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BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

THE NATION.
The Foundations of Civil Order and Political Life in the United
States. By Elisha Mulford, LL. D. i vol. crown 8vo, $2.50.
From Hon. James A. Garfield, President of the United States.
It is a very able discussion of what is to me one of the most important branches
of political philosophy. Every page I have read surprises me with the extent and
thoroughness of the author's study, and the freshness and vigor of his discussion.
From Hon. Wayne MacVeagh, A ttorney General of the United States-
It is so complete in its argument, moves so steadily to its own high end, and is so
novel in Amencan literature, for its wealth of political knowledge.
From Hon- Charles Sumner.
I have read *' The Nation " from the first to tfie last with constant interest and
sympathy. It is a most important contribution to our political literature, and can
not fail to strengthen and elevate our national life-
In a letter to Dr. Francis Lieber Mr. Sumner said: "If you write to Mr. Mul-
ford let him know that I am one of his pupils."
From James B. Angell, President of the University of Michigan, and recently
Minister to China.
It is the most valuable contribution to political philosophy which has been writ
ten in the English language in this generation. Its hearty recognition of the moral
element in the national life carries us back to the good old times of Hooker and
Milton. From J. L. Diman, late Professor of History in Brown University.
Mr. Mulford's " The Nation " is not only by far the most profound and exhaust
ive study in the field of speculative politics that American scholarship has yet pro
duced, but we shall be obliged to go very far back in the> literary annals of our
mother country to find anything worthy of comparison with it.
From. F. D. Maurice, late Professor of Moral Philosophy, Cambridge University,
England.
The bracing effect of your late contest for freedom is manifest in its protest
against commercial theories and pale abstractions which are wearing at the life of
England. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Publishers, Boston, Mass.

THE

REPUBLIC OF GOD.

&n gngtttute of C^eolog^.

ELISHA MULFORD, LL.D.

BOSTON:
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY.
2E&e Btuersiac Prtstf, CamkiBjje.
1881.

Copyright, 1881,
By ELISHA MULFORD.
All rights reserved.

run

The Riverside Press, Cambridge :
Stereotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houguton & Co.

TO MY CHILDREN.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
PAG!
The Being of God  1
The consciousness of God.
1. The ontological argument.
The manifestation of God.
The name of God.
The knowledge of God through experience.
2. The cosmological argument.
Causality.
3. The teleological argument.
The imperfection of the physical process.
The strife in nature.
The reconciliation.
Necessity is not inconsistent with freedom.
Freedom is not manifested in necessity.
The enduring element in religion and philosophy.
4. The moral argument.
Righteousness and freedom.

CHAPTER H.
The Personality of God  22
Personality, the highest attainment of man.
1. The relation of the personality of man to the personality
of God.
The foundation of the personality of man in the person
ality of God.
The knowledge of personality.
Personality the central principle of the world.

IV CONTENTS. PA8H
2. The attributes of God.
The personality of God, the ground of the knowledge of
God.
The person of God and the scheme of divinity.
CHAPTER IH.
The Precedent Relations of Religion and Philoso
phy to the Revelation of God  40
1. Definition of religion.
The nature and end of religion.
The history of religion.
The influence of physical conditions on the growth of
religion.
Correlation of religion and philosophy.
Conflict between religion and philosophy.
2. Definition of philosophy.
The relative influence of religion and philosophy on the
ethical life of man.
3. The revelation of Christ is not a religion nor a philosophy.
The Christ does not come as the founder of a religion.
The Old Testament is not the record of a religion.
The preface to the Commandments.
The Commandments.
The New Testament is not the record of a religion.
The Christ was not the founder of a sect of Christians.
The conflict of the revelation of the Christ with the pa
gan religions.
The goal of religion and philosophy.
CHAPTER IV.
The Revelation of God  81
This revelation is from God, hut primarily it is o/God.
The divine self revelation.
The revelation for another.
The revelation of and through and to a person.
The revelation through Sonship.
The knowledge of God.
Revelation and science.
The correspondence between discovery in the physical
process and revelation in the spiritual life.

CONTENTS. y
PAGE
This revelation alone can satisfy humanity.
The mysteries which become the subject of knowledge.
Revelation is light.
Revelation is through relations.
This revelation is not spectacular.
The revelation to faith and reason and conscience.
CHAPTER V.
The Revelation of God in the Christ . . . 103
The revelation in a person.
The revelation which is not external to God, nor exter
nal to man.
There is in the Christ: —
(a.) The consciousness in the world of perfect unity '
with God.
(6.) The consciousness in the world of perfect unity /
with man.
The manifestation of God in a person.
The manifestation of God in a person; always in rela
tions.
The realization of the freedom of man is in relations
with God.
The record in the Evangelists of the coming of the Son
of man.
Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of history.
The biographical life of Jesus.
An apologetic notice of recent theories : —
(a.) That Jesus came, through a religious disposition
and reflection, to adopt the idea of the Christ.
(6.) That Jesus did not recognize a system of econ
omy, nor the culture of art.
(c.) That Jesus conceived an ethical aim, as the en
thusiasm for humanity.
The Incarnation as physical, and as ethical, and as
formative of the perfect and perfected life of hu
manity.
The Christ, the head of the human race.
The Trinity.
The coming of the Spirit.

Vi CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VI. PAOB
The Convection of the World  133
The conviction of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.
1. The conviction of sin.
The nature of sin.
Sin is an alienation from God and from humanity,
through selfishness.
The transgression of the law.
The contradiction of life.
It is incident in the imperfect development of freedom.
2. The conviction of righteousness.
Righteousness is in the fulfillment of the law of God,
and the law of the life of humanity.
It is manifested in the life of the Christ.
It is recognized through the conscience and the con
sciousness of men.
3. The conviction of judgment.
The judgment is in the revelation of the light.
The judgment an object of desire.
The law of the divine judgment in the oneness of the
Christ with humanity.
The judgment in the coming of the kingdom of God.
CHAPTER VH.
The Revelation of Heaven to the World . . 165
The Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The signs of the Kingdom.
The representations of the pagan religions.
The life of man verified in the coming of the Kingdom
of Heaven.
The Kingdom of Heaven realized in the coming of the
Christ, in the Holy Spirit.
The Kingdoms of this world become the Kingdom of the
Christ.
The glory of the conquest of death not yet manifest,
but Jesus has that glory.

CONTENTS. Vii
CHAPTER VIII. PASS
The Justification of the World  173
Righteousness by faith.
The source and object of faith.
Faith in a righteous person.
Faith in another, and being in another.
Faith works with hope and love.
Faith in a righteous person, in the fulfillment of whose
will is the unity and life of the family and the nation.
Justification by faith, and the unity and freedom of the
nation in modern history.
CHAPTER IX.
The Redemption of the World  180
The world is redeemed.
The Christ redeemed the world : —
(a.) In becoming himself the perfect redeemer.
(5.) In a life in the fulfillment of perfect righteous
ness.
(c.) In a life in the Spirit.
(«?.) In a life consistent with the knowledge of the
destination of mankind.
(e.) In a life in oneness with God, and oneness with
humanity.
The sacrifice of the Christ.
The law of sacrifice.
The redemption through love.
The redemption through knowledge.
The redemption through sacrifice.
The work of the Christ the fulfillment of the will of
God.
The work of the Christ the manifestation of the love of
God.
The world is not redeemed through a legend nor through
a scheme of divinity.
The end of the redemption.
The deliverance from evil.
The redemption is from sin and unto righteousness.
The redemption is from the slavery of sin into the free
dom of God.

Vlll CONTENTS- PACE
The redemption of every creature.
The final cause of the world manifest in the redemption
of the world.
The relation of the redemption to eternal life.
The communion of earth and heaven.
The death of the Christ brings to life its infinite signifi
cance.
CHAPTER X.
The Life of the Spirit  207
The coming of the Spirit.
The going away of the Christ, the manifestation and re
alization of the divine relations of humanity.
The procession of the Spirit.
The Church the witness to the continuing life of the
Christ in the world.
The Church ; the communion of saints.
The Scriptures.
The Scriptures; the record of the revelation of God.
The Scriptures ; the difference, in their method, from
the religious books of the world.
The Sacraments.
The Sacraments; the manifestation of the character and
end of domestic and national worship.
The coming of the Spirit ; the Lo»d and Giver of Life.
The law of Christ, the law of humanity.
The foundation of human society.
The prayer of human society, " Show me thy righteous
ness."
The realization of manhood.
The resurrection.
The ascension.
The conquest of death.
The new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth right
eousness.
*** The references to the Scriptures are in a few instances nec
essarily a paraphrase, simply conveying the substance; but these
may be readily verified, and in some instances another translation
has been given, but only when sustained by the most critical author
ities. Montbobe, Susquehanna County, Penn.

THE REPUBLIC OF GOD.

CHAPTER I.
THE BEING OF GOD.
The being of God is the precedent and the
postulate of the thought of God. It is the ground
in man of his conscious life. From the beginning,
and with the growth of the human consciousness,
there is the consciousness of the being of God,
and of a relation to God.
Man is conscious of the being of the external
world, and lives and acts in this consciousness, and;
the being of the external world so comes to be ap
prehended by him. And, further, man is con
scious of the being of God, and lives and acts in
this consciousness, and the reality of the being of
God so comes to him.
We cannot deduce the being of God from the
existence of the world, nor the eternal from the
temporal, nor the infinite from the finite ; and yet
the temporal has its ground in the eternal, and

2 THE BEING OF GOD.
the finite in the infinite. The eternal is not the
continuation of the temporal, nor the infinite the
extension of the finite, and God is not the se
quence nor the limitation of the world.
In this process of the consciousness of the be
ing of God, man does not start from the finite ex
istence which is within the conditions of space and
time, — that which consequently is placed.1 Being
is of itself, in finite conditions, a vacant phase of
thought. It is not that we have to ask its applica
tion, as derived from the finite existences, to God.
The notion of God is derivative from the being
of God. It is not necessary to supplement the
notion of God with the empty category of being
as derived from finite conditions.2
1 " We must find something like God before we reach God, or we
shall not in our thoughts attain unto him." (Bascom, Philosophy
of Religion, p. 74.) It is necessarily the reverse of this. We know
God, and then we find that which in a higher or lower measure is
like him.
2 Kant ( Werke, vol. i. p. 90) does not prove the difference between
being and notion. It is assumed in a popular way, but it is a phase
of thought which applies only to imperfect or incomplete things.
Thus, in society the state advances in its normal process into the
reaUzation of the idea of the state, and the course of the physical
world may be a development, after its germinal or radical type,
through the succession of its forms. But this process does not per
tain to the being of God. He is not the sequence of an evolution,
though his manifestation may be through the process of an evolu
tion. God is the perfect being, and incompleteness does not attach
to him.
If Kant's postulate is correct we can know nothing of God ; we
can make up various notions about God, but that is not to say that

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD. 3
The being of God is not an attribute which is
to be appended to some abstract notion of reality,
or of the sum of all realities, or to the notion of
perfection, and if it were in this constructive
method to be thus apprehended, it would have the
place of an attribute and not of the subject.
Thus it is not necessary to the knowledge of
the being of God to assume that it is one among
several objects of immediate intuition ; nor that
it is a requisition of the emotions, — the require
ment that there shall be placed before them the
highest end ; nor that it is arrived at, as a con
clusion, through the formulas of logic.
The knowledge of God thenceforth, in this pro
cess of consciousness, comes through experience.
It is the experience of the individual and the fam
ily and the nation in the life of humanity.
The being of God is the primal truth. It is
primitive in human thought : there is nothing be
fore it nor apart from it, from which it is to be
derived. Thus the being of God has not its foun
dation in the life of humanity, but humanity has
its foundation in the life of God. Theology has
not its ground in psychology.
The idea of God is in and with and through the
these notions are so, nor is the existence of God implied by thein.
See Hegel's Philosophie der Religion, vol. ii. p. 214.

