible to be deceived. But they are
very important in relation to the conceptions we form
of such a being as God." They are of use to exclude
from our thoughts of Him all that is not infinite; but
not to exclude the Infinite itself !
(2) It should be remarked that no one means by
the assertion, "our knowledge of God is negative,"
to affirm a pure negation of being — to say that the
Infinite = 0.
The German distinction between Nichtswissen
(knowing that nothing is) and Nichtwissen (not
knowing in certain relations what is or is not), is ap
plicable here. To affirm the former of God is Nihil-

APOLOGETICS. 63
ism, is atheism. The philosophy of Nescience is not
— Nihilism. (3) The term " negative," then, in the proposition,
" our knowledge of God is negative," must be taken
in a relative sense, and must refer to our knowledge.
Granting that the Infinite and Absolute Being
exists — our idea of it is, and must be, purely negative
— the result of " impotence of the mind."
The question eludes our grasp when it is said that
the negativity of our knowledge of God means, that
though we know that an Infinite and Absolute Being
exists, yet we cannot do two things more in the pro
cess of knowledge ; (1) exhaust the scope of the pred
icates Infinite and Absolute ; or, (2) define the
limits of the Being. We grant both positions, and
say further, that if we should " define the limits " of
the Infinite Being, we should un-define it — turn it
into its contradictory. If we have a clear, definite
conception of it, we have no idea of it at all. To de
fine it thus, is to deny its being.
The question to be held fast is, whether our knowl
edge, our ideas, refer only to the Finite and Limited ;
whether they consist exclusively of clear logical con
ceptions, existences with determinate boundaries.
To say that this exhausts all knowledge, is to beg the
question : the affirmation must be proved.*
(4) Our knowledge of the Infinite may properly be
said to be negative in the sense that it involves
negative definitions ; i. e., denying something of any-
* If it could he proved, we should come ultimately to Hegel's posi
tion, "Sein u. Nichts," as identical.

64 APOLOGETICS.
thing. We affirm that it is non-finite, that no limits
can be assigned to it. But such a definition gives us
the idea in relation to the Finite, and not in itself.
(5) The Finite involves the real negation— negation
of being — by limitation. Here the maxim fully ap
plies : " Omnis determinatio est negatio." There is
a vast deal that the Finite is not. All besides its
limited self is denied of it. Hence the positive is
really upon the other side, viz. :
(6) The Infinite is the positive in thought, in the
highest sense.
Trendelenberg (Log., ii. 452) says : " The Absolute
is not a negative notion. We reach it by a negative
process. We remove everything which limits it, but
the notion itself is positive, and if it be correctly
thought is the most positive of all notions, because
not limited."
Herbert Spencer (in First Principles, ch. 2) says :
" The Absolute is positive, for in the very denial of
our power to know what it is lies the affirmation that
it is. Our conception of the Relative disappears, if
our idea of the Absolute is a pure negation."
Hamilton himself has said : " That is a positive
idea which affirms existence."
Concluding Statements :
1. We can give a positive as well as negative
statement of the Infinite.
In the way of negation : The Infinite is that (e. g.,
space and time) to which no limits can be assigned.
Positively : The Infinite is that which is complete in
itself, perfect, absolute, unconditioned.

APOLOGETICS. 65
2. We have an idea — though not a conception —
notion — of the Infinite.
An idea is that which we know to be, as having a
real and necessary being. It refers to pure being.
A conception is that which we know to be under
the forms and limitations of time and sense.
If we had a conception of the Infinite we should
make it finite.
IV. The position that we can have an absolute
knowledge of God.
We have affirmed that, as far as such predicates
as Infinite and Absolute are concerned, we can know,
positively, that they belong to God, without being
able to grasp or comprehend them.
But though we know the Infinite and Absolute in
this sense, it does not at all follow that from it we
are able to deduce the Finite and Relative — as Pan
theism asserts.
A knowledge of the Absolute is not absolute knowl
edge. Pantheism — to which the position now under
consideration brings us — is recommended to many
minds by its simplicity (being Monism) and its uni
versality. Exalting the immanence of God, in nature
and history, it has, however, sacrificed to this imma
nence the transcendence of God above all nature and
history. It has doubtless helped to break the power
of a mere deistic notion of God, as an abstract deity,
sundered from the world. But it has done this by a
theory which identifies the substance of the world with
the substance of the Godhead.
The fundamental postulate of Pantheism is — that

66 APOLOGETICS.
there is one infinite and absolute substance (spirit),
of which all relative and finite phenomena are but
modifications. Its assumption as to method is — that
the development of the Relative and Finite from the
Absolute and Infinite can be demonstrated as neces
sary. And this, of course, implies the further claim,
that man can know this Absolute and its processes,
because he is kindred thereto.
To show that Pantheism is the final and exclusive
system for man would involve the proof of the fol
lowing three points at least :
(i) That man knows the Absolute ; not as knowing
that it is, but, what it is. Such knowledge can be
proved only on the bold assumption that our sub
jective thought and objective being are identical.
With God, thought and being are doubtless coincident.
But, in a finite creature, thought can only be the re
flex and the echo of being ; and the measure of the
thought is not the measure of being, but only of the
capacity of the thinker. "Alas for the universe, if
it is only as, and what, we know - it to be ! " (And
the radically fallacious theory of knowledge, referred
to before, is also here assumed, viz., that we can
know only what we are.)
(2) That man can develop the Relative from the
Absolute, the Finite from the Infinite, and this by a
necessary or demonstrative process. But, in fact,
the Absolute and Relative, the Infinite and Finite, are
incommensurable ratios ; the idea of the one is con
trasted with, rather than deduced from, the other.
The relation of the two, in human thought, is
neither that of cause or ground to effect, nor that of

APOLOGETICS. 67
a whole to its parts, nor that of the generic to the
individual. It being none of these, the process of
demonstration (deduction) cannot be logically com
plete. And besides, the logical law of contradic
tion, by which alone, in the most consistent systems,
this demonstration is attempted, cannot be claimed,
without further evidence, to be a law of being as well
as of thought. For the principle of negativity is not
an efficient agent ; it has no productive or generating
capacity. Therefore it cannot be the principle of
a real development. It is not applicable even to
physical processes; it cannot explain a spontaneous
energy ; we cannot by it construct the acts of a per
sonal will. If inapplicable even to the Finite, its scope
must be too narrow to embrace the Infinite.
(3) The prime postulate of the system would also
require to be proved, viz., that there is only one
spirit (absolute and infinite) in the universe, and that
all other existences are its modes or modifications ;
itself unconscious, it is the source of all specific ma
terial and spiritual modes of being. The proof of
this involves also the proof of the second position,
just considered. But it is attended with other dif
ficulties. All that is, the Absolute and Relative, the
Infinite and Finite, may doubtless be included in one
category, viz., that of being. Herein is the truth, and
here may perhaps be also found the fallacy of the
pantheistic assumption. For as soon as we attempt
to pass from the abstract and indeterminate idea of
being, to any of its modes, e. g., the material and
spiritual, the real and the ideal, we need some primum
mobile, some developing power, to account for the

68 APOLOGETICS.
developing process. Whence this power ? It cannot
be deduced from the idea of being ; it must then be
hypostasized as inherent in being. That is, in order
to start, we must have a principle of movement, an
act, as well as being. And as it must be an activity
equal to all the effects ; the Absolute Being itself must
contain a causality adequate to each and all the spe
cific effects, of wisdom, power, and moral order man
ifest in the universe ; and how can it contain this,
without itself being wise, powerful, and good, i. e., a
conscious moral intelligence ?
Still further, when we come to the modes or modi
fications of being, we cannot construe them in thought
as having only one identical substance. Take, e. g.,
spirit and matter ; they are defined by contrasted
properties ; the properties cannot be deduced either
from each other, or from one and the same substance.
Substance and attributes are correlative. If there
are different attributes, we have no warrant for assert
ing identity of substance. Matter can be derived
from spirit only by an act, not by emanation. But
Pantheism must make this deduction — by emanation
— must prove the identity of substance, or else it
rests on a mere assumption.
Nor does it avail for the pantheist to say that an
Infinite which does not embrace the Finite is not in
finite but finite, since it has the Finite for its limit ;
and so of the Absolute. For whatever difficulty there
may be about it, it is equally difficult, on the other
hand, for the pantheist or any one else to conceive
that the Infinite includes the Finite, that the Absolute
includes the Relative, and that the Perfect includes

APOLOGETICS. 69
the Imperfect, without equally annulling the Infinite,
the Absolute, and the Perfect. The real problem —
equally a problem with pantheist and theist — is not
to show that the one includes the other, but rather
to show how the transition must or may be made from
the one to the other. The theist says, by creation —
the act of a self-conscious will ; the pantheist must
say, by emanation — the outflowing of an unconscious
substance. Both find here the knot of speculation.
But the pantheist is obliged to demonstrate the transi
tion ; the theist need only show that it is possible to
an absolute will, and may grant that the mode is
beyond the scrutiny of human science. And while
the theist refers all the order and harmony of the
universe to a wise and intelligent author, all final
causes to the one efficient cause, the pantheist is
burdened with the difficulty of explaining how the
Intelligent can be derived from the Unintelligent, the
Personal from the Impersonal, the Moral from the
Neutral, and the whole fair order of the kosmos from
a blind, unconscious spirit, which becomes conscious
of its rational and moral powers only in and by these
products themselves.
(Further : as to the Infinite including the Finite, or
else not being the Infinite, it is to be noticed (1)
that this could apply only when what is excluded
would add to the perfection of the being, (2) that it
applies to quantity [space and time], not to quality.)
Hence, upon the whole question as to our knowl
edge of the Infinite and Absolute, it is to be affirmed
that our knowledge is neither negative nor absolute,
not of the Finite only, nor of the Infinite wholly, but
lies between, having elements of both.

70 APOLOGETICS.

CHAPTER III.
THE SENSE IN WHICH WE CAN BE SAID TO KNOW THE
ABSOLUTE AND INFINITE — GOD.
The general result (of the discussion in Chap. II.) —
or the theistic position — is that —
i . All our knowledge is not derived by induction
from the phenomena of sensation ; otherwise no God
is reached, or only an imagination, a being made in
our image, an anthropomorphic deity, an illusion — no
reality. 2. That man can know the Absolute as well as the
Relative, and knows the Relative as relative only be
cause he has a presentiment — a knowledge of the
real being of the Absolute.
3. This knowledge is not a negative knowledge,
excepting in the sense that it declares that the Infi
nite is not the Finite, the Absolute is not the Relative.
It is positive in the sense of the affirmation of real
being. 4. While our knowledge is not an absolute knowl
edge, it is a knowledge of the Absolute. We can know
the real being of what we are not, know that — not
what — know, not comprehend. __*. g. We can know
that space is illimitable without grasping the illimit
able, or being ourselves illimitable.
God may have some modes or attributes of which
we know nothing. Spinoza here is right,* and cau-
* /. .., as far as his method is concerned.

APOLOGETICS. 7 1
tious, when he says : " The infinite substance may
have infinite modes ; of these we know two, thought
and extension."
Hence, if we know God, this cannot be by induc
tion, which would give only the sum of the finite ;
nor by intuition (direct), else no proof could be de
manded ; nor by identification, else we should know
no God above the world.
If we know God at all, it is not as we know a stone,
or tree, or man ; not as we know a class, an abstract
notion, a general idea; not as we know a nothing or
an inconceivability ; but as we can and may know a
perfect absolute being — intelligent and personal —
the author of the world, and the appropriate object
of our love and worship.
We have now the question : How man comes to the
knowledge of God. In what sense we know Him ; and
how we arrive at such knowledge.
§ I . Explanatory. The question is, How can we knozv
God?
This very question implies some knowledge. Un
less we had some conception of God we could and
would nevermore ask, How can and do we know
God ? Unless man had some belief in God he would
not ask, any more than an animal, Can you prove
His being — can you demonstrate His existence?
The question implies a need, a craving — seeks for
an answer to a demand of our rational and moral
being. This is the very least that can be said. There
is a strong subjective belief — that is the starting-

72 APOLOGETICS.
point ; and the question is, Is there a corresponding
objective reality ? Are there sufficient grounds for
full belief, binding on all rational and moral beings ? *
Hence the question is not at all about knowing
some unknown thing, about proving the existence of
a mere abstraction — as a theorem in geometry. It is
as to the proving the existence of a being in whom,
somehow, in some wise, we already believe. It is
not going from the known to the unknown — but
showing that there are valid and final reasons for a
strong, universal, native, human belief.
Proof, in this case, means — and can only mean —
that the ultimate truths of our mental and moral be
ing, that all the facts we know about the world with
out and the world within, that the ultimate ideas
and laws of the mind, and the rationale of matter as
well — that all our ideas, all our knowledge, all the
categories of thought, all the processes of knowledge
— agree with, lead to, rest in, the knowledge and
worship of the one only living and true God.
So that if we give up God, we give up all that is
highest and best in knowledge, the very life of the
soul. To illustrate the character of the proof required,
take the case of the parallel (in some sense) belief in
an external world. Everybody believes in an ex-
* In some respects like, e. g., the question of the real existence of
the sun and fixed stars. We believe them — see them. But, it is ob
jected, our senses deceive us ; there may be no external world. You
think you see it ; it is only a sensation — an image — a nervous impres
sion — a motion of the molecules — an irrecognizable source of transient
impression. Prove that the sun exists.

APOLOGETICS. 73
ternal world.* But some sceptic says, there is none ;
it is all a fleeting shadow, ideas, sensations. Prove,
if you can, that such a world exists. Then we will
believe it, when you demonstrate it by means of
some ultimate idea or crucial experiment. How,
now, are you to set about proving this to him, espe
cially when he says that if you do not, all the natural
sciences must be given up as unreal and visionary.f
We tell him there is an irresistible, universal, in
expugnable belief. Yes, he replies, but that is only
an idea, a sensation, something purely subjective.
Prove, demonstrate your objective reality.
How, we ask him, can any one go to work to con
duct such a proof in the way you propose ? Every
thing that you know, that you are conscious of, you
call a subjective sensation, and demand that we pass
from that to something objective. You deny all
objectivity, all reality to the object, and then ask us
to put that idea into you as a development of the
subjective. That cannot be done. Nobody can de
duce the objective from the subjective. The objec
tive can only be known, not deduced.
If you admit the reality of any objectivity what
ever, there is a basis of argument ; but if you do
this, you give up the opinion that the objective is to
be proved by a process, and confess that it may be
known as a fact and ultimate.
We may, can, and must know nature (and God),
* Especially do the naturalists who doubt about everything else ;
else were their vocation emptier than that which they ascribe to the
theologians. f This is what they say about religion.
4

74 APOLOGETICS.
because we may, can, and must recognize an objec
tive reality corresponding to some — say only at first
some one — of our ideas. Grant this, and the rest
follows: deny this, and you fall into metaphysical
insanity. The idea of being as objective is the source and
test of all true philosophy.
Admit anywhere, at any point — the smallest — that
the subject and object are together in an act of con
sciousness, and the question is settled. For there, at
that point, in that consciousness, idea and reality,
thought and being, coalesce. If such objective reality
of some of our ideas or beliefs be wholly denied, no
proof is possible. Thus, if the barest objective be
admitted (the least ray of light), it is inclusively ad
mitted that the two coalesce in a single conscious
act somewhere. Hence the belief in the objective
world is given directly in consciousness, be that world
atoms, or forces, or what it may.
Then to carry on the argument proving the reality,
the proof will consist (on the basis of the above ad
mission), in showing that the facts of external and
internal experience agree, are counterparts, outside
and inside, idea and law, all making up one system.
So, in respect to the proof of the being of God.
The reality of being (objective) is the primal con
sciousness. In sum : There are two grand spheres, Nature and
Spirit. Man belongs to both. In the spiritual, as
spirit, he knows God ; in the natural, he knows na
ture. There are two fundamental metaphysical ques
tions: (i) Does nature exist; has it a real being?

APOLOGETICS. 75
(2) Does God (the spiritual in essence) exist, and has
God real being ? There is the same question for both.
There are the same objections to both. Man, devel
oped, knows both. What are the grounds of his
knowledge ? Is there an object corresponding to
the subjective belief ? Nature is, says the naturalist.
God is, says the spiritualist. Prove the existence of
nature, says the idealist. Prove the existence of
God, says the naturalist. The method of proof (so
called) must be essentially the same in the one as in
the other. Track, know the mode of proof in the
one, and in the other is its parallel. What does, or
can, proof here mean ? Disprove God, and by the
same argument I will disprove the world. Prove the
world, and in a way akin I will prove God.
§ 2. First Point in the Ascensio Mentis ad Deum.
The starting-point, the point d'appui, the fulcrum
is in man's native belief, in the fact that man is made
in the image of God.
Hence what the mystics call the ascensio mentis
ad Deum ; and there is a natural ascension here as
well as a spiritual, an instinctive as well as a reflec
tive knowledge, as is proved by the history of all
nations. What is implied in native knowledge ?
Man is made for God — must believe in Him, must
know Him. The image seeks its archetype-; the
reflected light is to be traced back to its source. In
this native knowledge of God we have the profound-
est instinct, the deepest bent of the human soul.

76 APOLOGETICS.
This does not by itself prove the being of God,
objectively. It sets us on the proof: it makes the
evidence a matter of the highest concern. It haunts
us, as Columbus was haunted and inspired by the
vision of the Atlantis beyond the seas. It shapes
the question thus : Is there valid and sufficient evi
dence of the real being of Him whom we worship, of
a Reality corresponding with the aboriginal instinct
of the human soul ?
This instinct, we say, is native to the soul, im
planted, vis insita.* Religion is impossible without
it ; the actual religions prove the belief, as much as
works of art prove the existence of the sentiment
and idea of beauty ; as much as social order, and law,
and courts of justice prove the reality of duty and
obligation ; as much as the existence of governments,
states, and nations proves the existence of a social
instinct, that government is not by contract, but by
necessity. We call this — and may well call it — a native be-
lief.f We mean by this, that man is made for God;
* Dr. Owen (cited in Haliburton's Rat. Inq. , c. 3) : " We do not
say that men are born with any natural knowledge of God, as they
have no knowledge at all when they are born ; but we say that they
are born with a capacity of knowing him, and that they do not so
naturally know, as they feel this implanted capacity of knowing God,
which stirs them up to worship him in some manner. And that this
capacity will not less naturally and spontaneously exert itself in adults
that are possessed of reason than reason itself."
f In Latin we can say, Conscientia Dei; in German, Gottesbewusstsein;
in French even, la conscience de Dieu; not quite yet in English, con
sciousness of God. " Innate idea " also is too definite; it came from
the Cartesian metaphysics of simple ideas — clear, distinct — as ultimate.

APOLOGETICS. "J1/
that all his powers tend to Him ; that the right
use of all his powers leads to Him ; that man's rea
son, conscience, and affections are satisfied only in
Him, that He is the complement of our being; that
we, in fact, know ourselves only as we know Him.
The evidence for this " native belief" is —
I. Historical.
II. Psychological (analyzing our powers we .find
that the highest exercise of all is in religion).
III. Philosophical.
As to I., the consensus gentium, the proof of which
must of course be derived from history, we cite a few
instances and illustrations.
The historical testimony is well summed up in
Calvin's Inst., lib. i. ch. 3. Caption : " Dei notitiam
hominum mentibus naturaliter esse insitam."
The first sentence : " Quendam inesse humana.
menti, et quidem naturali instinctu, divinitatis sen-
sum, extra controversiam ponimus."
Aristotle (dc Ccelo, i. 3) says : navreS avStpco7toi
nspi Seaiv exovffiv vxo\r/ipiv.
Plato (de Legibus x. contra Atheos) often asserts
that " the belief in the god or the gods is a natural,
an universal instinct."
Cicero (Tusc. Disp., i. 27) says : " Nee vero Deus
ipse, qui intelligitur a nobis, alio modo intelligi po
test, nisi mens soluta quaedam et libera, segregata
ab omni concretione mortali, omnia sentiens et
movens, ipsaque praedita motu sempiterno."
Cicero (de Nat. Deor., i. 16), "Quae est enim gens,
aut quod genus hominum, quod non habeat, sine
doctrina, anticipationem quandam Deorum, quam

78 APOLOGETICS.
appellat 7tp6\r;ipiv Epicurus, i. e., anteceptam animo
rei quandam informationem, sine qua non intelligi
quidquam, nee quaeri, nee disputari potest." *
Maximinus Tyrius (cited by Grotius, de Veritate, i.
§ 15) says ; " Notwithstanding the great discord, con
fusion, and debates among men, the whole world agree
in this one constant opinion, that God is the king
and. father of all; but that there are many other gods
who are but sent and share in his government. This
is affirmed by Greeks and barbarians, by the dweller
on the continent and the dweller on the shore."
Prichard (Egypt. Mythol.) shows that the Egyp
tians believed in a First Cause which was spiritual.
Sharon Turner (History Angl. Sax., App. to Bk. II.
ch. 3) says : " Odin's first name was All-Father, though
many others were subjoined in process of time."
The universality of belief in God is hardly con
tested. The array of evidence would fill volumes.
As soon as society exists anywhere we find something
like forms of worship. The most primitive and most
degraded tribes are most exclusively under this re
ligious control.f
The general evidence from the consensus gentium
also contains an objective element (besides the sub-
* Conf. de Leg., i. 8 ; Tusc. Q., i. 13 ; de Nat, x. 17 ; Seneca,
Epist. 117.
f In reviewing the evidence Benjamin Constant (bom at Lausanne,
1767) had a remarkable experience. He set out to write a book to dis
prove the universal belief in deity, but as he proceeded became con
vinced of the opposite. He was a disciple of the Encyclopaedists.
" My work," he says, " is a singular proof of the remark of Bacon,
that a little philosophy leads a man to atheism, but a good deal to re
ligion." His book, de la Religion, published at Paris, 1824.

