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THE BEDELL LECTURES.

THE BEDELL LECTURE FOR 1881
The World's Witness
TO
JESUS CHRIST

The Power of Christianity in developing
Modern Civilization

BY
THE RT. REV. JOHN WILLIAMS, D.D
Bishop of Connecticut

NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
27 and 29 Whst 23D Street
1882.

Copyright by
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
1882

Mp<i54-

W&7

Press of
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York

EXTRACTS
From the communication of the donors to the
Board of Trustees of the Theological Semi
nary of the Diocese of Ohio and Kenyon Col
lege.
Cleveland, June 21, 1880.
Gentlemen: We have consecrated and set apart for the service
of God the sum of $5,000, to be devoted to the estab
lishment of a lecture or lectures in the Institutions
at Gambier on the Evidences of Natural and Re
vealed Religion; or the Relations of Science and
Religion. We ask permission of the Trustees to establish the
lecture immediately, with the following provisions:
The lecture or lectures shall be delivered bien
nially on Founders' Day (if such a day shall be
established), or other appropriate time. During our
lifetime, or the lifetime of either of us, the nomination
of the lectureship shall rest with us.
The interest for two years on the fund, less the sum
necessary to pay for the publication, shall be paid to
the Lecturer.
The Lecturer shall also have one half of the net
profits of the publication during the first two years
after the date of publication. All other profits shall

O EXTRACTS.
be the property of the Board, and shall be added to
the capital of the lectureship.
We express our preference that the lecture or
lectures shall be delivered in the Church of the
Holy Spirit, if such building be in existence; and shall
be delivered in the presence of all the members of
the Institutions under the authority of the Board.
We ask that the day on which the lecture or the
first of each series of lectures shall be delivered, shall
be declared a holiday.
We wish that the nomination to this lectureship
shall be restricted by no other consideration than the
ability of the appointee to discharge the duty to the
highest glory of God in the completest presentation
of the subject. We desire that the lectures shall be
published in uniform shape, and that a copy of each
shall be placed in the libraries of Bexley Hall, Ken
yon College and of the Philomethesian and the Nu
Pi Kappa Society. Asking the favorable consider
ation of the Board of Trustees,
We remain with great respect,
G. T. Bedell,
Julia Bedell.
The Board accepted the gift, approved the
terms, named All Saints' Day, November the
first, as Founders' Day, and made it a holi
day.

LECTURE I.

I count it no small privilege to be permitted
to join in the services of a day like this. The
foundation on which I am honored with the
position of first lecturer, and which has been so
nobly provided for all coming time by the pious
forecast and thoughtfulness of those whose good
works for " Christ and the Church " have been
so manifold, is itself something to which a day
of grateful commemoration might well be de
voted. It takes its place, however, with other
commemorations which carry us back over the
history of three generations. I cannot forget,
this day, that he who came hither long years
ago, to lay the foundations on which this goodly
superstructure has arisen, came from the dio
cese in which my lot is cast ; and I, therefore,
rejoice the more that I am permitted to share
in the services of the first celebration of Found
ers' Day.
On such a day, too — how appropriately joined

8 BEDELL LECTURES.
to the commemoration of All Saints — it cannot,
I think, be inappropriate to speak of the evi
dences of Christianity. Since whatever other
evidences there may be found — and God be
praised for their manifold variety — the grandest
of all must ever be the lives and deaths of that
"great cloud of witnesses of whom the world
was not worthy."
But I must not linger on thoughts like these,
grateful as they are, and I turn to address my
self to my proper duty.
When we speak of Christian Evidences what
a boundless field of thought and discussion
opens before us ! We touch the world of
nature and the world of man. We come into
contact with natural science, with human his
tory, with the inductions of observation, with
the deductions of reason, with weighing of tes
timony, with the profoundest needs and the
loftiest aspirations of humanity. We have to
deal with the internal, or subjective, evidence in
the individual mind, and with those proofs that
are addressed to the reasoning faculties in man.1
Moreover, when Trom such general survey
as we can make of this field of thought, to
1 Palmer's Doctrine of Development and Conscience, p. 2.

LECTURE I. 9
which there seem to be no limits, we descend
to details, how endlessly various we find those
details to be. To say nothing of Apostolic
days, from the time when Justin Martyr2 began
the first Apology for Christianity " by urging
the claims of truth," down to the present day,
each succeeding age has brought out its own
special line of attack, demanding a parallel line
of defence or assertion. The general character
of the conflict has been marked by a change-
lessness that is even sublime, but the successive
forms of the onset and the resistance have
shifted like the rapid movements of some vast
battle-field. Out of all this has arisen the necessity of
guarding against two great mistakes : first, that
of forgetting in our attention to details wider
and more comprehensive lines of argument ;
and secondly, — if indeed this is not a form of
the mistake just mentioned, — that of giving to
some immediate and pressing attack an impor
tance which does not fairly belong to it. For
instance, so much attention has been given of
late to scientific difficulties,3 to the relations, as

2 First Apology, Sec. 2.
3 Perhaps one might better say the difficulties raised by writers
on science. Ernest Naville well says : ' ' There have often been

IO BEDELL LECTURES.
the phrase goes, between science and religion,
that we have left much out of sight the great
historical argument. Nor only that ; where the
historical argument has been worked, it has
sometimes been with an attention to details —
the value and power of which should by no
means be underrated — that has led men away
from those wider and grander views which that
argument can employ, with such persuasive
power, in asserting the claims of the Faith and
the Church of Jesus Christ our Lord.
In the two lectures which it has become my
duty to deliver, I propose, by God's blessing, to
present one form of the general historical argu
ment which seems to me to be a strong one ;
and that not so much in the negative way of
defence, as in the positive way of assertion. I
am not at all sure that the charge will not be
brought against positions and method alike,
that they are quite old-fashioned and out of
date. I am altogether sure that they ought
neither to be forgotten nor abandoned.
Let us find, then, our starting-point in a fact
which no man will question. When we look
conflicts between theology and science, or rather between theologians
and naturalists; for between belief in God and science there is a
profound harmony." — Lc Christ, p. 53.

LECTURE I. II
around the civilized world we find everywhere
in it some form of Christianity.
And whatever the form may be, it rests for
its authentication and its motive power, nay,
for its life and being, on one person, Jesus of
Nazareth. Whatever else these forms may differ in, they
all agree in this. They all assert that at a cer
tain definite period in the world's history, there
lived in Palestine one who was known as Jesus
of Nazareth, and that he was the author of that
Faith and the founder of that Church which are
embraced in the general term Christianity.
From this unquestioned and unquestionable
position we advance to another equally undoubt
ed and unassailable. 'We find, on testimony
which can neither be gainsayed nor evaded, that
at the time and in the place asserted, such a
person as Jesus of Nazareth did actually live,
and that from Him Christianity came as from a
founder. It was the fashion in some quarters, in the
last century, to assert that no such person as
Jesus Christ ever existed ; 4 but such a position
would hardly be assumed to-day. Indeed it
4 Dupuis, for instance, in his Origine de tous les cultes, published
in 1795.

12 BEDELL LECTURES.
could not be without shaking down all historic
testimony whatever, and reducing all the history
of all time to a dream or a falsehood.
The scornful words of Tacitus,3 " The author
of this name [Christian] was Christ who, in the
reign of Tiberius, was punished with death by
the Procurator Pontius Pilate," are the testi
mony of a heathen to a person whose existence
is as truly historical as that of the Emperor of
Rome or his representative in Palestine. Nor
is this testimony confirmed merely by the ut
terances of believers of the early days and by
the historic creeds of all the Christian ages.
The early opposers and maligners of Christianity,
be they Jews or Pagans, be they represented by
their own words, or in the apologies of those
who replied to them ; the early heretics and cor
rupters of the Faith, be they Ebionites or
Gnostics ; all these unanimously attest the his
torical verity of the existence at a given time in
Palestine, of a person known as Jesus of Na
zareth. All equally bear witness to the fact that
Christianity came from Him. To deny this is
simply to destroy all history.
To these unquestionable facts let us add a
5 Annals, Lib. XV. c. 44,

LECTURE J. 13
third, namely, that at the time when He whom
we call our Lord was to be born, men were
everywhere yearning and hoping for a better
day than the world had seen ; a day of deliver
ance from manifold miseries internal and exter
nal, a veritable golden age, wherein the world
that seemed dying around them, should receive
a fresh life — even a new creation.
The fire-worshippers of Persia, the Chinese
disciples of Confucius, looked for the regenera
tion to arise in the West. The nations of the
West, on the other hand, looked eastward.6
Tacitus speaks of the general persuasion, found
ed on priestly writings, that in those days the
East should grow powerful, and those who
should come from Judea should be masters of
the world,7 and Suetonius 8 repeats his words ;
while the vision of the new and glorious age
is sung by Virgil9 in words which, seeming
to echo those of the Evangelic Prophet, are
themselves echoed in many a mediaeval Chris
tian hymn.
Standing, now, at that period in human his
tory where we find Jesus of Nazareth living
* Schaff's Apostolic Church, p. 184.
' Hist. Lib. V. c. 13. 8 De XII. Casar, Lib. VIII. 4.
9 Eclogue IV.