THE BELNG OF GOD.
•eing of God. The idea and the being of God
,re one. In Him is the oneness of the ideal and
he real. It is only in and from the being of God
hat we discern the infinite and the eternal in
heir realization.1
The infinite is not subject to the conditions of
he finite, nor the eternal to the conditions of the
emporal. In the physical process we can attain
mly to the negative infinite, the temporal and
ipatial infinite, that is, the quantitative infinite.
Dhe imagination is dissatisfied with this, and passes
>eyond it, but only through its ideal qualities.
That the conditions and conclusions of thought
ire not the same in the finite — the temporal and
spatial — is no argument against this position.2
1 It has been said of one form of the ontological argument, " It
nfers the being of God from the ideal necessity of being to the con-
jeption of infinite attributes. It thus accepts a connection of ideas
is a proof of facts." (Bascom, Philosophy of Religion, p. 60.) This is
iritical of a merely formal process of thought that assumes ' ' infinite
attributes," and then assumes "being" also, as an attribute that is
a-ttached to them through a " connection of ideas." But in the on
tological argument strictly there is no "connection of ideas" as
sumed. For the idea and the being of God are one, and it is only
in and from the being of God that we discern what are called his
"infinite attributes."
Again, it is not from the notion of a perfect being — " the con
ception of infinite attributes " — that the reality of being is deduced,
for the argument does not assume an attribute of perfection to which
existence is to be appended, and if existence be an attribute or per
fection of God it must take the place of an attribute and not of the
subject. 2 The ontological argument of S. Anselm, as it has been represent
ed in the interpretation of a school of formal logic, has for its postu«

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD. 5
There is no demonstration of the being of God.
It is itself the principle of demonstration. In
every mode of demonstration whose object is to
arrive at it, it is assumed. It can form no term
in the formulas of logic. It is not a truth which
is to be counted among the achievements of human
thought. There can be no demonstration of the
being of God by man: there may be the manifes
tation of God to man.
The name of God is that name which passes
into the common forms of thought. In its deriva
tion it may have an ethical significance. It has
late the thought of a perfect being — a being than which none
greater can be conceived, and then it attaches the attribute of being
to the thought as necessary to its perfection — as that lacking which
it would lack perfection.
But S. Anselm's argument strictly is as follows: God is something
than which nothing greater can be conceived: but that cannot be
in the intellect alone. If it were only a thought it might be con
ceived as existing, and that would be something greater, therefore
existence is necessarily implied in it.
The representation of S. Anselm's argument by a school of formal
logic, as Hegel says, implies an antithesis of thought and being.
But S. Anselm compares two modes of conceiving the perfect be
ing, that which conceives him as a mere abstraction, simply an
object of thought, and that which conceives him as really existing,
and he maintains that so long as God is conceived only as an object
of thought — that is, as a product of the human mind — we do not
conceive that than which nothing greater can be conceived, in which
the definition of God consists. Thus Hegel says: " The profound
thought which the argument involves has acquired a false and shal
low aspect from being forced into the form of a conclusion of the
understanding." See Hegel's Philosophie der Religion, vol.ii.p. 541;
Hedge's Ways of the Spirit, p. 176.

6 THE BEING OF GOD.
a definite place in the language and literature of
English-speaking men. The substitution for it of
forms which denote some special phase of thought
is an indication of weakness. These terms are
often the sequence of an argument for the being
of God. They often have the" stamp of certain
schools upon them. Thus the term " supreme be
ing" implies the notion of being which is rela
tively more and higher than other forms of being.1
It has no content, and implies only the empty
abstraction of indeterminate, but yet relative, be
ing. It has not a certain strength which is in the
term "central being," as in Dante's phrase, "truth
deep as the centre." The term " first cause " in
dicates only one, if it be counted the first, in
the sequence of the forces of the world, and these
forces often apparently move through forms ad
vancing from less to greater. The term " provi
dence " indicates a notion as to the determina
tion of these forces, in what it further defines as
a special or general way toward a certain end.
These phrases were widely prevalent in the style
of the last century. The terms " the absolute,"
which is characteristic of the Greek thought, and
1 This phrase is used by Edwards, and becomes the basis of his
theory of the nature of virtue, the love of the more and higher over
the less and lower being, which has thus only a quantitative charac
ter. An ethical content is imported from some incidental reference,
or some other writings of Edwards, but it is lacking in his theory of
virtue. The same conception is carried, in another form, into the
sovereignty of God, which is thus a bare sovereignty, — the starker
stronger force.

THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 7
" the infinite " and " the eternal," are more signifi
cant and comprehensive than the preceding, and
denote the high service of philosophy. Thus the
terms " the word," or " the divine word," or " the
eternal word," indicate a truth of the deepest sig
nificance, while yet they retain, in their literal
form, the trace of certain schools and epochs, and
recall their relation to these in the history of phi
losophy. The evidence of the being of God from the
being and condition of the physical world is not
to be traced in the common lines of thought in
which this argument is presented. The argument
which has this inference for its object has been
called, in the term of the schools, the cosmological
argument. A special form of this argument is based upon
the notion of causality. The process of causality
appears in the physical process. But causality
here is the transference of force. And the cause
is always contained in the effect, and the effect
measures the cause from which it proceeds. We
cannot transcend the effect as we pass through
the being and condition of the physical world to
its cause. And the law of causality, which is ad
duced, itself forbids a stop in its numeric preces
sion, which is to be designated as a first cause, it
self having no precedent. This would subvert the
very principle which is assumed as the foundation

8 THE BEING OF GOD.
of the whole structure. And the cause, which is
physical, can be invested with no other qualities,
for instance, with no intellectual or moral quality
which is not in the effect.
The argument aims to transcend the physical
process by the application of a law in which that
process and the persistence of that process are
constantly implied. There is no recession through
which we pass, in the process of the physical world
with its finite changes, to the being of God.1
But the mind of man is left unsatisfied. It is
still led to follow that which is beyond and still
beyond. There is an argument derived from the being
and condition of the physical world, on the ground
that the universe bears traces of intelligence, — of
thought and will. This has been called the argu
ment from design, — the teleological argument. '
This argument in one form rests on an analogy
between the physical process and the works of
man; as when from the design, in the tools, the
buildings, and the streets, we infer a designer of
them. This strictly would involve by way of an
alogy, man as an animal, and then, also, other ani
mals of certain lower forms, as the bird that builds
a nest, and the insect that makes a cell.
But while man as involved in this physical pro-
1 " The universe lies forever back of the universe." (Bascom,
Philosophy of Religion, p. 41.)

THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 9
cess has intelligence, this product cannot carry us
beyond the process itself in which it exists. The
indications of intelligence, moreover, are not lim
ited to conscious action, but they appear in un
conscious movements, as in the structural uses and
functions of the human body. The argument, in
stead of showing thought as antecedent, shows
it as pervading the whole, and in a process whose
apparent mode of operation is that of necessity.1
And there are in the works of man other and
higher qualities than those which appear in the
physical process. The music of the storm, of the
sweep of the surges of the ocean, is not so impres
sive as that of great orchestras. The tree that
sways in the wind has no tones to compare with
those that are brought out by the viol and the
flute. It is the human element that gives to the
landscape its deepest attraction.
It is said in the old phrase, that in the physical
process there is an adaptation of means to an end.
But if this phrase be allowed an application to
the physical process it is only the evidence of in
telligence, and the degree of intelligence is in the
completeness of the adaptation of the means to
the end. This adaptation is also modified by the
relative imperfection of the physical process, which
1 " The being that emerges under the teleological proof is the
universe itself, as an organic unconscious conscious being. The
teleological argument breaks down, not because it does not reach in
telligence, but because it includes it, and includes it among neces
sary forces." (Bascom, Philosophy of Religion, p. 68.)

10 THE BEING OF GOD.
appears in the fact, for instance, that in every class
or species the individuals are comparatively few
that attain to the normal type. In any evolu
tion of forms the variations are but slowly ef
fected, and the forms displaced still in some in
stances remain, and in individuals recur when all
use for them is gone. This led Hegel to say, that
in the physical process the idea is slowly and with
difficulty developed, and in its processes there are
many divergences, as if nature were not always
very clear in her own intent. There is, however,
in the physical process only the evidence of adap
tation to the circumjacent condition, and not to a
determinate end. And this adaptation of means
to an end, or of the individual to the environment,
bears, in the physical process, the evidence of no
moral quality.1 In the physical process, the beak
1 The witches in Macbeth, that are gathered on the lonely heath
in " fog and foul air," stand very near to nature. They begin their
strain of dolor, with " Fair is foul, and foul is fair,"
in her indifference. They gather at hand, to throw into their seeth
ing cauldron, " Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting."
Macbeth calls to them in the same moral indifference, out of the
course of nature, "Though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up ;
Though Waded corn be lodged and trees blown down ;
Though castles topple on their warders' heads ;
Though palaces and pyramids do slope
Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure

THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. H
and talons of the hawk are adapted to clutch its
prey with almost no pause in its swift flight. The
flower is formed for the distillation of poison, and
plants which are useful are so mimicked by those
which are hurtful that only constant scrutiny, after
fatal experiences, can detect the difference. The
toadstool grows close by the mushroom. The fruit
which the tempter found already growing was fair
to the eye. Hegel says, the earth declares the
goodness of God, and that his goodness appears in
this adaptation of means to an end, but it is only
when this physical process is considered with ref
erence to that which is beyond it, to an end which
it brings not within our observation, that these
words are justified.
The conditions of this process are those of con
flict, a struggle for existence, it is
" The rack of this tough world,"
and one form passes beyond another form by sur-
Of nature's germens tumble all together,
Even till destruction sicken; answer me."
Macbeth, Act IV., Scene 1.
Man, as involved in the physical process, and as an object of
physical science, in a school which holds these limitations, has no
other dignity than attaches to any other animal. His cunning may
outmatch the fox, but it has no other quality; his powers of digestion
are the same as those of the rat; the fly does copulate as he; the
dog may quarrel with him for his food; the shark may prey upon
him, as he on the shark, and with advantage when it finds him in its
own element; he learns the conditions of physical existence from the
anatomy of other animals; vegetable and animal parasites grow and
feed on him; his life as involved in the physical process has no other
dignity, it is of the earth, earthy.

12 THE BEING OF GOD.
vival. There are in nature elements of subsist
ence for production and for destruction. One
race to subsist must prey with ravin upon an
other race.1 There is the adaptation of the wing of
the crow and of the tooth of the shark. There is
a strange intermingling in the poison that fills the
chalice of the most beautiful flower, the malaria
that is borne upon the softest airs, the color that
gleams resplendently in the sinuous folds of the
serpent. There is the fair light that illumines the
dawn and empurples the evening, but throws its
radiance over mists and exhalations. There are
smooth waters that bear the reflection of the
clouds which hold the tempest, and are changed
with the clouds which burst over them into the
rage of cruel seas. The tides rise and fall with
almost changeless precision, but they are swept by
the storm that marks their lines with wreck. By
the cleft and broken strata of the rocks, one may
still seem to hear " the sea rehearse
Its ancient song of chaos."
1 There is a school which assumes the identity of God with the
physical process of the world, or with what it calls " the nature of
things." It identifies God actually with the course of physical nat
ure, with the nature of things in the current physical condition of
the world. Then that which is apparently inexorable and cruel is
directly ascribed to him. That which in its transient course is dark
is ascribed to Him in whom is light and no darkness. But it would not
be true even to assert the identity of man thus with the nature of
things. It would be a degradation of man in whom is the life of the)
spirit.

THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 13
There is in nature that which is beautiful and that
which is fantastic and monstrous. These aspects
of nature become more apparent in tropical coun
tries, where there is a stronger movement of the
impulse, the passion of nature, with more im
petuous energies. Thus in India there are more
images and shrines of supplication to Siva the de
stroyer, than to Brahma the creator, and Vishnu
the preserver.
For individuals and races this physical process
is one of successive survivals followed by cessa
tions of existence. There is the extinction in this
succession of individuals and races, and whatever
may be the effect of means, or of conformance to
that which is contingent, death is the end. The
research of geology indicates the mutations of
cold and heat, through long epochs and over vast
continents, which would bring a termination to
every form of life within our knowledge. We
may admit the strength of the force working in
material moulds, and the persistence of the move
ment in this evolution which slowly modifies itself
with its environment, and maintains unbroken ad
hesion to its types, but there is no evidence that
that which is lower is always displaced by that
which is higher, nor that any displacement is per
manent.1
1 It has been truly said that the Darwinian is the derivative, not
the development hypothesis. It is not always from the lower to the
higher, nor in that sense does the fittest survive. Strictly it fur-

14 THE BEING OF GOD.
These indications of ugliness, of rapacity, of
cruelty in nature, it is said, are on the whole not
to be noticed. But they are there. They per
vade the whole, and are involved in the whole
process of the physical world. They have in cer
tain lands and ages a potency that overmasters
the imagination and fills it with images of dread,
and so they mould the thoughts of men, as they
have found expression in literature and art. It is
said that a balance is to be struck between the
fair and foul, the beneficent and cruel ; but this,
however the balance swayed, would only indicate,
and in that exact degree, a mixed quality of indif
ferent good and evil in the intelligence which
formed the world, or appears in the evolution of
its forms.1
nishes evidence only of the survival of the one best adapted to the
situation, nor does it furnish evidence that the situation materially
improves ; on the contrary there are indications that would show the
recurrence at long, and it may be, periodic intervals, of ages of
gradual extinction, as the geological ages of ice. And while, in the
physical process from and through geological periods, there has
been in physical forms apparently an increase in the complexity of
organization, there has been a diminution of physical force and
bulk. 1 This argument in one form is based on the order in nature.
Janet says "the order supposes an end, and the very principle of
order is the end." {Final Causes, p. 215.) The doctrine of final
causes has its justification in philosophy. But in the physical pro
cess there is no evidence for a final cause and end, nor against it,
and no evidence of the character of that end. There are around
us only the circling suns — flamentia maenia mundi. This argument
identifies the current, the existent process with order, and then as
sumes that this order, which is the existent process, is the final cause

THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 15
There is in the process of the physical world no
moral quality, no manifestation of the will, as in
the life of the spirit; it is as Hegel says, "the
other " of the spirit : it is only elevated and in
formed with a moral attainment through the me
diation of the spirit.
There is in the physical process no manifesta
tion of freedom, nor is it in man, as he is involved
in the physical process. There is in it no trace of
personality. There is in nature no strain of sympathy that
breaks its indifference, no love interrupts its inex
orable course. No appeal can stay its falling rocks.
No entreaty can restrain its beating waves. It
has no power to help man in his calamity. It
does not turn to avert his injury, nor to mitigate
his pain. The clown says to the old man in the
storm — " Here 'a a night that pities
Neither wise men nor fools."
It is only in a figurative way that there is any
declaration of a moral quality in the physical
process. It is simply without the moral.
and end. This is simply a change of phrases, while the actualization
is the same.
The end of this order for individuals and races is death, and the
inference is that this order is continuous. And order is not so pro
found a conception as life, and, in the physical process, the final
cause and end of life is death. The adaptation to a circumjacent
condition may be a degradation with the extinction of higher ener
gies. This process is not in any moment in itself what Renan calls
it, " an eternal order," nor the end in nature.