APOLOGETICS. 79
jective) that, as a matter of fact, men not only have
this internal religious sentiment, but have also be
lieved in the existence of deities, and ultimately of
one supreme, divine power. Man's religious feeling
is not a mere subjective state, but an aiming ever
after an object ; as if there were an objective reality-
corresponding. (This would not directly prove the
existence of such an object ; but it does prove the
fact that men have believed in such.) The religious
sentiment aims after and needs an object, just as
much as the eyes need light, as the body craves food.
That there should be in man such a craving for di
vinity, and no object corresponding, is as unnatural,
as incredible, as that there should be a craving for
food and no food to satisfy it. And, in point of fact,
we cannot conceive (metaphysically) of an exercise
of the religious sentiment without the belief in the
objective existence of deities.*
The most primitive belief of India, seen in the
older Sanskrit writings, was doubtless such.f Such
was the most ancient Egyptian. (See Kenrick and
Prichard.) Cicero, Plato, and Aristotle all confess
such, not only as being their own faith, but as being
the primitive faith of man. The Indians of America
believed in one spirit : Dr. Livingstone finds a simi
lar belief among the tribes of Central Africa. The
Mosaic monotheism was a revelation, but it completed,
unfolded the idea of God ; and man's reason, when
* As of the question of beauty, etc.
f Cf. Prof. H. H. Wilson, Ed. Rev., Oct., i860, The old Vedic Re
ligions. Diestel, Der Monotheismus des altesten Heidenthums, Jahrb.
f. d. Theol., i860.

80 APOLOGETICS.
the idea of God is understood — however received —
welcomes it as the truth. So that ultimately the be
lief is in one God.* So the Mohammedan religion.
So of the Christian monotheism. The religious sen
timent leads naturally, logically, and only to this one
God, where it is rightly educated.
To give specimens of the evidence,f we mention:
The fate behind the Greek drama, and behind the
Parsee conflict of Ormuzd and Ahriman.
Athens with thirty thousand deities, longing for
the unknown God.
The Eleusinian mysteries.
Eusebius (Praep. Evang.) cites from a lost tragedy
of Euripedes :
" Thou self-sprung being, that doth all infold
And in thine arms heaven's whirling fabric hold."
On the Sibylline Oracles, see Neand. Ch. H., i. 35.
Justin Martyr cites from them this passage :
" One God there is alone, great, uncreate,
Omnipotent, invisible, seeing all,
Himself unseen by mortal flesh. "
The passage from the CiliciaYi poet Aratus, to
* A. H. v. Schlegel. " The more I investigate the ancient history
of the world, the more I am convinced that the civilized nations set out
from a purer worship of the Supreme Being " — that polytheism was a
corruption of this, and that the wise preserved the memory of it.
f See Cudworth's Intel. Syst. ; Warburton's Div. Leg. ; Muller's
Introd. to Mythology ; F. W. Schlegel's Lang, and Wisd. of the In
dians ; Mosheim's Early History of Chr'y, i. 17 ; Neander's Ch. Hist.,
i. 536 ; Kenrick's Ancient Egypt, i. 302 ; Ritter, vol. i. ; 'and espe
cially Schelling's Philos, d. Mythologie, 1856.

APOLOGETICS. 8 1
which the Apostle Paul is supposed to have referred
(Acts xvii.), has been thus translated :
" From Jove begin we — who can touch the string,
And not harp praise to heaven's Eternal King ?
He animates the mart and crowded way,
The restless ocean and the sheltered bay.
Doth care perplex ? Is lowering danger nigh ?
We are Jove's offspring, and to Jove we fly."*
These phenomena of religion can only be ascribed
to this: that there is a subjective religious sentiment
or feeling belonging to human nature as such (simple
and ultimate), prompting man to seek for God.
No mere external authority could have produced
these phenomena and facts of religion in human his
tory. No " invention " theory will account for them.
Men do not invent what IS, on such a grand scale.
The religions of history are the grand facts of history.
And besides, why are the " inventions " received?
The assertion that religion springs from fear does
not answer. Whence the fear ?
Nor that it is from education. It is through edu
cation, not from it.f
Only some native, common religious sentiment can
account for the sum of the phenomena.
The very universality of superstition demands of
us that we recognize such a ground for it.

* But see a different version in Turnbull, p. 45.
f The difference between what is given by nature and education is
seen in the act of talking and learning the alphabet. Religion is
learning to talk.

82 APOLOGETICS.
The native belief in God is equally proved by man's
conscious internal experience. All men, at times,
have the feeling of reverence and worship springing
up in them. They cannot suppress it always; its
voice is heard in the great emergencies and changes
of life. It shows itself in all men, chiefly in the fol
lowing forms :
(a) A profound sense of dependence on some un
seen and higher power.*
(b) In the monitions of conscience, suggesting di
vine judgments for our deeds. This is in all men. So
that the divine being is recognized as a moral ruler.
(c) It is also seen in the fact that man will sacrifice
to religion all other ties and affections.
II. The second source of proof that the knowledge
of God is connatural, is derived from an analysis of
human nature itself, showing that the highest exer
cises of each and all of man's powers is in religion.
There are two points here : (a) The highest exer
cise of each is in religion ; (b) The combined exercise
.of all is in religion. f
(a) The highest exercise of each.
(i) The intellect. The ultimate analysis here is
into the two elements, the infinite and the finite, or
the absolute and the relative. These comprehend,
in the last analysis, the two extreme terms of our
knowledge. We cannot, in thought, either escape or
go beyond them. Take away, in thought, all that
* Schleiermacher makes this the only element. It is not that — but
it is one.
f The first source being the consensus itself, the second, the analy
sis of this into its subjective and objective elements.

APOLOGETICS. 83
comes from the finite and the limited, and we
go back upon and rest in something which is infi
nite. Take away what is fleeting, and we cannot
but think of and believe in something which is ab
solute. Whether this infinite, this absolute, be conceived of
as positive or as negative (which we must by and by
ask about), it is still a fact of man's intellect that he
believes, and cannot but believe, that there is that
which is infinite, which is boundless, which is unlim
ited. The necessity of thought compels to this ; we
cannot escape it. Everybody who thinks about it
believes that as a matter of fact there is something
which is not finite, not limited, e. g., space and time.
Exceptions are exceptions. They arise from yielding
the mind too exclusively to physics, or to too much
metaphysics. Instances given are such as La Place,
some French Encyclopaedists,* Harriet Martineau,
Comte,f Epicurus, Leucippus, etc., to show that a
number of highly intellectual persons have disavowed
belief in God.
The only object of a reply to this objection is to
show that the unbelief of such persons does not in
volve disproof of the general fact.
(a) These are exceptions in their own class of

* Not Voltaire.
f Comte, however, grants, that if an answer must be had to the
question of the origin of things, the best answer would be an intelli
gent will ; but he says the problem is insoluble. He repudiates the
name of atheist, saying that ' ' atheism is the most irrational form of
theology."

84 APOLOGETICS.
minds. The greatest minds of all times have been
on the other side.
(b) Even these concede the existence of an ultimate
power, energy, etc., in unity of action — the most gen
eral notion of divinity. Their denial is that of a sin
gle personal agency.*
(c) As degradation may suppress nature, so may
a one-sided intellectual or metaphysical cultivation
dry up, stifle the soul. This is doubtless possible.
(d) Their scepticism does not at all impair the
argument for the point to be established, viz., that
a belief in God is native to man. They have sup
pressed the voice of nature. Their unbelief no more
disproves that belief is native than the solitary cases
of misanthropes disprove the position that man was
made to love his fellows ; nor than the case of the
idealists disproves the fact that men are by nature
impelled to a belief in the independent existence of
the material world.f
(.) The reply to this scepticism is in the general
argument. III. The Philosophical Evidence.
God is the sum of the categories. God is the
idea of ideas. God is that which is ultimate in
human thought.
The rudiments of the IDEA: being, force, cause,
* The ancient atheists were against the gods many; the modern are
against one God.
t Cf. Cud worth's Intel. Syst., ch. iv.
Hume's Essays on the Natural History of Rei. acknowledge the
feeling of dependence on God, but ascribe it to education, disease,
etc.

APOLOGETICS. 85
substance — eternal and infinite — truth, beauty, good
ness — all in one.
None doubt this except those bound up in sense.
Man may think away external nature, but not in
finite and absolute being, in some form.
The only real question to-day is as to personal
intelligence and consciousness. The force of force,
idea of ideas, sum of the categories — that is confessed
by unbelievers to be their God.
The theist claims all this, and more too.

§ 3. The Shaping of the Argument.
We have thus our basis in the argument — a pri
mary, universal, instinctive belief, conscientia Dei.
This is the fulcrum of the lever. Now to frame the
argument. What is its nature ? What its best form ?
What is the sense of the argument ?
We must come to the knowledge of God as we do
to all other real and ultimate knowledge, by the
combination of two factors — the intuitional and the
experiential ; by the union of two methods, the a
priori (ontological, demonstrative) and the a pos
teriori, the inquisition into the grounds and causes
of facts and phenomena.
The meaning of "Argument for the Being of
God—" Not, arguing from the known to the unknown.
The object is to evince the certainty, reality of the
idea of God's being.
The idea is innate : not as complete and distinct,
but irresistible mental and moral tendency. It ap-

86 APOLOGETICS.
pears first in the form of feeling, anticipation. Edu
cation develops it.
The proofs are the development of this idea, in all
its necessity and relations.
The proofs are various ; not because any of them
is unconvincing, but on account of the universality
of the idea.
All the proofs are one proof or chain of argument.
The progress in the proofs is from the more ab
stract to the most concrete. Ontological, cosmolog-
ical, teleological, moral, etc., exhibiting it on all
sides. The proof is not of a mere abstract being, but of
the existence of the fullness of absolute being.
What, now, are we to prove ?
The existence of an infinite personal Spirit, the
author (or Creator) of the world. This is the least
we can propose ; it presents the demand in its lowest
terms. Two points are involved: (i) The infinitude
and personality of this Spirit ; (2) this world (all that
is finite) is by and through him. To prove the one
without the other is not to prove God. To prove an
infinite personal spirit alone is not enough ; to prove
an author of the world is not enough ; we must do
both to have God, i. e., a being in whom we may
trust, who is our God. The two conceptions may be
sundered in thought and proof ; there might be an
infinite personal being who had no relation to the
world ; there might, possibly, be an author of finite
phenomena, not an infinite spirit. We need both if
the proof is to be adequate.
How, then, shall this proof be conducted ?

APOLOGETICS. 87
It can only be, it seems to me, in the following
order and manner :
1. As the starting-point show that man's whole
nature and man's whole history prove the need to
him of a God; that man by nature and reason is
irresistibly prompted to seek for Deity, and cannot
else be satisfied. This is not the proof of God's
being, but the basis of proof.*
2. That all the phenomena and facts of the uni
verse (so far as known) demand the recognition of a
God as their source and unity — a personal God, the
necessary complement of the world.
3. That man's reason (a priori) demonstrates the
existence of a real, infinite, absolute being.
4. The combination of 2 and 3 gives us the result
and proof.
In its ultimate philosophical principles the proof
for the being of God consists of three arguments,
resting upon three ideas :
(a) The ontological argument, on the idea of being.
(b) The cosmological argument, on the idea of
cause. (.) The teleological argument, on the idea of de
sign. The so-called ontological is not a priori in the
sense of from cause to effect, as if the cause of God's
* There is a kind of parallel here to Kant's procedure in his Cri
tique of the Pure Reason, against the sceptics, to show, first of all,
the necessity and universality of the judgments of pure reason, against
sceptics, not yet asking for their objective validity (which is to be
established on other grounds). He cuts off, thus, the appeal of scep
tics to reason, etc., etc.

88 APOLOGETICS.
existence were grasped. It is the argument from
being, from the idea of being. Not a syllogism,
rather an analysis. The only assumption is that of
being. The only conclusion — the attributes of being.
In the cosmological1 argument, the eye is not now
on being, but on successions of being ; so that all
temporal is seen to depend on the eternal, all finite
on the infinite, etc.
In the teleological argument, nature, mind, morals,
history, reveal the pursuit of ends, above all, of an
end. The contradictory proposition never can be proved.
To prove the atheist's position would imply omni
presence, omniscience, eternity, self-existence in him
who established the conclusion.*
All the proofs make one proof; all the arguments
make one argument. All are intended to establish
the necessity of the divine existence, to explain the
universe, so far as we know it.
The proofs need to be enumerated seriatim and
independently : e. g., in Melanchthon's Loci, 9, they
are reduced to five or six. But all these are only
successive aspects and enlargements of the idea of
God. Thus, the ontological argument gives the idea
of the being of God and its abstract elements as nec
essary to human thought, the idea of one absolute,
infinite Being as the cause of all that is.f
Then the cosmological argument stands between

* Cf. Pearson. Infidelity.
f See Herbert Spencer's reasonings and concessions ; his attempt
to reconcile philosophy and theology.

APOLOGETICS. 89
the a priori and a posteriori, giving the connecting
link, the bridge, in the idea of cause.
And then follows the a posteriori argument, show
ing that there is an all-powerful, wise, and good
author of the world (all that is finite). The natural
sciences, mental and moral constitution of man, his
tory, consensus gentium (not hominum) testify here.
The decisive force of the argument lies in the
combination of the two main aspects of it.
The ontological proves, from our necessary ideas,
that there is a Being, infinite, unconditioned, spir
itual, the ground and cause of all that is. But it has
failed to demonstrate conscious intelligence or per
sonality. The different forms of the a posteriori argument
prove that the adequate cause of all that is must be
(a) intelligent, rational, wise — because there is intel
ligence, reason, wisdom, in the whole of creation ;
(b) must be moral, because there are moral ideas and
a moral order in the world itself. But this argument
fails to show the infinitude of this cause, and fails to
demonstrate that only one personal agency is con
cerned in all.
Combining the two, we have one substance, infinite,
spiritual, and the ground and cause of all that is ;
also, intelligent and moral, or the source of rational
ends and a moral order.
The question may arise, what warrants us in making
the combination, and saying that the one infinite
substance (demonstrated ontologically) is also the
cause or source of the rational ends and moral order
in creation ? We are warranted in doing this for two

90 APOLOGETICS.
reasons : (a) The law of parsimony ; requiring a sim
plicity of ultimate causes; But this is not enough.
(b) By the nature of the causative agency, which
enters into both arguments equally. Ontologically,
we see the necessity of one ultimate causative energy
for all that is ; and, in the series of causes produced
by this energy, we find intelligence, reason, and
moral order. Hence the causality in the case must
be rational and moral.
After all, true knowledge of God is a living, vital
knowledge, gained only from communion with Him.
It is the highest spiritual vision of the soul. The
loss of it is spiritual darkness and death. This we
are never to forget and never deny. Religion is not
a theory, not metaphysics, not demonstrations — but
a life, the life of God in the soul of man.

CHAPTER IV.

THE SUPERNATURAL AS THE MIRACULOUS. — THE DOC
TRINE OF MIRACLES : * HERE CHIEFLY PHILOSOPHICAL.
The Supernatural and the Miraculous are not
identical. * References to works. Hume, of course. Campbell, Dissertation
on Miracles. Mill's Logic (concedes that a miracle is not against the
law of cause and effect). Article by Prof. Smith in Appletons' Cyclo
paedia. Mozley, 1865 (3d ed., 1872). Wardlaw, 1852. Trench, 1850
(and later). Leslie, Truth of Christianity. Powell, Essays and Re
views (cf. Goodwin, Am. Theol. Rev.). N. W. Taylor, Sects, on
Mor. Gov. Mansel, Aids to Faith, 1861. Butler, Anal., Pt. II.,
c. 2. Whately, Historic Doubts. Douglass, Criteria of Miracles.

APOLOGETICS. 91
The miraculous is one mode or manifestation of
the supernatural, as we have already seen. In one
sense, in the highest sense, all nature is a manifesta
tion of the supernatural. Creation is the highest
miracle (in a general sense). The incarnation and
resurrection of Christ are also manifestations of the
supernatural. Take the resurrection of .Christ and
the raising of Lazarus, and the latter is a miracle in
the stricter sense. But really, fundamentally, there
is the same power, the same idea, the same moral
end in both. Unbelief creates a sliding scale as to
the whole manifestation of the supernatural. Give
up the Scripture miracles, and logically you give up
Creation. This is Strauss's position (Old and New
Faith), Renan's, and that of the whole modern school.
Belief in a personal God and in miracles really stand
or fall together in any consecutive logic or theory.
Miracles are the revelation of the supernatural in
deed, as the Bible is in word, as Christ is in the incar
nation. Further, miracles are usually discussed only in re
lation to the evidences — the question being, How
far, and in what sense they give evidence of the
divine commission of those who claim to be messen
gers of God. Christ says : " The works that I do
bear witness to me." This, undoubtedly, is the strict
sense of " miracles." It is necessary, however, to take

Steinmeyer, Miracles (translated, 1875). Dr. A. Hovey, Miracles of
Christ as attested, 1863. Barnes, Ely Lectures. Dr. A. P. Peabody,
Ely Lectures. Dr. Skinner, Presb. Rev., Jan., 1865. Newman's
Essay.

92 APOLOGETICS.
them — before they are viewed as evidences — in their
most general aspects. Here is the battle ground on
the question of the Supernatural in History.
Here, moreover, both Christianity and Theism are
in the sharpest contrast and contest with the two
reigning schools of modern anti-Christian thought —
the pantheistic and materialistic — the idealistic and
the positive (materialistic — realistic). The impossi
bility of miracles is with them as an axiom — is the
one unproved datum of all their criticism and philos
ophy. The same is true of evolutionists of every
variety. Strauss and Renan both assume this as the
basis of their criticism of the life of Christ, rejecting
as unhistorical all that is miraculous (without any
exception). This unproved postulate we are now to
examine. On philosophical grounds the proposition : A mir
acle in the nature of the case is impossible, is to be
met with the proposition : A miracle is possible, and,
on sufficient evidence, credible.
Hume was cautious, arguing against the proof or
the possibility of proving a miracle; now, opponents
are more daring, asserting the impossibility of the
miraculous intervention itself. Of course, one who
does not believe in a God cannot believe in a miracle
as a work of God ; as an event it may confound, but
cannot convince him.
Strauss says : " The absolute cause never disturbs
the chain of second causes by single arbitrary acts,
but rather manifests itself in the production of the
aggregate of final causalities, and of their reciprocal
action." This is well put. (i) He allows that the

APOLOGETICS. 93
absolute cause manifests itself in second causes —
which is true. (2) Allows that it produces the chain
and all in it — in which he is right. (3) Asserts that
the absolute cause produces not as an arbitrary act,
that is, not without cause, ground, reason — which is
granted. But (4) can we tell a priori what and what
not the absolute cause may or may not do? If not,
it is a question of fact, history, testimony, and the
miraculous is not a priori impossible.
In the discussion all depends on getting
1. The True Idea of the Miracle.
2. The Possibility of it.
3. Determining when it is Probable.
4. Determining the Actual Proof.
§ 1. The True Idea of the Miracle.
As prodigies, wonders, marvels, miracles are almost
universally recognized, in all religions.
In the early apologies for Christianity they were
not contested in general ; objections were made to
particular miracles and their proof — not to miracles
in general. This mode of viewing the matter pre
vailed for a long time in the early church ; no sharp
lines were drawn.
Augustine first brought the idea of miracles under
the general notion of order — a part of Providence —
a mode of divine working.*
* De Civ., x. 12. " Is not the world a miracle, yet visible, of God's
working ? Nay, all the miracles done in the world are less than the
world itself, the heavens and earth and all that in them is ; yet God
made them all, and after a manner we cannot conceive."
De Civ., xxi. 8. Miracles are not against nature in her highest

94 APOLOGETICS.
In the New Testament, three words are chiefly
used, which may serve as criteria of a miracle :
I. repots. Marvels, prodigies (never Savpa),
("lOlb* marking the effect on the beholder.
2. Svva/xiS. Mighty work, marking the efficiency,
the supernatural element.
3. Gtj)XEiov, J11K, Sign, marking the purpose or ob
ject, the moral end, placing the event in connection
with revelation.
Miracles thus are
Wonderful phenomena, not explicable by known
laws or natural agencies (second causes) ;
The product and evidence of superhuman, divine
power ;
Designed to give attestation to a divine revelation.
More particularly :
1. A miracle is some event or phenomenon which
(in common with all other events) is a fact, an occur
rence, subject to observation and testimony. Else
there could be no proof of it. The presumption is
against it ; but this may be overborne by evidence,
as far as the alleged fact is concerned. E.g. Raising
the dead.
The miraculous is doubtless used always in con
trast with nature or the natural ; but it is not prop-
aspect. " How is that against nature which comes from the will of
God, since the will of such a great Creator is what makes the nature of
everything ? In miracles God does nothing against nature : what is
unaccustomed may appear to us to be against nature, but not so to God
who constituted nature. "
So Abelard : "In relation to God nothing is miraculous."

APOLOGETICS. 95
erly or best defined as a violation of the laws of na
ture, or a suspension. This is, at the best, a negative
description, and does not give the attributes of the
miracle. It exposes to needless objections. Miracles
are in contrast with the ordinary laws of nature, are
not explicable by them,* are above them ; that is all.
In relation to nature, a miracle is in it, yet not of
it, is from a higher source, another power than is
seen in the sequence strictly natural.f
It is not necessary to say that all the signs and
wonders in the Bible are of this decisive, indubitable
character; there may be, and is, a great difference
among them, and some " wonders" may be explained
by natural laws.
Only — There are some indubitable ones, some
manifestations of divine power which no possible
advance of science can explain. There are Test
Miracles, which admit only of the alternative:
Miracle or Fraud. E. g. The raising of Lazarus.
We should not care if there were only one — that is
enough.:]: * Thus Spinoza, Tract. Theol. -politicus : " A miracle signifies any
work, the natural cause of which we cannot explain after the example
of anything else to which we are accustomed : at least he who writes
about or relates the miracle cannot explain it. ''
t As to the ambiguity of "Nature" and "Laws of Nature," see
Mill in his "Essays on Religion " (last work).
(a) Nature means : all phenomena and their causes. In this sense
miracles would belong to nature.
(b) It may mean : second causes — the ordinary course. In this
sense the cause of miracles lies outside of second causes.
(c) It may mean : the uniformity of nature, allowing no changes.
But this, as we shall see, is no final principle, no absolute law.
X As Renan plainly sees and grants.