14 BEDELL LECTURES.
upon earth, and where we are breathing this at
mosphere of expectation and listening to these
words of hope, let us look back over what was
then the long past of the story of our race and
see, at least, something of the work done and
the preparation made for a new order of the
ages, as we say to-day, a new departure for hu
manity. Just how this review falls into my
proposed line of argument will appear as we
advance. At first thought such an undertaking, even
when preceded by and accompanied with the
declaration that only the most general and even
cursory review will be attempted, must appear
almost absurd.
The field, it will be said, whether in reference
to time or place, is so vast, the details are so
manifold, that to attempt to cover the one and
present the other in a single lecture can only be
an act of folly. There is, however, a considera
tion which must very greatly modify this obvi
ous criticism.
Frederick Schlegel long ago declared that
the number of really historical countries, when
these are compared with all the countries of
the world, is relatively small.10
10 Phil, of History, p. 108, Bohn's Ed.

LECTURE I. 15
As the stream of historic life and progress has
flowed onward from its source in Central Asia,
it has moved within narrow limits, and its
course has been ever westward. Confining our
view to the eastern hemisphere, and we need
not now look beyond it, we find this stream of
historic life mainly limited, even to our own
days, by the twenty-fourth and sixtieth degrees
of north latitude. Those limits embrace not
more than fifteen really historical countries, and
even of these not all had fairly entered on their
development "when Jesus was born in Beth
lehem of Judea." Indeed if we fix our eyes on
the middle country of Western Asia, as it lies
on the two great streams of Tigris and Eu
phrates, and between the Persian and Arabian
gulfs and the Caspian and Mediterranean seas,
and then look on to Arabia, Egypt, Asia Mi
nor, Northern Africa, Greece, and Italy, we
shall have glanced at all the countries which, to
the time of our Lord, had entered into that
development of the race which really consti
tutes universal history.
For universal history, it must be remembered,
is not a mere collection of the detailed histories
of single nations. It concerns itself with the
general destiny of mankind, and does not allow

1 6 BEDELL LECTURES.
this main subject to be lost in the multitude
and variety of details. As. amid the millions
of men who are born and live and die, there are
few who can be called historical men, so it is
also with nations. Of these there are, and there
must be, many which "serve only as a mark or
evidence of some particular stage of civilization,
without of themselves holding any particular
place in the general history of our species, or
conducing to the social progress of mankind,
or possessing any weight or importance in the
scale of humanity." I know, indeed, and would
recognize the sublime truth with awe and thank
fulness, that to the all-seeing eye of God every
human soul has its own great history reaching
beyond the grandest destinies of time into the
mightier destinies of eternity. But this is God's
view, not ours. When we deal with human
history we are limited as He is not. We deal
then with humanity, its triumphs and its fail
ures, its gains and its losses, its advances and its
retrogressions, as a whole. Mankind is, and
must be " all mass to the human eye, even
though it is all individual to the Divine."11
The task, therefore, which I have proposed
11 Mozley's Univ. Sermons, p. 121.

LECTURE I. 17
is not so hopeless as at first thought it might
appear. Difficult as it may be, it is not alto
gether an impossibility.
Far back, then, in the story of the human
race, so far back that, in the mist which shrouds
them all visible forms are dim and phantom
like and all thoughts of men come to us in
fashions that are vague and ill-defined, I seem
to recognize a yearning for wider unions and
more extended brotherhoods than those of
family, or tribe, or clan, or even nation. What
is it, this mysterious impulse that carries men's
thoughts and wishes onward? It looks mar
vellously like an instinct implanted in man's
nature ; an instinct which shall one day find the
thing that fits it and satisfies its longings, albeit,
in the mean season, it may go far astray in its
search and waste its strength on ways and
methods that end in nothing. No doubt this
instinct was early seized and perverted by that
" spirit of enterprise and ambition" which sprung
up in and emanated from the "great middle
country of Western Asia, the native seat and
cradle of conquest." It was seized and per
verted so early that men hardly remember how
true and genuine the instinct. that lay behind
the perversion was. And yet its influence was

1 8 BEDELL LECTURES.
incalculable. It entered largely as a living force
into that successive uprising of empires which
the visions of the prophet Daniel so marvellously
foreshadow, and which gather to themselves so
much of the older history of the human race.
Cast your eyes along that great "course of
empire ;" the Babylonio-Assyrian, which first of
all brought men together in imperial union ; the
Medo-Persian, which bore, at last, the Orient to
the shores of Europe; the Grseco-Macedonian,
with its rapid rush of conquest, which carried
Europe back into the East, and in its break-up
did such marvellous work for the future of the
race ; and the Roman, which in its irresistible
march swept the wide world. Was all this,
think you, merely the outcome of the ambition
of one or another strong and masterful man ?
That marched, doubtless, at the front, but it
was able to march there, and to march to con
quest, because of the deep instinctive feeling of
mankind, that their highest achievements and
their grandest destiny required a union and an
organism wider and deeper than any that family
or tribe or nation could present to them.
This instinct, too, it was that from time to
time spoke out in words of sage or poet weary
of evil and yearning for good. It shaped the re-

LECTURE I. 19
public of Plato, so noble amid all its impractica
ble ideals and abstractions. It animated the cry
of Terence, " I am a man and nothing human
is alien to me." It spoke in the verse of Clau-
dian, when he sung of Roman citizens — all one
nation — who drank from the Rhone and the
Orontes, and whom Rome, in an empire that
should know no end, cherished as a mother
rather than ruled as a mistress.12
So had this course of empire run, carrying
along with it men's instinctive hopes and long
ings, and such were its outcomes when our
Lord was born. It held in its bosom — so far
as they shared in the world's true history — the
human race. And more than that, whether
there was in the world only a desolation that
went by the name of peace, or whether the
peace was real, there was such peace that the
symbolic temple of Janus was closed, and some
men may have dreamed that in this Universal
State, the strong desire of man for a universal
brotherhood of humanity had been attained.
Was it so ? Had the new order of things,
the golden age, really arrived ? Were the long
ings of all the ages met ? A thought of which,
12 De Laudibus Stiliconis, Lib. III., line 150 ft

20 BEDELL LECTURES.
purposely, I have not yet spoken, answers those
questions, and answers them in the negative.
Only two factors in the building up of empires
have been named : one the enterprises of ambi
tion, the other the longing for human brother
hood. There was another, which gave the first
its greatest power and crushed down or swal
lowed up the second, and that is found in the
debased passions and ferocious hatreds of men.
Till these were touched no empire met the
longing desires of men, or could satisfy the in
stinct of which I have been speaking. The
great disturbing cause, the root of bitterness,
remained. Wherefore the apparent peace and
repose of that year of Augustus in which wars,
for the time, had ceased could not, in the very
nature of things, be a finality. Human needs
were not met nor were human longings satis
fied. Another and a higher peace must descend,
and " be made visible on the earth — and along
with that higher and diviner peace, a new and
spiritual combat, waged not with the warlike
parties of old, nor even with external and earth
ly power, but with the secret and internal cause
of all the agitations and all the injustice in the
world." 13 How, by whom, in what, this peace
18 Schlegel, ut sup. p. 203.

LECTURE I. 21
and combat were to come, I shall try, in due
time, to show. Just now we must pass on from
these very general views to others that are more
specific. Were I, now, to take the countries and peo
ples we are to consider in strict order of chron
ology, Egypt would claim our first attention.
But its great preparatory work for a crisis in
the world's history and a new order of mankind
really took place in the break-up of the Graaco-
Macedonian Empire; and, therefore, I turn
from it to that noblest land of the ancient world
— Greece. Nature herself marked this land as one of
manifold activities and varied life. Think of
" its advantages in reference to navigation, com
merce," and colonization. It is situated in the
immediate vicinity of the three great quarters
of the globe, and is washed on three sides by
the sea. Look at its remarkable coast line, so
irregular, so indented with bays and harbors,
and so enormous in proportion to the super
ficial area of the country.14 A nation dwelling
in such a land must do what the dwellers in
the vast plain of Central Asia never could have
14 Heeren, Man. of Ancient History, p. 90. Freeman's Historical
Geography, Introd. § 2.

22 BEDELL LECTURES.
done ; they must build ships, they must engage
in commerce and maritime adventure. They
are very likely to become a colonizing people.
They may, if they will, carry, as England and
America have done in our time, their language
into every part of the known world.
Then take into view the varied surface, moun
tains, valleys, plains, which this country pre
sents ; the variety of climate which is thus pro
duced ; a variety, however, which does not inter
fere with its general mildness, and which, taken
in connection with its numerous small streams
and the qualities of its soil, make up a country
in which " every branch of cultivation may be
prosecuted equally and in conjunction."
Consider, finally, the manifold diversities in
race — composed of so many heterogeneous ele
ments, — in civilization, in history, in legislation,
in forms of government, in habits of thought
and life, in poetry, arts, science, in a word in
all that goes to the make up of a nation's being,
which this wonderful land presents ; contrast
all this with "the seclusion and monotonous
character of Asiatic influence, the generally un
changeable uniformity of Oriental society," and
you have the pledge of an intellectual develop
ment and an artistic culture, the promise of a

LECTURE I. 23
bloom and a glory that you find nowhere else
in all the ancient world.
The pledge and the promise were fulfilled.
As near as human effort can approach perfec
tion without supernatural aid, so near to per
fection Greek culture came. All that painting
and sculpture can achieve without the inspira
tion of a divine ideal to fill the artist's soul and
guide his pencil or his chisel, that Greek art
achieved. All that philosophy can accomplish
without a divine law to shape its precepts, and
a divine sanction and a divine life to give it
a motive power and make it effectual to the
advancement of mankind, that Greek philoso
phy accomplished : while Greek commerce and
colonization carried throughout the world —
making it a universal medium of communica
tion — a language richer and more harmonious,
more capable of giving to words nice shades
of meaning, and expressing all subtle play of
thought, and distinguishing in utterance things
that differ, than any language that human lips
had ever spoken. As one looks upon it all,
its brightness dazzles and confuses,
"  sinking far,
And self withdrawn into a wondrous depth,
Far sinking into splendor without end."