16 THE BEING OF GOD.
These facts must be brought into a more pro
found synthesis, and it is the merit of the cos-
mological argument, however crude and deficient,
that it has made an effort toward this.
In this synthesis, the oneness of the life of man
in its physical process with the physical process of
the world, the physical conditions of the attain
ment of the ethical life ; the recognition of the
finiteness of the finite, the transience of the
transient in the world, through the negation of
the finite, and the fulfillment of the finite in its
life in the infinite ; and the necessity of reconcil
iation for the satisfaction of the spirit, — these
are brought to their resolution in thought. These
are postulates of this synthesis that have found
expression in the most profound and enduring
forms of the religion and the philosophy of the
world. It is not from the physical process with its finite
conditions that there is the evidence of the being
of God. There is no discovery of him in the
furthest research into the elements of the suns,
no traces of him in the strata of the rocks, there
is no finding of him at the roots of the tree, or in
the dust of the stars.1
1 " It is indeed not on the finite ground occupied by the physical
sciences that we can expect to meet the indwelling presence of the
infinite, and thus Lalande has said, he had swept the whole heavens
with his glass and seen no God." (Hegel, Encyklopadie, vol. i.
p. 128.)
" Though we allow that this argument from design and therefore

THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 17
The thought of man passes through the physi
cal process to the apprehension, through the suc
cession of its phenomena, of the universal, but this
is only by its ideal quality.
Thus the transient recalls to the mind that
which is not itself transient, and is not subject to
transient conditions. The flower fades while the
maiden gazes upon it, but with it beauty itself
does not fade : that is imperishable. But nature
in herself does not intimate this. The beauty
that fades with the fading flower is cast aside by
her with weeds and worn-out faces.
There is in the physical process a necessity,
and there are relations of sequence, from which
may be derived the inference of natural laws, a
law of nature. This necessity is, however, not
inconsistent with the attainment of freedom, al
though freedom has not its manifestation or reali
zation in it. It always subsists as an element in
freedom, and may be taken up and transmuted
into freedom. There is, whatever may be the ex
tent of its range, a mode of action or a law of
the physical process by which that which is lower
may be carried on to that which is higher, and
retained as a moment in the higher.1 Thus man,
a designer, furnishes an explanation of physical phenomena, the fact
of an infinite and perfect being does not follow." (Hedge, Way,
of the Spirit, p. 161.)
1 " In the gradual series of earthly existences the law holds good
that the higher essence takes up into it the character of the lower
as a moment." (Ueberweg, History of Logical Doctrines, p. 93.)

18 THE BEING OF GOD.
who is representative of the higher forms of life,
is connected with the lowest forms, and subject to
the incident of the lowest conditions of earth.
Thus necessity inheres as an element in freedom,
but it is taken up and transmuted in freedom.
Therefore man may advance through the school
of necessity toward freedom. There is always
the institution and recognition of law in the real
ization of freedom in the nation. Thus instead of
forming an adverse element in the freedom of the
will, necessity is involved and transmuted in it.
There is in freedom the negation and transporta
tion of necessity. But one is not therefore to
identify the presence of necessity, the current of
physical forces, with freedom or the will in the
realization of personality.1
There is in man the recognition of the limita
tions of nature. But in recognizing this limit,
and in defining it as limit, he has himself over-
Ueberweg finds an intimation of this doctrine which has had so
wide an application in recent philosophy, and so wide an illustration
in recent science, in the school of Pythagoras.
1 In Mr. Martineau's argument the conception of the will in man
as a person is inserted into, and carried by transfer over to the phys
ical process. This would identify the will with mere force, and
force acting in and through necessity. It is true that necessity is
an element in the freedom of the will, and the education of the
will at its first schooling is through necessity in the course of human
life. But the physical process is not in its courses of necessity in
identity with the will in personality. The conception of the will
derived from the process of the physical world in itself is not even
so high as that of fate.

. THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 19
passed it. But this implies an ideal element in
the mind of man.1
We pass from the physical process of the world
to the historical process of the world. The phys
ical process of the world is taken up and trans
muted in the historical process of the world.
There is an argument for the being of God de
rived from the historical process of the world.
This carries thought on to the conscious life of
man, and the realization of an ethical idea and
freedom. There is in this ethical order the organization
and institution of the family and the nation. The
family is not simply the product of physical con
ditions, to sustain no other relations and to sub
serve no other end ; and the nation is not merely
the method of physical life, and to have its end
in physical growth and bulk. Thus Hegel says,
" the bond of the family is in love ; " and Aris
totle says, " the end of the state is not simply to
live, but to live nobly."
This process of the historical world which, in the
realization of an ethical life, tends towards right
eousness and freedom, must proceed from a force
in which subsist qualities of righteousness and
freedom. But these are the qualities of the will.
1 " No one is aware that anything is a limit or defect until at
the same time he is above and beyond it." (Hegel, Encyklopadie,
vol. i. p. 121.)

20 THE BEING OF GOD.
They are the very elements of personality. The
energy working in righteousness and towards free
dom cannot be an indeterminate force as a thing,
and cannot be determined by contingency, as a
thing in relation with a thing.1
Thus it may be said that there is a revelation
in history of the" truth, or that the foundation of
human society is in the truth. But truth is to be
apprehended here not as the result of external ob
servation, and not as a series of abstract propo
sitions to be applied to the course and conditions
of human life.
This is not simply the construction and applica
tion of an abstract idea, but the idea is realized
in and through the determination of the moral
order of the world. It is realized in the sphere
of freedom ; and in freedom there is the self-de
termination which is the integral element of per
sonality.
1 A recent writer finds, as the result of his research, " something
in us not ourselves that works for righteousness." It is here and
now; it is in us; it is not ourselves; it works for righteousness.
This tendency, it is said, is not aimless; it works for righteousness
and presumptively against unrighteousness. But this is the deter
mination of a will, and of a will working in freedom, — that is, in a
moral determination.
The writer implies only an empty notion of something with its
drift or working. But the inference is not of an indefinite some
thing, and it is not in things to work for righteousness. And if
this be something in us " not ourselves," then man in his own per
sonality, in the freedom of the spirit, must reject it as alien, for
there can be no ground of action or of relation to it, as there would
be of a person to a person.

THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 21
This in one form is the evidence of the being of
God ; in another form it is the evidence of the
presence of God through the courses of history
and in the experience of the life of humanity.

CHAPTER H.
THE PERSONALITY OF GOD.
The personalty of God is implied in the self-
determination, — the perfect determination — of
the being of God.
There is in personality the highest that is within
the knowledge of man. It is the steepest, lofti
est summit toward which we move in our attain
ment. The germ and growth of grains and plants, the
ebb and flow of waters, the rise and change of
winds, the results of the most recent inquiry into
the constitution of the suns, have not the worth
and significance of personality.
In the course of human life, the relations of man
as a person and with persons are deeper than his
relations with that which is impersonal. That
which is impersonal, in so far as it comes within
the scope of our knowledge, exists in subjection
to conditions of necessity, and has no power to
transmute them in its process, and does not pass
beyond them. It has no self-determination ; it is
not determined from within, whatever be its rela
tions to that which is without.

PERSONALITY. 23
From that which is personal, and as the ex
pression of its life, have come the arts and laws
and literatures of the world. This appears in the
highest forms of human thought, in some single
phase, in the writings of iEschylus and of Shake
speare, and there the personality of iEschylus and
Shakespeare is greater than their works, while
their works give forms of thought which, in their
elements of freedom through their ethical life and
conflict, are other and higher than those which
subsist in the necessary process of the physical
world. That which is personal is also construed in the
institutions of society. It is involved in the life
of the family and the nation. It exists in corre
lation with them, and through them it has its real
ization. There comes thence the recognition of
the foundation in and through God, of the life of
the family and the nation, in the historical courses
of the world.
The personality of God is thus in consistence
with that process of thought, through the realiza
tion of righteousness and freedom, by which there
comes the manifestation of God, and from which
there is derivative the knowledge of God.
The personality of God does not involve limita
tion. The only limitation is self -limitation, — the
limit which it sets in its own self-determination.

24 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD.
This is its own action and for its own end, and
personality in and through this is manifested.
Personality does not involve limitation. Per
sonality has not its ground in the difference of
the me and the not-me, but in the realization of
the me. It has not its ground external to itself
as in the limitation of the me by the not-me, but
it has its ground within itself.
Personality in man exists among the limitations
of the finite, but it has not its ground in these
limitations. It is not prescribed and determined
by physical conditions. It is not the consequent
of its circumjacent condition, — and this, among
finite forms, would make it only a contingency.
It is not the result of certain potencies in a phys
ical sequence ; this would leave it in their opera
tion merely a residuum. It has not its end in a
determination or dissolution into the elements of
the physical process.
The personality of man in its realization tends
to overcome the limitations of the finite. It does
this in the assertion of its own being, its own self-
determination, its own freedom. It recognizes
these limitations, this
"Muddy vesture of decay
That doth so grossly close us in."
It does not here and now exist beyond these
limitations, but it exists in them in a life which

THE PERSONALITY OF MAN. 25
is self-determined, and may not be determined by
them. Personality in man is impaired in the same
measure in which it is determined from without.
It suffers, then, the mutations which exist in the
necessary process of the world, but it does not
carry through them a clear and increasing pur
pose, and does not transmute them into freedom.
Personality with God is in substance the same
as personality in man. The elements in the will,
and in freedom, and in righteousness are the same.
The personality of God is infinite. There is
the perfect oneness of the ideal and the real.
Thought and will with him are one. In him is
the absolute righteousness, the eternal truth, the
infinite life.
Then to man, in the realization of his own per
sonality, there is open the life that is infinite. The
will of God is manifest that man may become
one with God. God suffers the limitations of the
finite that man may rise to the life that is infinite.
God becomes subject to the conditions of time that
man may enter into the life that is eternal.
The personality of man has its foundation in
the personality of God. It could have no lower
and no other ground, as there is for it the realiza
tion of the life that is infinite and eternal.1
1 Lotze says: " Perfect personality is to be found only in God,

26 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD.
These words are the expression of a person,
Because I live, ye shall live also.
The personality of man is not to be represented
as a reflection of the personality of God. It is no
remote imitation, and no faint impression of the
personality of God. It is real. It has the strength
of the free spirit. It moves among the fleeting
forms and fading images of the finite, where
shadow pursues shadow, but it is not of them. In
the accident of time it is conscious of a lif e —
" Builded far from accident."
The personality of God is the ground of his re
lation with the personality of man. Without per
sonality in< God, he would, so far as the knowl
edge of man goes, be lower than man, and with
out personality in man, there would be no ground
of relation to God.
while in all finite spirits there exists only a weak imitation of per
sonality." (Mikrokosmus, vol. iiit p. 576.) But personality is real :
it is most real. It is not some pale outline, some dim semblance.
In its advance, even, it is not, to use Shakespeare's phrase, merely
" a simular of virtue." When it is said that in man there is only a
weak imitation of personality, the words involve a contradiction,,
and in weak imitation personality is not realized but impaired.
Personality is real. It is free and enters into the freedom of God.
It advances in its moral being, but this is in the life with God.
It advances through relations, but its relations are not to God as
to something external; it is not simply an external relation. Lotze
says truly, " the relation of a being to another being is not between
them but in them." The relation, in human life, of a father and a
son, which is but imperfect as the- expression of the relation of the
human personality to the divine personality,, is yet not merely an
external relation.