96 APOLOGETICS.
The question arises : Can God only perform mira-
cles? Wm. Fleetwood (1656-1723, Bp. St. Asaph) in
his Essay on Miracles, 1701, takes the ground that
none but God performs true miracles : " No true mira
cle was ever performed in opposition to truth." He
was replied to by Bp. Hoadley, 1702 (and by Gilbert).*
Chalmers has taken the position that created
agents may work miracles ; that miracles are to be
distinguished by their design, not their source, to be
tested by the falsehood or truth of the doctrine
which they seal.
This evidently denudes the miracle of its value —
as an interposition of God.
On the whole, the weight of evidence goes to show
that bad men and demons have not wrought real
miracles. The Egyptian enchantments were probably im
positions ; the man of sin produces lying wonders ;
Samuel may be best assumed to have been raised by
divine power, etc. t
It is difficult to believe that God would give a di
rect power over nature — power to set aside his own
ordinances — to evil beings. If the power in question
be creative — the power of raising the dead — this
would seem to be impossible to be communicated.
* The reading of these led Locke to write his Disc, on Miracles.
f The prohibitions of necromancy and witchcraft do not necessarily
involve the recognition of a real control over nature similar to the di
vine, exercised by demons. Yet it need not be denied that evil spirits
have access to some secrets of nature which human science has not
reached, and may never reach. Man (and demons) may work the
" mirabile," but not the "miraculum."

APOLOGETICS. 97
The Scriptures afford the following intimations on
both sides of the question :
Only God performs real miracles :
John iii. 2. " No man can do these miracles that
thou doest, except God be with him." (This, of course,
being the opinion of Nicodemus, is not decisive.)
Acts x. 38-40. " Jesus of Nazareth .... who
went about doing good, and healing all that were pos
sessed of the devil ; for God was with him."
John v. 36. " The same works that I do bear wit
ness of me, that the Father hath sent me."
John x. 38. " Though ye believe not me, believe
the works."
Matt. xii. 26, 28. — " if Satan cast out Satan " — " if
I by the Spirit of God"—
Per contra :
Matt. vii. 22. — " and in thy name have cast out
devils," i. e., men rejected at the last have exercised
this power. But mark — " in thy name."
Matt. xxiv. 24. — " shall arise .... false proph
ets, and shall shew great signs and wonders." Yet
there is no reason why these should not belong
only to the class of " mirabilia," and not of " mi-
racula." Rev. xiii. 13 ; xvi. 14. The same remark applies.
2. Does the progress of science, continually ex
plaining what have heretofore been marvels, estab
lish a probability that the wonders related in Scrip
ture were susceptible of such explanation ?
Matthew Arnold* says: "That miracles cannot
* In his God and Bible, 1876.

98 APOLOGETICS.
happen, we do not attempt to prove ; the demon
stration is too ambitious. That they do NOT happen —
that what are called miracles are not what the be
lievers in them fancy, but have a natural history
of which we can follow the course — the slow action
of experience, we say, more and more shows ; and
shows, too, that there is no exception to be made in
favor of the Bible."
Further : " We have to renounce impossible at
tempts to receive the legendary and miraculous
matter of the Scripture as grave, historical, scientific
fact. We have to accustom ourselves to regard
henceforth all this part as poetry and legend." *
We deny the main point above, viz. :
That the progress of science and experience does or
can show that the miracles recorded in the Bible
can be resolved into myths, legends, natural causes,
and imagination. Especially will this be impossible
in regard to the chief, the test miracles, e. g., the
raising of Lazarus. The progress of science, so far
from favoring the view that this can be explained by
natural laws, demonstrates more and more the utter
impossibility of doing this. The more we know of
nature and science, the more impossible it will be to
account for this by second causes.
The progress of science does not leave the alterna
tive, miracle or imagination ; it leaves only the alter
native, miracle or imposition.

* Yet Arnold is anxious to keep the Bible, and its hold, after giv
ing up all miracles — the vainest of attempts. Keep Christ and the
Apostles, and reject miracles !

APOLOGETICS. 99
3. How is a miracle related to the law of cause
and effect ?
It does not contradict — is not inconsistent with
that law.
The idea of cause is that of power, efficiency — not
mere sequence.* The law of causality demands
that for every event or change in nature there must
be an adequate cause, ground, or reason. This is
universal — co-extensive with phenomena.f
This law is not violated in a miracle ; there is a
cause assigned. Brown % says : " A miracle is a new
effect, supposed to be produced by a new cause."
Mill § concedes, " that in the alleged miracles, the
law of causation is not contradicted."
Instead of impugning the law of cause and effect,
a miracle only postulates a higher than the ordinary
causes — a divine power.
4. How are miracles related to the dogma of the
uniformity of nature ?
This is the chief point in the debate.|
Proposition : " Natural laws are elastic."
So far as the uniformity of nature implies or in
volves any absolute truth, a miracle does not violate
that uniformity :
And, so far as a miracle does violate the uniformity
of nature, it does not conflict with any absolute truth.
* The simplest idea of it is seen in the case of willing.
f It does not apply to substance, or first cause.
X Notes to Essay on Cause and Effect.
§ Quoted above.
[ The ablest statement of opponents is Baden Powell's Order of
Nature. Reply by Goodwin, Amer. Theol. Rev., 1862.

IOO APOLOGETICS.
The uniformity of nature has at least five distinct
meanings :
(a) It may mean that the total sum of causes
and effects is always the same. This may be true,
if in the causes all is included — the supernatural, ab
solute force, God. Miracles are not against this.
(b) It may mean that the ultimate causality always
pursues the same order and method of manifesta
tion. This is the common view of it, and false,
radically opposed to astronomy, geology, history — to
all evolution.
(.) It may mean that the same series of merely
physical causes and phenomena continue invariably
the same. This begs the question (materialism), and
is refuted by human agency using physical sequences,
destroying them for use, for beauty, for law, for wor
ship. (d) It may mean that physical and human se
quences together are invariably the same. This is
refuted by providence and history.
(e) It may mean that the same causes in the same
circumstances will always produce the same effects.
This is true, and the whole truth. And a miracle
does not contradict this. This is all there is to in
duction and positivism. And who knows all the
causes ? *
* Mr. Lewes (Problems, ii., 99) calls it an " identical proposition ; ''
viz., " the assertion of identity under identical conditions ; whatever
is, is and will be, so long as the conditions are unchanged; and this is
not an assumption, but an identical proposition."
A. Bain (Log. of Deduction, 273) lays it down " as essential that
we should postulate or beg the uniformity of nature ; " maintaining

APOLOGETICS. IOI
The Scotch school has done great harm to all
metaphysics and theology, by hypostasizing the so-
called uniformity of nature as an ultimate datum or
principle, as an irreducible idea. Whereas, instead
of being simple, it is both complex and vague. It
has been allowed to play the part of a second god,
and finally to many it has become a god.*
Generally admitted and advanced by Theists, it
has proved tolerably safe with the background of
Theism ; but it can be, and has been, used in the
interests of modern materialism. Now it is sup
planted, in the idealistic schools, by spirit, being,
force ; in the materialistic schools by atoms and
forces, ot force.
The ultimate ideas are : being and cause — being
as causal (force, energy). Force is not final, it de
mands a substratum ; being (substance) is presup
posed. And ultimately all we know of force is from
the consciousness ol power (or causal energy) in our
selves, in mind : as applied to external events it is
derivative, symbolic. And so the uniformity of na
ture is simply that the same causes in the same
circumstances will produce the same effects (as
above). " The logic of unbelief wants a univer
sal. But no real universal is forthcoming, and it
that we could give no reason for the future resembling the past, but
must simply risk it, and see if it does not come out so.
Bain (in Mind, No. I. , '76, p. 146), ... Lewes, says : Lewes ' ' takes
no account of differences in space and time, " as among "the condi
tions," etc., etc. As if mere space and tirne could alter the real con
ditions !
* Cf. Mill in his Three Essays (on Nature, Laws of Nature, etc.).

102 APOLOGETICS.
only wastes its strength in wielding a fictitious
one." *
In Hume's noted argument the required universal
is silently assumed in the phrase, " unalterable expe
rience." The word " unalterable " begs the whole
question. (Hume's objection, however, is really to
the proof, and not the possibility, of miracles.) " Ex
perience " is indefinite ; there is no law in it. Up to
a recent period, a train drawn by a steam-engine was
contrary to all experience. To affirm that a certain
experience is " unalterable," it is necessary to know
all' the possibilities of experience — which involves
omniscience — or to grasp a law which involves the
unalterableness. 5. What is the relation of miracles to doctrine, or
to the sum of our knowledge of God and his de
signs ?
Besides having an adequate cause, miracles have
also a sufficient end or object, and are never to be
considered apart from, or dissociated from that.
The Scriptural miracles always stand in this point
of view. "Jesus . . . manifested forth his glory." t
" The works that I do in my Father's name, they
bear witness of me." \ " God also bearing them wit-
* Mozley on Miracles, p,'6i. The following are also instances of
the futile attempt to establish such a universal : Spinoza — " Nothing
can take place in nature which is contrary to the laws of nature."
Powell (Study of Evid., jf. 107) — " No testimony can reach to the
supernatural." As to the latter position, see Mansel (Aids to Faith,
pp. 14, 15, Eng. ed.). One kind of testimony certainly reaches to the
supernatural, viz. , that of him who performs the work.
f John ii. II.
X John x. 25.

APOLOGETICS. 103
ness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers
miracles." *
Much of the speciousness of modern infidelity is
gained just here, by conceiving of the miracle as a
mere prodigy, as that which breaks up the order of
nature for no object, something altogether baffling
to thought in any consistent view of the universe.
There is no greater conceivable object than that
which is disclosed in the Christian system of redemp-
tion.f A supernatural doctrine may well be attested
by a supernatural fact. A supernatural fact not
connected in any way with a course of revelation of
supernatural doctrine would lack one of the most
important marks of the " miracle." %
6. What is the relation of miracles to the ordinary
exertion of divine power, and to the divine plan ?
They are not " single " acts — arbitrary — but are in
* Heb. ii. 4.
f Mozley (Bampton Lect's, '66) defines a miracle as " a visible sus
pension of the order of nature for a providential purpose " (p. 6). There
must be a purpose ; no mere prodigy amounts to a miracle. Miracles
differ from special providences, as the latter are "a less obvious inter
vention of the supernatural " (pp. 8, 211) ; and special providences
are also deficient in the coincidence between the prediction and the
fulfillment (pp. 7, 148), which makes up the complete proof of a
miracle. X Wardlaw makes re'pcxS chief, drj/tslor incidental ; Trench re
verses this, testing miracle by doctrine.
In the apologetic age of Christianity, its divine origin was argued
chiefly from its moral effects, though this would not show what
weighed the most with Christian thinkers, but only what they thought
the best adapted to impress their heathen readers. Christ, in vindi
cating the divine character of miracles, appeals to the whole tenor of
his doctrine and work. " If Satan cast out Satan " —

104 APOLOGETICS.
the whole plan of God from the beginning. No new
power is required for them, only the same power
which produces and sustains all things in another
form. They involve no greater power — not so great
— as that which built the worlds.
In this view they are not against law, but a mani
festation of the very highest law. They argue no
want of foresight ; they are no afterthoughts. They
are Promethean, not Epimethean.
Summary :
The Idea of Miracles is that they have :
An efficient cause — God ;
A final cause or object — to authenticate a rev
elation ;
A possible attestation — being sensible phenom
ena, capable of being apprehended and
known by men.
Miracles are:
possible, if there is a God ;
probable^ if a positive revelation is needed ; and
they have been, if Christ and his apostles can
be believed.
Miracles are : direct works of divine power, super
seding or using second causes (the ordinary course
of nature) for a higher end — for a higher and better
manifestation of God — the end for which God made
the world.
Definitions of Tlie Miracle.
Mozley:* "The chief characteristic of miracles,
* On Miracles, p. 149.

APOLOGETICS.

105

and that which distinguishes them from mere mar
vels, is the correspondence of the fact witk the noti
fication ; what we may call the prophetical principle.
For, indeed, if a prophecy is a miracle, a miracle, too,
is in essence a prophecy ; the essence of which is the
correspondence, not the futurity, of the event."
Bacon: * " There never was a miracle wrought by
God to convert an atheist ; because the light of na
ture might have led him to confess a God; but
miracles are designed to convert idolaters and the
superstitious, who have acknowledged a Deity, but
erred in his adoration ; because no light of nature
extends to declare the will and worship of God."
Spinoza :\ " Miraculum significat opus cujus caus-
am naturalem exemplo alterius rei solitae explicare
non possumus, vel saltern ipse non potest qui mira
culum scribit aut narrat." $
Alexander § gives the following classification of all
the definitions which have been framed :
1. From the point of view of the agency employed
in their production.
a. Divine, only.
b. Superhuman.
2. From that of their relation to the course of
nature. a. As violating all natural laws.
b. As not violating but superseding laws.
* Adv. Learning, B. 3, c. 2.
•f Tract. Theol., .. iv., 67.
X So Wegscheider, De Wette. Schleiermacher denied that miracles
proved truth or the commission of the worker.
§ Christ and Christianity, App. D.

106 APOLOGETICS.
3. From the view of their effect or design.
a. As producing wonder.
b. As producing faith (religion being the test).
4. From their relation to our ignorance.
Aquinas (one of the best as far as it goes) : " Noth
ing can be contrary to the order of the world, as
it proceeds from the primal cause; " but if we look
at the order as it is grounded in the cosmical
chain of causes and effects, then God may bring
something to pass praeter ordinem rerum ; for he is
not limited to this series of causes and effects.
Hence: " Miracula sunt omnia quae divinitus fiunt
praeter ordinem communiter servatum in rebus."
A sufficient definition : A miracle proper is an
event in the course of nature— not to be accounted
for by natural laws — produced by divine power, in
attestation of the personal divine commission of him
who works it.*
§ 2. The Possibility of Miracles.
This possibility is exactly measured by the real be
lief in the Being of God — as a Personal, Conscious
* On the question, How does the miracle prove the credibility of the
worker? see Dr. Thornwell (So. Presb. Rev., Aug., '56, p. 355). The
worker appeals to God as a witness.
(_) It is an example of the supernatural.
(.) It is an example of the precise kind of the supernatural which it
is advanced to confirm. Wardlaw (p. 32-3), " The prophecy is a
miracle of knowledge— the miracle is a prophecy of power."
(c) God's character would not permit such audacity as is implied
in working miracles by a bad man.
" That ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to
forgive sins " — prophecy of power. Mark ii. 10.

APOLOGETICS. 107
Intelligence. It is as vital as religion itself — or
prayer ; though prayer be not a miracle, yet both be
long to the same order of conceptions — both involve
belief in the reality, presence, and power of the Su
pernatural in History. The degree is different, but
the order of facts is the same, i. e., the supernatural
order, a living sense of God's presence and power.
If there be a Personal, Intelligent, Omnipotent,
and Holy God — the author and governor of the
world — it is possible that, to answer the end for
which the world was made, he may intervene by
miracles. If the being of God is on the whole only
the most credible hypothesis as to the origin, course,
and end of the universe, miracles may be congruous
therewith. In such a universe the physical must be in and for
moral and spiritual ends — the world for God — man
for God — God the end of creation. To manifest his
full power and glory, for, in, and by his creatures,
there may be need of supernatural intervention, or,
at any rate, such an intervention is possible.
This does not here require further illustration.
The anti-Christian theories, on this point, either
wholly beg the question, or come under the necessity
of establishing the inherent incredibility, the physi
cal and metaphysical impossibility of the miraculous.
In the face of the general belief, the impossibility
must be proved if the possibility is denied. (We do
not yet speak of the probability or the actuality,
but only of the general possibility.)
This proof cannot be conducted : the claim is only
an assumption, as violent and arbitrary as any that

108 APOLOGETICS.
can be made ; involving a denial of all supernatural
ism^ — the affirmation of Nihilism and Nescience at the
root, not only of our knowledge, but also of the uni
verse itself. Even if God be only possible, miracles
have a derivative possibility.
These anti-Theistic theories — materialistic or pan
theistic — or both — or neither — assume, in common,
the following points :
I. That all we can directly know is, certain sensa
tions or subjective phenomena. This is the indubi
table. 2. That all we can do with these sensations or
phenomena is, to state them in some general rule or
so-called law — which only means, that we combine
the separate facts in one general statement.
3. That as to the cause or source of these phe
nomena or facts, all that we can do, " scientifically,"
at the utmost, is to refer them to some unknown, in
conceivable, indefinable substance, cause, or source.
Some deny even this.
4. That this ultimate substance, cause, or source
evolves or develops the phenomena by a necessary
law — evolution — which is always at work in the same
order. Here is a difference. A says : This evolu
tion is of atoms and forces, but both material ;
B says : This evolution (development) is not material
(atomic), but spiritual — as force. Yet it is an un
conscious force.* C says : It is neither spiritual nor
material, but some tertium quid, hybrid, both in one :
that spirit and matter are different sides of the same
* Von Hartmann.

APOLOGETICS. IO9
facts. But all say : It is a Mode of Being, uncon
scious, non-intelligent, non-ethical.
5. That this evolution is for some end. There is a
question here among anti-theistic theorists. Posi-
tivists deny (in terms, while their position all the
while demands) final cause or end ; Mill hesitates.
But all who admit radical evolution virtually admit
final cause : for what is evolution without end or be
ginning? It is simply atoms in motion, and time
and space. The end, however, is not contained in
thought, in plan, in the original sense, but just
comes to be, somehow or other, because it could
not help it.
This is the sum and substance of the present
theory against the possibility of miracles.
Now, if this theory is not true, miracles are pos
sible. Hence we go on to consider the dogma of
Evolution in relation to the origin and end of crea
tion.* [The author intended to do this in the Ely
Lectures for 1876.] See Appendix IIL, Outline of
Prof. Smith's Intended Lectures on Evolution.
§ 3. The Probability of Miracles.
Only the outline of discussions will be given here ;
the full treatment belongs to Historical Apologetics.
* If there is a Personal God,
if Nature is not God,
if Atoms and Forces are not all,
if the spiritual is as real as the natural,
if the moral is above the natural,
if there is a moral government,
and a moral end (even if only " generally tending to Righteous
ness," in Matthew Arnold's phrase) ; then
Miracles are possible.

I IO APOLOGETICS.
The argument is manifold and combined :
i. The two general positions ; Theory of the Uni
verse :
a. God is Holy and a God of Law ;
b. Man is a moral being, made for God ; and
this world is for moral ends, under a moral
government.
2. The Actual Condition ; the Historical State of
Mankind :
The end is not reached, yet is in process and
progress. The two great facts of sin and of the need of re
demption. Man's moral nature, though perverted,
asserts itself. Conscience testifies to his sin and
need. The need is of God's interposition. It is met
in the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Redemption
in Christ.
3. The special state of the world at Christ's com
ing, and preparation for that coming.
4. History since: Christianity the center of History.
Christianity beneficent.
The evils of Christianity are the evils of human
nature contesting against it.
The probability of miracles is of the same order
and degree as the probability of the truth and need
of the Christian system.*
* Butler, Anal., Pt. ii., _. 1, 2.
Paley's position : There is the same probability of miracles as of a
revelation. The "Truth" of Christianity lies in its correspondence with the
character of God and his plan, and in its proved historical adequacy
to meet the entire " need " of man.

APOLOGETICS. Ill
§4. The Proof of Miracles. (Here only outlined.)
The witnesses — numerous — had full opportunity of
observing, were honest, unimpeachable — give full
details (no thaumaturgic reserve), shaped their whole
lives by the supernatural facts and doctrines which
they relate, suffered, and (many of them) died in at
testation, which is notably true of Christ and the
apostles. The miracles were visible, audible — public in the
face of foes, of many witnesses.
The question coming up here is as to the possibil
ity of proving miracles and the nature of the proof
actually afforded ; whether, on general grounds, it is
to be deemed valid.
The real question is, not whether there is enough
testimony, but whether any possible degree of testi
mony can prove a miracle.
The testimony of the miracle-worker is the deci
sive element. He testifies to the supernatural. Is
he then credible ?
As miracles are appeals to the senses, to " expe
rience," testimony is the only mode of proving them
to us. The proof to those who witness them is the
evidence of the senses ; the proof to us, their testi
mony. The Scriptures say that the miracles are
from God. Testimony here may be valid, unless
one assumes that it is not, and if this be assumed,
the procedure is suicidal ; " going to testimony to
show that testimony cannot be depended on." *
* The assumption can only be based upon the fact that the mass of
human testimony goes to show that miracles have not occurred within

112 APOLOGETICS.
The proof of miracles, as far as testimony goes, is
complete. The two chief objections to the proof :
(a) It does not reach to the divine agency. To
show that an event lies out of the range of the causes
which man knows of, is not to show that it lies be
yond the range of all second causes, and to trace it
to the direct energy of God. (b) Testimony, from
the nature of the case, cannot prove a miracle. The
evidence that the sequences of nature are unbroken
is stronger than mere human testimony to any facts
can be.
(a) Such proof as we have respecting miracles does
not reach to the divine agency.
(i) It is said that in affirming the occurrence of a
miracle, we virtually claim that we know all the laws
of nature,* since the miracle is defined as being
above or contrary to all those laws.
Reply : We need not know all nature to be certain
that some events are entirely above nature ; e. g.,
raising the dead, curing the blind with a word. Ob
servation and experience have given us the limita
tions of nature in certain directions, though not in
all. If we do not know enough of the laws of nature
to decide that a miracle has occurred, infidelity does
not know enough of them to decide that it has not.

the experience of the vast majority of men. If the (unimpeachable)
testimony of those who have observed miracles is to be rejected, the
testimony of those who say they have not seen them is to be neglected.
* The substance of Rousseau's objection to miracles.

APOLOGETICS. 113
There may be direct proof that the miracle is from
divine power, in the way of the testimony of the
miracle-worker, he being entirely credible; e. g.,
Christ and apostles.
(2) It is said that what are deemed miracles may
be due to occult agencies in nature merely, as mag
netism, etc.
Reply : No such are proved to be available, or are
even conceivable in, e. g., the raising of the dead.
If occult natural agencies were employed, the effi
ciency would not be in them, but in the will which
controlled them.
The testimony of Christ is explicit. " If I by the
finger of God " — " Father, I thank thee that thou
hast heard me." *
(3) Another form of (2). It is said that the Scrip
tures recognize the fact that the miracle-worker may
do what to others is miraculous, yet not by divine
aid ; may know secret powers, etc. Deut. xiii. 1-3.
" If there arise among you a prophet . . . and giveth
thee a sign, . . . and the sign come to pass, whereof
he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other
gods, . . . thou shalt not hearken." (So Matt. vii.
27 ; xxiv. 24; 2 Thess. ii. 9, quoted before.)
Reply: The Scriptures describe these as lying
wonders, false signs.
The criterion is, that they are against the truth.
Then —
(4) It is said that the Scriptures would prove truth
by miracles, and miracles by truth. No, we reply :
* At the raising of Lazarus. John xi. 41.