24 BEDELL LECTURES.
Alas that it was all so powerless ! Alas that it
left Greece " a lazar house of morals." 15
Naturally, I might turn here to Judaism and
the Jewish Nation, and speak of what they
directly did for and contributed to the universal
history of the world. For reasons, however,
that need hardly be stated in detail, I wish, in
the present argument, to keep outside the limits
of revelation, and, therefore, will only say of
Judaism that with all its great endowments, its
knowledge of the one true God, its pure moral
ity, its covenant privileges, it had lost its living
power, and was ending in those three miserable
" tendencies which are usually found to arise
when a religion decays, namely, sanctimonious
formalism, trifling infidelity, and mystic super
stition."16 Still, there was an indirect work of Judaism
which does come very directly into our present
line of argument. It is found in the contact of
Judaism with Heathenism ; and its story —
briefly to be told — opens out some of the most
striking pages in the history of the world.
Judaism had, indeed, touched heathenism
from its early days. Necessary contacts with
15 Sewell's Christian Morals, p. 43.
16 Schaff's Apostolic Church, p. 172.

LECTURE I. 25
surrounding tribes and, later on, the widely ex
tended commerce of Solomon effected this.
The Babylonish captivity must have greatly
multiplied these points of contact, and given
permanence and power to the influence which
they enabled Jewish faith and thought to ex
ercise. But there is one place to which, above
all others, we must look for the nearest approach
that Judaism made, whether to Greek or Ori
ental thought and culture, and for the greatest
influence it had upon or received from them.
It was a dream of Alexander the Great to
build, on the coast of Egypt, a city that should
bear his name and be a centre of commercial en
terprise as well as the metropolis of his western
empire. His dream was more than realized. For
under the first three Ptolemies, whose reigns
filled out the years of a century, Alexandria be
came a centre not less of science and learning
than of trade. The days of these Ptolemies
were days of desolation and destruction in the
world. But for these great princes, so far as man
can see, science and learning must have perished
from the earth amid a darkness that might be felt.
But under their fostering care science and learn
ing " found more than a shelter, they found a ral
lying point." Nor did the glory and the power

26 BEDELL LECTURES.
of Alexandria pass quite away till an illiterate
barbarian sacrificed its magnificent library in
the brutal ignorance of his execrable fanaticism.
A thoughtful scholar of our own time has said,
speaking of Christian Alexandria, " to the last,
Alexandria fulfilled its mission, and we still owe
much to the spirit of its great teachers, which,
in still later ages, struggled, not without success,
against the sterner systems of the West." 17
Jews, Greeks, Egyptians, were the chief classes
of the inhabitants of this most attractive city ;
but mingled with them were the representatives
of almost every nation of the then known world.
And thus it came to pass that all varieties of
mind, all forms of thought, were brought to
gether there. Greek activity, vivacity and rest
less energy ; Oriental conservatism, faith and
quietism ; Jewish shrewdness and love of spec
ulation ; creeds of East and West ; clashings and
strifes of dogma ; indirect influences of various
literatures and philosophies upon each other ;
all these brought together in Alexandria, and
then carried out from it, must have told mightily
on the mind of the world. It is often and truly
said — sometimes (and then untruly) in a carping
" Prof. Westcott in Smith's Bible Diet., art., "Alexandria."

LECTURE I. 27
way — that " the literary school of Alexandria
was critical and not creative." Still let us not
forget that there language was studied, the
records of all the past collected, and the exact
sciences perfected. Well does Heeren ask,
" Suppose the critic's art, which now grew up,
could not form a Homer or a Sophocles, should
we, had it not been for the Alexandrians, be
able to read either Homer or Sophocles ?"
Above all, let us remember that there the elder
Scriptures were translated into the then univer
sal language of mankind, and, in the venerable
Septuagint version, given to the world. And
here, for the present, I leave this centre of
thought and influence, only adding that we shall
have occasion to recur to it again.
Over all the lands at which we have glanced,
over all the wrecks of all the great ancient em
pires, over Greece and Palestine and Egypt,
swept the resistless power of Rome. Ordained
to rule the world, the Roman Empire completed
the work that Alexander had begun. It broke
down many a barrier, it bridged over many a
gulf, and, to speak of no other things which
it accomplished, it brought the whole civilized
world into one Slate and ruled it by one Law.
As Greece had brought men together by her

28 BEDELL LECTURES.
ships which navigated that great central sea
around which were gathered all the elements of
human civilization, so Rome, by her marvellous
far-stretching roads, bound together all parts of
her world-wide empire. These wonderful con
structions, " issuing from the Forum of Rome,
traversed Italy, pervaded the provinces, and
were terminated only by the frontiers." They
ran " like railroads, straight as arrows," from
one extremity of the empire to the other.18
Never before had the human race been so
brought together, never, apparently, so put in
the way of being welded into one state, as by
these two agencies — the law and the roads of
Rome. And yet no real welding was accom
plished. There was outside pressure enough
and to spare. The difficulty was internal, and
though it was the resultant, doubtless, of many
factors, there was one thing above all others, I
think, which produced it. It is difficult to
state this fact in a brief way, and yet the at
tempt must be made.
Law, then, presents itself first as strict and

18 Gibbon, Vol. I, p. 31, Harper's Ed. Stanley's Eastern Church,
p. 182, Am. Ed. Gibbon says that from the wall of Antoninus to
Rome, and thence to Jerusalem, the road measured four thousand
and eighty Roman miles.

LECTURE I. 29
absolute ; and secondly, as tempered and mod
erated by considerations of equity. Now "if
this last conciliating principle does not pro
nounce its sentence, or if it is not attended to,
extreme injustice only can spring from this
rigid and inflexible application of extreme law."
Then the more law there is the less justice will
there be. Summa lex summa injuria, is the
proverb in which this truth has been expressed.
As one has well said, " Woe to mankind, woe
to every individual, woe to the world, were
they doomed to be judged according to this
rigid justice, and only by it, even by Him, who
alone has the right and the power to dispense
such rigid and severe justice unto men." Only
one who is incapable of error can dare to judge
in this wise. And He — His holy name be
praised ! — does not so judge men. He takes
all circumstances, all conditions, all opportuni
ties, all degrees of light and knowledge into
account, and not only " in the midst of judg
ment remembers mercy," but tempers all strict
law by a most righteous equity.
Now Roman law had in it little or no room
for equity. It was strict, absolute, inexorable
in the letter. When Roman jurists said, Fiat
justitia ruat ccelum — let justice be done

30 BEDELL LECTURES.
though the heavens shall fall — they meant just
that strict, absolute, inexorable letter. So that,
however true and good that letter might be, its
administration, untempered by the manifold
circumstances of which equity takes account,
could be neither good nor true. It must pro
voke reactions, oppositions, contests. If it did
bind men externally in iron bonds, it yet drove
them asunder by internal repulsions. It did
not, it could not, meet men's needs. Its de
fect was fundamental, nay, it was fatal.
This was bad enough. But there was more
and worse. This false theory of absolute law
led on to political idolatry of the state. For
that which administered such a law, might well
seem the impersonation of that great deity of
the Prometheus Vinctus, whose two demons,
Force and Might, presided over the nailing of
the victim to the rock ; nay, the impersonation
even of that all-powerful Necessity which is
over all, and to which Homer makes Zeus him
self an obedient slave.
In time this deified state became incarnate in
the persons of successive emperors, and then
the emperor was also deified, and Nero and
Caligula were gods ! No possibility of worship
remained to heathen Rome " but the worship of

LECTURE /. 31
power," and this power was incarnate in the
sovereign of the world. It had all ended in
this. The gods of the old mythology had van
ished away before the " unknown God " was
preached at Athens by St. Paul.19
Let me now gather up and summarize these
manifold preparations for a possible future of
humanity, a new order and a nobler one, which,
in our rapid survey, we have noted. I have not
even tried to speak of all these preparations.
Only the more salient and important have been
named ; while, for the reason already men
tioned, the direct preparations of the Jewish
CEconomy have been purposely passed by, and
its indirect work alone has been considered.
The point in human history at which we
stand, it must be remembered, is just before
our Lord was born. As we look back over the
wide field we have glanced at, what do we be
hold ?
We see that deeply rooted instinct of humani
ty which longs for even universal brotherhoods
and unions, living and working through the
ages, and, even when it is not actively at work,
living still in yearning souls. We see the arts,
19 Schlegel, ut sup. pp. 264-267. Conybeare and Howson, Life
of St. Paul, c. xxvi.