THE PERSONALITY OF MAN. 27
The personality of God is the condition of the
communion of man with God. If the personality
of man was only a weak resemblance, and an
imperfect reflection", then also, there could be
no ground of communion. There is, further, no
conception of knowledge or love, which are in
volved in a communion, that man can attach to
" a something not ourselves," or " a universum,"
or " an unknown," and With these terms and for
mulas there can be no ground for a communion.
In the course of this human life, and these human
relations, man is conscious of a communion which
has other and higher qualities, and is not formed
of physical elements, and is not subject to their
conditions.1 The personality of God is the postulate of the
knowledge of God. In this human life and these
human relations, in the knowledge of a person by
a person, there are elements of strength and love,
elements of freedom which are deeper than those
which exist in the knowledge of the physical
world. The knowledge of the physical process is
1 There is no ground in the physical process, for personality or
for freedom. The school of Mr. Tyndall is correct within the limi
tations of its own thought. For in the physical process the law is
that of necessity, and a person is only a sequent in the evolution of
things, or a contingency in the incident of things. The distinction
of a person and a thing is superfluous. For personality is then at
the most only a product of physical forces, a congeries of heredi
tary habits and tendencies.

28 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD.
the result of observation and comparison; it is
the fruit of research; but in human relations
there are other elements. There is a knowledge
which is not the result of experiment, and yet
may come through experience. Thus, for in
stance, one will not experiment on a friend, and
sympathy and love are not among the results of
research. There may be in the words, i" know Mm
in whom I have believed, a deeper knowledge than
that which man obtains through the external ob
servation of phenomena.1
As the personality of man has its foundation in
the personality of God, so the realization of person
ality brings man always nearer to God. Through
the deeper knowledge of himself, through self-
knowledge, man comes to the knowledge of God.
As the higher realization of personality is not
simply through the realization of the me and the
not-me, so in the family and the nation there is
a relation for man that is beyond this, it is through
the me and God. Thus the institution and con-
1 " For morality you must have affections, and for affections you
must have beings: and atheism does not provide beings. The beings
it provides are not substances and spirits. Can you love phenom
ena? Nature is moved indeed; and a spirit half volatile and half
melancholy breathes in light, classic poetry toward all vanishing be
ings, even upon the sympathetic ground of a common transiency;
but love by its very law tends toward a substance; it wants the so
lemnity of eternal being; it wants a beyond; and no being that is
without this beyond can duly answer to it as an object." (Mozley,
University Sermons, p. 47.)

THE FOUNDATION OF PERSONALITY. 29
tinuance of the life of the family and the nation
is in God.
The personality of God is the foundation and
the condition of the freedom of man. It is the
source of moral strength. It is the condition of
the moral responsibility of man, for this implies a
relation that is other than that which exists to
ward phenomena or the law which is inferred
from the sequences of phenomena. The self-de
termination of God in righteousness and freedom
is the ground of the self-determination of man.
It lifts man beyond the absence of nihilism, with
its negations and mere transpositions, and beyond
the indefinite phases of pantheism, that concep
tion that is spatial more than spiritual, in which
man loses himself, but comes not to himself. It
is in contrast with the ignorance and servility that
breed superstitions. The superstitious man is one
who is not self-determined, and trusts in righteous
ness, but is determined by external and occult
potencies, and yields the control of his own action
to his conceit of these. The recognition of this
forbids all that is abject, the degradation of reason,
and the prostration of will. It overthrows all
idolatries, whether before the idols of the school
or the market, of the street of the city, or the as
sembly of the people.
It makes personality the central principle of
the worlds, and, for us, the first principle of hu-

30 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD.
man emotion and human thought. It is the / am
who was before all worlds ; it is one who saith /
am that I am. In this finite existence man exists
in conditions of necessity, but necessity is taken
up and transmuted in the self-determination of
the free spirit.
The personality of man not only has its founda
tion in the personality of God, but in that alone is
its eternal life. H man had no relation beyond
the physical process, if personality had no other
relations, it might not avoid the conclusion that
it was to be resolved again into the physical ele
ments,1 to be reproduced in other chemical poten--
1 It is apart from this, that life becomes ephemeral and phenome
nal'. From a recent school, Mr. Tyndall has a representation of the
personality of man, as determined within the limitations of the finite.
It is the apprehension of the life of man simply as ephemeral and
phenomenal. Its movement is regarded as automatic and void of
real freedom. The only hope for man is that in the mingling of the
physical elements he may impart some tint of blue to the cloud,
while the mists and exhalations of earth are mainly gray. Shake
speare has a representation of life as phenomenal, where all person
ality is gone, but it is portrayed as a consequence of evil courses, it
is the issue of a life, the steps of whose advancement have been
through falsehood and murder, it is the issue of a course of awful
crime, until at last the energy of the free spirit has failed, and the'
consciousness of its divine relation has gone. In the closing scenes
of the play of Macbeth, the death of Lady Macbeth is announced,
with the comment on it.
Macbeth. Wherefore was that cry ?
Seyton. The Queen, my lord, is dead.
Macbeth. She should have died hereafter j
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.

THE FOUNDATION OF PERSONALITY. 31
cies and forms, and could have no existence apart
from them. This Socrates, who drank the hem
lock, might have no other hope but that he him
self in the mingling of the elements might be
changed into the. root and liquor of that tree of
hemlock. In its chemical changes it could only
anticipate the shaping of the curvature of -the
bones of some other animal, or the imparting of
some tint to the sky of some later day. This an-
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle !
Life 's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more : it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
But this portrayal of life as merely phenomenal, with no ground for
personality and with no realization of divine and eternal relations, is
given with the contrast of another life. In these closing scenes, there
is the announcement of another death.
Ross. Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt:
He only lived but till he was a man ; . . .
Siward. Then he is dead 'i
Boss. Ay, and brought off the field: your cause of sorrow
Must not be measured by his worth, for then
It hath no end.
Siward. Had he his hurts before ?
Soss. Ay, on the front.
Siward. Why then, God's soldier be he! . . .
And so, his knell is knoll' d.
Malcom. He 's worth more sorrow,
And that I '11 spend for him.
Siward. He 's worth no more :
They say he parted well, and paid his score :
And so, God be with him !
This life is with God. This life, that is not that of fribble or of
crime, is not ephemeral, it has a worth that hath no end.

32 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD.
ticipation would involve some knowledge or as
sumption of knowledge of another and continuous
existence, which would be in suspicious contradic
tion to man's present brief existence. But it
would be all that man would have. There would
be no relation beyond the physical to justify the
thought of continuous being. The personality of
God is the ground of the continuous being of the
personality of man.
The personality of man in its relation with men
involves individuality. This individuality exists
in the relations of the individual to the race, and
in the development of personality through an ex
istence subject to finite conditions. In the reali
zation of personality as it advances in man toward
the universal, this element of individuality tends
to recede and disappear. But the personality of
God, in his own infinite being, is not formed in the
differences of a finite process, that the element of
individuality should attach to it. The perfect
self-determination of the self-moved one is the
eternal and the infinite.
The personality of God must determine our ap
prehension of the attributes of God and not be
determined by them. God is a person : the chief-
est attribute of God is freedom, he is the self-
determined one, his determination is the perfect
manifestation of himself, this is the significance of
the Will of God : the holiness of God is the cen-

THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 33
tral principle in that Will, the principle in which
he cannot become other than himself : the right
eousness of God is the assertion of that Will on
the earth ; the love of God is the expression of a
person toward those who are persons.
There is a certain representation of these attri
butes, in which the ground assumed for them is an
abstract system, a mere formalism of thought.
They are subjected to formal distinctions as posi
tive and negative, or absolute and relative, or
natural and moral. These terms have no substan
tial ground. They indicate a mere collection of
qualities which are detached and divided as the
elements of some component power. They bring
before us a mere accumulation of powers and
then leave us to consider the attachment of these
to the personality of God.1
The attributes of God which are thus predicated
of him proceed from no inner unity as in person
ality. They are collected and held as something
external, and then applied to him. They are
1 S. Augustine says, Quidquid de Deo dicilur, non qualitas est sed
essentia. This is true, but it is ignored in the common representa
tions of the attributes of God, and these are enumerated not merely
in their attribution to him, but in their detachment as a catalogue of
qualities. " We do not worship a law however simple and fruitful it may be; .
we do not worsnip a force if it is blind, however powerful, however
universal it may be; nor an ideal however pure, if it is an abstrac
tion; we worship only a being who is living perfection, perfection
under the highest forms, — thought, love." (Caro quoted by Van
Oosterzee, Dogmatik, vol. i. p. 247.)
3

34 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD.
often conceptions derived from another source.
They would in some instances even involve defect,
and be regarded as alien when applied to the per
sonality of man. They may become in many
ways a diversion of thought from God. They in
dicate notions about God and are not derivative
from God. Their postulate to which they are for
mally appended is often the empty notion of
being, as derived from the finite existences.1
These attributes are often described in terms
1 "When it is said of God what he is, then the^ attributes or prop
erties are enumerated. Thus God is defined by predicates, that is,
special qualities, characteristics, etc.
" These predicates are not immediate properties which are essen
tial to his nature, but through reflection they are made subsistent,
and thus the definite content for them becomes as immovably fixed
as is the natural content under which God was represented in the
religion of nature. The natural objects in that religion, as the sun,
moon, etc., exist and these characterizations of reflection are held in
the same way.
" Because the Orientals have the feeling that this is not the true
way to represent God, they say that he is ' the many-named,' and
that his nature is not exhausted in this specification of attributes.
" The defect in this method of defining God through predicates,
from which this various and unenumerated series of attributes comes,
is this, — that these predicates are only special characteristics, and
there are many such whose ground is the subject in itself.
" These predicates are to express the relation of God to the world.
As special properties they are not correspondent to his nature, — so
the other way is adopted, — to regard them as relations of God to
the world. They do not thus indicate the true relation of God to
himself, but to another, — that is, to the world. So they are limited
and so they come into contradiction. We are conscious that God is
not thus represented in a living way, when so many properties are
enumerated, one after another." (Hegel, Philosophie der Religion,
vol. ii. p. 230.)

THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 35
correspondent to some abstract argument for the
existence of God. Thus the argument constructed
from the physical order of the world determines
the reference to him primarily of force. This
conception assumes that which exists in the phys
ical world in a certain degree and through certain
correlations, and ascribes it to him in its com
pleteness. The conception of God which we derive from
the physical process of the world and the attri
butes we attach to him from his relation to nat*
ure, will not be very far beyond the deification
of the powers of nature. It may indicate an ad
vance, but a very slight advance, in our knowl
edge of God. It may bring to us the knowledge
of an energy, a first principle of force or might,
— and this is always an element in personality, —
and this knowledge may come to man in the be
ginnings of time, but it is not then that this is
known as the energy of the eternal love and life.
It may lead the steps of man through the cloud
and whirlwind and tempest; but when their tu
mult is stayed there may be the recognition of
a diviner voice in the conscience and the con
sciousness of men.
The attributes of necessity are relatively lower
which are suggested through the physical process
of the world. They have not the attraction which
belongs to the life of the spirit, in freedom and
personality. This omnipresence indicates only a

36 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD.
force wide as the expanse of the unmeasured air.
This omnipotence in the same relation indicates
power which excites dread as something to be
averted, except in the measure in which it is
brought within the knowledge of man.
There is the source of awe and terror in phys
ical powers, and the physical life of men in the
course of necessity is frail and brief. But there
are no powers adequate to those of personality,
no elements of freedom, no traces of sympathy or
love. Nature, in the stillness of the forest, with
indifference to man, weaves the web of the leaf
and the flower. The storm will not wait for his
journey, nor the night delay for his toil.1
There is thus always attached to these attri
butes, which are the inference of the identifica
tion of God with the physical process of nature,
a certain characteristic, a trace of indifference or
passivity. There is power, as there is in nature,
but a repose that in relation to man is constant
and passionless. But the personality of God, the
self-moved, the self-determined one, while it im
plies the highest energy, does not allow apathy.
1 It is true that "we are by nature the children of impulse:"
but this is not a complete representation. This power of nature
working in man, and this indifference of nature to man, have their
expression in that awful tragedy, — the most solemn and lofty trag
edy of our literature, — King Lear. It is this power by nature work
ing in man that becomes the subject of the drama. Thus the court
ier says of the course of King Lear, "it was the bias of nature; "
and thus Edmund, with his hereditary fault, is led to say, at the
close, " I thought to do some good, despite my nature."

THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 37
The natural attributes of God, as derived from
the expression assumed for the course of physical
nature, must only indicate a passionless repose,
— for instance, the type in art of the face of
Brahma. The attributes of God, when wrested from per
sonality, nor centered in its unity, are constructed
after the notion of some abstract system of ethics.
This scheme is set forth with certain definitions,
and the attributes of God are defined in conso
nance with it. Thus an abstract and empty con
ception of sovereignty which has no ethical con
tent is assumed ; but this, in the self-determination
and freedom of the will, even in a human rela
tion, would be a defect. It is a barren conception,
and is annulled in the realization of righteousness
and freedom on the earth.1 Thus in another way
the attributes of justice, of relative and distribu
tive justice, are primarily ascribed to God, while
truth and love and mercy, in conformance with
this scheme, are placed in a secondary grade, and
are regarded in a special and reserved way. Thus
a scheme of divinity is held in the place of a per
son. The attributes of God are not relative, as the
1 " The story of the prophets and the kings of the Old Testament
is applicable to the modern world, because it is a continual witness
for a God of righteousness, not only against idolatry, but against that
notion of a mere sovereign Baal or Bel, which underlies all idola
try, all tyranny, all immorality." (Maurice, Prophets and Kings,
p. 9.)

38 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD.
term might imply ; they are essential. They are
not relative, as if they were involved in certain
relations, and subsisted only in these relations.
They are not contingent to the world.
The attributes are not, then, the expression of
certain notions in which the being of God is con
strued. They are not the reflective phases of
human thought. They are not elements which
conform to the changes of human desire ; they
are not measured in the varying conflict of human
emotion.1 But in this recognition of the attributes of God
the freedom, the righteousness, the goodness,
which belong to God, while in him they are abso
lute, are in their nature the same as those exist
ent in the personality of man. If they were not,
then the goodness which appears in the life of
man would be illusive, and we would be left in a
world of forms, — a phantasmal world, in which
the ethical is not real, and is itself void of sincer
ity. Then one in sincerity must come to hate it.
The perfect manifestation of God to man is in
a person ; it is through personality. It is only in
freedom that we know the infinite, and that hu
manity realizes its divine and eternal relations.
It is only in the fulfillment of the life of humanity
1 " They are not simply the product of our intellect in reflecting
on God, but have existed in essential objectivity in God, and will
exist, though the activity of the distinguishing human intellect exist
not." (Rothe, Dogmatik, vol. i. p. 45.)

THE ATTRD3UTES OF GOD. 39
in God that there is the perfect satisfaction of the
spirit. In the realization of personality in freedom
man rises above the limitations of the finite, and
in this, and this alone, man is brought into rela
tions with the infinite,
Thus, as man, in the realization of personality,
rises through and above the finite, it is into rela
tions with the personality of God. It is in this
that he enters into the life that is immortal.
That which is open to him is the life of God.
We can rightly apprehend God, not when we
consider his attributes in relation to the finite ;
and thus to consider his omnipresence, his omnip
otence, his omniscience, involves trivial confusions
and superficial perplexities, because the ground
is itself the finite, and subject to transient condi
tions. We can only rightly apprehend him in the
life of the spirit ; we can only truly contemplate
him sub specie eternitatis ; we can only really know
his attributes of being in his own infinity and his
own eternity.

CHAPTER ni.
THE PRECEDENT RELATIONS OF RELIGION AND PHI
LOSOPHY TO THE REVELATION OF GOD.
Religion has been defined as the disposition
and conduct of man, impelled by motives of hope
and fear toward a power conceived as above man ;
or as the active and passive relations of the finite
consciousness toward an unknown ; or as the rec
ognition of the relation of man to the invisible.1
1 There are certain definitions of religion to be noticed. These
definitions are often the representation of abstractions. They are
inconsistent with the facts in the history of religion and the facts
which the writer brings in with them. They often identify the re
ligious with the ethical, which they are necessarily led to do by
their assumption that the Christ was the founder of a religion.
Their defect is thus in this assumption, — that the Christ was the
founder of a religion. Then they proceed to contrive a definition
that will correspond with their notion or system of this religion, and
also be in some way consistent with the facts in the history of re
ligion. Van Oosterzee says, " Religion is the life of man in communion
with God." In the preceding sentence he has said: " We discern
in the most savage fetish worshiper, an inward compulsion to rise
not merely above themselves and this visible world, but to the Di
vine." But the worshiper of the fetish is not then, as the definition
implies, in communion with God. So again he says: " Religion is as
old and widespread as mankind upon the earth." (Dogmatik, vol. i.
p. 76.) But this again subverts the definition it is to expound.
" Religion is an acknowledgment of our duties toward the law of
God."

RELIGION. 41
The inquiry as to the development of the re
ligious consciousness, and the induction from the
" Religion is the recognition of all our duties as if they were divine
commandments." (Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen
Vernunft, iv. 1.) This identifies religion with ethics. But the actual
condition of religion is often void of every principle of ethics, and
an advance in an ethical life is in conflict with it. The Christian
development has to contend with it, as in the religion of the Aztecs
and the Hindus.
" Morality and religion are absolutely one; both are a grasping of
the supersensuous. What claims to be morality without religion
may indeed lead to an outwardly decorous mode of life." (Fichte,
Werke, vol. v. p. 210.)
" Religion is the living power of morality, a power which has be
come conscious of its origin, and which manifests itself ceaselessly
in moral achievement."
" Religion is conscious morality, a morality which, in virtue of
that consciousness, is mindful of its origin from God." (J. H.
Fichte, Ethik, vol. i. p. 23.)
" The first meaning of religion is consciousness, the highest unity
between what we know and what we do, which makes it impossible
that what we do should contradict what we know; as the tendency
of the spirit to be one with its centre — God, is morality." (Schel-
ling, Werke, vol. i. p. 55.)
These definitions are admirable ; they represent a lofty concep
tion, but they are not an inference from the facts in the history of
religion, nor can they consist with those facts, nor are they ad
mitted for one instant by the most recent expositors of religion.
But these representations, assuming that the Christ is the founder
of a religion, and that it is the highest or exclusive type of religion,
are compelled to adopt a definition that identifies it with an ethical
life, — the ethic of the spirit.
" Religion is an active and passive relation of the finite conscious
ness to the creator, preserver, and ruler of the world." (Nitzch,
quoted by Hagenbach, History of Dogma, vol. ii. p. 462). This defi
nition has a higher justification in history.
If a definition is to be devised in indifference to the facts in the
religious development of the race, simply as an abstract proposition
to consist with certain abstract theories or notions, then the theories

42 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
facts in the history of the religious life and con
dition of the race, have a higher value than any
formal definition. The systems which have for
their postulates definitions, and proceed with in
difference to the facts, only minding the defini
tions, are of little service except as an intellectual
exercise. They are merely the building of ab
stractions. Religion is conterminous with the historical life
of man. It has a history. This may be traced
in monuments, customs, ceremonies, laws, arts,
literatures, — the records of the race.
It is modified by the soil, the climate, and the
incident of physical condition. These influences
may sometimes be traced as its characteristic.
They not only shape its expression, for this al
ways partakes of the external, and in all historical
forms of life must be modified by external condi
tions, but its very character is often moulded by
physical circumstances, as conditions of soil and
climate, so that it seems a product of them.
In the religious life of a race there have been
often the widest contrasts. Religion has some-
may have some intellectual attraction, but it matters little what the
definition is.
The defect in the last definition is that it excludes pantheistic
religions, — and a large part of the religions of the world are of
this character, — religions which overpass the finite, only to attain
to the indefinite, not the infinite.
It is also a defect in this definition that it gives an imperfect
particular, and it should add, for instance, the maker, preserver, and
destroyer, — since perhaps no religion prevails more widely.

THE DEFECT OF RELIGION. 43
times appeared as a thing of good, and again of
evil. It reflects the highest, and again the lowest
impulses in the nature of man, and obtains from
them its object. It has given the motive to some
of the noblest, and again to some of the darkest
pages of history. It is more often the expression
of emotion than of the mere understanding, with
which in the conduct of life, though sometimes in
nobler and better ways, it is frequently at vari
ance. It is sometimes allied with the most de
grading superstitions, as in the worship of some
fetish, and its services are confused with the lust
and violence of men. It is sometimes the worship
of animal forms or physical forces, as a river, the
sun, the moon. This has frequent illustration,
for instance, in the rites of the tribes of Africa,
or of the Indians of the Pacific coasts, or in not
a low period of civilization, in the Bacchic rites of
the Greeks.
Religion has been the ally of rapine, the defense
of crime, the cry of war. It has brought to its aid
the fiercest persecutions. It has swept many ages
and lands with its desolation, until it has come to
verify the line of the Roman poet, —
"Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum."
It is often the weakness of man, who is over
come with dread before the forces of nature. It
is often the investure of some external object with
arbitrary qualities of will and cruel and relent-

44 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
less qualities of character, an object of which men
are afraid, and they seek to purchase its favor or
avert its wrath. Thus, the religion of a people
may become not simply an index of its condition,
of its cruelty and violence, but the services of re
ligion itself may become cruel with unrestrained
emotion and dark with the gloom of a disturbed
imagination. It is, again, allied with larger and nobler forms
of life. It has ideals which find but an imperfect
expression in nature, and it embodies its thought
in the loftier types of art. It sometimes becomes
in so high a degree ethical in its portrayal of hu
man life, that it is wrought in literature in its
most perfect forms, so that it furnishes the illus
tration of the ethical conflict of man. This is the
characteristic of the great dramas and epics — the
" Prometheus " and " Agamemnon " of JEschylus,
the "Odyssey" of Homer, the "iEneid" of Vergil.
It is often the expression of a larger ethical con
ception in the historical development of a people.
This has its illustration in the religion of the
Romans in the early periods of their history.
When in the foundation of their institutions there
was the recognition of the unity and order of the
family and the state, and the asse^st****-^ the au
thority and majesty of law, ->n to thesq religion
brought its consecration, and it invested them
with that solemnity which afe?^ gave dignity to
the spirit of Rome.

THE EFFECT OF RELIGION. 45
In different countries and ages, religion is so
involved in the conditions of human life, that no
one taking from philosophy the canon of truth
can draw the lines, and describe this as a true re
ligion and that as a false religion. In each there
are certain elements of truth, however imperfectly
apprehended or rudely represented, and in each
there are certain principles which indicate neces
sities of human nature, however imperfectly sup
plied.1 And when religion is judged by an aesthetic
canon, it cannot be apprehended as altogether
beautiful. It may often embody its conceptions
in some monstrous or fantastic forms, some gro
tesque image with cruel faces and many hands,
to strike terror in the minds of men. It finds the
symbols of its worship in that which is lowest.
It identifies man most closely with animal forms
of life. It draws its attributes from the physical
process, the types of its productive or destructive
energies, attributes of cruelty or caprice, of irony
or indifference for the condition of man. These
images are often invested with some mythical or
1 Schleiermacher, who in this is widely followed by recent writers,
says: "Religion is constituted in feeling — the absolute feeling of
dependence on God." {Werke, vol. iii. p. 70.) But it is not simply
constituted in feeling, and while a feeling of dependence is in a
certain way a right feeling and condition, it is very far from the
whole or the highest condition, though it is taken up as an element
in the hi°-hest. It is at most the attitude of a servant, and a deeper
feelino-, as well as a larger human relation, is evoked in the words,
J call you not servants hut sons, I call you not disciples but friends.