1 14 APOLOGETICS.
the evidence that these are not true miracles is that
they undertake to support false doctrine. It is a
part of the evidence — not the whole — of true miracles,
that they are " for the truth." It is a part — not the
whole — of the evidence for the truth that it is at
tested by miracles. The single circumstance that
alleged miracles are for the truth does not prove
them to be true miracles ; but their being against the
truth proves them to be false.*
On the whole, under Obj. (a).
That the proof does reach to the divine agency is
involved in the testimony, especially of Christ; all
centers there in him, and his disciples derivatively.
Obj. (b). No amount of testimony can prove a mir
acle. This is Hume's noted objection : No evidence
can establish the fact of a miraculous occurrence;
there is always greater probability that men are de
ceived or deceivers, than that a miracle has taken
place ; for testimony has, nature has not, deceived.f
He says : " A miracle is a violation of the laws of na
ture, and as a firm and unalterable experience has
established these laws, the proof against a miracle,
from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any
argument from experience can possibly be imagined."^:
(It follows that the progress of science has nothing

* The excellency of doctrine agrees with — does not prove — the
divinity of the miracle ; the divinity of the miracle establishes the
excellency of the doctrine, yet never so but that the excellency is also
seen in its own light.
t Hume does not deny the abstract possibility of miracles. Admits
this in Essays, ii., pp. 131, 132. (Edinb. ed., 1788.)
X Phil. Works, iv., 133.

APOLOGETICS. 1 1 5
to do with the argument — it is the same always ; i.e.,
there is a metaphysical impossibility of proving mir
acles. But the progress of science, in fact, makes
Christ's miracles appear still more supernatural, since
nothing adequate to perform them is discovered.) *
The best replies f to Hume :
If " experience " means universal experience, it
begs the question.:]:
The objection proves too much. Proves the im
possibility of establishing any new event. Proves
that the fact of creation cannot be believed on any
testimony of God, coming through men.
The objection assumes a violent probability against
miracles. But " under the circumstances," etc., the
fact is the reverse.
Hume separates the miracle from its object. A
miracle with him is a miracle merely, not a miracle
of Christ for the redemption of men.
Hence the probability against the Christian mir
acles is based upon sceptical ground, taken in ad
vance. His objections to testimony cannot apply to Christ
and his apostles. It is more difficult to believe that
such men § were deceivers than that the sequences of
nature are " alterable."

* So Mansel, Aids to Faith, p. 13.
f See Campbell, Paley, Encycl. Brit., Babbage, Vaughan, Chal
mers (Evid., Bk. I., c. 3), Rogers (Edin. Rev., 1849).
X The experience of any who were present when unimpeachable
witnesses testify that miracles were wrought, and did not see them,
might be brought forward with effect.
§ Archb. Whately has written with force upon this point. On the

Il6 APOLOGETICS.
Newton, certainly equal to Hume in his power of
estimating what is involved in the uniformity of na
ture, thus qualifies the "immutability of the laws of
nature : " " nisi ubi aliter agere bonum est." * The
" uniformity of nature " is not a rational, necessary
truth. The uniformity of physical law gives way
under the impulse of man's free will, whenever this
is duly put into the line of causes ; a fortiori it will
under God's.f
other hand, a singular proof of the incapacity of some minds to see
the decisive feature in testimony is afforded in the writings of one
Craig, a Scotchman, who wrote, in 1699, a 4to pamphlet, "Theo-
logiaa Christianise, Principia Mathematica," proving that on its present
evidence Christianity could be received until A. D. 3153.
* See paper on the Immutability of the Laws of Nature, in Lond.
Quart. Rev., Oct., 1861.
f So, in substance, Mansel, Aids to Faith, pp. 18, 19 ; see, also, Dr.
A. P. Peabody, Chris. Exam., Nov., 1856.

APPENDIX I.
SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF APOLOGETICS.*
From an Article by Prof. Smith in the "Presbyterian Quarterly and
Princeton Review," July, 1876.
THE Italian philosopher, Giovanni Battista Vico,
the founder of the modern philosophy of history, and
one of the ablest and most comprehensive of the
* Works. Apologetik. Wissenschaftliche Rechtfertigung des Chris-
tenthums. Von J. H. A. Ebrard, Dr. Phil, et Theol. 2 Theile.
Glitersloh, 1874-5.
System der christlichen Apologetik. Von Franz Delitzsch. Leipzig,
1869. Christliche Apologetik auf anthropologischer Grundlage. Von Christ.
Ed. Baumstark. Erster Band [all published], Frankft. _. M., 1872.
K. H. Sack, Christliche Apologetik. Hamburg, 1829. [Second
edition, 1841.]
Von Drey, Apologetik als wissenschaftliche Nachweisung des Chris-
tenthums in seiner Erscheinung. Mainz, 3 Bde. 1844-1847. (Roman
Catholic.) Werner, Geschichte der apologetischen und polemischen Literatur. 5
Bde. 1861-67. (Roman Catholic.)
Dr. Fr. Dtlsterdieck, Der Begiijf und die encyclcpadische Stellung
der Apologetik, two instructive articles in the Jahrbiicher fiir deutsche
Theologie, 1866. Dr. Diisterdieck is a Consistorial Counsellor in
Hannover. Theod. Christlieb, Modern Doubt and Christian Belief. Transl. by
Rev. H. U. Weitbrecht, etc. New York, 1874.
Luthardt, Apologetic Lectures. Three series : On the Fundamental,
the Saving, and the Moral Truths. Transl. Edinb. 117

Il8 APPENDIX.
philosophers of the eighteenth century, develops, in
his Principles of the New Science, a theory of civil
ization embracing what he calls the Law of Returns.
Each age runs its appointed course and dies ; and
after a long period there will be a return of the same
process. Though this cannot be called a final law of
history (since it neglects too much the law of prog
ress), yet it shows us one of its marked conditions.
At different periods, widely sundered, we find similar
historic laws, though working under different condi
tions. The early literature of Christianity was apol
ogetic. The same is true of the present literature of
Christianity in almost all its departments. We, like
the early church, live in an apologetic era. There is
hardly an effective theological work, we might almost
say, hardly any great Christian discourse, which does
not take on an apologetic stamp.
I.
As has been said, Christian Apologetics is essen
tially Vindication. It seeks to vindicate, and in
vindicating to establish, the value and authority of
the Christian faith. It begins, in fact, with the
Scriptures, the epistles, and especially the discourses
of Paul. In Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, and other
Christian writers, it received more distinct form, pro
posing to defend Christianity against all gainsayers.
All that belongs to the proof of the Christian re
ligion, and all that belongs to its defense, and all
that belongs to its counter-attack against its foes, is
a part of Apologetics.
We sometimes think it strange — it almost alarms

APPENDIX.

119

us — that Christianity should be so desperately as
sailed ; but when we come to think about it, it is the
most natural thing in the world. Evil will always
attack good ; error instinctively assails the truth ;
sin, by its very nature, is opposite and opposed to
holiness. Incarnate Love was crucified between two
thieves ; and the church cannot expect to be better
treated than its Head and Lord — it is surely enough
for the servant that he be as his Master. Men who
cannot find God in nature cannot find God in the
Bible. Men who deny the supernatural must con
sider all religious faith a delusion. Even a heathen
might go on and find God, but a materialist must go
back, deny himself, in order to find him. As long as
there are sin and unbelief, so long there will be at
tacks on Christianity ; and there must needs be a
defense also.
And this, too, is to be considered : that as knowl
edge grows, as science extends, as the boundaries of
investigation and thought are enlarged, man's rest
less and inquisitive intellect will always be framing
new theories about something or other, or about
everything. And each infant Hercules must first
fight it out with his nurse. Christianity has bred all
the new aspirants for omniscience ; and the young
men and women wish to show that they are wiser
and stronger than the authors of their being. This,
too, is quite natural. Nor is it all wholly sinful.
These sciences and philosophies and criticisms have
a right to be ; and if Christianity cannot make good
its ground against them — where they oppose it — can
not approve itself as wiser, stronger, and better — it

120 APPENDIX.
must so far forth give place to them. If it cannot
appropriate all that is good and true in them (how
ever new it may be), and still preserve its lordly sway,
then it is not the wisest and best system for mankind,
and will give place to what is better. But it has the
prescriptive right of possession and favor ; its roots
are imbedded in the depths of the broad earth, and
wind round among its ribbed rocks, and its branches
wave high, overshadowing and fruitful, so that the
nations of the earth lodge beneath them. And infi
delity has got to dislodge them before it can even
begin to build its own temple on and with the ruins.
Neither the end of the world nor the end of Chris
tianity seems to be very near yet ; and there is still a
fair chance that the world may end first.
The necessity and importance, now, of the diligent
and specific study of Apologetics is seen in part just
here, viz. : in this constant progress of the human
race in knowledge and in aspiration ; in the advance
of the sciences and arts, of culture and civilization ;
in the successive and comprehensive schemes of phil
osophic speculation, wherein thoughtful men strug
gle with the grand problems of nature and of human
ity, and try to solve them. What is the world ?
Whence is the world ? For what is the world ?
Whence is man ? What is man ? and for what ?
These questions have stirred men's minds from the
dawn of thought — elevating, perplexing, often con
founding, yet always impelling them. In the dark
ness of the labyrinth which we call life, the groping
hand has been ever in search of the clue no eye could
see — feeling after God, if haply it might find him.

APPENDIX. 121
What wonder if here many go astray, especially those
whose eyes are blinded by reason of sin. What a
marvel, that, in spite of every defeat, and of innu
merable false lights, the same search is going on from
age to age ! A new question for every new genera
tion ! Yea, a new question for every new soul, strug
gling in the throes of its higher spiritual birth.
And every new science and every new philosophy
— still dealing with the same old, old questions —
views them in some new light. And hence the
necessity of a renewed, an honest, a patient investi
gation. It is true that the questions are ever essentially
the same : for God and man and the universe remain
essentially the same from age to age ; and the ques
tions are ultimately about them and their relations.
It is true that the substance of faith and the formal
nature of unbelief remain the same, and that sin is
sin, and holiness is holiness only, and forever.
But it is not true that the form of the conflict or
its weapons remain, or can remain, the same ; these
change with the changes of age and nations and
philosophies, just as much and as surely as do the
armaments of war.
Hence, Apologetics as a system must, to a certain
extent, be reshaped, in each century, with each new
class of opponents, so as to adapt Christianity to each
new age, and to exhibit its inherent superiority over
all that can be brought against it.
And this subject is forced upon us anew everyday,
not only in works of learning and philosophy, but
also in the current popular literature. Many a popu-
6

122 APPENDIX.
lar lecturer owes a part of his success to his covert,
when not open, attacks upon the Christian system.
This shape of evil, this substance of infidelity, often
realizes the great poet's apt description of its pro
genitor :
" If shape it might be called, which shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb ;
Or substance might be called, that shadow seemed,
For each seemed either."
And the very fact that infidelity is so subtle and
so persuasive, is only another reason for studying it
well and understanding its weapons and its arts.
II.
In discussing so wide a subject, there must, of
course, be a selection of certain special points. At
present we propose to consider briefly the elements
of the conflict— some of the different phases through
which attack and defense have hitherto run, and a
statement of the main topics embraced in a course of
Christian Apologetics. And it will be found that
there is in its career a kind of logical process — at any
rate, such logic as there is in the development of a
system of truth through and by antagonisms — which
seems to be one of the laws of all terrestrial progress.
The term infidelity, in its most general usage,
covers both skepticism and unbelief ; it expresses
both the state of doubt and the state of denial,
which, though differing in some respects, are often
passing over into each other. Doubt tends to denial ;

APPENDIX. 123
it is not always such. The state of doubt in respect
to religious realities is different from, though often
confounded with, that philosophical disposition which
leads to inquiry and investigation ; since the latter is
chiefly intellectual, while the former is essentially
moral, in its nature. When men come to doubt
about or deny sin and judgment, the moral law and
the moral law-giver, their moral perceptions are al
ready obscured or benumbed. Infidelity consists in
the doubt or denial of those moral and spiritual
truths upon which moral judgment and personal
accountability are dependent. Man is accountable
for his belief just so far as any moral truth influences
his judgment— just so far as his decisions have respect
to sin or holiness.
The Christian faith, having its ground and essence
in the spiritual realm, appeals directly to man as a
spiritual and religious being, as made for God, and
in the image of God. And it especially addresses
itself to man's sense of sin and need of redemption.
It is, in its very nature, a redemptive system ; all
that is in Christ, in his relation to us, centres around
and in the question of redemption from sin. If sin
and punishment are denied, Christ and salvation
must consistently be denied. And accordingly, we
find in the whole history of Christianity, that here,
in the last analysis, the battle has been fought in
every believing and unbelieving soul, in all the ages
of faith and all the epochs of infidelity. Any system
of philosophy, any speculation, any tendency which
weakens the sense of sin, also weakens the power of
Christianity, and gives to infidelity an easier victory.

124 APPENDIX.
Still further, the Christian system is, in its very
nature, a supernatural system — above nature in its
origin, its processes, and its results ; for it is from
God, and it works for eternity. It works with and
through the seen and temporal, but it works also
above and beyond all that greets the eye of sense.
It makes the spiritual and the eternal to be thegrand
realities, and the tangible and temporal transient and
shadowy in comparison. The supernatural element
is not to be found — as some would have it — merely,
or even chiefly, in the sphere of the will (for such a
supernaturalism a mere naturalist need not deny) —
but it is essentially found in those divine truths and
realities (the most real of all that is) which come from
God through a specific revelation, for the elevation
and restoration of the lost race of man. And it is
this supernatural element of the Christian faith which
has always provoked the assaults of unbelief ; for
man, through the power of sin, is involved in spirit
ual darkness, as well as made subject to a distem
pered will.
Here, then, are the essential elements of the con
flict of all ages. On the one hand, a supernatural
and redeeming system centering in one Incarnate
God ; on the other hand, man, loving the sin inborn
and inbred, and blind to the light which streams out
from the heavenly places. The one rests ultimately
in God, making the divine wisdom and glory, as they
are the source, to be also the end, of all things; the
other has its roots in human nature — as it now is —
and makes man's needs the great impulse, and man's
well-being the great end, of all our striving. The

APPENDIX. 125
whole alphabet of the one — its Alpha and Omega —
is God in Christ ; the other uses the whole alphabet
to syllable the desires of man, or express the facts of
nature. The former echoes with the sharpest em
phasis the wail of humanity, groaning under its body
of sin and death, haunted by a sense of sin pro-
founder than all our other experience, so that its cry
is and must be : Who shall deliver me from the body
of this death ? The latter feigns that sin is a nega
tion, or a process of education, and repentance and
regeneration purposes of man's will alone, and re
demption a gradual progress in moral culture. Un
belief has on its side not only all our natural desires,
but also their main bias, their partial and limited
ends ; while faith is obliged to contend against and
overcome the natural man, its victory is the over
coming of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and
these do not yield without violent throes and con
flicts. The one finds in natural reason, in its laws
and processes, the limits of all knowledge ; the other
is satisfied only when, in the darkness of nature, it
can feel that it is touching the right hand of God,
and that, though itself is blind as to the future, it is
led by one who sees the end from the beginning.
As Wordsworth — that truly Christian poet — has well
sung: " No ! let this age, high as it may, install
In her esteem the thirst that wrought man's fall.
The universe is infinitely wide,
And conquering Reason, if self-glorified,
Can nowhere move, uncrossed by some new wall
Or gulf of mystery, which thou alone,
Imaginative Faith, canst overleap
In progress toward the fount of Love."

126 APPENDIX. III.
The elements of the contest being thus given, on
the one hand in the supernaturalism and redemptive
grace of the Christian system ; and in the love of
sin and the pride of reason on the other; and these
being the strongest of contestant agencies, it is not
wonderful that we find the history of the church,
yea, the very history of mankind, to be a record of
this immortal battle in different and progressive
stadia.* All the philosophical and religious systems
of the ancient world, and every new system — physical
and metaphysical — have enlisted in this, as yet in
effectual, warfare against the victorious progress of
the Incarnate God. The battles of empires and of
races are but mimic mock-fights, in comparison with
this intenser conflict between the underlying and
mightiest powers that sway the destiny of the race.
First of all, to rehearse these spiritual wars in a
rapid outline : there was the subtlety of the Greek
speculation, and the pride of the Hebrew legalism ;
the cross was to the Jew a stumbling-block, and to
* Dr. Werner's History of Apologetics is the fullest general account,
though based on Roman Catholic views. The last volume contains a
more minute history of the English deistic works than is to be found
elsewhere — on some points more complete than Leland. He is a
voluminous writer, the author of the History of Roman Catholic The
ology in the Munich Geschichte und Wissenschaften, of a History of
Arianism, etc. The well-known smaller works of Bolton on the
Early Apologists, and Fa.rra.r's-History of Free Thought, as well as the
sketches of the later German Theology, by Hagenbach, Schwarz (4th
ed.), and Kahnis (new ed., 1875, in two volumes), must of course be
consulted as well as Buckle and kindred authors.

APPENDIX. 127
the Greek foolishness ; while to them that believed,
it was the wisdom and power of God unto everlasting
life. Against these foes the Christian literature of
the second century became to a large extent apolo
getic, and as such, both offensive and defensive.
Against the Jew the object was to show that Jesus
was indeed the promised Messiah, and that the law
was not only abolished, but also fulfilled, in the
Christian dispensation. Against the heathen there
was a wider range of argument to refute their objec
tions, that Christianity was a new religion, and that
it was irreligious and immoral (superstitio exitabilis
— a detestable superstition), and that it claimed to
be, what no heathen believed possible, a religion for
all mankind. This last, for example, was one of the
strong objections of Celsus ; a pagan of the classic
world could believe in a universal empire, but not in
a universal religion. To meet these and similar ob
jections, we have in the second century the admirable
apologies of Justin Martyr, Tatian's Oration against
the Greeks, the anonymous epistle to Diognetus
(going often under the name of Justin, yet certainly
not by him), one of the most admirable remains of
early Christian literature, far surpassing the works of
the so-called Apostolic Fathers. To these in the
same century were added the writings of Athenagoras,
of Theophilus of Antioch, and, in the latter part, the
great names of Clement of Alexandria, and the fiery
and struggling genius of Tertullian, who, in the name
of Christ, conquered the Latin tongue,* and made it
speak the words of faith.
* Hooker speaks of Tertullian as " " sponge steeped in vinegar

128 APPENDIX.
But heathenism was not willing to part with its
• gods without a more desperate struggle. It gathered
up all its resources for attack and for defense. In
the city of Alexandria, Greek, Roman, and Jew all
met ; and there was framed out of this confluence an
eclectic system, a New Platonic school, the object of
which was to show that Christianity lacked the ele
ments needed to secure supremacy and universality.
It was a movement wonderfully akin to some tend
encies of our own times. Celsus, Porphyry, Pro-
clus, Plotinus, and Julian are the prototypes of some
Frenchmen and Germans, not to say Englishmen
and Americans of to-day. Celsus, for example, who
has been much overrated, because the adamantine
Origen replied to him, says, that in the Greek wisdom
we have the true logos, the Messiah ; that this fair
world (kosmos) is the true Son of God ; that Chris
tianity leads to social disorders ; and that the only
way of keeping up law and nationality is by propping
up the pillars of the old temples.* Porphyry, too,
and gall." The remains of Celsus (A.D. 178) have been admirably
restored by Dr. Keim of Zurich, in his Celsus' Wahres Wort, 1873,
and compared with Lucian and Minucius Felix. The Plea of Athena-
goras, admirably edited by Prof. March, of Lafayette College, is in
cluded in the Douglass Series of Greek and Latin Writers, vol. v. Of
course, the hints here given of the history of Apologetics are meant to
be only references.
* On the difference between the early Greek and Latin Apologists,
there is a striking statement by the late Dr. Hundeshagen, in an
admirable address, as Pro-Rector, at the birthday celebration of the
Duke of Baden, in Bonn, Nov. 22, '60 : "As the Greeks contended
for the assailed cause of Christianity on rational grounds, with appeals
to Socrates, Plato, and other coryphaei of philosophy, so did the
Latins on grounds of right and justice, and with citations from the

APPENDIX. 129
objects, that the Christian faith interrupted the his
torical continuity, and introduced barbarism. Find
ing how the personal power of Christ was silently
and surely working (e.g., Origen says, that He, unlike
others, represents the sum and perfection of all the
virtues), these pagan assailants looked about for an
ideal man to set up in his stead, and brought forth
Pythagoras, to whom distance lent enchantment ;
and Apollonius of Tyana, the juggling impostor, the
best that heathenism could find, and quite as good
as some of the objects of the fashionable worship of
genius in these later days. Then, at last in Julian,
the apostate, Julian, the emperor, the philosopher,
and the priest, we have the union of all the resources
of the ancient world against the growing forces of
Christianity : the state against the church, philosophy
against faith, the old culture against the new; the
host of stars of the polytheistic canopy of night, in
contrast and contest with the rising sun of the new
and better day. Julian, with the zeal of a fanatic,
attempted to revive the old pagan enthusiasm, repre
senting heathenism as world-historical, and Chris-
Roman laws. With the former, the salient thought held up against
opponents is always the evidence for the truth of Christian doctrine ;
the latter make prominent the bearings of Christianity upon the
injured rights of the individual and of society. ' All the early Latin
apologists were advocati, versed in law. Tertullian, Cyprian, Augus
tine, and Ambrose, the former Proconsul of Aemilia and Liguria, had
all of them been Roman Causidici, and teachers of legal eloquence ;
they were all men who received their special mental, as well as their
general, character, not from the divisive and uncertain philosophy of
the Greeks, but from a solid and firm training in the service of the
Roman State.' "
6*