32 BEDELL LECTURES.
philosophy, laws of reasoning, outcomes of
imagination, carried to a point beyond which
human powers can scarcely go. We see a uni
versal language, so perfect that the highest praise
that can be given to any later tongue is that it
approaches its marvellous capabilities. We see
Greek ships carrying men from one region to
another ; and Roman roads completing the op.
portunities of intercourse thus given to the
world, breaking up old isolations, breaking
down old barriers, so that " many shall run to
and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." 20
We see scholars gathered at Alexandria just
when the "abomination of desolation" seemed
to be sweeping over the world, and then scat
tered from thence over the world again, with
the sacred books of the Jew translated into the
universal language. And finally we see the
iron Roman law, the law of "the ever pros
perous, the eternally powerful, the world de
vouring, the people destroying Rome," bind
ing the nations into one by its strong external
bonds, even though powerless to prevent in
ternal disunions and repulsions.
What a spectacle it is! What solemn
90 Dan. XII., 4.

LECTURE I. 33
thoughts of its own present does it awaken !
What possibilities for a future not its own does
it suggest ! Are all these things to come to
nought? Are they simply to flash upon the
sight as meteors flash across the sky and then
go out in darkness? Is there to come, for
the world, no person, no system, no institution
that can gather up all those agencies with all
their possibilities and powers, and use them for
an advancement of the race such as has never
before been reached? The world has, as we
may say, stopped for a space in its troubled
career. There is, outwardly at least, the hush
of peace among the nations. And in that hush
these questions come to us. How the men of
that age pondered them ; what the men of that
age felt of hope and anticipation or of fear and
despair ; what the story of the then long future
has to say in answer to them, will, God willing,
engage our thoughts when we meet again.
Meanwhile, it is well to remember that when
men, in various lands and in successive ages,
have been laboring without concert, each doing
his own work and then lying down in death ;
and when each of those isolated works is still
found to have its place and function in some
grander nobler work, which takes them all up

34 BEDELL LECTURES.
and uses them for its own great purposes ; more
than that, when men's perverse and evil pas
sions are, in their outcomes, made themselves to
serve such higher purposes and help on such
more beneficient and gracious ends, he cannot
be a weak man, or the victim of a foolish super
stition, who shall say, " The Lord is King, be
the people never so impatient ; He sitteth be
tween the cherubim be the earth never so un
quiet."

LECTURE II.

The close of my previous lecture left us not
amid the ruins, but amid the possibilities, that
surrounded the men of the period when Jesus
of Nazareth was born in Judea. It can scarce
ly be necessary to recapitulate those elements
of a possible advance, those factors in a possible
future for humanity. In all of them, under the
guidance of God, men had "builded better than
they knew." Their rough hewing had been
shaped for higher ends than they could dream
of. • At this point, we turn from the past to
glance briefly at the then present before we
look at the coming future.
And first, we ask, How did the men of the
time regard these various elements, factors,
possibilities ? What thoughts were awakened,
what energies were aroused, what impulses
were given by them ?
The view which these questions open to us
is a strange one. Were we dealing with any-

3^ BEDELL LECTURES '
thing but human nature and its workings, we
might well turn away in despair from its incon
sistencies and contradictions.
Nothing is more striking, as we look back
upon the times we are reviewing, than the pro
found and utter hopelessness for the present
that everywhere we see and hear. Poets, his
torians, naturalists, moralists are all at one in
this. Everywhere there is this undertone — not
always an undertone — of blank despair. It
sounds forth from song and satire ; sometimes
bidding men to snatch the passing pleasure of
the day, its wild revelry and wanton mirth ;
sometimes urging them to seek for refuge in a
proud, self-sufficient, heartless resignation —
that was no real resignation — the principles of
which, if carried out, must logically end, as they
often actually ended, in suicide. Thus men
| were vibrating between a frivolous Epicureanism
and a self-deified Stoicism.21 It was under the

91 Both these philosophies were really philosophies of despair.
The one made happiness, the other virtue the supreme good. But
the happiness of the Epicurean was a serenity too superficial and
frivolous to be disturbed in its round of pleasure ; the virtue of the
Stoic was a. passionlessness too proud and self-contained to care
for anything. Neither system had that in it which could meet
men's wants. See Bp. Lightfoot's "St. Paul and Seneca," in his
Commentary on the Philippians.

LECTURE II. 37
dominion of this dark despair that Rome's
great historian began, his history with words so
fearful, speaking of nothing upon earth but
" darkness and cruel habitations," beholding
nothing in the heavens but manifest tokens of
coming vengeance. I need not swell the cata
logue with names. There is all around the
same cry of woe ; man's wretchedness, death's
blessedness are its burden.22
But along with all these cries of despair over
the present, there were also utterances of hope
for the future. I have already spoken of these,
and need not repeat what has been said before.
How the deliverance was to come, who was to
be the deliverer, no man could tell. Easterns
were looking westward, westerns were looking
eastward, each away from themselves to other
and far-off regions, each forward from the hope
less present to some unknown future. It is a
strange spectacle. The longer we dwell on it
the stranger it appears. Let it suffice to have
thus brought it, in its contradictions of despair
and hope, before your minds.
99 It is obvious to refer to Horace, Juvenal, and Persius. The
passage specially referred to in Tacitus is, Hist. Lib. I. 3. See
also for a summary, not at all exaggerated, Dr. Schaff's Apostolic
Church, pp. 158-59.

38 BEDELL LECTURES.
We see to-day that there was nothing, at that
period, in all the world that could lift man out
of the mire and clay, and set his feet upon a
rock, and so order his goings that he might
walk in light, and live and move under the
power of what should be, in very deed, a new
creation. And, besides, that which was to the
men of that time the impenetrable darkness of
a hidden future, is to us the clear and distinct
history of all the centuries of a lengthened past ;
and to that history we look — we have a right
to look — for the answer to these cries of de
spair, these murmurings of hope, that reach us
across the vast expanse of ages.
There were religions and philosophies in the
world then, others have made their appearance
since. What one of these, if any, has taken up
those various elements that we beheld, and
used them all for the advancement of the race ?
What one of these has proved itself possessed
of the capability of universal adaptation, of a
permanence which is living and not fossilized,
and of the power of continuous and limitless
expansion ? ^ These three marks or signs I
hold to be not only noteworthy but crucial. A
93 Eaton's Bampton Lectures for 1872. Lect. I.

LECTURE II. 39
system in which they are not found — whether it
contains doctrinal or ethical truth or both —
cannot be one fitted to meet the hopes or fulfil
the destinies of man. It may contain elements
of truth, and those elements may give it — must
give it — a certain degree of power. They may
adapt it, within circumscribed limits, to the at
tainments of a race, an age, or a country. They
may give it a permanence which turns out, on
examination, to be the permanence of a sealed
up corpse that crumbles into dust when light
and air are let in upon it. They may work for
it an expansion that may continue for a time,
but that comes at last to an end. Such a sys
tem carries within itself its own doom of death.
It proves itself incapable of doing that for
humanity which the very instincts of humanity
demand. There is still another question that
may well be asked, although it may appear
to be covered by those that have gone before.
What system has most thoroughly developed
human intelligence and given the greatest im
pulse to the arts and industries that in our time
have achieved such triumphs ? I hold that any
system, institution, religion24 which, in the lapse
94 I use this word, fully holding Christianity to be more than a

40 BEDELL LECTURES.
of ages, has shown itself competent for such
achievements as these questions indicate ; which
has been able to gather up all those prepara
tions of all previous time and use them for the
best interests of the race ; which has shown
itself possessed of capabilities of adaptation to
all nations under all conditions of life, raising
them, meantime, towards, if not to, its own
ideal of what men should be ; which has proved
itself permanent, not as being fossilized into
immobility but possessed of an ever animating
life ; which has exhibited a power of expansion
that, though sometimes checked, has never been
destroyed, and to whose advances no limits can
be set ; which has most thoroughly developed
human intelligence and given the largest im
pulse to these arts and industries that con
tribute to the noblest civilization ; I hold that
such a system, institution, or religion has vindi
cated its right to hold the world as its heritage,
and the nations as its possession. More than
that, I claim for it the right to demand that
in the absence of any other adequate explana
tion of its origin, its nature, and its powers, its
own account shall be accepted. Nor is more
religion, which man might contrive : even the religion which God
revealed. But the word is accurate enough for my purpose.

LECTURE II. 41
included in this demand than a truly scientific
method must necessarily require. Canons of
historical criticism can no more rightly be a
priori, arbitrary and antecedent to the facts of
history, than canons of good writing can prop
erly be a priori, arbitrary and antecedent to
good models in composition. All true canons
of criticism, whether, historical or literary, are
— as Pope ^ said long ago of the latter — " dis
covered not devised." In either case facts pre
cede theories. Theories, indeed, must come
out from facts and not be imported into them.
Taking, then, the testimony of almost nine
teen centuries, what answer do we obtain to the
questions, gathered up into one, that we have
been asking ? Where do we find the system,
religion, institution, which has met the condi
tions presented to us, and accomplished, with
whatever drawbacks, the work for the race
for which all previous history had been the
unconscious preparation ?
I anticipate your answer to this question as
you anticipate mine. In truth there is but one
answer that can be given. It is the system of
Christianity, the religion of Jesus Christ, the
95 Essay on Criticism.