46 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
traditional significance which is a subject of in
terior knowledge. They may thus furnish to
those who hold them in their intellectual reserve,
suggestions of a certain beauty and truth. They
come to be celebrated in temples of great splen
dor of architecture. This has often appeared with
the advance of a people in its art and culture
of life.1
But, again, religion takes on forms at variance
with that which is true and beautiful. It appears
in the abject degradation of one who worships the
stone on which his foot has tripped, or the snake
whose fang he dreads. It is seen in the tread
1 The derivation of the word religion, whether that given by
Cicero, or by Lactantius, or, stillbetter, with the remote suggestion
of S. Augustine, is of slight significance. And the distinction which
Lactantius draws between religio and sapientia, or that of S. Au
gustine between religio and pietas has not, although of interest, the
deepest significance.
" Religion is a disease, though a noble disease." This re
markable saying of Heraclitus, in the sixth century b. c, has been
placed among the spuria, but, as Muller says, it has the full, mas
sive, noble ring of Heraclitus. It is too great to be of a doubtful
origin, while so remote in its source. " Heraclitus blames those
who follow singers and whose teacher is the crowd; who pray to
idols as if they were to gossip with the walls of houses, not know
ing what gods and heroes really are. But Heraclitus nowhere de
nies the existence of God, or of the one Divine. • Only when he
saw people believing in what the singers told them about Zeus
and Hera, about Hermes and Aphrodite, he seems to have mar
veled; and the only explanation which he could find of so strange
a phenomenon was that it arose from an affection of the mind, which
the physician might try to heal whenever it showed itself, but
which he could never hope to stamp out altogether." (Muller, OrU
gin of Religions, p. 5.)

THE EFFECT OF RELIGION. 47
with measured motion of the dervish, and in the
squalor, the lacerated form and rigid feature of
the ascetic of the Hindus. It is in its methods
often wild and turbulent ; it is subversive of hu
man energy; it is destructive of institutions of
order and law ; it is regardless of truth and sobri
ety ; it is alien to human freedom ; it guards its
domain as its own possession against the advance
of thought ; it is in alliance with ignorance against
the beneficent influences of science ; it is in con
flict with elements of progress, and confronts them
with its own inquisition ; it thwarts natural affec
tion, and leads the mother to abandon her offspring
before some image of its devotion. Still, in nearly
every town it leaves the record, it may be, of
some poor child whose imagination has been tor
tured, or of some poor woman who has been taxed
by its devices, and is left deranged and confused
in mind and life by the modern revivalist.1
1 " Religion builds by turns, and fires the world, — in its pureness
the ornament and strength of society, in its perversion the scandal
and scourge of nations. It supplied the first rudiments of society; it
forecasts the social destination of man; — leader in all progress; van
guard of all stability; source of revolutions the most prevailing;
champion of the boldest adventures; pioneer more eager than com
merce; explorer more patient than science. Religion is acknowl
edged the mistress of arts. She reared the temples that make Egypt
venerable, and the marbles that made Greece renowned. While
gratefully acknowledging the multifold service of the great benefac
tress, we cannot forget the mischief and the woes that have often
accompanied these gifts and goods. We cannot forget that religion
has been a worker of evil. No agent that has wrought in earthly
scenes has been more prolific of ruin and wrong. The wildest aber-

48 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
In its more prevalent and in its recent forms, it
recognizes in the object of its fear and devotion
alike the preserver and the destroyer, whether it
be the Vishnu and Siva of the Hindu, or the
Apollo of a later culture, who is "healer and
slayer of men." It is, in some ways, averse to a
high ideal ; the picture which is rude in outline
and dim in color is preferred to that which has
greater excellence. The Apollo, with its beauti
ful disdain and its lines of light and strength, is
remanded to a museum ; while the dark image of
a Jupiter, formed in some later and lower school of
art better serves its uses, and is made to stand as
the image of a High Pontiff, and its foot is worn
with the kisses of the faithful.
In the comparative history of religions, the de
velopment of the religious spirit may be traced
more perfectly, perhaps, in India. From India have
come religions which have been sustained by a
larger number, and have survived greater crises,
and have prevailed through more extensive territo
ries. No other people has been so deeply religious.
When the vast multitude, the long centuries, the
extended territories are considered, no other his
tory is so impressive and so pathetic. In no other
people have there been forms, traditions, days,
rations of human nature, crimes the most portentous, the most dev
astating wars, persecutions, hatred, wrath, and bloodshed, more
than have flowed from all sources beside, have been its fruits."
(Hedge, Ways of the Spirit, p. 36.)

COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS. 49
discipline of life, so carefully observed or so com
pletely interpenetrated with their religion. No
where else have there been built so many shrines,
so spacious temples; nowhere else have there
been penances so long, pilgrimages so frequent,
fasts and trials so severe and unrelenting. Its
service is so costly, its gifts so many, its devotions
so constant, its asceticism so patient.1
Religion, in its higher forms, everywhere may
express the sorrow and pain of the human spirit —
in the limitations of the finite ; in the darkness of
its ignorance, so shadowed by the uncertainty of
its brief years; in the struggle of its own mor
tality; in the depth of its degradation, of which
there may come an increasing conviction ; in the
1 " Comparative religion shows that Christianity is one among
many forms." " It can only be understood when taken as one step
in the religious history of mankind." " Idolatry is one form of re
ligion." (Parker. See Weiss, Life of Parker, vol. ii. p. 56.) In a
work indicative of common thought, the writer says: "Notwith
standing their many differences of opinion, all Christians agreed in
believing that, of all historical forms of religion, Christianity was
most worthy of God, and best adapted to the religious wants, etc."
(Hagenbach, History, vol. ii. p. 463.) In consistence with this,
that, which describes the Christian revelation as a religion, would
make all Christian men agree that it was relative, and might be at
some date displaced by some form of religion yet more worthy and of
better adaptation. The confusion arises from assuming that it is a
form of religion among the religions of the world.
On the relation of the religions of the world see Maurice, The Re
ligions of the World; Hegel, Philosophic der Religion. The latter is
mainly a study in the comparative history of religions. The writ
ings of Mr. Conway and Mr. Frothingham are also of interest on
this subject. 4

50 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
conflict with evil forces which it yet knows are
alien to itself: and through all these it may express
its unselfish aims, its lofty aspirations, its uncon
querable hopes. It may be stirred with that which
is better, and with the images of that which is en
during, and is not subject to decay, nor transient
in the transience of the world.
In its higher forms the religious mind becomes
the evidence of the greatness of man, which has
no finite measures. It becomes pervaded with
the awe and humility, the reverence and adora
tion, which are the expression still of the exalta
tion of man. It becomes filled with images drawn
from the deep life of the world. Religion is
then the ally of poetry and art in their nobler
forms. It brings before the mind images of holy
beauty, with no stain of decay. It transfigures
the sorrow of earth. It is indifferent to the
finite, and is itself the morning and evening of
the spirit. It breathes the air of the happy isles ;
it sails into the sunset beyond the far Cathay. It
is led by a mystic devotion ; it is lost in the rapt
ure of its joy. It bows at the shrines which it
has built with the heart's adoration.
It rears temples which are the rest of the sor
row and the loneliness of earth ; where weakness
may pray and penitence may weep; where an
guish may seek to quench its tears ; where grief
may strive to forget its pain, and hope to reil-
lumine its gloom. In its weariness of the restless

THE POWER OF RELIGION. 51
play of human passion, it seeks the obliteration of
the finite, and turns to some abode of calm and
passionless repose. It recognizes the pathos of
the closing day, the changing seasons, the autumn
with its falling leaves, the swift advance of age,
the loneliness of the grave.
The forces which may modify and restrain the
course of the religious mind are traced through
the whole circumstance of life. They are, for in
stance, the obligations of domestic and civil rela
tions, the subjection to necessity in the requisi
tion of the labor of the day, and the economy of
life that encourages a sober realism. Man has to
look to other forces, to the life of nature in its
more healthful influences, to society, to literature,
to poetry, to art, for restraints which may control
the ignorance, the emotional excess, and the im
aginative gloom of the religious mind.1
Philosophy, also, has only a scant representation
in formal definitions. To assume the statement of
the boundaries of a country as the actual descrip
tion of it is better than the limitations of a formal
definition. Philosophy, in its larger outline, has been de
fined as the course of thought which has its spring
1 Hegel says, with consummate beauty and depth of expression,
" In morality, the harmony of religion with actuality, with the world
as it is, is brought to existence and perfection." (Hegel, Philoso-
phische Abhandlungen, p. 400.)

52 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
in man with the love of knowledge ; or the reflec
tion of thought on the process of being ; or the
attainment toward truth by the way of reason.
The larger apprehension of philosophy than any
definition, may be derived from its history ; but it
is not to be forgotten that, while there is a his
tory of philosophy, there may be in a deeper sense
a philosophy of history. Philosophy apprehends
an empiric process in history, but passes beyond it
to that which is metempirical.
Religion and philosophy, although there has
been a difference in their comparative process,
and although they have often been in conflict,
have an immediate relation. They have for their
object the same goal. Ill each the end is the
absolute, the attainment land realization of the
truth; in each the end is God, the goal of the
aspiration and endeavor of the spirit. Each in its
advance conforms with an ethical principle, — in
humility. The process of the one is in thought,
of the other in worship ; the one moves through
reflection, the other through emotion; but each,
in its development, involves the other, as it has
for its aim the truth.
, Hegel, in one of his letters, says, " Philosophy
seeks to apprehend by means of thought the
same truth which the religious mind has by faith."
He repeats this: "The object in philosophy is,
upon the whole, the same as in religion. In both

PHILOSOPHY. 53
the object is truth in that supreme sense in which
God, and God only, is truth." 1 Religion and phi
losophy in their end are one.
But while religion and philosophy thus often
move in parallel lines and toward the same end,
in certain respects, it is necessary to place philoso
phy above religion. This is involved in its very
method. There is an element of thought which
formulates religion, and opens a critical inquiry as
to its contents. It proceeds through a dialectic of
reason. There is thus a philosophy of religion.2
Philosophy has often given a profounder ex
pression to the ethical conflict of man than it has
found in religion, while, in their higher forms, they
are so closely blended. Philosophy has advanced
through the most profound experience of the re
lation of man to the truth, that is, the reality of
things. It has not been a formal process, a barren
speculation, as the blank of light, and void of all
1 Hegel, Vermischte Schriften, vol. ii. p. 520.
It may be said that man is by nature a religious animal, in the
same way that it may be said that he is philosophical ; or that he
has a philosophical or religious nature. The nature of the religious,
the philosophic, the scientific mind is an interesting subject. These
are all in their relative service determined by a strictly ethical meas
ure. 2 "It has been said that religion is at the cradle of every nation,
and philosophy at its grave." (Morley's Rousseau, vol. ii. p. 259.)
This has a certain truth, and religion appears more often as a con
structive force in society, while philosophy is of later culture and
reflective.

54 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
content, but it has wrought as truly as religion
with things of life. There has been through it
the expression of that which is deepest in the life
of man.
The progress of philosophy also has often been
indicative of a higher historical development in a
people. It has given a firmer maintenance to the
authority of law, to the unity and order of states.
It has furnished no less impressive sanctions to
the domestic and civil and political relations of
men, in the family and the commonwealth and
the nation. Its work toward the same end with
religion, has been pursued with a no less enduring
patience and a constant devotion. It has been
animated by an enthusiasm that could be sus
tained only by the noblest ends. It has been fol
lowed with a disregard of merely selfish interests
and an indifference to worldly aims. Its course
has been characterized by a humility and rever
ence as real as that which has prevailed in re
ligion. There has sometimes been a collision be
tween them, and this has assumed a tragic form.
Socrates was condemned to die as an enemy to
the religion of the state. The accusation against
him was that he was an enemy to the common re
ligion of the times in which he lived. The world
will continue to read the story of the untimely
death of the martyr of philosophy, wrought by
Plato into the very argument of immortality, and
will hold it among its imperishable possessions.

PHILOSOPHY. 55
Philosophy has often been connected with a
higher ethic, and furnished the aid toward a
higher ethical life, than religion. If its influence
in this respect has not in any one period prevailed
so widely, it has been more enduring and survived
greater crises. The Ethics and the Political Ethics
of Aristotle and Plato have had a continuous in
fluence upon the actual life of the race. They
have been translated into languages then un
spoken, and have shaped the thoughts of a thou
sand tribes with their advance toward a historic
life in lands which were then uninhabited. The
cultus and system of the religions that were con
temporary with them have utterly perished ;
there comes to them no revival. But these works
still have power in the lives of men. They have,
it is true, this advantage in the close relation of
philosophy with literature, that the greatest mas
ters in philosophy have also been the greatest
masters in literature.1
1 If it was ever given to any one man to express the prophetic
hopes and longings of the human soul, to give voice to
— "the prophetic soul of the wide world,
Dreaming on things to come,"
it was given to Plato. There has been in no religion so full an
expression of the hopes and desires of men which prefigure the rev
elation of God. The common thought is given by Van Oosterzee :
"It is certain that Plato has more distinctly than any one else ex
pressed the want which has been supplied by the revelation ot the
light of the world." (Dogmatik, vol. i. p. 113.) The work of Aris
totle also has brought the most profound justification to the Chris
tian theology. This was recognized in the greater ages of the the
ology of the church.