I30 APPENDIX.
tianity as a conventicle and a sect ; and, if truth is to
be settled by mere tradition and numbers, he un
doubtedly had the right of it. Christianity, too, he
said, was but a mixture of Judaism and heathenism,
retaining their worst elements ; for example, taking
from Judaism what Julian calls its atheism (adeorr/s),
that is, its belief in one God ; and also that adventur
ous faith which leaps the gulf between the finite and
the infinite. But in vain did Julian prostitute all the
power of the State to help the debased deities ; in
vain did he borrow from Christianity some of its
benevolent institutions, and engraft them upon
heathenism ; in vain did he himself offer sacrifices
as the Pontifex Maximus, and preach, and lead even
an austere life ; flames and an earthquake kept him
from building the temple of Jerusalem, whereby he
attempted to disprove the prophetic word ; and he
himself, with his expiring breath upon the plains of
Persia, could only say, according to the tradition :
"Thou has conquered, O Galilean!" The great
victory over the whole external civilization, as well
as over the speculations, of the ancient Greek and
Roman world was now gained ; and the cross in
scribed upon the labarum of Constantine was the
symbol of its victory ; the cross, which meant only
ignominy and torture, penetrated all literature and
all history, and entered into every loving and believ
ing heart, as the symbol of divine suffering and vic
torious love. And the greatness and completeness
of the victory is seen in the simple fact, that for
more than a thousand years the whole literature of
the church was chiefly occupied with the shaping

APPENDIX. 131
and systematizing of doctrines, and had but little to
do with the avowed foes of Christian thought and
the Christian faith. Augustine wrote his De Civitate
Dei on the highest ground which human thought
(outside the inspired prophecies) had yet reached, as
to the problem of human history; and Aquinas
summed up the controversy in his work De Vera
Catholica Fide adversus Gentiles, which alone would
have made his name immortal, had he not himself
eclipsed it by his Summa — undoubtedly one of the
master works of theological authorship. On the eve
of the Reformation, Boccaccio, indeed, had satirized
the faith, and Macchiavelli wrote upon the anti-
national tendencies of the Christian system. Here
and there was one who uttered some dissent on
minor points ; but the whole tone of thought and
belief was on the side of the church. And herein
was a part of the secret of the power of Rome — the
mystical Babylon. The papacy became despotic,
corrupt, and anti-Christian ; the reform, prepared for
during more than a century, broke out simultaneously
in all parts of Europe ; and with the reform came a
spirit of free action in all departments of life, and
free inquiry in respect to the truths of the faith.
The highest aim and success (so far as it went) of
the mediaeval church and theology, was to combine
(in the realistic theory) the traditional dogmas of the
church with the Greek, especially the Aristotelian
philosophy : for Scholasticism is the marriage of the
Aristotelian philosophy with the Christian dogma
(as determined by consent and councils). The Ref
ormation consisted, intellectually and spiritually, in

132 APPENDIX.
the denial of the premises, viz., in the position, that
the dogmas of councils are not divine and immutable,
and that the metaphysics (not so much the logic) of
Aristotle does not contain all ultimate truth in its
best form.
The essence of the skeptical spirit, which, after the
Reformation had been adjusted in its political and
religious relations, manifested itself in the different
countries of Europe, may perhaps be said, in the
most general and abstract formula of statement, to
consist in exalting the subjective, the individual
reason and will, against the objective, as found in
the faith and the Scriptures of the church. The
earth was made the centre, and the sun supposed to
revolve around it — reversing the law of astronomy.
The mediaeval church feigned that itself was theo-
centric ; the extreme reaction of the Reformation
was anthropocentric — man's need and destiny being
the one thing needful. The shape that this tendency
has taken in the latest times is virtually geocentric—
making this world and its supposed laws to deter
mine destiny. The philosophic method of the latter
tendency is called inductive — a powerful and suf
ficient method in its own sphere, but now assuming
to govern the premises, as well as the mode, of in
ference. Every method presupposes certain facts,
and can only dictate the inferences. It cannot limit
either the facts of nature, or the phenomena of con
sciousness. Bacon and Descartes, though both of them believed
in the Christian faith, are put at the head of the two
great and opposite tendencies in which infidelity

APPENDIX. 133
has shown itself since the Reformation, viz., the
materialistic and the rationalistic or transcendental,
in the bad sense of these words. But neither Bacon
nor Descartes contemplated such results from their
systems. Especially is it only by taking the lesser
half of the Baconian system, that infidelity gains any
countenance from him. He himself says, " that it is
most certain, and approved by experience, that while
light gusts may move men to Atheism, yet fuller
draughts bring men back to religion," and in a
striking passage in the New Organon, he says : " Only
let mankind regain their rights over nature, assigned
to them by the gift of God ; and that power obtained,
its exercise will be governed by right, reason, and
true religion." It was only when his system was
transferred to another soil, and brought under the
formulas of infidelity, that it came to nourish skep
ticism. The course of modern infidelity has been curiously
determined by the comparative freedom of the dif
ferent nations, and it has come to its height — it is
well worthy of being carefully noted — not in those
countries where political thought and speech are
freest, but where they have been most restricted.
Deism, Atheism, Pantheism are the three main forms
represented respectively by England, France, and
Germany. The movement began in England with
Herbart, Hobbes, Collins, Tindal, Chubb, and Mor
gan, in the 16th and 17th centuries (including Toland,
who, however, held to a kind of material pantheism).
And as far as the main and fundamental position of
these free-thinkers is concerned, meeting them on

134 APPENDIX.
their own grounds, fairly and fully, English Christi
anity showed itself fully equal to the task, as is seen
in the works of Baxter, Cud worth, S. Clarke, Water-
land, Leland, and especially the immortal Analogy of
Bishop Butler.*
This same movement, transferred to Germany, at
.first attained the form known by the name of ra
tionalism, criticising the historic records of the faith,
and setting up natural reason and ethics as the ulti
mate test and source of truth. Philosophic rational
ism received its most consistent form through the
criticism of Kant ; though he himself, with all his
speculative insight, confessed the radical evil of hu
man nature and a firm faith in the Being of God.
In France the infidel movement was neither criti
cal nor rationalistic — it became materialistic and
revolutionary. The French monarchy had become a
despotism ; the banishment and slaughter of the
Huguenots had decimated the moral power of the
nation ; a corrupt and persecuting Romanism was all
the faith recognized. Rousseau pleaded for the
rights and sympathies of nature ; Voltaire, though
retaining faith in a God, ridiculed the Scriptures on
the basis of a philosophic portative. D'Holbach,
Diderot, D'Alembert, preached atheism in the En-
cyclopddie — (Diderot declaring that the height of
* The great religious movement in England, under Whitfield and
Wesley, in the last part of the century, completely broke the popularity
of this deistic movement. Dr. Gillett's God in Human Thought, 2 vols.,
N. Y., Scribner Armstrong & Co., 1874, gives a comprehensive and
able account of the whole English controversy, and of the services of
Bishop Butler.

APPENDIX. 135
religion was to have none at all) : and the result was
reached in the chaos, conflicts, and woes of the French
Revolution, from which that fated land only recovered
by accepting an imperial despotism and restoring the
Catholic clergy with new pomp ; so that now ultra
montane principles have the ascendancy in the suc
cessors of Bossuet and the old Catholic bishops, who
contended so manfully for the Gallican liberties.
But it was reserved for Germany, in some of its
more recent forms of philosophy and theology, to
combine together all the phases and all the resources
of infidelity, in the most learned, acute, and compre
hensive assaults ever made upon the Christian faith
— so that any other current infidelity in any other
part of the world is but a feeble echo, so far as learn
ing and speculation go, of what is found in these
Teutonic schemes — while, at the same time, it is true,
that the same land has furnished the most elaborate
and thorough replies to the criticisms and hypotheses
of those assailants of our faith. There is a striking
resemblance in many points between the character
of the attack on Christianity in this last form of it,
and that which it assumed under the influence of the
New-Platonic philosophy in ancient times — the same
comprehensiveness of method and combination of
weapons, and the same attempt to form a complete
system for man by an eclectic process ; but yet the
Germans show more thoroughness and destructive-
ness in both the historical and philosophical methods
of conducting the argument, for infidelity must grow
in skill to compete with a Christianity which has been
growing in power for 1800 years.

136 APPENDIX.
Ever since the time of Leibnitz, the German philo
sophic movement has tended toward the construction
of a universal system. The influence of Spinoza,
with his pantheistic theory of one substance, and his
demonstrative method applied to metaphysics, also
had a very great influence, especially in the later
German schools. Kant initiated a powerful tendency
by his Criticism of the Pure Reason (directed in
part against Hume's skepticism), and by his Criticism
of the Practical Reason ^conscience), on which he
grounded his severely ethical and strongly theistic
creed. He is the real philosophical father of strict
ethical rationalism — that is, of the system which puts
the prescripts of reason above the written word. At
the same time, there was a host of scholars who were
applying historical and philological criticism to the
interpretation of Scripture in a way to undermine
its infallible authority. Fichte followed Kant, re
taining, however, chiefly his idealism in a subjective
sense ; he endeavored, in his earlier writings, to de
duce the universe from the Ego, and substituted the
moral order of the universe for God. Schelling, in
his youthful enthusiasm, when magnetism was dis
closing its wonders, announced, as a prophet, the
theory of the identity of opposites, of the ideal and
the real, with pure intellectual vision descrying one
common essence with the two poles, viz. : the
spiritual and the material ; in his later system, the
Philosophy of Mythology, he plants himself upon
more distinctive theistic and Christian ground.
Hegel, with his more thorough and logical method,
identified thought and being, and made the vast at-

APPENDIX. 137
tempt of a logical development of the universe from
pure being by an inherent law, the law of negation,
confounding the movement of real being with the
processes of logic. He makes spirit to be ultimate.
By the law of negation, spirit is transformed into
nature, and then comes back to itself in humanity ;
God becomes conscious in man. This is Hegel's
theory, as expounded by the so-called left wing, of
which Strauss is the most signal representative. Hegel
himself, and many of his followers of the right wing,
claim that his system is to be understood only as a phil
osophy of the Christian faith ; that Hegelianism gives
us, in the form of philosophy, the same fundamental
truths which Christianity gives in the form of creeds.
The later German tendencies are a reaction against
such an abstract idealism, and, as developed by
Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann, they avow pes
simism as their creed, and make annihilation to be
the chief boon for the race. Not to speak more par
ticularly of the contemporaneous movements in
France and England, we can now only refer to the
alliance, in these three countries, of Pantheism and
Materialism, in their most developed forms, and in a
common attack upon the Christian creed and church.
This rapid historic sketch may suffice to show, that
in all the periods of this great conflict, there has
been a difference in the character, both of the assault
and the defense. At first it was Christianity against
Polytheism, Judaism, and the wisdom of the ancient
schools. And here Christianity was vindicated as a
positive revelation ; and, as a result of the conflict,
the old Catholic church ruled in the East and the

138 APPENDIX.
West. In the mediaeval period, there was not only
the subjugation of Northern Europe, but also the
consolidation of the Christian system in the scholas
tic theology and the realistic philosophy. The
Christian theory governed the world of thought and
kept it in bonds. In the next stadium we have the
separation of these elements, and the conflict of
Christianity with all the forms of human research
and speculation. It has come into conflict with
deism, with rationalism in its various modes, with
atheism and with pantheism ; and now it is contend
ing with atheism and pantheism allied. And as the
form of the conflict has changed, so has the mode of
the defense. The Analogy of Bishop Butler, admi
rable as it is for its specific ends, does not meet the
questions raised by Hegel and Baur, by Darwin and
Spencer.

APPENDIX II.
RECENT GERMAN WORKS ON APOLOGETICS.
An article by Prof. Smith in the " Presbyterian Quarterly and Prince
ton Review," October, 1876.
IT is only within a generation that Apologetics has
become recognize^ as a distinct department of the
ology, and treated as an organized whole. And it is
chiefly in Germany that its distinctive nature and
definition, its method and relation to other branches,
have been fully discussed. Planck, in his Introduc
tion to the Theological Sciences* first assigned to it a
definite place in the sphere of theology, putting it,
however, strangely enough, under the head of exeget
ical theology.
Schleiermacher, in his epoch-making treatise, en
titled A Short Exhibit of Theological Study, pub
lished in the first volume of his Complete Works, f
first assigned to Apologetics the leading place in the
organism of the different departments of theology —
as a preparatory discipline for all the rest, and having
* Planck, Einleitung in die theologischen Wissenschaften, Vol. I.
§§ 271-362.
t Schleiermacher, Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums :
Sammtl. Werke, Abthlg. I., Bd. I., § 39. 139

140 APPENDIX.
to do with the fundamental principles of theology.
In this sense it is equivalent to fundamental theology,
and has for its object the investigation of all the
ideas, facts, and truths which logically or historically
precede the system of theology proper, or Christian
dogmatics, strictly so called. This is a broad and
comprehensive view of the subject ; but, as thus de
fined, it neglects too much what has always been
considered as the chief object of Apologetics, that is,
the specific defense of religion, especially of the
Christian religion, against objections — the vindica
tion of the absolute and final authority of Christian
ity as the highest and best system of truth for man.
Accordingly, few have followed Schleiermacher in
giving so wide a scope to Apologetics ; though al
most all recent writers find a specific position for it
in the encyclopaedia of theology. Tholuck (in his
Vermischte Schriften, Bd. I., p. 149, sq.) and some
others denied that it could be treated fully, as a
whole, by itself ; for the general reason, that all the
doctrines, facts, and truths of both natural and re
vealed religion, have, and must have, their apologetic
side ; they can all be assailed, and must all be de
fended ; but this, they say, should be done in detail,
rather than by grouping all together. In any case,
the materials with which Apologetics has to do must
be taken from some or all of the other departments
of theology. And if its office be to reply in detail to
all the specific objections, and to establish the truth
of the assailed positions, of course it is an endless
work, and would defy all attempts at a proper class
ification. But it is not to be, nor has it been, so un-

APPENDIX. 141
derstood. Very generally stated, it may be said that
Apologetics comprises what has previously been pub
lished under the two great heads of natural theology,
on the one hand, and of the evidences of Christianity
on the other. And the chief problem and question
has been to bring these two under one department,
or under one definition ; also including the general >
principles and questions that come up in the modern
philosophies of history and religion, as well as the
substance of the investigations contained in the in
troductions to the Old and New Testament. The
facts of ethnology, and of primaeval and prehistoric
history — even the investigations of natural science,
and the principles of anthropology, and of ethics,
have also come to constitute a part of the materials
of which Apologetics must make use. So that we
have here manifestly a pretty broad field ; and the
question is, whether it can be fairly and profit
ably cultivated with a scientific unity of idea and
design. Another, though a somewhat secondary question,
is, to which division of the general encyclopaedia of
theology shall Apologetics be allotted? Nobody
would now think of following Planck in putting it
under exegetical theology. Only a part of its mate
rials can be claimed as giving it a position under his
torical theology ; but it comprises much more than
this, especially when we bring into view the modern
and urgent conflicts of Christianity with materialism
and pantheism. It must then come under either sys
tematic or practical theology, or have a place by
itself.

142 APPENDIX.
Dr. Delitzsch,* in his System of Apologetics, as
signed it to practical theology, since it has to do
with the practical work and progress of the church
(as has preaching). It cannot well be put under any
one department. But Dr. Delitzsch's own treatment
of the subject is quite like that of a work on system
atic theology ; it is made up almost wholly of dog
matic material.
Dr. Diisterdieck,t in his able articles on this ques
tion, also contends for practical theology as the
proper rubric under which Apologetics is to be put,
on the ground that Apologetics, etymologically, is
the theory of apology, just ashomiletics is the theory
of sermonizing, and so comes under the head of prac
tice and art, rather than of system or theory. But
this seems to be too narrow a view of its nature and
functions. It does not merely tell us how all vindi
cation is to be conducted ; how Christianity is to be
scientifically defended ; but it also defends it ; and
not only defends it, but tries to establish its truth
and authority. As Baumstark (Apologetik, p. 29)
well remarks : " Apologetics, as the scientific proof
of the absolutism of the Christian religion, as a
whole, cannot be assigned to a single division of the
system of theology, but is to prepare the ground for
the whole of theology. Hence it has its place in the
introduction to the whole system, as proposed by
Schleiermacher." It is treated of by Pelt in his En-
* System der christlichen Apologetik, 1869.
f In Jahrbiicher ftir deutsche Theologie, 1866, on the Idea and En
cyclopaedic Position of Apologetics.

APPENDIX. 143
cyclopaedia under the general caption of the " Doc
trine of Theological Principles ; or, Fundamental
Theology." The objection to this is, that its mate
rials are so largely taken from church history, exegesis,
etc., that it must needs come after these. It would
seem, then, that we must either make a distinct head
for it, introductory to all the departments of theology,
or else assign it a place (as Hagenbach does) intro
ductory to systematic theology. The latter is, per
haps, the most convenient arrangement for teaching,
even though it be not free from all logical objections.
To return to the general idea of Apologetics. It
was defined by Sack* (in the first really important
and systematic work on the subject after Schleier-
macher's scheme was propounded) as that branch of
theology ("theological discipline ") " which treats Of
the ground of the Christian religion as divine fact."
He distinguishes between the ideal and real sides of
Christianity ; and assigns the former (the ideal) to
systematic theology, while the latter (the real) is the
proper subject of Apologetics — having to do with the
actuality of Christianity ; so preparing the way for
dogmatics. This seems (as Baumstark says, p. 2) to
separate the ideal and the real too much ; and Apol
ogetics, as a matter of fact, has to do with a good
deal more than the external history of Christianity.
And Sack himself concedes, that " the ideal side, or
the doctrine, can never be considered without rela
tion to the real, historical basis ; and that, in Apolo
getics, though the main subject-matter be the real
* K. H. Sack, Christliche Apologetik. Hamburg, 1829. 2d ed.,
1841.

144 APPENDIX.
side of Christianity, yet this can never be treated
without reference to the ideal element." His further
treatment of the materials of Apologetics is, in fact,
rather doctrinal than historical ; for his chief head
ings are " Redemption," " Life," and " Perfection ; "
and these subjects are taken from Christian theory
and life, rather than from Christian history.
The Roman Catholic divine, Drey* in his work,
entitled Apologetics as the Scientific Evidence of the
Divinity of Christianity in its Manifestation, defines
Apologetics as " the Philosophy of the Christian
Revelation, and of its History." He is the represent
ative of a class of German Catholic divines who felt
the influence of the philosophy of Schelling, in its
later form, in its opposition to the Hegelian logic ;
and who were led to lay the chief stress on the posi
tive historical elements of the Christian system.
Christianity, they said, is primarily historical fact ;
and theology should also be historical and positive
in its fundamental character. Yet it cannot be
merely historical ; it is rather a philosophy of the his
tory — a scientific shaping and defense of the Chris
tian church and religion. To this definition and
treatment of the subject it has been well objected,
that it brings the whole of Apologetics under the
head of the philosophy of religion ; it ceases to be a
part of theology, and becomes a branch of philos
ophy. As a philosophy of religion, Drey's work con
tains valuable materials, shaped with learning and
* Apologetik als wissenschaftliche Nachweisung der Gottlichkeit des
Christenthums in seiner Erscheinung. Mainz, 3 Bde., 1844-47.

APPENDIX. 145
ability. It handles a part of the theme, but does not
give a clear and full view of the whole of the science.
Apologetics includes, to a certain extent, the philos
ophy of religion ; but it has also a wider as well as a
more specific scope.
Of the Christian Apologetics oil an Anthropological
Basis, by Pastor Christian Edward Baumstark,* only
the first volume has been published. It differs from
the other works on this subject chiefly in its method,
as indicated by the title. The author takes the
ground (on the Method of Apologetics, pp. 30-36),
that while the historical method has been chiefly fol
lowed, the psychological is the only satisfactory and
final one. The historical method tries to show that
the Christian religion is, and by its history is proved
to be, the true religion for man. The psychological
method, on the other hand, starts with the individ
ual, and shows that Christianity completely corre
sponds to the religious capacity and the religious
needs of man. It is a merit of Baumstark's work
that it emphasizes the latter point, and vindicates its
necessity. But the fact is, that every apologetic work
must, in some way, more or less consciously combine
both methods. Even in the oldest apologetic litera
ture, as Baumstark concedes, we have examples of
both — the Pra^paratio Evangclica and Demonstratio
Evangclica of Eusebius, and the De Civitate Dei of
Augustine, standing more on the historical ground ;
while the psychological method predominates in
* Christliche Apologetik auf anthropologischer Grundlage. Bd. I.
Frankfurt a. M., 1872.
7

146 APPENDIX.
Tertullian's treatise, De Testimonio Anima; natural-
iter Christiana?, and in the Clementine Homilies.
On this psychological basis, the general scheme of
Apologetics, as propounded by Baumstark, is the fol
lowing : First of all, in opposition to materialism and
pantheism, he proposes, by " anthropological investi
gations," to evince and exhibit man's native religious
capacities and endowments; then to show how far
this natural religious basis reaches, and where this
development has its limits, which require to be sup
plemented by a special revelation. Thus the founda
tion is secured which bears up all the rest. In the
second part he reviews the history of the non-Chris
tian religions — those " outside of " Christianity — to
see whether, and how far, this native religious bias is
manifested in them, and whether they can, and do,
satisfy man's religious cravings. The third part is
to give the proof, that man finds in Christianity alone
the full satisfaction for his religious needs. The first
two parts are well and fairly treated in the first vol
ume of this work ; the third part is not yet published.
The utmost that seems to be possible, or accom
plished, by this " anthropological method," is to
prove that man is a religious being ; that religion is
a necessity of human nature ; and that in the Chris
tian religion man's religious longing and needs find
their highest development and satisfaction.
The most important and, on the whole, the ablest of
these recent German works is the treatise of Dr. J. H.
A. Ebrard,* Apologetics ; The Scientific Vindication
* Apologetik. Wissenschaftliche Reehtfertigung des Christenthums,
von J. H. A. Ebrard, Dr. phil. et theol. 2 Theile, Gtttersloh, 1874-5.