42 BEDELL LECTURES.
institution known as the Christian Church, that
has accomplished this ; not Confucius, not Bud
dha with the Sutras, not Mohammed with the
Koran, not anything that has been, or that
is in the world has accomplished this, except
Jesus Christ and His Church. Of Christianity
only can that be said which Montesquieu has
said of it,26 " The religion of heaven has not es
tablished itself by the same methods as the re
ligions of this world. Read over the history of
the Church and you will see the prodigies of the
Christian religion. Has it resolved to enter a
country ? It knows how to open the gates of
that country, and can use all instruments that
present themselves. Sometimes God employs
a few fishermen, sometimes an emperor on his
throne. Does the Christian religion conceal
itself in subterranean hiding-places ? Wait a
moment and you will hear the imperial majesty
speaking in its behalf. It crosses seas, rivers,
mountains ; there are, in truth, no obstacles that
can arrest its march. Are human minds re
pugnant to it ? It overcomes that repugnance.
Are customs, usages, edicts, laws opposed to it ?
It will triumph over natural conditions, over
96 Defence de V Esprit des Lois ; article Tolerance ; vol. iv. p. 274,
ed. 1772.

LECTURE II. 43
laws and legislators." Strange and striking
words these ! but how strictly true ! What a
picture they present of the march of Christianity
along the historic pathway of the world, taking
up as it advances all the factors that the ages
have prepared for a possible future, and from
them and with them enabling men — by its
spirit, in its power, through its life — to work
out all that is best and noblest in that civiliza
tion of whose triumphs, on every side and in all
directions, we are never weary of making our
boast. Look at Paul the Apostle of the Gentiles, as,
under his appeal to Csesar, he comes to the im
perial centre of the world. Mighty in the He
brew Scriptures, trained in Jewish learning, not
untrained, assuredly, in Greek letters, speaking
the universal language — Greek, crossing the
Mediterranean in a Greek ship of Alexandria,
advancing, after he reaches the shores of Italy,
towards the capital on a Roman road, coming
to be tried at a Roman tribunal, and by forms
of the world-wide Roman law, what a living
prophecy, so to speak, he is of the progress of
the Faith and the Church of Jesus Christ. Ex
cept the mighty events of our Lord's own life,
to which there can be no parallel nor approach,

44 BEDELL LECTURES.
I know no sublimer spectacle in the history of
the world than is exhibited by the apostle stand
ing, if not literally still very really, in the
presence of the Emperor of Rome. Both are
representative men as well as individuals. Each
represents a system — and the systems so repre
sented are alternative possibilities for the his
toric world. The one centres in the Roman
Emperor, the other centres in Jesus Christ ;
and one or the other is to mould the world.
Which of them shall it be ? That represented
by the emperor who witnesses to, and in some
sense records, the failures of the past ; or that
represented by the apostle who is the living
prophecy of the possibilities of the future ?
History has answered that question, and we all
know what the answer is.
To attempt to follow out this answer in all its
multitudinous details, multiplying themselves
through eighteen centuries, would be a simple
impossibility. It would involve a review of phi
losophy, science, art, literature, the great in
dustries of civilization, and many other things
which could be adequately exhibited only in
volumes upon volumes. The result, however,
of such a survey may be expressed in the briefest
of brief statements. All these things have been

LECTURE II. 45
most fully and thoroughly developed in Chris
tian countries and under the influences of Chris
tianity. If there are any things on which our present
civilization specially values itself, these are its
great attainments in science and in the indus
trial arts. We hear and speak of these attain
ments continually ; and assuredly they deserve
to be heard about and spoken of. How are
we to explain the fact that they are exclusively
the possession of Christian countries — so exclu
sively, that other countries have them to-day
only as Christian civilization has introduced
them, and sometimes (as in the case of China)
introduced them in the face of violent oppo
sition ?
The fact is admitted by those who have no
wish to admit it, no prejudice, as we say, in
favor of Christianity. Indeed, it is too patent
to be denied. In 1877, at a reunion of natural
ists at Cologne, a Berlin savant and professor
said : " Paradoxical as the utterance may seem,
modern science owes its origin to Christianity."
In the report of the French commission on the
Exposition of 185 1, we find a manufacturer
saying, " The exposition has proved to all the
world that industry really exists only in Chris-

46 BEDELL LECTURES.
tian countries."27 He means, of course, the
great industries, those that, deal with the won
ders of mechanism and the use of natural agents.
What does this fact mean, and what is meant
by citing it ? Is it meant that Christianity has
directly concerned itself with that knowledge of
nature, its laws and forces, which constitutes
science, or with the application of that knowl
edge which results in the great industries of our
time ? Assuredly not ; to assert that would be
both false and foolish. No ! but that the intel
lectual movement which Christianity rouses up
in men, just how we need not ask, has taken
on, and then given out, the impulse which has
wrought these wonders. The writer from whom
I have cited the testimonies just given, has-
placed this matter in so clear a light that I
avail myself, with a single change, of his strik-
; ing words. They occur at the close of a bril
liant lecture on "Christ the Teacher." "If on
going out of this hall you should say to a friend
whom you chanced to meet, 'We have just
learned that Jesus Christ invented machines,
telegraphs, and railways,' you would provoke a
smile. But if you said, ' We have had pointed
27 Cited by Naville, Le Christ, pp. 54, 238.

LECTURE II. 47
out to us the influence of Christianity on human
thought and its movements, out of which have
come modern science and the industries to
which science gives birth,' then the smile, if it
came, could be, in my opinion, only the smile
of ignorance or prejudice."
We may take another instance in illustration
of our general position — the influence of Chris
tianity on language. No words need be wasted
in proving the intimate connection between
language on the one side and human advance
ment or retrogression on the other. As man
advances in civilization, as his world of thought
enlarges, so language enlarges and grows richer.
" As one habit of civilization after another is let
go, the words which those habits demanded have
dropped as well, first out of use and then out
of memory, and thus after a while have been
wholly lost."
Let us dwell for a few moments on this law
under which language becomes more fruitful
and more full. I do not know that it, and its
bearing on the connection of Christianity with
language, can be better stated than in the words
of the present Archbishop of Dublin.
The " cause which more than any other
creates the necessity for additions to the vocab-

48 BEDELL LECTURES.
ulary of language, and evokes the words which
shall supply this necessity when it is felt, is
beyond a question this — namely, that in the
appointments of highest Wisdom there are cer
tain cardinal epochs in the world's history in
which, far more than at other times, new moral
and spiritual forces begin to work, and to stir
society to its central depths. When it is thus
with a people, they make claims upon their lan
guage which were never made upon it before.
It is required to utter truths, to express ideas,
which were strange to it in the time of its first
moulding and shaping, and for which, therefore,
terms sufficient will naturally not be found in it
at once — these new thoughts and feelings being
larger and deeper than any with which hitherto
the speakers of that tongue had been familiar."
" The most illustrious example of this where
of I speak, is, of course, the coming in of Chris
tianity, or, including the anterior dispensation,
of revealed religion into the ancient heathen
world, with the consequent necessity under
which the great novel truths that were then
proclaimed to mankind lay, to clothe them
selves in the language of men, and first in the
language of Greece and Rome ; languages
which in their previous form might have suf-

LECTURE II. 49
ficed, and did suffice, for heathenism, sensuous
and finite as it was, but not for the spiritual and
infinite of the new dispensation."28
No man, indeed, but one who has carefully
investigated the subject can have the smallest
idea of the extent to which Christianity has per
meated, vitalized, and enlarged the language of
civilized nations ; so that if you could eliminate
from them its influence and work, you would
not only greatly narrow their limits and abridge
their fullness, but you would almost be com
pelled to learn them over again before you
could use them intelligently. And then, be
sides, what a mass of the best and noblest litera
ture must be utterly disfigured if not absolutely
destroyed ! This would be an invasion of bar
barism in very truth.
Why, the very language in which unbelief
voices its attacks on Christianity is language
that largely owes its capacity to express the
ideas that unbelievers seek to communicate, to
the influence of Christianity itself.
It is, of course, easy to say that what is here
asserted amounts to no more than the declara
tion that if Christianity had not existed it could
"Trench, Study of Words, p. 138-9.