56 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
Religion and philosophy both have their fulfill
ment in the revelation of God in the Christ. The
long conflict and the travail through suffering and
sacrifice of religion, and the toil through doubt
and denial, the sincerity of conviction, the wrestle
of thought for the truth, of philosophy ; — the
effort of religion and philosophy, have their ful
fillment in the revelation of God.
They have been formed in the slow and arduous
ascent of man. They appear through the dissolu
tion and resolution in the reflective movement of
thought and emotion, of the relations of man with
the finite and the infinite. They bear the im
press of many tribes and many lands, through the
ages of the world. It may be given to faith, it
may be the ascertainment of reflection, that no
step through this evolution of society has been in
consequent, and no effort vain.
Religion and philosophy have both exerted a
determinate influence on the development of the
Christian faith and doctrine. The hope and as
piration of religion, the desire of the nations, has
found its end in the Christian revelation. But
this influence has been more potent through phi
losophy. Thus, in the speculation of Plato and of
Aristotle, the Christian doctrine has found its jus
tification, and their influence has determined the
course and development of great schools of Chris
tian thought.

THE EFFECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 57
The Revelation of and in the Christ is not a
religion, and it is not a philosophy.
It cannot be brought within the scope or prov
ince of any definition of religion that has a jus
tification in history. It is not the product of any
distinctive religious progress ; and, further, it has
not its origin in any system of speculation, nor in
the reflective order of thought. It is not a phi
losophy, but its relation to philosophy is as clear
and distinct as to religion.
It is not within the process of the history of
religions. It is not to be brought as one stage
into the development, or as one subject in the
comparative study of religions. It is not re
lated to them as one individual form to another,
nor as the universal to the individual ; for when
they are embraced as a whole, it is other and more
than they. It can no more take the place to
which it is invited among the various religions of
the world than the figure of the Christ can take
its place in the Pantheon of a Julian.
If it be assumed that it is strictly a religion, it
is not clear in its relation to philosophy. For phi
losophy will still maintain its claim to hold it in
subjection to its canons, to determine its position
in relation to the continuous progress of specula
tive thought, and will still seek for a real and sub
stantial truth.
The Christ does not come into the world as the

58 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
founder of a religion, and this revelation is not
set forth as an institute or a system or a cultus of
religion. The Old Testament is not primarily the record
of a religion, or of a system or science of religion.
It is not the revelation of a religion,1 but it is the
revelation of God to the world ; his revelation to
the family which he has formed, and to the nation
which he has founded, and thence to the world.
The ritual which it contains is subordinate in
this historical, this domestic and political devel
opment. There may be traces, in the forms and
services, which the scholar may discern, of the in
fluence of the religions of Egypt and Babylon, and
the countries of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys,
but it is primarily a revelation which is other than
these. It is throughout in conflict with these re
ligions, through its revelation of God, as One and
invisible, who will put away all the idolatries of
men, and will establish his righteousness on the
earth. It is a record of the unity and order of the
family and the nation, as these endure, in the or
ganic life of humanity.
1 " In other books you have the records of a religion. You are
told how a people introduced this worship and that ceremony; how
their soothsayers, told them of services that they had neglected ; how
their priests enforced new propitiations. Here you have nothing of
the kind. All the religion which the priests or the people introduced
— the worship on hills and in groves, the calves, the altars to Baal
— is noticed to be denounced ; a righteous king proves his righteous
ness by sweeping it away." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 507.)

THEIR RELATION TO REVELATION. 59
It averts the attention from a further world.
without affirmation and without denial in regard
to it, and is intent upon the eternal and infinite
presence dwelling in the here and now. Thus it
is an even question with a scholar whether it
recognizes a world on and beyond and the immor
tality of the soul, in the common use of this term.
Thus it differs from the subjects which form the
staple of the religious books of the world.
The Commandments, which are given at an
early age, and are continuous and formative with
the people, have no distinctive religious quality ;
they are formed in and become themselves the
maintenance of institutions of domestic and civil
and political order.
It is throughout the revelation of one God, who
is invisible, of whom there can be no graven image
made by the hands of men, whose name is the
Almighty, the I Am, the Eternal, who is with the
family and with the nation in the attainment of
their life in the life of humanity. It was in this
and in the acknowledgment of the Commandments
as the ground of freedom, and in the consequent
transition from slavery to freedom, and in the act
ualization of righteousness, that there were the
sources of conflict with the religions which the
people sought constantly to introduce. This eth
ical course is brought out with the strongest con
trasts. It is the burden of the prophets borne
through all the ages of their history. When the

60 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
king says he has reserved the best of the sheep
and oxen to sacrifice unto the Lord, the prophet
answers, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to
hearken than the fat of rams. The words which
the prophets repeat as. one long refrain through
historic periods are, the new moons and sabbaths ;
your new moons and your appointed feasts my
soul hateth : they are a trouble unto me; I am
weary to bear them ; wash you, make you clean ;
cease to do evil, learn to do well. The charge which
is brought against the people is their taking the
forms and formulas of a service instead of God.
They said no longer, where is Jehovah ? but the tem
ple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. To repeat
the expression which Kant uses, their fault was in
the substitution of the services of religion for the
service of God.1
i In the course of the development of the his
tory of the world, in the fullness of time, the
Christ does not come to man as the Founder of a
religion. The institution of a religion is not the
subject of the records of the New Testament. In
recent times an eminent man, and of eminent in
fluence upon his age, has announced himself as the
Founder of the religion of humanity.
1 " The charge which God by his prophets brings against his
people in the last days is the taking his ordinances instead of him
self. See Isaiah and all through Jeremiah. They said not, where
is Jehovah? but the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord."
(Erskine, Memoirs, p. 157.)

THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 61
The writings of the New Testament, as we pass
again to their content, have not a religion, nor the
institution nor the revelation of a religion, for
their subject. It is the revelation of the Christ in
man, and the infinite and eternal life of man. In
these writings the very word religion does not
appear. There is no word which could identify
their subject distinctively with a religion or a
philosophy. Thus there is in the writings of S.
John no reference to the subject. The Gospel and
the Epistles of S. John are concerned with a rev
elation, and the manifestation of an eternal life.1
1 " Thus we learn what work it is our missionaries have to do
when they go into heathen lands. It may be, before they leave their
own country, they think that their business is to rouse the natives of
those lands to what they would call a sense of religion, an interest
about their souls, a conviction of the shortness of life, the anticipa
tion of an approaching judgment and eternity. They can scarcely
stir a step in any of these countries without discovering traces of a
sense of religion, of an interest about the soul, of an anticipation of
death, of a dread of what is to follow death, to which they were
quite unused on their own soil. If they have no other vocation than
this, if they have not learnt that this is not even a part of the mes
sage which they are to carry with them, they may soon regret that
they ever crossed the seas. They will find that the task which they
came to perform has been done and is doing more effectually by the
Yogis and Fakirs, whose influence they wish to destroy. Unless
they come with a gospel concerning God ; unless that gospel enables
them to meet the anxieties about religion, about the soul, about
death, about the future, which lie like a dead weight upon the fac
ulties and energies of tribes which have proved themselves capable,
and are still capable, of noble thoughts and great deeds; unless they
can turn the thoughts of immortality and judgment into moral and
quickening thoughts, they are not going out upon the errand on
which S. Paul and the missionaries of his day went; they are not

62 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
: In the writings of S. Paul the rare use of a cor
responding word is very significant. It finds no
place except in infrequent and indirect reference.
S. Paul lived among sects and societies, into which
the nation was divided, that were of an exclusive
and intensive religious character. He describes
his early life, — his life before his conversion, and
before the revelation of the Christ and its light
was given to him : after the most straitest sect of
our religion, I lived a Pharisee. The Greek word
which he uses is not of very noble lineage nor
character, nor of the larger significance of the
English word — religion. S. Paul, in a phrase of
critical significance, says to the Athenians, as he
stands in sight of their altars and temples, where
their services and processions are so frequent and
imposing, I perceive that in all things ye are too
religious. The characteristic words which S. Paul
uses are of a revelation in the Christ and the
righteousness of the Spirit. S. James has a phrase
in which the word is assumed in the common
translation, which may be noticed for its ethical
significance, "pure and undefiled religion is to
visit the widow and the fatherless." This would
obviously be deficient by its limitation of religion
to the ministry of charity. The word should be
translated ritual. It is not of grave importance
carrying the news of a redemption, they are not testifying of that
glory which was manifested in the Person of Jesus Christ to the
world." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. i. p. 126.)

THE GOSPEL OF ST. PAUL. 63
to the subject, but it has thus an illustrative and
beautiful significance. The true ritual is not of
form and processional, but in actual charity.
In the writings of S. Paul there is only an in
direct reference to the development of religion
or the speculation of philosophy. It must be ad
mitted that nothing could be more alien to his
thought than a discourse on the advantages or the
excellences of religion. He is concerned neither
with the experiences of religion nor the courses of
philosophy. But not only the very word religion
has in these writings no correspondent, but their
content is other than that. It is a revelation ; it is
of righteousness ; it is of righteousness by faith ; it
is of the ethic formed in the knowledge of God ; it
is of a judgment in the presence of the infinite and
eternal, in which alone is the right judgment, by
individuals and by nations, of this finite world ; it
is a judgment of the world, but by One who has
lived on this earth, and is risen from the dead.
This in one form is verified in the deepest human
experience, as it has its anticipation in one of the
loftiest works of philosophy, the dialogue of Plato
on the immortality of the soul. The thought
which is always deeper than his formal argument
is that in the presence of the death of one we
love we know the infinite in the life of humanity.
This verifies itself to man that love is stronger
than death.
The outline alone remains of the large dis-

64 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
course of S. Paul at Athens ; but that discourse
was of the revelation of God, of righteousness, of
the judgment of the world by one risen from the
dead. It was not the announcement nor the com
mendation of a religion to the Athenians.
In the writings of the New Testament, the
Christ uses phrases that were common in his day,
— words derived both from philosophy and re
ligion. This appears in terms pertaining to phi
losophy, — as the word, truth, the eternal, free
dom ; and in terms pertaining to religion, — as
prayer, faith, heaven. But these words are used
very sparingly, while they are penetrated with a
new meaning, and another and higher import is
given to them. His words are mainly drawn from
the daily life of man, as the Father, the Son, the
Son of man, and again, from the contemporary
forms of political life, as the King, the Kingdom
of God.
The law of all forms, which subjects them to
the uses of humanity, and pervades them with
a principle which is wrought into the actuali
zation of the freedom of humanity, is in the
words, the sabbath was made for man, and not
man for the sabbath. This is universal in its ap
plication, and from one of the earliest and most
sacred of all forms the principle is derived by
which all are regarded.
In words of yet more significant import, whose
offense to the religious societies of his age could

RELIGION AND REVELATION. 65
not be exceeded, and which have the same im
port for the religious societies of every age, the
Christ as he walks across the fields on the sab
bath day says, in this place is one greater than
the temple.
These words were used by S. Paul afterwards
in the deeper imagery in which human life is por
trayed in the life of the Spirit, as he writes,
know ye not that your body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost? There cannot be a further re
move of the religious order than in the represen
tation of man as the temple of the Spirit.
The Christ was a divine witness for the ser
vice of humanity. It is a divine precedent that
is not superseded by any form ; therefore did
the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him,
because he had done these things on the sabbath
day. But Jesus answered them, My Father work-
eth hitherto, and I work.
It has been said that every religion consists
primarily of a cultus and a doctrine. This has
an entire historical justification. But this cultus
and doctrine, in the words of the Christ, are
transmuted into an ethical and a universal prin
ciple. Thus the law of a cultus, or worship, is
given in the r-ubric : not here nor at Jerusalem ;
they that worship the Father must worship him in
spirit and in truth. The same principle was to be
repeated again, in the diversion of thought from
the earthly Jerusalem, the city girt by the Syrian

66 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
mountains, and in the realization of that which is
universal ; the Jerusalem which is above is free,
which is the mother of us all.
As it is with a cultus, so it is with a doctrine of
religion ; it is at once transmuted into an ethical
process and realization ; he that doeth the will
shall know the doctrine. This is given conversely
in words of the most profound ethical import ; ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you
free. The Christ had at no time an identity, even the
•most remote, with any of the great sects or so
cieties which represented and embraced the dis
tinctive religious life of his age. He had no con
nection with the Scribe or the Sadducee or the
Pharisee.1 The strongest contrast was seen in
the character of the Pharisee. The Pharisee was
not a man of mere pretense ; he was the type of
a strictly religious man, but one who cared more
for religion than for humanity.
The Christ, in the beginning of his work, as he
went forth into the world, went, to a marriage fes
tival. He did not withdraw himself from the
actual life of men. The reproach brought against
him by the religious sects and societies of his age
1 " The Pharisaical aspirant assumed evil as the ground from
which he started. Evil was the condition of his race. Every step
that raised him above evil raised him above mankind. The nearer
he approached to the Being he worshiped, the further he was from
those among whom that Being had placed him." (Maurice, Ser
mons, vol. ii. p. 333.)