APPENDIX. 147
of Christianity, 2 Parts, 1874-5. The author is best
known outside of Germany by his Scientific Criticism
of the Evangelical History (3d edition, 1868, 1241
pages), at first written in reply to Strauss's life of
Jesus, but afterward extended in scope so as to ex
hibit the unity and harmony of the four Gospels in a
thorough and satisfactory manner. Bleek assigns it
a very high place among the works on that subject.
Ebrard's Dogmatics, too, in two volumes, gives a com
prehensive outline of systematic theology, chiefly
from the Reformed point of view, though his Calvin
ism is of a moderate caste. It is one of the more
useful works for students of theology, and has been
used as a text-book in some of the Reformed institu
tions. His Apologetics has still higher claims- to at
tention, as showing the results of wide and protracted
studies, and making an excellent attempt to collect
the somewhat heterogeneous materials of this new
disciplina into a systematic form. He says in the
preface to the first part :
" For several years I have had a growing convic
tion that the coming ministers of the gospel must
enter more thoroughly into the investigations, ques
tions, and principles of the natural sciences, if they
would be in a condition to contend victoriously
against the anti-Christian tendencies of the times."
" These considerations determined me, in the winter
of 1872-3, to deliver a course of academic lectures,
to which I gave the only partially adequate name of
Apologetics, in order to fit it into the Schema of the
traditional departments of theology. My hearers were
theological students. I could, likewise, have wished

I48 APPENDIX.
that there might have been an equal number of stu
dents of medicine ; for I well know the severe internal
struggles through which a young man, educated as a
Christian, must pass when he enters upon the study
of medicine or the natural sciences." He adds, that
though he has always to some extent pursued the
study of the natural sciences, yet for the purpose of
these lectures he engaged in renewed investigations,
and he claims that in the present work he stands
upon the basis of the assured results of present scien
tific investigations — distinguishing between what is
certain and what is merely hypothetical ; and exam
ining with special critical care the consequences
drawn from these hypotheses in respect to super-
sensuous or supernatural subjects. He further claims,
that this criticism of the hypotheses of naturalists is
not made from the standpoint of an abstract, a priori,
metaphysics. " Whoever will take the pains," he
says, " to read my book, will at once discern that my
philosophical method is realistic throughout ; I start
from observed facts, and go forward step by step
with painstaking care ; I endeavor to lay at the
basis of my investigation the complete series of tlie
facts'' In the introduction to this work, Dr. Ebrard pro
ceeds to an examination of the main preliminary
questions as to the nature, scope, and place of Apol
ogetics as a scientific vindication of Christianity. To
bring these questions fairly before our readers, we
cannot do better than to give a translation, with
slight abridgments, of the whole of this introduc
tion.

APPENDIX. I49
INTRODUCTION TO EBRARD'S APOLOGETICS.
§ 1. Apologetics or Apology. — In giving this work
the title of Apologetics, according to the modern
usage, and not Apology, as the fathers of the church
called it, I am not without justification. And yet,
before we ask, What is Apologetics ? we must ex
amine and decide the previous question, Whether
there is such a science as Apologetics ? According
to the verbal interpretation, Apologetics is the science
of the anoXoyaladai, that is, the science or disciplina,
which examines the nature of defense (or vindica
tion), that is, the essential characteristics of the
apologetic procedure, and thence deduces the cor
rect method. According to this, Apologetics is re
lated to Apology as is theory to practice ; that is, it
is a relation analogous to that of homiletics to preach
ing, of liturgies to worship, of catechetics to catechis
ing, etc. But here we encounter a fact which makes
us hesitate, and demands a more thorough analysis.
For while in the above-named theoretical depart
ments of theology we always sharply distinguish be
tween theory and practice, doctrine and application,
so that homiletics never goes over into homilies, nor
liturgies into liturgies, we never, on the other hand,
see, nor can we conceive of, an Apologetics which
does not go right over into and become an Apology.
In the military art the theory of the defense (e. g., of
a country or a fortress) is clearly distinguished from
the act of defending; in the sphere of Christian
theology, Apologetics is never limited to the theory ;
it does not merely tell us what the defense should
be, but it is the scientific vindication itself.

150 APPENDIX.
§ 2. Apologetics a Science. — It is not difficult to see
the reason of this. The above noted separation of
theory and practice has no place whatever excepting
in the sphere of ecclesiastical action, where theology
becomes a practical art. The rules of such ecclesias
tical action are derived from theological science, but
they cannot, without practice, be so appropriated as
to become a capacity or an art. It is wholly other
wise in the defense of the truth of Christianity. It
may, indeed, find a place within different branches
of church activity — for example, we may have Apol
ogetics in sermons and pastoral care, in catechising,
in the work of foreign and domestic missions, but
Apologetics as such does not come under any of
these ecclesiastical acts, it forms no part of church
action, but it is essentially a scientific work.
It is only a scientific vindication of the truth of
Christianity which deserves to be called a defense
(an Apology), for the last end or aim of the so-called
Apologetics is not to impart a capacity for action, but
knowledge, viz., a recognition (knowledge) of the
truth of Christianity. The name Apologetics does
not seem to be exactly fitted, or it is only half fitted,
to denote this. What the word exactly denotes,
that is, the science of defense in general, would be
only a very empty and formal discipline. For as to
defense in the abstract, nothing more can be said
than what might be embraced in a very few formal
and general conceptions. Every defense is deter
mined by the character of the object to be defended ;
a fortress is to be defended otherwise than a chess
man, a mathematical theorem otherwise than a philo-

APPENDIX. 151
logical thesis, and both of these in a different way
from an ethical postulate. Christian Apologetics,
now, has for its object the defense of Christianity;
for, according to usage, by Christian Apologetics we
do not understand instructions as to how any given
object may be defended in a Christian way, but in
struction in the way in which Christianity is to be
defended. " Christian " here designates the object
and not the quality ; " Christian Apologetics " is
equivalent to " Apologetics of Christianity," that is,
it is the Science of the Apology of Christianity.
§ 3. Nature of Apologetics. — And thus we are led
to conclude that there is, at least, a relative justifica
tion for retaining the designation " Christian Apolo
getics." Between it and a mere " Apology " there
still remains a difference, though a flowing one. For,
Apologetics considered as the science of the defense
of Christianity is to be distinguished from a mere
Apology as such, in both its principles and method.
There are apologies, oral or written, which are de
signed to reply to some definite objections made
against Christianity, each of which may require some
thing special in the method ; thus Justin Martyr
directed both of his Apologies against a series of
definite single attacks. Such a defense may be
admirable as an Apology, and on this very account,
one-sided and inadequate as Apologetics. Christian
Apologetics must then be 'distinguished from mere
Apology by the fact, that its procedure and method
are not determined by casual attacks made at some
particular time, but by its deriving its method of

152 APPENDIX.
defense, and consequently the defense itself, from the
essential nature of Christianity. Every Apologetics
is Apology, but every Apology is not Apologetics.
Apologetics, in fine, is that science which infers from
the inmost nature of Christianity what classes of
attacks are in general possible, what different sides of
Christian truth are liable to be attacked, and what
false principles are at the basis of these attacks.
Apologetics is the Science of the Defense of the Truth
of Christianity.
Note. — Haaaell (Studien und Kritiken, 1843, 3) defines Apologetics
as "the science of the common ground of the church and of theology, "
but this is no definition, for this ground is Christ, and. Apologetics
would then be the science of Christ. The definition of the Roman
Catholic theologian, Drey (in the work above cited), represents Apol
ogetics in a way which is formally false, as the " Philosophy of the
Christian Revelation and of its History." Philosophizing about some
given object (as about revelation in general), and even about an object
of faith, is, indeed, possible (this is indirectly denied by Baumstark—
see below), and it can also take on an apologetic character, and every
true Apologetics must also proceed philosophically, not empirically, so
that for substance Drey's definition is not so far from the mark ; but
in form (formally) it is incorrect, because instead of developing the
idea of Apologetics, it only names one of the means of which Apol
ogetics has to make use. Lechler's definition is better, viz. : " The
scientific proof that the Christian religion is the absolute religion."
(Ueber den Begtiff der Apologetik, Studien und Kritiken, 1839, 3.) Only
this says too little, for Apologetics is not merely the evidence, but the
science of the evidence of the truth of Christianity. Then, too, the
idea of the "absolute religion" introduces something foreign to the
object, just as in the title to Drey's work the phrase " divinity of Chris
tianity " is too specific. For the question is simply this : Is what
Christianity says of itself true or false ? If this is decided, everything
else about its absoluteness or divinity follows of oourse. Chr. Ed.
Baumstark ("Christi. Apologetik auf anthropologischer Grundlage, "
Frankf. a. M., 1872) contests the position that "Apologetics is the

APPENDIX. 153
science of Apology," and defines it as "the scientific defense of
Christianity as the absolute religion." Apologetics, as we have seen,
comes to this, and I have, therefore, put the two as equivalent in the
title of my book, but this is not a definition. Baumstark himself after
ward recognizes the fact, that Apologetics, in distinction from an
Apology, has to defend Christianity not merely on one or another
side, but on all conceivable sides. This can be done only when Apol
ogetics deduces from the very essence of Christianity the possible attacks
upon it, and thus becomes the science of the defense of the truth of
Christianity. § 4. The Twofold Office of Apologetics. — Chris
tianity, according to its own original and docu
mentary declaration in the Holy Scriptures, is the
redemption of man by the eternal, living, and per
sonal God, achieved in time and ever advancing to
completion ; it is man's redemption out of an abnor
mal state and relation to God, opposed to the will of
God, and the true nature and destiny of man him
self, and into a normal condition and relation to God,
corresponding with the divine will and man's nature
and destination. Thus Christianity, according to its
own testimony, is (a) not a relative truth, or stage in
the knowledge of the truth, having only a relative
worth, but it is eternal and absolute truth, yet it is
this truth, (b) not in the form of mere teaching or
doctrine, but in the form of fact, of actual realization.
Christianity is an historical act of redemption in
time ; it is historical fact, but it is act and fact,
having eternal and absolute contents. In the person
of Christ " the truth " (// a\r)6eia) appeared person
ally ; in history " the life " (7 Zwrf) ; in Christ's pas
sion and resurrection, the eternal normal relation
between man and God is reinstated in and by a
7*

1 54 APPENDIX.
temporal act ; and so, too, the conversion of the in
dividual to Christ, and faith in Christ, are the filling
of the soul in time with an eternal substance. If
Christianity now be such an intimate union of tem
poral historical acts with the eternal substance of
truth, it follows directly — that the attacks upon Chris
tianity must be aimed either against its eternal sub
stance of truth, or against the temporal facts. That is,
either the eternal truths in Christianity can be assailed,
or its historical character.
Note. — The definition of Apologetics given by Sack (Christi. Apol
ogetik) is one-sided, viz. : " That branch (disciplina) of theology which
shows that the ground of the Christian religion is a divine fact. " In
accordance with this he goes on to sa^ that the office of Systematic
Theology is to develop ' ' the ideal side, " or the eternal truth of Chris
tianity, while Apologetics treats of Christianity as actual fact. Sack
was probably led to this one-sided definition by the fact, that when he
wrote this work, the attacks (of De Wette, and then of Strauss) were
almost exclusively made against the historical character of Christian
ity. Had he written in reply to the modern assaults of materialism
upon the existence of life, of soul, of personality, of design (teleology),
and of God himself, his definition could hardly have been so partial.
But yet he might have remembered the French Encyclopaedists ! But
his chief error consisted in his starting out from the attacks for the
moment in vogue, instead of deducing the idea of Apologetics from
the essential nature of Christianity.
§ 5. A. Defense of the Eternal Truth of Christian
ity. Difference between Apologetics and Polemics. —
The eternal contents of Christianity are attacked
when the truths which it teaches or takes for granted
are denied, and represented as falsehoods. The attacks
which Apologetics has here to repel are directed
against these truths as such, and thus Apologetics is

APPENDIX. 155
distinguished from Polemics. The office of Polemics
is that of contending against tendencies which do not
deny the truths as such, but only call in question the
connection of these eternal truths with the facts of
Christianity, or present them in a perverted form.
Note. — The Rationalismus Vulgaris, as well as Socinianism and
Pelagianism (like Ebionitism before them), do not deny the historical
character of Christianity, do not declare it to be a myth ; nor do they
deny such eternal truths as that there is a God, that there is a law of
God, a moral law for man, and that the transgression of this law is
sin. Nor do they deny that Christ— came to deliver men from sin —
that is, to redeem mankind.
But they call in question that mode of conjoining the historical
facts with the eternal truths which are taught by revelation in the
primitive documents of Christianity. Thus they deny that the eternal
substance of truth was in Jesus Christ personally made manifest ; that
he freed men from guilt by his expiatory sacrifice, and that deliverance
from guilt must precede deliverance from sin, etc. They reduce sal
vation to mere teaching or example, to a sharpening of the law. This
is a perversion of Christianity, exipedii, not a direct denial.
Analagous to these Ebionitistic tendencies, only in the opposite direc
tion, are the Docetic heresies ; analogous to the legal heresies are the
Antinomian — they are perversions. The office of Polemics, as well as
of Dogmatics, is to contend against and to refute these perversions of
Christianity. On the other hand, Apologetics has to establish
the truth of Christianity against such assaults as
have grown up in those systems of speculation which
are outside of Christianity, or are opposed to it, and
which attack and deny the eternal truths of Chris
tianity as such. When, for example, materialism
maintains that the soul and thought are mere func
tions of the ganglia of the brain ; when materialism
and pantheism maintain that there is no immortal-

156 APPENDIX.
ity, neither eternal happiness nor eternal misery, and
that consequently the whole presupposition of the
necessity of redemption is from the outset deception
or superstition ; or when these systems maintain that
the freedom of the will is a mere seeming, and that
every man at every moment acts from necessity as
compelled by his nerves and the ganglia of the brain,
etc., that the difference of good and evil is deter
mined only by custom and convenience, that there is
no ethical law binding in itself, and hence no sin ; or
that there are in nature and in the order of the
world no works of design, and consequently that
there is no Creator : — all of these cases are denials of
Christian truth as such ; here the ground is taken
away from under the feet of Christianity, and it is
about these questions that Apologetics is to be em
ployed. It has for its office to investigate such at
tacks in a philosophical manner, and to inquire how
they are to be scientifically refuted.
§6. Illustrations and Limitations. — It is a matter of
course that Apologetics cannot bring to these inves
tigations any axioms borrowed from revelation and
theology, but can only appeal to the facts of self-
consciousness and of native rational knowledge be
longing to man as man. We do not prove idem per
idem; this were illogical and objectionable. To take
for granted a knowledge of Christian truth, to pre
suppose a consciousness shaped by Christianity, and
then to analyze that consciousness, this is not Apol
ogetics. Considered on its practical side, the object
of Apologetics is to give instructions to the practical

APPENDIX. 157
theologian, to the minister of the church, and in gen
eral to every Christian and member of the church,
how he is to defend the truths of Christianity against
those who still stand aloof from the faith, against
non-Christians and gainsayers. Not as though an
unbeliever or scoffer can be converted to Christianity
by means of deduction and proof (somewhat as Pas
tor Blendinger, in Franconia, tries to compel the Jews
to see the truth of Christianity by demonstrations
inserted in the Number g Korrespondent). Repent
ance alone leads to true Christian faith, such repent
ance as comes home to the anguished conscience from
an inward conviction of the holiness of God's law,
and as leads one to ask, what must I do to be saved ?
But besides scoffers and unbelievers, there are also
those who are weak in the faith and wavering, and
who are in danger of being led wholly astray by such
audacious foes ; and for their sakes it is necessary to
oppose the fallacious arguments of unbelief, and to
do this on such grounds and with such evidence, that
these opponents can have nothing to say in reply.
Consequently it is necessary to come down to their
ground, to their arena, to ignore all axioms borrowed
from Christianity itself, so as to lead the objectors e
concessis ad absurdum ; to make it evident that their
own assumptions and inferences are false and per
verse even on the ground of their own premises. For
this reason the Apologetics of Christianity in its first
division, where it defends the eternal truths of Chris
tianity, has to begin wholly with the general facts of
human consciousness and the assured results of the
study of nature. It has to ask whether those truths

158 APPENDIX.
and doctrines which are presupposed by Christianity
agree or are in conflict with the facts of nature and
of natural consciousness, viz. : Such truths as the ex
istence of a living holy God, the reality of a moral
law, and the freedom and responsibility of the will •
the fact that man is in a state of opposition to the
law, and his incapacity to save himself. The subject
then of the first part of Apologetics may be thus
stated : The eternal truth of the substance of Chris
tianity, as measured by the facts of nature and of
human consciousness.
§ 7. B. Defense of the Historical Character oj
Christianity. — The other side of Christianity is its
historical character. The redemption through Jesus
Christ is a fact which occurred nearly two thousand
years ago in the land of Judea. The assaults of anti-
Christianity are also directed against the historical
character of Christianity, especially against its histori
cal documents — the biblical writings. The foremost
attack is against the historical character of the con
tents of these writings, of which (as Strauss says, in
his "Life of Jesus for the German People," 1864,
Preface, p. xiv)_we must get quit ; next, against the
credibility of these writings ; and then — as the means
of contesting their credibility — against their genuine
ness and their antiquity. The investigation of these
points, under the unfitting name of " Introduction,"
or under the more fitting title of " Criticism of the
Writings of the Old and New Testaments," forms a
special part of theology — a very extended and com
prehensive branch, which, taken strictly, is through
out of an apologetic character. But yet, in all its de-

APPENDIX. 159
tails, it does not properly come under Apologetics.
Not merely for the reason of convenience, since its
very comprehensiveness would carry it far beyond
the proper limits of this science, but for another —
an internal reason, viz. : that such a " criticism "
properly makes an " apology " (see § 3), and is not
Apologetics, because it necessarily has to follow up
and examine the objections, views, and hypotheses
made at special times.
§ 8. Historical Character — continued. — Apologetics
also examines the historical character of Christianity,
and the attacks upon it, but in another way, under
broader and more general points of view. It must
inquire into the possible points of attack, and de
velop the mode of defense in accordance with certain
general principles. The historical fact of redemption
presupposes the reality of another historical fact,
viz. : of a rebellion, in time, of the will of the crea
ture against the eternal moral law and will of God.
Christianity — biblical, revealed Christianity — stands
and falls with this preamble. The exact opposite of
biblical Christianity, on this point, is found in pan
theism and materialism. Pantheism looks upon
moral evil, not as the opposition of the creature's
will to God; not as a fall and corruption — in a word,
not as sin ; but, like its father, the devil (Gen. iii : 5),
as a lower good — a process of development not yet
completed, and even as a necessary means of transi
tion to the good itself ; and consequently holds that
no Saviour is needed, excepting humanity redeeming
itself ; and the same is true of materialism, which

l60 APPENDIX.
teaches that humanity is developed out of an apish
state. According to pantheism, we find, in the his
tory of mankind, only a constant progress from mere
undeveloped to developed, and hence better, con
ditions. Whether this be really so is to be deter
mined by investigating the History of the Race. As,
in the first division of Apologetics, we appeal to the.
facts of nature and of consciousness, so, in the second
part, our subject-matter is the General History of
Culture and Religion, as well in civilized nations as in
savage tribes, in order to find an answer to the
question, whether it is a fact, that in the history of
the human race there is a constant progress from the
lower to the higher, or whether it is not historically
established, that there is an incessant counter-tend
ency, viz. : a constant lapse and degeneracy from a
higher to a lower state.
§ 9. Historical Apologetics — continued. — When we
come to the study of Christianity as a historical fact,
in its organic connection with the general history of
religion, we encounter two remarkable phenomena.
On the one hand, there is the historical proof of a
fall of the human will from the divine ; of a perver
sion of development into degeneration, as is seen in
the documentary evidence of a lapse from primitive
monotheism into polytheism, and a tendency to an
ever-increasing savagery. But, along with this, we
also find the striking fact, that precisely in that
Semitic race, in which sin was first raised to a satanic
degree of corruption, and the relation of religion to
morals was not only glossed over, but perverted into

APPENDIX. l6l
a gross and fearful immorality, the Godhead being
worshiped by lasciviousness and murder — in the
midst, now, of this very race, a single branch, not
withstanding all its inclinations to the same corrup
tion, did, nevertheless, manifest the very opposite
tendency; so that we find in it a knowledge of the
holiness, and consequently of the unity and person
ality, of God, as well as a clear recognition of the
curse and misery of sin, and of the necessity of an
expiation ; and this, too, for hundreds, yea, thou
sands of years — after every time of disturbance
breaking forth anew. The object of our investiga
tion is to ascertain whether this historical phenom
enon can be explained in the sense of pantheism, and
with the factors of naturalism ; or whether we are not
obliged, with the Scriptures, to recognize and confess
a series of revealed acts of the living God redeeming
man from the debasing progress of sin and corrup
tion. And when, in fine, among the same Semitic
people, we find the historical ground upon which
Jesus Christ appears as the Redeemer of the world,
then too — apart from all special researches about the
age and origin of the individual gospels — we have the
double facts of the Lord's Supper and the Sunday
observance, ever testifying to the historical reality of
his death and resurrection ; and also the testimonies
of the Pauline epistles, bringing positive evidence of
the supernatural character of his person. And fur
ther, Christianity can be tested in history, not merely
by the advent of Christ and his entrance into the
series of sinful humanity, but also by the effects it
has produced upon history itself. It is not difficult

1 62 APPENDIX.
to adduce the proof of the heavenly fruits of Chris
tianity in history. And there is also the weighty
fact, that every form of corrupt Christianity which
has been drawn into the service of sin, and inter
twined with lies, has produced much more abhorrent
and pestilential corruption than were ever found in
heathendom alone ; and this, too, heightens the evi
dence for Christianity — just as the mouldering corpse
of a man spreads much fouler taints than the carcass
of a beast. Here, too, the history of religion, con
sidered in the light of God, becomes, throughout, an
apologetic — not of what is now and then called Chris
tianity, but of what Christianity is in the Holy Scrip
tures. Hence the object of the second part of Apol
ogetics may be given in the phrase — Christianity as
a historical fact, in its organic connection with the
general history of religion.
§ 10. As to the Form. — The character of Apologet
ics, in distinction from Apology, is secured when
positive investigations are, made the starting point,
and the refutation of opposing theorems follows on
after. This appears in the First Part of our division
of the subject ; here, in the First Book, we inquire
after the facts of natural consciousness and of objec
tive nature, in a systematic order ; before, in the
Second Book, we refer to the theories and systems
opposed to Christianity, and expose their internal
contradictions. In this Second Book of the First
Part, too, where Apologetics manifestly becomes
Apology (see above, § i), it is distinguished from a
bare Apology (in the sense of § 3) by bringing within

APPENDIX. 163
the sphere of its examination, not only such anti-Chris
tian theories as spring up at the present time, but also
all classes of theorems, in systematic grouping, which
can be directed against any, or all, of the fundamental
doctrines and presuppositions (prwambula) of Chris
tianity, in all the forms in which these have appeared
until now. The future shapes of these theories it
cannot, of course, conjecture in detail ; and so far
forth Apologetics, like every human science, is not
complete,.but growing in and with the times. The
last holds true also of the Second Part of Apologetics
in our division. The materials here used for the his
tory of religion have been chiefly collected, in recent
times, by the labors of Max Mulier, Spiegel, Dunker,
and others. Such an investigation as is given in this
Second Part was not possible a generation ago. In
ethnography, and the religious history of the savage
races, our knowledge is still fragmentary. Here the
first canon of investigation must be, not to fill up the
gaps by airy hypotheses, but to restrict ourselves to
deductions from what is surely attested. Thus the
error will be avoided which is now so plainly in vogue
on the side of the opponents of Christianity.