50 BEDELL LECTURES.
not have been assailed ; a declaration which
would be simply a stupid truism. But the fal
lacy of such a reply is too obvious to need more
than the merest mention. It is answered as
soon as it is stated, and by its very statement.
There are, however higher things to be con
sidered in civilization as vitalized by Christi
anity than science, industrial arts, language or
letters. We have also to look at the moral
training and advancement of civilized nations.
Here is, after all, the crucial test. With this,
we may well press upon men's thoughts the in
fluence of Christianity in the various matters
named, and in others like them. But without
this, all those other things would amount to
nothing, and would not be worth the trouble of
considering. Let me then state this higher
aspect of the influence of Christianity in the
shortest and most comprehensive form : " The
influence of Christianity on the moral education
of nations is the great fact of modern times."
Now I know that I shall be met here with
two objections, or it might, perhaps, be better
said with two forms of the same objection.
First it will be said, Talk as you will of the
moral education of the nations by Christianity,
any man can see that it has not wrought its pur-

LECTURE II. 51
posed work. It speaks of peace and liberty and
purity and mutual rights and duties, and we be
hold, on every side, war and oppression and
impurity and manifold wrongs and evils. And
then, secondly, we shall be told — we are told —
that Christianity has not only failed in this wise
and to this extent, but that it is itself the source
of untold horrors that stain and darken the
pages of the world's history. Such accusations
as these burden, in our day, the very air.
Now underlying the answers to both these
objections is the great fact, (conveniently over
looked just here, however loudly it may be as
serted on other occasions) that Christianity,
from the first, recognized the free agency of
man as a moral being, and treated him as pos
sessed of such free agency. On that basis, and
on that basis only, it professed to do, it has
done, its work.
Taking our stand, then, at this point, we
may reply to the first objection : " Christianity
has never acted, or professed to act, as a revolu
tion, but only as a reform. It has never sought
to produce unexpected, instant results, but it
has gradually wrought the reform of minds and
sentiments, and by the reform of morals and
institutions the reform of the world. Such

52 BEDELL LECTURES.
was its mission, such was the end it proposed,
according to the declaration, " My Kingdom is
not of this world ; " that is to say, I do not act
directly upon men in bodies as a civil law-giver,
I reform the world by the reform of individ
uals."29 I suppose nothing is more frequently urged as
proving the failure of Christianity in the moral
training of the civilized nations than the wars
and the armaments of those very nations. Now,
admitting that "selfish ambition, rapacity, tyr
anny, and vanity" are largely the motives that
bring about wars, and that " the condemna
tion of the one side is the justification of the
other," that is to say, that the motives condemn
ed on the one side justify resistance to them on
the other ; admitting that war may, sometimes,
be the final and only method of obtaining jus
tice when all others fail ; 30 admitting that, for
these reasons, armaments of nations are not to
be sweepingly condemned, nor war indiscrimi
nately branded as a crime ; admitting all this, it
is, assuredly, true that Christianity does propose
to bring about peace on earth and good-will
among, as well as to, men.
"Rossi, Bibliotheque Universelle, Dec. 1867.
30 Mozley, University Sermons, Sermon V.

LECTURE II. 53
After all, it will be said, wars have not ceased
in the world. No ! but have they not become
less frequent? Once they we're unceasing in
their continuous clang and clash ; so unceasing
that it was thought — and was — a marvellous
thing when Christian influence caused the Truce
of God 31 to be proclaimed, under which the din
of arms was hushed from the evening of
Wednesday to the morning of Monday in each
week, and during Lent and Advent. Those peri
ods of rest and safety to the people, giving them
opportunity to turn- to the arts of peace, were
some gain surely. And there has been more gain
since. Truces of God are the rule in our time
rather than the exception, and the longer they
continue the more old enmities are buried and
forgotten. If some one had prophesied at
Yorktown in September, 1 781, that when the
centennial of that victory, which secured their
place as an imperial power to the United States,
should be celebrated, the British flag would be
honorably saluted, with the consent and even
acclamation of the nation, what terms of con
tempt for his idiotic assertion would have been
deemed too strong ? Yet so it was. And what
31 First proclaimed, probably, in 1032 or 1034,

54 BEDELL LECTURES.
brought it about ? Not state-craft, not diplo
macy, not human policy of any sort, but that
drawing of heart to heart which obedience to
the law of Christian sympathy had wrought.
Time only strengthens such a bond as that !
Again, it will be said, the horrors and atroci
ties of war continue. Yes ! but how much mit
igated by Christian influences. When the Con
vention of Geneva recognized the neutrality of
ambulances, and protected those who, marked
with the cross of red, ministered to the wounded
of either army, a great step was taken forward.
Ministrations to the battle-stricken were indeed
no new thing. Christian hearts had often be
fore impelled men and women to undertake
them. But recognition and protection of this
sort were new things ; and do they not, must
they not, point on to a still better and brighter
future ? 32
As to the second objection, that Christianity
is itself the source of untold and horrible evils,
it is even more futile than the first. It con
founds, and that often for the basest purposes,
what men, acting as free moral agents, have done
under the name of Christianity, with the teach-
89 Naville, Le Christ, p. 44.

LECTURE II. 55
ings and influence of Christianity itself. And
this confusion the very men who make it would
scorn and scout in other things. Who would
hold law responsible for the chicanery of petti
foggers, or medicine for the pretences of quacks,
or science for the charlatanry of empirics ? In
all these cases men easily distinguish between
the character of the thing itself and the purposes
and acts of those who attempt to use it as a
cover for their own baseness and evil doing.
Let the same obvious distinction be made here,
let the same method of treatment be applied,
and this objection vanishes at once. The re
proach then falls on men and not on Christian-
ity. One word more before I leave this topic. It
is surely a noteworthy fact that every scheme
which contemplates the moral advancement of
the race without accepting and employing the
influences and laws of Christianity does, never
theless, adopt as its necessary basis, those very
moral rules which Christianity alone has given
it. But for Christianity and its teachings,
there would be nothing on which those who are
now endeavoring to deny to Christianity and
its institutions any share in the moral culture of
the race, could take their stand. They owe to

56 BEDELL LECTURES.
it the very position which but for it they could
by no possibility assume.
The phenomenon which I have desired to
present is now, I think, sufficiently before us to
bring on the question which necessarily and at
once grows out of it. The phenomenon is, first,
that gathering up of what were the preparations
of the past, when the Faith and the Church of
Jesus Christ came into the world, and, next,
that opening out of what was then the future,
some of the manifold results of which we have
been contemplating; a gathering up and an open
ing out which Christianity alone has wrought.
The question is, how is this phenomenon to be
accounted for, and what is its explanation ?
Ridicule of human proneness to superstition,
ridicule indeed of any kind, can neither destroy
it nor explain its existence. That method was
tried in the beginning much as it is tried to-day.
"Some mocked" is the prophetic statement
which follows the record of the sermon of St.
Paul at Athens. In excavating the site of the
palace of the Caesars, at Rome, a room was
found once occupied by the body-guard or
the pages of the emperor. On its wall was
roughly sketched the figure of a man bearing
an ass's head and fastened to a cross ; while

LECTURE II. 57
underneath were the words " Alexamenes wor
ships his God." No doubt the ribald soldier
or flippant page who thus vented his contempt
and scorn, thought he had given the exitiabilis
superstitio — so Rome's great historian desig
nates Christianity — its death-blow. No doubt
applauding comrades gave praise to his achiev-
ment. To us it comes out of the dust and rub
bish of centuries, so far as its author is con
cerned, simply as a saddening proof of human
folly. But its misrepresentation of our Lord,
the blasphemy of its caricature, its cheap and
coarse attempt at wit have found their imitators
in every age ; they find them in our own. The
uttered word and the written page have, indeed,
taken the place of the rude sketch and legend,
but both are outcomes of the same weak folly ;
and the same oblivion that came to one inevi
tably awaits the other.
The denial of the truths of history cannot
destroy or explain the phenomenon. To deny,
as the French writer quoted in my first lecture
did, and as others have done since, that such a
person as Jesus Christ ever existed, simply puts
him who makes the denial outside the possibili
ties of discussion. No student of science would
dream of attempting to discuss the solar system,

58 BEDELL LECTURES.
as we term it, with one who began his part of
the discussion by denying the existence of the
central sun. In this case, indeed, it would
be an undoubted scientific fact that would be
denied, and in the other an attested fact of his
tory. But he who makes the one denial out
laws himself from the domain of reasoning, as
much as he who makes the other.
Do we gain anything in the way of explana
tion from the theory which first declares that in
Jesus there abode the loftiest consciousness of
God that humanity has ever known ; which
next asserts that in bringing the power of this
consciousness to bear on man our Lord, when
other means had failed, had recourse to false
hood, imposture, and the arts of a charlatan ;
which, finally, in order to justify such crimes —
for crimes they are — argues that mankind in
order to be led must be deceived, and then
concludes that, since no great work can be
otherwise accomplished, such deceit is blame
less ? Now the ribald Roman soldier and his
later imitators might very well adopt this
theory. One who regarded Christianity as an
evil thing might very well adopt it. But one
who sees in Christianity a power for the good,
the right, the true, can only protest, solemnly

LECTURE II. 59
and earnestly, against such an outrage, not only
upon God and upon our Lord, but upon the
conscience of man and humanity itself. A pure
stream could not proceed from so foul a source.
Do we make any advance towards a solution
of the problem by saying that monotheism was
natural to the Semitic race, especially to the
Hebrews ; that our Lord was a man of that race,
of lofty character, reason, and conscience ; that
the reasonableness of his doctrine and the purity
of his morals attracted a crowd of followers ; that
by these means his doctrine spread in the world ;
that, in time, a miraculous legend was formed,
such as is often formed around good and great
men ; that, in a word, Christianity is the con
summate flower of the "tree of religion," but
is after all only the result of natural, aside from
any supernatural, causes ?
I have stated this theory, the latest, I believe,
and the most attractive one, of the naturalistic
school, almost in the words of an eloquent
French writer, to whom I have already been
indebted, and I will also give you the sub
stance of his reply, with some of my own addi
tions. If monotheism was so natural to the Hebrews
how was it that they were so perpetually laps-

60 BEDELL LECTURES.
ing into polytheism and idolatry ; and that
their strong tendencies in this direction were
effectually checked only by the stern discipline
of the Babylonian captivity ? If the doctrine
of Jesus of Nazareth satisfies in many things
the reason, does it not also confound the reason
by the mysteries for which it demands belief?
If it consoles the heart on the one hand, does it
not also lacerate it on the other, in demanding
the sacrifice of its deepest affections in the
cause of duty and of God ? If it calms the
conscience by its promises of pardon, does it
not also disturb it by the strictness of its re
quirements ? So far, then, as we contemplate
its attractions for individual's souls we find
over against everyone of them a balancing, if
not an overbalancing, obstacle.
And if we look on things external we really
see scarce anything but obstacles, obstacles that
are, apparently, insurmountable ; the hatred of
the Jew, the scorn of the Greek, the " superb
contempt " of the Roman ; on every side perse
cution, prisons, torture, death ; nothing to fa
vor the advancement of the "sect everywhere
spoken against," everything to oppose it. And
yet we behold it ever spreading, ever overcom
ing difficulties, ever gathering new adherents,

LECTURE II. 6 1
till Tertullian could say,33 " We are of yester
day, and yet we have filled your cities, islands,
castles, towns, your places of assembly, your
very camps, your tribes, your decuriae, the
palace, the senate, the forum ; we have left you
only your temples ;" till the last confessedly
heathen emperor, dying on the plains of Persia,
was compelled to cry with his latest breath, as
he flung a handful of his own blood up towards
heaven, " Galilean, Thou hast conquered ! " M
Whether, then, we consider the internal or
the external difficulties of the naturalistic solu
tion of our problem, it breaks down by its own
weight. Driven thus from one explanation to
another, and finding none to meet the condi
tions of the phenomenon we have in mind, and
to explain them, we are also driven — if I may
so say — to the account which Christianity gives
of itself, namely, that it is God's plan for the
regeneration of the race. This explains, ade
quately and fully, how it lives by death, con
quers by what seems to men's eyes failures,
grows by repression, is strong in its weakness,

33 Apolog. c. xxxvii.
34 Theodoret, Eccl. Hist. Lib. III. c. xxv. One cannot but think
that Julian's words meant more than merely a reference to his own
death.

62 BEDELL LECTURES.
rich in its poverty, glorious in its humiliation ;
because it is the power of God and the wisdom
of God.
Am I told that if one accepts this explana
tion he also accepts the idea of a miraculous
interposition of God in the affairs of men, and
that this involves too severe a strain on faith ?
Then I reply, that any other explanation in
volves a vastly greater strain, and compels me
to accept a vastly greater miracle ; for, you may
rely upon it, incredulity is the most credulous of
all things.
If Christianity has won its way and done its
work because it is a puerile superstition and a
fair butt for ribald wit ; or because its reputed
Founder never lived on earth ; or because with
lofty purposes and aims He still condescended
to arts of deceit and charlatancy, thereby out
raging both God and man ; or because against
every attraction which it presented a fully bal
ancing obstacle reared itself, against every out
ward favoring circumstance there stood an
overbalancing counter-circumstance that seemed
to be an insurmountable hindrance ; if I am
to seek in these things the explanation of the
spread and the work of Christianity among
men, then, indeed, I am presented with a mira-

LECTURE II. 63
cle, or rather a mass of miracles, that well may
stagger me. While I have been asserting the
impossibility of any miracle, I have been creat
ing a thousand for myself. While I have been
making boast of my philosophical incredulity, I
have fallen into the pit of a most unphilosophi-
cal credulity. And my only escape'' from it is
to accept the account which Christianity gives
of itself, its origin, its Founder, its purposes and
its powers. In that light, and in that light only,
shall we see light, the light in which there is no
darkness at all.
As I draw toward the end of the line of
thought along which we have been moving, I am
reminded that I have not brought out those loft
iest truths with which we find ourselves in con
tact, nor led you to that higher level on which
we stand, when we consider the living power of
the truth as it is in Jesus on human character in
its individual personality ; in a word, the life of
God in the soul of man. This has not been be
cause I underestimate the surpassing value and
reality of this great attestation of the Faith.
God forbid ! But, only because my purpose
was to show, if I might, that looking solely at
what the Faith and the Church of Jesus Christ
had accomplished for the race in the outwork-

64 BEDELL LECTURES.
ings of its ordinary historical development, the
truest explanation — indeed, the only one that
met all the conditions of the phenomenon to be
explained — was found in their own account of
their original power as being from God, and not
of man.
But that the higher and at the same time the
deeper thought may not be quite omitted, let us
place ourselves once more at the point towards
which, as we have seen, all previous history
converges, from which all after historic life and
movement diverge. Doing this, we find our
selves standing, as the Apostles once stood, in
" the coasts of Csesarea Philippi" and by the side
of Jesus. We know, as we stand there, what
they did not — the story of the future. We hear
the question, "Whom do men say that I, the
Son of man, am ?" We hear the Apostles'
answer as to the men of that day — but we hear
more. From the future, of which they knew
nothing, we hear a confused sound of many
voices in reply. Some say a deceiver ; others,
the ideal man ; still others, one who was the
joint production of climate, race, and surround
ing conditions and circumstances ; others still,
one in whom the divine has temporarily rested
in the progress of its eternally recurring incar-

LECTURE II. 65
nations. Amid all the perplexity and confusion
another question reaches us, "Whom say ye
that I am ?" And as we look back through
preceding and on through coming ages, what
answer can we give but the one that Peter
gave, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the liv
ing God"?
Surely we cannot rest there. Surely we must
ask, you and I, What do these answers promise
me ? To what do they bring me ? What is
built upon them, what comes out from them,
for me and my own necessities ? Whatever it
is and whatever it means, no reply can be any
thing to me, unless it is individually my own,
and unless it means something for me as an
individual. What is to be said, then, of these
several replies ?
If I conclude that Jesus was a deceiver,
nothing is offered me. If I say that He was
an, or even the, ideal man, I am brought in
contact with an example — possibly with a school
of morals — but with nothing more. If I re
gard Him as one developed by manifold natural
conditions, or one in whom the divine tempo
rarily rested, then I find " an ideal Christianity ;
a religion free, individual, without dogma or
bond of union, without theology or church ; a

66 BEDELL LECTURES.
religion eclectic and sentimental, which each
man builds up for himself according to his own
individual notion of God, admitting under that
name, so vague and confused, all great men and
moralists ; so building for the future a Jerusa
lem which De Sacy thus describes : ' a Jerusa
lem with a hundred gates, on which is written
beside the name of Moses that of Mohammed,
beside the name of Jesus that of Buddha, be
side the names of St. Peter and St. Paul those
of Rousseau and Voltaire ; a Jerusalem which
bears a marvellous likeness to the tower of
Babel, save that the old Babel ended with a
confusion of tongues, and this new one begins
with a confusion of ideas.'"35
On the other hand, if Jesus be the Christ,
the Son of the living God, then there is offered
me the sacrifice of the cross, the power of the
Resurrection, the life of the Spirit ; a way, a
truth, a life, which meet my deepest needs and
satisfy my highest longings. Then I find that
vision of peace, that city of God over against
the city of the world, that New Jerusalem
which does not spring up from the earth to go
back into the earth again, but which " cometh
86 Caro, L'id/e de Dieu et les Nouveaux Critiques, p. 130.

LECTURE II. &7
down from heaven," and takes up and uses for
man on earth what man has failed to use for
himself ; and so uses what it thus takes up as to
build, not merely for the race as a mass but for
each single soul, not for time alone but also for
eternity, " a city that hath foundations." This
gathers up the past, this opens out the future,
for every living man.
Built on the living Corner Stone
The city of our God doth rise,
Bright vision of celestial peace,
Whose jewelled turrets pierce the skies;
While in deep ranks on every side
Angels surround the Saviour's Bride !
How blest the mystic bond that binds
Thee, dowered with glories all divine,
Shining in marriage gifts of grace,
Queen Mother of a princely line,
To Christ thy Lord in spousal given,
Gleaming Jerusalem of heaven !

1881.
FOUNDER'S DAY
AT
Kenyon College.

FOUNDER'S DAY.

ORDER OF SERVICE
FOR
ALL SAINTS' DA Y.
November ist, 1881.

officia ting persons.
The Te Deum.
Ante-Communion, . . . 5 R^t Reverend George Wm Pe-
( terkin, D.D., of West Virginia.
The Epistle,  i Rev- w- £• Fren^' DD- Secre"
( tary of Convention.
The Gospel,  f Rev. W B Bodine, D.D., Presi-
( dent of the College.
CREED j Rev. Fleming James, D.D., Pas-
 ( tor.
Founder's Memorial, . . IXJS^S^0"
doxology. Prayer for Institutions.
Hymn 183.
The Lecture,  {RiDhD.^7cronLJttntWilliamS'
Hymn 176.
Offertory for Founder's Scholarship.
Prayer for Church Militant.
Matriculation of the Theological Seminary.
Matriculation of Kenyon College.
The Holy Communion, administered by the Bishops present.
Benediction, by the Right Reverend the Bishop of Connecticut.