This Introduction to Ebrard's Apologetics gives a
sufficiently full and fair view of the way in which this
department of theology is now generally treated in
Germany, and of the questions raised in relation to
its extent and method. Understanding Apologetics
in his sense and usage of the term, his treatment of
the subject, in the body of his work, is full and able,

164 APPENDIX.
more satisfactory on the whole than any other single
treatise. We can give only a very general sketch.
As already stated, the whole material is divided into
two parts. The First Part, comprised in the first
volume, is entitled The Eternal Truths of Christian
ity Measured by the Facts of Nature and of Human
Consciousness. This is divided into two Books, the
first of which contains the Positive Development;
the second, the Examination and Refutation of the
Systems opposed to Christianity.
Under Book First, after some general statements
as to the nature of Christianity, and what is presup
posed in it, there are three divisions of the subject-
matter. (1) The Ethical Law and its Author, pp.
17-222; (2) On Sin, pp. 223-281; (3) Redemption
and its Necessity, more concisely treated, pp. 282-
314. In the first division, the fundamental questions
of ethics, of psychology, and of natural theology are
discussed at considerable length. The facts of
human consciousness, in respect to the world, to the
human soul, and to the moral law are clearly an
alyzed and made the basis for the refutation of anti-
Christian theories and speculations. Man's depend
ence upon nature is fully granted, while his self-con
scious independence is clearly vindicated. The whole
of nature is viewed as a complex of laws filled with
marks of design. Man's knowledge of God is shown
to be natural and necessary. The author of the vast
system of designs in nature must be a self-conscious
being ; there is no real contradiction between an ab
solute and a personal being. The correct form of
proof of the existence of God is not to be found by

APPENDIX. 165
asking " whether the Absolute exists, but rather by
asking, In what form does the Absolute exist? Is it
an abstract aboriginal unity, or an unconscious prim
itive force, or self-conscious Spirit?" (p. 199.) God,
it is then shown, is essentially ethical ; God is love ;
the moral law is the highest law.
In the Second Division the existence and nature
of sin are considered. In opposition to the skeptical
theories, it is shown that it is not physical but. moral,
not from necessity but by an act of freedom, involv
ing the race, and also implying personal responsibil
ity. Its origin is in the beginning of the race and the
divine relation to it is one of permission and not of
efficiency. It is all, however, subject to the divine
disposal and government ; nature itself, in fact, was
arranged from the beginning in view of the possibil
ity of sin.
Man, thus shown to be essentially a moral being,
the subject of a moral law, and having transgressed
that law, stands in need of redemption, which is con
sidered in the Third Division. Man is unable to re
deem himself, redemption comes only through the
divine work of the God-man, which is grounded in
the mystery of the internal relations of the persons
in the Godhead. The Gospel is no human invention.
The divine act of redemption corresponds to the
human need. The incarnation and its miracles are
conceivable and not irrational. The Second Book of
the First Part is devoted to the examination and
refutation of the anti-Christian systems of philosophy
(PP- 3I5-443)- The author treats: 1, Of the me
chanical system, or the denial of the organic life-

1 66 APPENDIX.
power ; 2, Of the denial of final causes, design in
nature (which he calls Aposkopiology) ; he here ably
vindicates the teleological theory of the universe ;
3, Of the Darwinian theory, which is thoroughly and
acutely discussed ; 4, Of the denial of the freedom of
the will, and on moral statistics, where the positions
and assumptions of materialism are candidly and
fully exposed ; 5, Of the Pantheistic philosophy, ex
amining the systems of Spinoza, J. G. Fichte, Schel-
ling, Hegel, Von Hartmann, and Schopenhauer. He
has evidently made a thorough study of these anti-
Christian theories, and shows their inconsistency not
merely with Christian doctrines, but also with the
recognized facts of nature and of human conscious
ness. This work is as thoroughly done as his limits
would allow.
The Second Part of Apologetics in Dr. Ebrard's
arrangement presents Christianity as a Historical
Fact in its Organic Connection with the General
History of Religion. It is divided into two Books,
respectively entitled the Religions of Men, and the
Revelation of God. The first of these occupies some
five hundred pages of the second volume, while the
Divine Revelation is sketched in sixty-eight pages.
Perhaps the best and most thorough portion of the
whole work is contained in the author's elaborate in
vestigations under the former head, comprising, as it
does, the results of the latest ethnographic and lin
guistic studies by the most eminent scholars of Ger
many and other countries. Dr. Ebrard, according to
his own account, prepared himself by protracted and
extended study for this most important and difficult

APPENDIX. 167
task, going through the writings of W. von Hum
boldt, Buschmann, Schott, Von der Gablente, and
others, collecting the facts from all attainable sources,
and combining the whole in a narrative and argu
ment of convincing force. We do not know where
to find a more weighty reply to the assumptions and
theories of those writers who persist in claiming, ac
cording to the unproved hypothesis of a merely nat
uralistic evolution, that the primitive religious state
of mankind was the lowest and most debased form of
polytheistic idolatry, and that the higher religions
have been developed out of these base rudiments.
Dr. Ebrard shows conclusively that the facts all lead
to another conclusion, that gross idolatry is a degen
eration of mankind from antecedent and purer forms
of religious worship. He first treats of the civilized
nations of antiquity, the Aryan and Indian religions,
the Vedas, the Indra period, Brahmanism and Bud
dhism ; then of the religion of the Eranians, the
Avesta, and the Parsees ; next of the Greeks and
Romans, the Egyptians, the Canaanites, and the
heathen Semitic forms of worship, including Phoe
nicians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. His Second
Division is devoted to the half-civilized and savage
races, in the North and West of Europe, in Asia and
Polynesia (Tartars, Mongols, Malays, Cushites) ; thert
of America, including a minute examination of the
relations of the different races here to the Mongol,
Japanese, and old Chinese immigrations. This part
of the work is of special interest, and contains many
ingenious suggestions and speculations as to the con
nection between Asiatic and native American culture.

1 68 APPENDIX.
In summing up the results of these conscientious
and prolonged investigations, the author claims that
he has shown that there " is not anywhere the least
trace of an upward and onward advance from Fetich-
ism to Polytheism, and from Polytheism to a grad
ually dawning knowledge of one God ; but that, on
the other hand, it is definitely proved that among all
the nations of the heathen world there has been a
fall and degradation out of an earlier and relatively
purer knowledge of God;" that even among the
most abject and debased " there are reminiscences of
an earlier worship of one invisible creator and ruler
of the world." He also holds and maintains, that he
has proved " the essential unity of the human race,
and the unity of its primitive traditions, that is, the
truth of its early history," as given in the Scriptures,
and confirmed by the testimony of different races and
nations. In their dispersion from the original centre
of the race (the western part of Central Asia, in the
Euphrates Valley), all the people and tribes " carried
with them the memory of one God, who, in the be
ginning, revealed himself to man ; of one sin of the
first parents, in the eating of the forbidden fruit
through the influence of the tempter upon the woman,
and of the entrance of death as the consequence and
punishment of sin ; of the brother's murder, and of
three brothers who invented the metallic arts, etc. ;
of a race of giants ; of the flood ; of the ark, and the
mountain, and the birds sent from the ark ; of the
rainbow and the promise ; of three sons from whom
descended all the peoples ; of a revolt against God,
the building of the tower, the confusion of tongues,
and the sundering of the nations."

APPENDIX. 169
But we must needs stop in our analysis and ex
tracts from this very able, comprehensive, and timely
work. It is a vigorous, learned, and high-toned con
tribution to our apologetic literature — well worthy of
being reproduced in an English version. Before ma
terialism and pantheism can win the day, they have
got to disprove the positions and refute the argu
ments of such works as this. Their earth-born theory
is of little avail against such an array of facts — facts
of history, facts of nature, and facts of human con
sciousness. In the concluding Book, headed " The Revelation
of God," Dr. Ebrard sums up the results of all his
investigations, and then treats, first, of the " Redeem
ing Acts of God," in his revelation under the old
dispensation and in the incarnation ; and, second, of
the " Effects of Redemption " upon the individual,
upon society, and upon races and nations. This is
less fully treated than some other parts of his great
theme, and leaves much to be supplemented. It
might well be the subject of another volume.
The System of Christian Apologetics (1869), by Dr.
F. Delitzsch, the eminent orientalist, of Leipsic,
differs greatly from that of Dr. Ebrard, and is handled
in an entirely original method.

APPENDIX III.
OUTLINE OF PROFESSOR SMITH'S INTENDED LEC
TURES ON EVOLUTION.

INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.
Evolution is a great word : it is meant to cover
the History of the Universe. It is the result of a
great many words and of all the theories of the uni
verse : Cosmogony, Emanation, Development, Prog
ress, progressive organization, the ascent from the
lowest to the highest, the whole space from the be
ginning to the consummation, the last aspiration of
Metaphysics, the last results of Physics, the final
term of Pantheism, of Materialism (Atheism), of The
ism and also of Theology.
The history of the evolution theory is as old as
human thought. Its materialistic forms were ad
vanced and rejected in the dawn of philosophy. It
is now newly formulated.*
In the Vedas we find the recognition of forces and
organizing powers. Theism (at least, infinite Mind),
Pantheism and Materialism are there. The " order
* By Spencer more ably than any other. 170

APPENDIX. 171
of succession " is drawn out : from the substance of
eternal being plants, animals, ether, and earth were
separated. To the Greek mind " atoms were the sacred home
and shrine of Philosophy." Democritus assumed
them as the origin and explanation of all things ;
Xenophanes conceived the original substance as
ethereal; Anaxagoras demanded that to atoms
should be added a shaping intelligence ; and the
complete reaction against the old materialism (and
materialistic necessity), was expressed by Socrates
and Plato, in the position that Necessity was not all
or ultimate, but that Intelligence was more and
higher. This comes out in a striking way in the
Timaeus :* " Intelligence, superior to Necessity, per
suades it (tg_ neideiv autrjv) to govern the most of
what is evolved so as to lead to what is best, and
thus the universe (to nav) was fashioned at the be
ginning because Necessity allowed itself to be per
suaded by wisdom." Also :f " two kinds of causes "
are discerned, " one necessary, one divine." Socra
tes, in Phedon4 tells " how glad he was when he first
heard that Anaxagoras had said that Intelligence was
the. cause of all, and he thought that Anaxagoras
would tell how everything was arranged for the use
ful and the best design — how the physical was for
the moral : and how disappointed he felt when he
found that no use was made of Intelligence — that
ether, water, and other things equally absurd were
made the cause of all — the physical made to explain
* Tim. 48. a. t Tim- 68- e- X 97 c. 99 d.

172 APPENDIX.
the moral and the intelligent, and no account taken
of the fair order of things."
In short, with Socrates and Plato, the ethical view
— the order and end of the universe— predominates.
They find ideas a place in the creation — find thought
in things. Here Teleology is born. There is noth
ing much better, even in modern science, than these
utterances of Socrates : * "He who in the beginning
made man gave him ears to hear, eyes to see, nostrils
to smell, tongue for taste, eyebrows and eyelashes
to protect the eye, light of day to distinguish objects,
divisions of day and night, nourishment from the
earth, water, fire, and air The gods love and cherish
man, watch over him as their greatest care." f " He
who orders and governs the universe, in which are
united all beauty and all good, and who, for our
use, keeps the universe in eternal vigor and youth
. . . . this god is seen accomplishing the most
sublime works, but abides unseen in the government
of the world." %
The sense of this is, that when we ask, What is
the world (or universe) for ? — the question is not and
can not be answered by propounding any mere mathe
matical, mechanical, or physical end or object : for if
* I do not find that the masters in modern physical research, with
all their advantages, are yet qualified, either by the quantity or quality
of their brains, or by their culture, to sneer at Socrates, to cast aside
Plato as a " poet," or to patronize Aristotle by misunderstanding him.
Many of these men are as far from Socrates and Plato — as far from
Cicero and Seneca — even from Buddha and Zoroaster, as they are from
Moses and the prophets and the apostles of Christ.
t Memorab. I., iv. § 5.
X Ibid., IV., iii. § 13.

APPENDIX. 173
this were all, there would not be and could not be
any man, any intelligent moral agent, or any God
but Fate.
Merely physical agencies can never evolve a moral
being and a moral end. But these latter are found
in fact, say Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.* The
world is made " for good." Hence, besides Neces
sity, there must also be Reason, Intelligence — lead
ing to some moral end — in the authorship (origina
tion) of the world itself.
This was the impregnable and victorious position of
the old Greek wisdom against the old Greek material
ism. And when this is said the essential thing is
said, the main point is gained. For, if a man be a
moral being with moral ends, there must be in the
First Cause — not power alone and mathematics —
but Will directed by wisdom.f
* Lange (Hist. Materialism) knows too much to put Aristotle on the
other side, as some English lecturers have done, though he puts Demo-
critus and Lucretius" above Plato and Aristotle.
f In Lange's History of Materialism, this form of philosophy is
traced through all history ; its counterparts are exhibited, but the Ma
terialism is represented as preeminent. Thus : — I. Ancient world :
Democritus, Empedocles (ethical), Aristippus ; the Idealistic reaction :
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle ; subsequently, theoretical Materialism car
ried farther by Epicurus and Lucretius.3 II. Mediceval. Moham
medanism more favorable to Materialism (Averroes) than Christianity
was. Scholasticism. Bruno, Bacon, Descartes. III. Seventeenth

a There was a debate between Origen and Celsus as to Man's place in Nature :
Celsus advocating self-transformation in matter, saying that man is not the end of
creation, that God cares for and punishes brutes, that elephants have moral qualities,
signs of speech and knowledge of the divine. Origen admits spontaneous genera
tion, as the work of God. See Aug, Kind, Teleologie und Naturalismus, in d. alt
Chr. Ztschft, Jena, 1875.

174 APPENDIX.
As the question of Evolution now confronts us,
we must recollect the difficulties of the subject in
the general mind of the age. The Christian Faith,
the simple Biblical Faith, is here assailed. The
whole of modern German metaphysics, philosophy
in its widest speculation — abroad and at home — is in
array against Faith. In this country, the most power
ful intellectual and investigating tendency of the
time is against us, including multitudes of the young
men in all the colleges and professions.* The ques
tion is : Is there as much evidence of the literal in
spiration of the Scriptures as of the results of philo
sophical and scientific investigations? We have to
meet that. We must be wary of our grounds.f We
learn of the past: e.g. of astronomy, geology. 'In
evolution, we must concede — and appropriate — all
that is proved true, as we have often done before.
Those hurt the good cause who stoutly maintain the
unbending literality of their own interpretation of
the sacred text, and anathematize all who will not
repeat their formulae. There are some who, if a
Christian utters the word evolution, accuse him of
playing into the hands of the infidel and the atheist.
Those Evolutionists who are not Christians just want
Christians to say that all evolution undermines the
Century. Gassendi's History, Bayle, Newton ; Locke, Toland. IV.
Eighteenth Century. English and French basis. Priestley, Bayle,
Diderot, Robinet, de la Mettrie, d'Holbach, Cabanis. Reaction in
Leibnitz and Wolf. V. Then general. Feuerbach, Moleschutz, etc.,
to the present, where we have Czolbe and Hackel advocating a doctrine
of " ensouled atoms."
* — " tua res agitur cum proximus ardet."
t It is easy to argue with believers ; the business is with unbelievers.

APPENDIX. 175
Bible, and that every form of Darwinism is Atheism.
But, to say that species are entirely arbitrary, that
there is no sort of physical connection or descent be
tween them, is to advance a purely scientific, not a
religious or Christian, theory. There are three theo
ries of Evolution. (1) The Materialistic. (2) The
Pantheistic* (These two may be combined. What
is to be marked in respect to both, or to the two
combined is— their insufficiency as regards (a) motive
power, (b) organizing power — mind.) (3) The Theistic
and Christian. This contains all of fact and truth
which is found in the others, and supplies, their de
fects, in the recognition of a personal, conscious,intel-
ligence. We are not to deny continuity of growth, as far as
shown. We are to consider that it is not shown at
the great joints and crises,f that is —
Between atoms and primordial forces,
Between life and mechanics,
Between the soul and the vegetable,
Between man and the animal.
But, even at these crises we are not to deny the
use of the antecedent in the new. " The Lord God

* ' ' One part of the Christian world worships a Jew, another, a
Jewess," and it might be added that the modern pantheistic world cele
brates in another Jew, Spinoza, the worship of genius.
f The Scientific Doctrine of Continuity, by Professor Leebody, Brit.
and For. Ev. Rev., October, 1876, advocates continuity, "with three
exceptions : (1) eternity of matter, (2) life, (3) man's place," etc. But,
the exceptions prove that the principle of continuity is not enough to
explain things, without a higher power, at crises : and why not recog
nize such higher power all along, like sap from tap-root to cone ?

176 APPENDIX.
formed man out of the dust of the ground." We are
to assert that —
All the mechanical laws are in vital products — and
something more,
All the vegetable in animal products — and more,
All the animal in man — and more,
All of man in history — and more.
And the question is : Whence and what this More?
We are to urge that mathematical demonstration
is great in its way, but that that is a narrow way: it
deals with few attributes, masses, numbers, motions,
planetary orbs — all very well in their place, all grand
in a sense, but comparatively barren and meagre.
To say that this is the highest knowledge, and the
highest way of knowing is perfectly absurd.* Things
that cannot be weighed and measured and chemi
cally worked up — are immensely more valuable and
interesting. A scrap of life, a speck of sensation, a
mote of vision is worth more individually than all
that mathematics and mechanics ever did or can do!
If the sun could see and feel, it would be worth
something; f if it could only see itself, if it only
knew that it was burning up for our comfort, it would
be immeasurably advanced in the- scale of being.
We may wonder that the world should be led by
such a pretense of wisdom as the theories of the day
exhibit,:]: but we are none the less to consider that it
* " Philosophy, which leaned on Heaven before,
Sinks to her second cause — and is no more."
Concluding lines of The Dunciad.
t Intrinsically, i. .., would be an "end in itself" and not a mere
means. X " Quantilla sapientia homines regnantur." — Oxenstiern.

APPENDIX. 177
is thus led and influenced, and that the interests at
stake are most vital.
It is true that such ponderous platitudes were never
used to cover a more superficial system (.. g. Spen
cer's definition : " Homogeneous becomes heteroge
neous — differentiates," etc.), that we have here mere
hollow phrases to express an empty law. But it is
also true that these high, dim, shining abstractions
and glittering generalities, harmless and distant as
they may seem, and much as we may deride them or
gaze with blank wonder, have an immense practical
power. They are meant to give us the code of the
universe, the laws of being, the seeds of all life and
growth, the organic principle of nature and the spirit,
to remodel laws and institutions, to shape philos
ophies, to build the state after new patterns, to re
shape social law and order, society and life, the
family, the state, the church.
The difficulty as well as the importance of the dis
cussion arises from the fact that it is border-lands
which are now the fields of conflict — the border-lands
between mind and matter, between force and life
(and life is a. form of force), between the vegetable and
animal kingdoms. Hence also the strife is between
materialism and spiritualism, atheism and theism,
science and philosophy, and philosophy and faith.*
The discussion may be conducted in the following
order :

* ' ' There is a border-land between philosophy and science. The
questions raised by science are answered by philosophy." See T. K.
Becker, Die Grenze zwischen Phil. u. exact. Wissensch. Berlin, 1876.
8*

178 APPENDIX.
After I. The Introductory and General Consider
ations. II. The Metaphysical Background assumed for
Evolution* III. The Scientific Achievement.!
IV. The Bearing on Theology. The Adjustments
between Evolution and Theology in general. (This
on the supposition that there is a view of Evolution
which (a) grants design and (b) is theistic.)
V. The Bearing on Scripture. Evolution and the
Bible. (Raising the questions (a) of geology, (b) of
the order of creation.)
It should be added that the subsoil of all the hy
potheses with which we have to deal is in the old
question: Is the universe to be viewed sub specie
mundi, or, sub specie aternitatis ? Are we e. g. to
bound our view of all organisms with " the four or-
ganogens," carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen ?
This is the battle of Armageddon, and here we en
counter the Anti- Christ. II.
THE METAPHYSICAL BACKGROUND.
It used to be considered something of a task to
make a world ; most people pondering the subject,
have gladly taken refuge in mystery and omnipo
tence.^: But now almost everybody fresh from the
* The strength of Evolution thus far is in the metaphysical theory
which it advocates, and not in its inductions.
t This has not met the metaphysical assumptions even half way.
X Fichte was a notable exception.

APPENDIX. 179
retorts can tell us, if not how it is done, at any rate
how it must be done if done at all.* This, at least,
the investigator has ascertained : that if he had been
present at the upspringing of life in the world, he
would have seen with his mortal vision, mechanical
forces becoming vital — and still remaining mechanical;
life appearing and really being nothing new — no life
there, in fact. The substance of the reason given for
this confident assertion respecting the origin of life is
that as we approximate to " protoplasm " in our ex
periments, we can see no difference between it as mere
material, subject only to chemical and mechanical
laws, and as " vitalized " or endowed with the laws of
life. But, having no instrument to detect the differ
ence, why should we expect to see it? The intima
tion is that the difference is infinitely small, is equal
almost to zero. But here the " infinitely small " be
comes the infinitely great. Every thinker would
rather know the heart of a molecule than know all
astronomy. In the little, the unseen, the invisibilia,
the mystery of creation slumbers. The theorist says,
" If I had been there I should have expected to see
the mechanical-chemical change into the living." But
with what instrument of vision? How would he
" see " an atom ensouled, or, perchance, a mechanical
law changed into a living force ? He would only see
some of the atoms differently arranged and showing
new properties, viz. : a live-centre, a sac, a cell
wriggling about, thrusting dead atoms out of the way,
* " He had first matter seen undrest
And took her naked, all alone,
Before one ray of form was on." — Hudibras.

180 APPENDIX.
using them, feeding, disgorging, fighting, using the
organs of nutrition and assimilation, finally repro
ducing something just like itself and giving up its
imperceptible ghost.
This could be seen, and nothing else : the existence
of a new being, with new properties and functions,
and its little life then expiring. t But it would never
be seen that mechanics and chemistry did this. It
would be seen only that they were there, but under
new conditions. Even if no new principle of life be
admitted, the new conditions, which cannot be derived
from physics and mechanics, must be.* Aristotle
says : iv roli d'deaiv, roi? aioOrfToiS, ra vor/ra
isri. In sense is intellect. The investigator of pro
toplasm does not " see " the mechanical and chemi
cal powers of matter, otherwise than with the mind ;
he needs only the mind to " see " life when it arises ;t
* Spencer, First Princ. 192, says : ' ' The sole truth which transcends
experience by underlying it is thus the persistence of force. To this
an ultimate analysis brings us down, and on this _ rational synthesis
must be built up." Again, p. 195, "Uniformity of Nature " is only
"persistence of relations among forces." Tyndall, Frag. Sc. no,
declares that "no matter how subtle a natural phenomenon may be,
whether we view it in the region of sense, or follow it in that of the
imagination, it is in the long run reducible to mechanical laws. " Yet
he says (Belfast address — see N. Englander, Oct. 1876) : " To explain
evolution without creation must radically change our notions of mat
ter." " Taught, as we have been, to regard these definitions " (which
give us its purely physical and mechanical properties), " as complete,
we rightly reject the notion that out of such materials any form of life
could possibly arise. " So Du Bois Raymond : " It is a mistake to see
in the first introduction of life on the earth anything supernatural, or
indeed anything more than an extremely difficult problem in me
chanics." f "Copernicus had no telescope."

APPENDIX. l8l
i. e. to discern that entirely distinct phenomena have
presented themselves, for which the mind — the organ
of vision in the case — demands a distinct cause or
source.* It is the position of our antagonists that Force is
all. But this very word, Force, connotes, not a
phenomenon, but its cause. The phenomenon is dis
cerned only through and by motion; and this motion
again is never discerned — and no man can define it,
except by a paradox — something which both is not,
and is. So true it is that the roots of phenomena
are in the noumena — of the unintelligible in that
which is discerned only by Intelligence, an Idea of
Reason. Moreover, by every law of psychology, of logic,
and of philosophy, Mind is what we know nearest,
most and best. All else is comparatively inaccessi
ble. The thing-in-itself, the substance which we
know, and alone directly is — Mind.
Let it be considered how much a materialistic
evolutionist must take for granted : He has space
and time, with no beginning nor end. In them,
atoms, f practically infinite ; yet space and time could
not generate atoms, nor atoms space and time.
Force is the movement of atoms, yet the force can-

* The law of this vision is : Respice, Aspice, Prospice. Look froni
phenomenon to cause, view phenomenon as caused, grasp the future
effect in the present cause.
f They show us an atom, and say, the fair world was built of such
— and it may in part be true — just as true as that the Parthenon was
built of blocks of marble, or that a brick is a specimen of a house ;
but something more is needed — and the best part, too.

1 82 APPENDIX.
not be deduced from atoms, nor atoms from force,
nor either from space and time. Then the atoms and
forces, in space and time, must form all the planetary
systems, proprio motu — according to the laws of
mathematics !
In fine, the metaphysical assumptions may be
briefly stated from the work of Lange. There is no
thing-in-itself, only phenomena : of which the human
organization is the centre : all is found here (even
Causality, II. , p. 45) ; Ethics is Egoism — and sym
pathy (not absolute) ; Religion is the impulse to the
unknown and unknowable ideal ; in man there are
realistic and idealistic Triebe. The Ideal is seen in
Art, Religion, Philosophy. Art is confessedly only
ideal : Philosophy will always have a place in human
thought: only we must not confound its imagina
tions with realities ! Religion* is sifted until naught
is left : it remains only as an aspiration. He doubts
whether Christianity can survive, if myths are given
up : one of these myths is the idea of God. Yet he
speaks of the hold which religion has against all ar
guments, f and would not give up the sacrificial death
of the Son of God — of course, in his sense.J
It seems necessary then only to state the question
in its breadth. Does man, does this our world, revolve
around God — or does God (all the God there is) re
volve around man? Is man everything and God
perchance nothing ? Is man's knowledge § all, and
* II. 547, 8. t II. 495- X II- 528.
§ Atheism, on its intellectual side, is simply the shallowest system
of philosophy that the mind of man can possibly devise. It is made
up of the two hardest, driest notions : Atoms, Force : out of those all.

APPENDIX. 183
is there no omniscience ? Is man's faith all a delu
sion, and has no voice, no Incarnate Word, pierced
the darkness of the night, and taught man the les
sons of eternal wisdom ? Are all the questions of
man's nature and destiny to be dismissed with the
sarcasm of " human knowledge ? " Have the race
been lunatics, and have we just found it out? Is
Theology a set of opinions, Natural Theology an
exploded series of hypotheses, Conscience the bug
bear of childhood, Man the head of the animal king
dom, Force — unconscious and with no object — that
which works its will in the heavens above and the
earth beneath, and the waters under the earth? Is
Sin a name for ignorance — Redemption a process of
matter — Christ an ideal — God equal to zero — and
Eternal Life a fiction of a dreaming brain ? *
The contrasts should be presented :
Theism — or Force and Casualty,f
Theism — or Nihilism and Nescience.
If Theism and Creation receive their recognition,
then the Supernatural is recognized : the miracle of
creation is admitted : an omnipresent Deity : first
and second causes, all along the line.
There will be given as the result — Natural Theo
logy. That given : then so deep and perplexing are the
problems, the disorders, the evils, the riddles, the
* Any and all the differences between the Greek, the Latin, and
the Reformed churches are slight, compared with those between the
whole of Christianity and the whole of Skepticism.
t Casualty explains nothing ; it is a name for our ignorance — for
caprice.

1 84 APPENDIX.
sphinxes,* the hidden and revealed God, the God
we find in nature alone, and the God whom we are
formed to adore — that the cry must be for a REV
ELATION, f
We are to assert, then, against all vain assumptions,
the true Metaphysical Background : the reality of the
Supernatural : — that which is above and before the
whole complex of natural finite phenomena, espe
cially such phenomena as are subject to the senses.
That there is such a mode of being, viz., which is in
finite, eternal, causal, yea incomprehensible — is at
tested by reason, and conceded by modern science.
Reason asserts itself in asserting it : denies itself in
denying it. You may say — not known; but it is
known in its effects — for all we know in experience
we know radically as effect.
Or, to adopt the common division :
The Ontological (a priori) argument — gives Ulti
mate Being, with its universal and absolute attributes
— in distinction from above and before, the chang
ing and finite.
* Bacon sees in CEdipus and the Sphinx, the allegory of science :
every man, every race has his enigma to decipher. And how eter
nally indifferent is the sphinx.
f The modern doctrine of God may be thus summed up :
God has been, is, and will be ;
God is that which is — pure absolute Being ;
God is Transcendent, and also Immanent ;
God is the Real — ens realissimum.
God is the Ideal, ever to be, to be realized, and never so !
This is the latest position : that of Lange, Tyndall, Huxley, Renan,
etc. This makes God the product of pure imagination. The conces
sions, however (as against the old atheism), are noteworthy : The
Ideal is — is necessary to man — is ever to be.

APPENDIX. 185
The Cosmological : — on the idea of cause (admitted
by Mill, etc.) — that the finite and changeable has its
ground and cause in the infinite and absolute Being.
(The language of modern philosophy — all forces are
from and of one absolute force.)
The Teleological : — on the idea of design: — that in
the finite world there are adaptations, designs, every
where. Hence the causal power which produces
(" evolves ") the finite and changeable must be ra
tional — i. e. conscious spirit.

III.
THE SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENT.
From estimating this all but professed scientists
are solemnly warned off. It used to be said by church
inquisitors, scientific men must not touch the Bible ;
now, the tables being turned, the cry is : Believers in
the Bible must not say anything about science : it is
so high that they cannot attain to it.* The cry will
not deter any thoughtful man from forming his own
conclusion as to the actual achievements of science,
and distinguishing between proof and the intimations
of what certain ardent minds regard as the possibil
ity of proof. Science has its honors and glories
* Are there not some zealous evolutionists who are not zealous
scientists ; who accept all the theories on mere authority, and are as
unable as the ' ' divines " are supposed to be, to read the facts ? ' ' Phys
icists," says Beale (Phys. Life, p. 436), "without having studied the
wonderful effects wrought by vitality, have tried hard to represent it
as a slave of force, but it has proved and will ever prove its master. "

1 86 APPENDIX.
which are well deserved. It has its martyrs, too. As
with love — nothing unto it is common, nothing un
clean. It has its matins, its vespers, and its vigils: it
lights its fires while others sleep. Its strength is in
facts and inductions. Its weakness is in metaphysics
and in morals. Where it is weakest it is most apt to
boast. Science, by itself, unchecked is and must needs
be of aristocratic tendency — must give birth to a class
who say, in an arrogant, dictatorial spirit, " Stand by,
for I know more than thou." (__". g., Renan in his
Dialogues.) Science is not directly duty or love, es
pecially if it goes back into Force and Forces — mere
ly physical — of which morals and religion are van
ishing forms, like waves, like leaves, like the flowers,
like a song.
The proposition to be maintained against mate
rialistic evolution is — that nothing which science has
as yet established contravenes, invalidates, or hardly
even touches the doctrine of Creation — none of its
evidence ; the arguments for creation are just as
strong and good (in some respects stronger, e. g.,
Design and Adequate Causality), as ever, and no
established scientific principle or fact is in their way.
The concessions of materialistic evolutionists may
be adverted to. Lange says, " How the external
nerve movement gives rise to the internal [contents
of sense] is wholly inexplicable."* " How unity of
physical image is gained out of the variety of ele
ments is also wholly inexplicable."f Yet " all must
be physiological."^:
* Hist'y Mater'm. II. , 375. f Ibid., II., 418. X ^id., IL, 369.

APPENDIX. 187
Evolution needs to establish the essential one
ness of the movement in mechanical (and chemi
cal) and " vital " combinations, and this by " sponta
neous generation." It is confessed that here nothing
has been achieved.
It is necessary for evolution to show the essential
identification of Reason and Instinct, of the Spirit
ual and the Animal, and to show how instinct arises
on its theory of life. But here nothing has been ac
complished. There is an extreme tenuity in the ex
periments and suppositions of the advocates of " uni
formity,"* reminding one of Webster's words (Dart
mouth College Case, p. 280, Farrar's Report) : " But
this is only another instance of that habit of suppos
ing extreme cases, and then of reasoning from them,
which is the constant refuge of those who have to de
fend a cause which upon its merits is indefensible."
All that has been suggested turns upon a misapplica
tion of the notion of habit. Habit only means, that
as a creature is, so it does. It gives no account of
the is, nor of the to-be, but only says the is becomes
the to-be. Habitus from habeo. It is purely a state
ment of facts in a general form.f In every case the
instinct which is propagated must at first have some
where been original. Lemoine (L'Habitude et L'ln-
stinct, Paris, 1875, — an able work) says (as Aristotle
said), " Habit is second nature." But what led to
* The term which Lewes prefers.
f So, in Psychology, Association of Ideas is merely a phrase for an
orderly series of facts. It is no law and embodies no principle. It is
not even a generalization, but only a general statement of a sum of
particulars.

1 88 APPENDIX.
the first acts which became habit ? Instinct. The
habit presupposes instinct. The common definition
of Instinct stands ; it has been well given by Bain :
" an aptitude — not acquired — to do all sorts of acts,
especially those necessary or useful to the individ
ual " [better : " to the species "].
Nothing has been achieved by instituting a false
analogy between development in the moral and in
the physical spheres. In both nature and history
there is doubtless a law of development, a process of
growth, a progress toward some end. But there is
also a marked difference between the two. In nature,
considered as comprising the material elements and
structure of the globe, and its vegetable and animal
forces and forms, the developing process (so far as we
know) has spent its productive energies, so that no
new species or genera of vegetable or animal life are
any longer brought into being. Thus the develop
ment we speak of in nature is of a plan already com
pleted, and perpetually repeated. The existing forces
and forms may be combined and applied by human
skill : but so far as nature itself is concerned, noth
ing new is engendered out of the hiding-places of its
power. But development in history, in the history of the
human race, is something different and higher. No
new species or races are brought into being, but the
race as a whole, under the guidance of Divine Provi
dence, is moving on, subduing nature to its use, and
taking on new forms of social, political, aesthetic, and
even moral and religious life. Even here there are
not, strictly speaking, any new elements or forces, or

APPENDIX. 189
even ideas, but there are larger and more diversified
applications of the old, so as to form new conditions
and phases of human life, and introduce a higher
order of society. In this consists human progress —
towards an end not yet realized, and to be reached
by successive stages and stadia.
One of the marked differences in these two orders
of development (which we may call the natural and
moral, or the physical and human) is, that in the
former, or the natural growth, everything proceeds
under the dominion and law of a fixed sequence or
necessity, while in the latter the element is that of
moral freedom. In the former there is no real prog
ress, because there is no possibility of education : in
the latter, it is a constant process of education. In
the one there is only the life and death of successive
individuals : in the other there is the instinct of im
mortality, the vital consciousness that the capacities
with which man is endowed are susceptible of an in
definite range and development.
So far is it from being true, as some physicists af
firm, that there is progress only in the sphere of the
natural sciences, and none at all in the sphere of
morals— that, on the contrary, taken strictly, there is
no real and continuous process of development (but
only repetition) in nature, while in the moral, intel
lectual and religious history of mankind there is real
and perpetual advance towards some higher end not
yet attained.
The suggestion that vital synthesis is simply the
" reversal " of chemical analysis carries no weight.
Tyndall (Vitality, p. 463) says, " every particle of

I90 APPENDIX.
every animal body may be reduced to purely inor
ganic matter. A perfect reversal of this process of
reduction would carry us from the inorganic to the
organic, and such a reversal is at least conceivable."
Dr. Elam rightly calls this * " a most marvelous con
ception," and asks if the same would be true of a
manuscript burned to ashes. How can there be a
transition, in the nature of the case, between the not
living and the living? The living can become not
living, but the converse cannot be. Tyndall says.t
Trace back line of life " to those organisms which I
have compared to drops of oil, suspended in alcohol
and water. We reach the protogenes of Hackel, in
which we have a type distinguishable from a frag
ment of albumen, only by its finely granulated char
acter." The reply is just : Life is new, totally differ
ent from chemical action.^ "If it is a chemistry, it
is a chemistry unknown in our laboratories : produc
ing effects exactly the reverse of most of the chemis
try with which we are acquainted."
It need, perhaps, only be added, that the bold at
tempt of evolutionists to suggest a scheme of world-
origination fails to present a self-coherent specula
tion. (See F. Plitt, Entstehung der Welt- u. Naturge-
setze, 1876, 37 pp. Cf. Hertling, Die Grenzen d. me-
chanische Naturerkl'g., in Theol. und Lit. Zt'g, No.
19, 1876.) Suppose (on the Kantian-LaPlace view)
the original gas, infinite in extent. How could it be
set going by known powers? Not by outside press-
* Cont. Rev., Oct., 1876, p. 739. \ Frag. Sc. 524.
X Cont. Rev., Oct., 1876, p. 740.

APPENDIX. I9I
ure, for there is no outside to the infinite. Not by
gravitation, for all is equal and balanced. Not by
chemical affinities — for all is infinite thin gas — disso
ciated. Not through lower temperature, for where
could the escaped heat go ? So there would be a
limit at the first end. There would be another at
the last end. The ether, retarding all and lessening
the tangential force, would cause all, at last, to roll
together. So, too, the gradual loss of heat would
bring all to an end. There would be a general tend
ency to rest and indifference.

IV.
THE BEARING ON THEOLOGY.
It is striking how Infidelity plays into the hands
of Orthodoxy. For example, the new positions on
Heredity, asserting a common descent, laws of trans
mitted qualities and liabilities, character, etc., point
directly to the great Christian doctrine of Original
Sin. The extreme views of individualism are thrust
back by the new doctrines. Then, too, Innate Ideas
come round again. Force, power, law, are asserted, in
the physical sense chiefly, it is true, but they cannot be
confined to that sense, when once evoked. Moreover,
while unbelievers used to know all about God, now it
is declared that He is incomprehensible of essence.
The proposition can be maintained, that modern
science, so far from setting aside the ultimate ques
tion which philosophy propounds and Christianity
answers, has in fact made them grander than ever.

192 APPENDIX.
Never did the Universe (so far as known) so much
demand the knowledge of God. The points will be
come more numerous on which the new science de
fers to the old theology. Heredity, as we have seen,
is obliged to open new ground for reverence of the
doctrine of Original Sin ; Pessimism emphasizes the
truth that the race is under a moral condemnation ;
Indestructibility is a shadow of the doctrine of Im
mortality ; Evolution paves the way for the view of
Man's higher destiny ; the doctrine that the end of
the world must come, and that by fire, finds new il
lustration in our latest science.
The movement (progress) of Theology and the
movement of Thought go on together. They are not
separate, in different planes or tangents, not even
parallel, but interlocked. There is one centre for
both — God : and one circumference — the universe.
Even their conflicts ultimately result in the adjust
ment of boundaries. We must have philosophy,
science, and religion — these three, but the greatest is,
and ever will be, Religion. And in fact materialism
is now busier about the religious question than about
any other. Lange and Tyndall divide all truth and
reality for us into two parts — empirical and ideal.
Lange concedes that the ideal is the highest, which
it certainly is. We use the results of the empirical
for ideal ends, virtue, beauty, thought. Then, this
deserves more, is worth more, is needed more. Both
are impulses in us. We may pursue one as well as
the other. But it is said, the one is merely ideal, viz.,
Religion. How so ? Religion is not only internal,
but has its historical truths and facts — to be investi-

APPENDIX. 193
gated, criticised, but not denied — any more than
empirical facts.
In respect to the great ultimate ideas of Force and
Cause a remarkable advance by modern scientists is
to be noted. All the great naturalists now agree on
two points : (1) The universality of the law of cause
and effect, (2) That this is to be traced to an Ulti
mate Force — the source (cause) of all phenomenal
forces and changes. Cause is viewed not as mere an
tecedent or sum of antecedents, but as Force — and
this ultimately one. This clears up a good deal of
ground. For example, 1st. Any given effect is — all
its antecedents (and only these) in another form.
Whatever is in the effect must then pre-exist — there
is nothing absolutely new : e.g. Wisdom, intelligence,
etc., must be in the antecedents. 2d. A First Cause
is conceded, i. e. the Infinite, Real, Unknowable Force.
Men cannot then ask any longer, What is the cause
of God? without also asking, What is the cause of the
Absolute Force? An absolute ground, basis, begin
ning, is conceded.
Finally, it comes more clearly to view, that the
common ground for all theories is in the facts of
man's evil, misery, sin. Christianity did not make
these facts : the denial of Christianity will not remedy
them. Christianity recognizes original sin — as a fact
— to be fought against, and has fought against it, to
overcome the dread consequences of the great apos
tasy. Its doctrines are not sad nor debasing, as the
materialistic and pantheistic positions are. These
lead to Pessimism, Christianity to Optimism of the
highest kind.
9

194 APPENDIX.

THE BEARING ON SCRIPTURE.
[Only the following is found upon this point. The paragraph ap
pears to be the statement with which the author intended to close his
course of lectures.]
One thing is certain — that Infidel Science will rout
everything excepting thorough-going Christian Or
thodoxy. All the flabby theories, and the mollus
cous formations, and the intermediate purgatories of
speculation will go by the board. The fight will be
between a stiff, thorough-going Orthodoxy, and a
stiff, thorough-going Infidelity. It will be, e. g. Au
gustine or Comte, Anthanasius or Hegel, Luther or
Schopenhauer, J. S. Mill or John Calvin. Arianism
gets the fire from both sides : so does Arminianism :
so does Universalism.

HENRY BOYNTON SMITH:
His Life and Work.

EDITED B^T HIS WIPE.

With a fine Portrait on Steel, by Ritchie. One Vol., 8vo,
500 Pages. Cloth, $2. 50. {Copies sent by mail,
post-paid, on receipt of price.)

This Memoir of the lamented Prof. Smith, gives a faithful
picture of his character and public career. The story is deeply inter
esting, and while it fully justifies his reputation as one of the most
accomplished scholars and theologians, it also shows him to have
been a man of very rare personal attractions. The volume is enriched
with recollections of him by Prof. Park, President Seelye, of Amherst ;
Prof. A. S. Packard, of Bowdoin ; Rev. Dr. Withington, Dr. Cyrus
Hamlin, Prof. Park, of Andover ; Prof. F. A. March, of Lafayette,
and the Rev. Drs. T. H. Hastings and M. R. Vincent, of New York.
Rev. Dr. Goodwin, of Philadelphia, and Rev. Dr. Prentiss have
assisted in the preparation of the work.

EXTRACTS FROM NOTICES OF THE MEMOIR.
Philadelphia Presbyterian says : '' Dr. Smith's life is here narrated largely in
his own language. His letters are frank, bright, full, and frequent. These give
to the book much of the interest of an autobiography — all the more interesting
because he did not consciously compose it,"
_V. V. Tribune : " This hook is "a picture of a character, and not of an intellect
merely— others besides scholars may profitably read it— the beauty of Prof. Smith's
character fully answered to the strength of his intellect and the richness of his
culture — as the record of a scholarly career he had few equals on this side of the
Atlantic." N. Y. Evangelist: "The book is indeed one of the most attractive pieces of
religious biography that we have ever read. The character ofthe departed scholar
is outlined with great delicacy by the loving hand of her who knew him best."
N. V. Christian Union: "This account of the man himself has a permanent
value. The life was worthy of noble monuments and lasting fame, and no one can
read this book without an impulse to higher effort and purer living; and this will
be more pleasing to the ransomed spirit — more in harmony with the wishes of his
life here than sculptured marbles."
_V. y. Observer : '' Dr. Smith's life was full of incident and adventure. His
education was splendid. Foreign travel in youth broadened his view, enlarged his
acquaintance with universities, with men, books, and life. The brightest intellects
discerned his greatness. As a pastor, preacher, teacher, lecturer and professor( as
a reviewer and editor, he always made the. mark of a first rate workman, doing
everything well. The loving hand of the wife has fitly held out to .the eyes of the
world, and bound up in this bundle such evidence of his greatness and worth, that
the present generation and posterity will know something of what the Church lost
when this light went out before eventide,"

A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON, 714 Broadway, New York.

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