FOUNDER'S DAY
AT KENYON COLLEGE, 1881.

We remember before God this day the Founders
of these Institutions: Philander Chase, the first
Bishop of Ohio, clarum et venerabile nomen, whose
foresight, zeal, unwearied patience, and indomitable
energy, devised these foundations, and established
them, temporarily at Worthington, but permanently
at Gambier. He was the founder of the Theologi
cal Seminary, Kenyon College, and of the Grammar
School ; — Charles Pettit McIlvaine, the second
Bishop of Ohio, rightly known as the second Founder
of these Institutions, whose decision of character, and
self-devoted labors, saved them at two distinct crises
of difficulty; he builded Bexley Hall for the use of
the Theological Seminary, Ascension Hall for the use
of Kenyon College, Milnor Hall for the use of the
Grammar School, and he completed Rosse Chapel on
the foundations laid by Bishop Chase.
We remember before God this day pious and gen
erous persons, contributors, whose gifts enabled the
Bishops of Ohio to lay those foundations, and who

74 FOUNDER'S DAY AT KENYON COLLEGE.
are therefore to be named among the Founders. We
make mention only of those who have departed, to be
with Christ, and now rest in Paradise.
Among the many, we name only a few whose gifts
are noticeable because of the influence of their char
acter and position:
Henry Clay, whose introduction of Bishop Chase
to the Admiral Lord Gambier, of England, initiated
the movement in 1823 ; the Archbishop of Canter
bury; the Lord Bishops of London, Durham, St. Da
vids, Chester, Lichfield ; the Deans of Canterbury
and Salisbury; Lords Kenyon, Gambier, Bexley, Sir
Thomas Acland; Reverend Edward Bickersteth, Hen
ry Hoare, Marriott, Pratt, William Wilberforce,
Thomas Wiggin, Thomas Bates; the Dowager Coun
tess of Rosse, who aided liberally the Chapel which
afterwards bore her name; Hannah More, who also
bequeathed a Scholarship which bears her name; and
five hundred and thirty others whose names are re
corded in the memorial prepared by the Rev. Dr.
Bronson at the order of the Trustees.
We remember before God the liberality of William
Hogg, from whom this domain was purchased under
the advice of Henry B. Curtis and Daniel S. Norton,
with the consent of Henry Clay; the grantor contrib
uting one fourth of its market value.
In 1838, John Quincy Adams, the President of the

FOUNDER'S DAY AT KENYON COLLEGE. 7$
United States; Mrs. Sigourney; Arthur Tappan, who
originated the Milnor Professorship; St. George's
Church, New York, which established a Scholarship;
Rev. Drs. Milnor, Tyng, Bedell, Sparrow, Keith, Rev.
I. Morse, Dudley Chase, Albert Barnes, John Trimble,
William Jay, Abbott and Amos Lawrence, Peter Stuy-
vesant, Richard Varick, and nine hundred and ninety
others whose names are recorded.
These were the first Founders of these Institutions.
Among those who aided Bishop Mcllvaine we men
tion before God to-day, — in 1832, Bishop White, Rev.
Manton Eastburn and the Ascension Church, the Rev.
Dr. Cutler and St. Ann's Church, Brooklyn, the Rev.
Drs. Muhlenberg, and Wing, Peter A. Jay, James Len
nox, Robert Minturn, Henry Codman, Robert Carter,
Matthew Clarkson, Charles Hoyt, J. N. Whiting, and
four hundred and sixty others whose names are re
corded. And in 1835, in England, Daniel Wilson, Bishop of
Calcutta; the Bishops of London, Winchester, Salis
bury, and Lichfield; the Duchess of Kent, the Duch
ess of Gloucester, the Princess Augusta, the Duchess
of Beaufort, the Earl of Carnarvon, Rev. Thomas
Hartwell Home, Charles Brydges, John Fox, Jerram,
Jowett, Baptist Noel, Dr. Plumtre, Charles Simeon,
Henry Thornton, Sir Thomas Baring, Henry Roberts,
architect, who gave the plan and working model for

76 FOUNDER'S DAY AT KENYON COLLEGE.
Bexley Hall; with four hundred and eighty -three
others whose names are recorded.
These are the second Founders of these Institu
tions. We mention before God to-day the gifts of Bishop
Gadsden, Bishop Johns, Colonel Pendleton, John Kil-
gour, the Kinneys, Dr. Doddridge, Charles D. Betts,
who founded a fund for the purchase of theological
books; Rev. C. C. Pinkney, who contributed for fit
ting up a Laboratory; J. D. Wolfe, who contributed to
found the Lorillard and Wolfe Professorships; John
Johns, M.D., of Baltimore, who left a valuable legacy
to the Institutions; Stewart Brown, William H. As-
pinwall, and others who contributed to the building
of Ascension Hall; Thomas H. Powers, Lewis S. Ash-
urst, John Bohlen and sister, and others who founded
a Professorship in memory of the late Dr. Bedell of
Philadelphia ; W. W. Corcoran, President Andrews,
Rev. Alfred Blake, and nine hundred and forty-four
others who are also to be counted among the founders
of these Institutions.
And last, the Philanthropist, the intimate friend of
Bishop Mcllvaine, who in token of that friendship
founded a Professorship, that now bears his name,
bears the name of George Peabody.
The donors to these Institutions who are still living
(many of whom have gathered on this day) unite with

FOUNDER'S DAY AT KENYON COLLEGE. 77
us in praising God for the privilege of building upon
foundations which were thus so strongly laid.
Among them we mention with gratitude, — of Eng
land, William E. Gladstone, Member of Parliament
(at present Prime Minister), Rev. Canon Carus, and
J. Pye Smith; — of the United States, Rev. Drs. Dyer
and Burr, Professor Francis Wharton, A. H. Moss,
M. M. Granger, John Gardiner, Mrs. Spencer, Rev.
Archibald M. Morrison, who founded the Griswold
Professorship; Peter Neff, Jr., who gave the Tele
scope, and Transit Instrument; Mrs. Lewis, who part
ly founded a Professorship; the Rev. Drs. Muenscher,
Bronson, and Brooke; Rev. Messrs. Lounsbury and
E. A. Strong, whose efforts brought many valuable
contributions to these Institutions; and several hun
dred others whose names are recorded.
The third Bishop of Ohio, with the aid of William
H. and John Aspinwall, James M. Brown, Samuel D.
Babcock, William B. Astor, and other members of the
Ascension Church of New York, builded the Church
of the Holy Spirit for the use of all the Institutions;
through him Mrs. Bowler founded the Professorship
which bears her husband's name, R. B. Bowler, who
gave a philosophical apparatus, and who with Larz
Anderson, Henry Probasco, William Proctor, and
others, founded the Mcllvaine Professorship; Jay
Cooke founded the Proiessorship which bears his

78 FOUNDER'S DAY AT KENYON COLLEGE
father's name; Frank E. Richmond founded the
Hoffman Library Fund; Stewart Brown builded the
Tower of the Church, to bear the name of his son,
Abbott Brown. By the same Bishop and his wife the
Organ was placed in the Church as a memorial of the
second Bishop of the Diocese, and the Episcopal chair
as a memorial of the great Founder; R. S. French
with the assistance of friends provided the full Chime
of nine Bells and the Clock, and by the aid of citizens
of Gambier and Mount Vernon placed them in the
Church-tower with power to ring the Canterbury
Chimes; members of the Church in Philadelphia
completed the endowment of the Bedell Professor
ship, among them chiefly William Welsh, John Bohlen
and his sister, and Thomas H. Powers, who also left
a Fund in the hands of the Vestry of Christ Church,
Germantown, for a perpetual supply of specified books
for students in Bexley Hall; and Robert S. Ives and
his wife, who stated that, desiring not to trammel the
Trustees, they placed their fund in the Treasury with
out conditions.
In 1875 the Trustees determined to found a "Trus
tees' Professorship," which is partially completed.
All these and seventy others are also to be counted
among the Founders.
We mention with gratitude the successful efforts of
the present President of Kenyon College to complete

FOUNDER'S DAY AT KENYON COLLEGE. 79
the endowments, and the gifts which have resulted
therefrom; namely, from R. B. Hayes, President of
the United States, Peter Hadyn, Dr. I. T. Hobbs,
Rev. William Horton, Thomas McCulloch, Samuel L.
Mather, William J. Boardman, A. C. Armstrong, H. P.
Baldwin; from John W. Andrews a donation in lands
for the founding of Scholarships in memory of his
son; from Mrs. Alfred Blake donations for the pur
pose of founding a Scholarship to bear her husband's
name; from Columbus Delano the Hall which bears
his name; from Mrs. Ezra Bliss a Gymnasium which
is being built; and from Henry B. Curtis, Scholar
ships which from generation to generation will foster
sound learning. These also with thirty others, the
latest givers to our Institutions, are to be counted
among the Founders. The congregation rising.
For all these generous gifts of the living, and for
the memory of the dead who were the Founders of
these Institutions, we give hearty thanks to God
this day; ascribing the praise of their benefactions
to His almighty grace, and the glory to His most
holy Name, who is the God of our fathers and our
God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, one
adorable Trinity for ever and ever. Amen.