THE CHRIST AND THE PUBLICANS. 67
was, he eats with publicans and sinners ; behold
the friend of publicans and sinners}
The apostles whom he called and sent forth into
the world were among common men, as one who
sat at the customs and one who was a fisherman.
There is in the words of the Christ the direc
tory for no penance, nor shrine, nor pilgrimage.
There is the pattern for no altar nor temple. The
rites which appear in various ways in every his
torical religion are not recognized.
The Christ institutes no cultus of worship and
prescribes no system of dogma. There is no sug
gestion of form of worship or formula of doctrine.
The blessing which he gives is of those who act
and suffer in the life of humanity. It is of the
gentle, of those who mourn, of those who suffer
persecution for righteousness, of those who hun
ger after righteousness.
The conflict and transition from the religions of
men to the life of the Spirit, the realization of
truth and freedom in humanity, was to be borne
on through the coming ages. The Christ fore
tells to his disciples this conflict, not as a casualty
1 " Jesus was emphatically a man of the world. The daily walks
of men were familiar to his feet ; their daily joys and sorrows and
all their wants familiar to his heart. When he went to the mar
riage feast he went as a wedding guest. When he went among pub
licans and sinners, he sat at their tables without reserve, and shrank
from no contact with the daughters of vice. Religion might flaunt
her sanctimonies, he wore no phylactery; he suffered no sabbath to
check his humanity, and no tradition to bind his freedom." (Hedge,
Ways of the Spirit, p. 108.)

68 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
of their lives, but as the sequence of a principle
that was to be realized : they shall put you out of
the synagogues ; yea, the time cometh that whoso
ever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.
These things will they do unto you, because they
have not known the Father nor me.
The characteristic event which marked the cri
sis, the close of one age and the opening of another
age, an geonian day, was the destruction of the
temple. And it was not simply the end of one
age and the beginning of another age ; it was not
simply the close of the dispensation of the law
and the beginning of the dispensation of grace ; it
was the destruction of the temple. The Christ
had gone into the temple, but it was to affirm that
which would lead, in its realization, to the over
throw of the temple. The worship henceforth
was to be that in which none had need to journey
far, nor to go on pilgrimages to distant shrines or
cities to enter the doors of the temple. As he
went out of the temple, some spake of the temple,
how it was adorned with goodly stones. Jesus
said, Seest thou these great buildings, there shall
not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be
thrown down. The destruction of the temple was
the sign of the coming of the Son of man; his
own person was that temple, in which God might
meet man, and man might meet God.
This principle was to be borne on to the close.
It finds a constant illustration. In the closing

REVELATION AND RELIGION. 69
events' of this age, the accusation of the Jews
against the Christ was on the ground that he was
an enemy of their religion. He was charged with
blasphemy. But in that hour in which he was
confronted with this charge, there was the expres
sion of no vision which brought into light the
symbols of the worship of this earth, no refrain
borne on through recollections of anthems and
litanies. There was the utterance of those words
which spoke of the eternal, the glorified life of
humanity in that fulfilled vision : Hereafter shall
the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power
of God.1
The difference between the revelation of the
Christ and all religions is ultimate. But it con
sists with the fact that this revelation is mani
fested to and in humanity. It is one with the life
of righteousness, the life of the spirit. Through
the revelation in the Christ the religions of the
world become transmuted, as in Him has been
manifested that foundation of human life which
they but vainly sought, and on this earth could
not find. They looked through the decay of all
things for that which was beyond decay and was
indestructible, but it was not in thought, or emo-
1 " In religious books we find the death of Jesus chiefly, almost ex
clusively pressed, whereas in the Scriptures we find that the Apos
tles were called to be witnesses of his resurrection. See Acts ch. i.
v. 22; ii. 32." (Erskine, Memoirs, p. 116.)

70 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
tion, or desire, and in Him was revealed that life
which does not suffer decay nor yield to the cor
ruption of the grave. It was through death to
the resurrection, the life that is here and now in
the life of the spirit, but the life that is infinite,
the life that is eternal.
This contrast is borne on to the close ; — in the
last vision, the types of that historical process,
of which S. John the Divine has written, are not
drawn from those of which the imagination, when
filled with religious conceptions of an individual
character, can have any intimation. Its types are
drawn from the most varied activities in the com
mon life of humanity. They are of a city, but
the glory of God doth lighten it, that there be no
need of the sun or of the moon; and of that city
it is written, / saw no temple there. These words
consist with no order of strictly religious thought,
and have no parallel in the religions of the world.
There are certain consequences involved in the
exposition of this revelation as a distinctive re
ligion that may be noticed.
Religion and certain religious sentiments and
notions are made the substitute for this revelation.
The phases of the religious imagination, the vague
aspirations, and the variable moods of the mind,
often its unrestrained desires when carried away
by impulse and disturbed emotion, are made the
sum and fulfillment of this revelation. That which

THE ECLECTIC AND THE AGNOSTIC. 71
man in his religious effort has devised about God
is made the substitute for that which God has
made known of himself.1
There is another consequence parallel with this,
which follows from the apprehension and repre
sentation of this revelation strictly as a religion.
It is brought with other religions within the pur
suits of an eclectic school of religions. This may
be joined with an agnostic school. It writes in
scriptions, but to an unknown God. It is very
religious ; it regards all religions as equal and the
same in their origin. This, then, is apprehended
strictly as one religion among these various re
ligions. Thus it defines their relative value ; it
composes their anthologies ; it forms a miscellany
of their various precepts ; it has represented the
Christ as one among the founders of religions, and
it finds in the course of the Christian life in history
only the institution of a system of religion. This
1 It has been made a criticism of the services of the Church and
its offices of prayer that wide ranges of religious aspiration and
emotion are left out. They have no expression. The characteristic
phrases are those which speak of the manifestation and advent, the
resurrection and ascension, the redemption of the world, an eternal
life, and a service which is perfect freedom. There is the widest
contrast between the service of the Church and that whose charac
teristic is the expression of religious emotion and aspiration.
There are religious sects or societies that trace their correspond
ence in their origin and order back to the synagogue of the Jews as
it was in • the time of Christ. But the correspondence which the
Christ uses is of the family and of political societies and institutions
as the kingdom of heaven.

72 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
school may have a value in its aid toward the
study of the comparative religions of the world.
But it illustrates the fact that this revelation,
when it is apprehended simply as one religion
among others, may become the most inconse
quent and incomplete of all. It is devoid of life ;
it is reduced to broken fragments, mere words of
counsel and exhortation to religious conduct. The
school is one of clever criticism, of intellectual
subtlety, of large but vague aspirations, of pale
negations, of weak but irregular pietism. It may
be, as S. Paul describes the agnostics at Athens,
too religious.
The defect in this mode of thought appears in
another form, in the assumption of a controversy
between religion and righteousness, — between re
ligion and morality. This distinction has no ground
in the writings of the Old and New Testament,
unless it be in the contrast of the revelation of
God and his righteousness with the religions which
prevailed in the world. It is not that religion and
morality are there represented as in a formal
identity ; these phrases are set aside. If morality
be regarded only as a course of external deco
rum, or as the economy of the individual result
ant from a prudential estimate of the promiscuous
advantages of life, or as a hereditament in the
evolution of man through a life determined by
physical necessity, then it has no consistence with
this revelation, which presumes a will that acts in

RIGHTEOUSNESS. 73
freedom, and the manifestation of a living God
who will establish righteousness on the earth.
This ethical life, the life of the righteousness of
the spirit, cannot be apart from God, as there can
be no true conception of conscience which does
not affirm the being of God.
The terms of this distinction, however, of re
ligion and morality, not only are alien to these
writings, but, among different peoples and ages,
religion is of worth mainly in the degree in which,
to use Hegel's profound expression, it has been
brought into identity with morality. Thus even
the sacrifice it calls forth in life, in its highest act,
has a value in the measure in which it is deter
mined by a moral emotion and for a moral end.
There have been far larger numbers who, from
generation to generation, in the devotion and ab
negation of their sacrifice, have thrown them
selves before the car of Juggernaut ; but the world
counts beyond these the three hundred who laid
down their lives in the pass at Thermopylae, in
obedience to the laws, and this gives to that field
an immortal interest.
The defect in the apprehension of this revela
tion as a religion is apparent in the religious and
philosophical systems of the preceding century.
It was carried through the assumption of a dis
tinction between a natural and revealed religion.
That was a time when the message to men was
the commendation of religion to an enlightened

74 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
patronage. It was an age when men could build
monuments alike to faith and hope and religion.
It was to be followed by a school of culture, which
could talk of " the state and art and religion ; "
but the revelation of God cannot be brought into
this catalogue.
There is a further defect in this apprehension,
which is to be noticed, in the fact that religion and
certain religious sentiments and notions are main
tained as the substitute for this revelation. The
forms of the religious imagination, the phases of
religious emotion, the conceptions of the religious
mind, control and determine this revelation, but
they are not controlled and determined by it.
These conceptions still hold their place, and are
made to mould the Christian revelation instead
of being moulded by it. The old heavens still are
over us. Those words of deepest and divinest
import were long since spoken ; The kingdom of
heaven is within you ; but not yet may we receive
them in their universal and human significance ;
if we accept the words it must be as a type or
shadow, and allowing no reality. Thus the forms
and conceptions of ancient religions determine
our thought ; they still prevail. They rule us
from their buried urns. The gods of those imag
inative forms, whether dark and cruel, or light
and beautiful with the changing forms of life,
have vanished, and the temples and shrines are
sought no longer by men, but the religious con

ANCIENT RELIGIONS. 75
ceptions and images still control us ; they do but
slowly fade. They shape themselves in the sys
tems of men, and still determine this revelation,
and are but slowly transmuted by its spirit. This
may be traced in every form and phase of relig
ious thought.
The divine and eternal sacrifice, in the com
ing and life and death of the Christ on the earth,
is interpreted in the preconceptions of the relig
ions of men. The light in which it is portrayed
is darkened with the awful rite, and lurid with the
glare of the fires which burn on the altars of
pagan sacrifice.
The inspiration of the Spirit, which is given to
men in the life of the spirit, and which, therefore,
has not and cannot have its postulate in the mere
limitations of the finite, is held within the style of
these religions. It is regarded as the inspiration
of the letters and pages of the sacred books. It is
no longer the utterance of the living word, but is
restricted within the conception of the pagan ora
cle. Thus, again, the representation of the divine
judgment is that which found expression, although
often in a serious and profound form, in the
greater of the pagan religions and philosophies,
as in the Gorgias of Plato. It is represented not
as an object to be sought, and a manifestation of
truth, and the realization of righteousness on the
earth, but as a doom to be averted and a power

76 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
to be dispelled. The judgment, most often as por
trayed in the Greek philosophies and in the Teu
tonic religions, is made the substitute for that
which the Christ has given, which is the realiza
tion strictly of an ethical principle and an ethical
spirit in the life of humanity.
Thus, the representations of heaven and hell
take on the imagery devised in the religions of
the world, and divested of an ethical character,
they are employed with a more potent effect.
These had an intenser expression in the Teu
tonic religions, with the tribes and peoples that
came from the German forests, than that which
had prevailed in the Roman or Greek religions.
Rome was practical, and had a profound sense of
law and order and their obligations. Her religion
was built on the validity of law and social obliga
tions, and penetrated with convictions of the au
thority and sacredness of the family and the state,
and of the judgments which come upon a people
with the violation of their bonds. But it was,
almost as little as Judea, occupied with a nether or
an other world. It was not attracted by the images
in which its joys were portrayed, nor repelled by
its penalties ; it was not allured nor alarmed by
these, while in the Greek and the Teutonic re
ligions these took a darker form. In the Greek
there was some lightness in the pictures of the
elysian fields, while in the Teuton there was the
portrayal of a sombre, though sometimes grotesque

ANCIENT RELIGIONS. 77
•
imagination. These are only surpassed in the aw
ful conceptions which fill the religions of India.
These still hold their place with the peoples who
have inherited the Teutonic and Indian traditions.
They have their reaffirmation ; they give form
and color to the revelation of the Christ and the
life of the spirit, and it is but gradually that they
are moulded and transmuted by it in the realiza
tion of the life of righteousness, the life of truth
and freedom. . The representations of these sub
jects in the higher periods of these religions and
philosophies may even be nobler than some of
those which still in some ages prevail. The repre
sentation of the judgment in the Greek philoso
phy, as in the Gorgias of Plato, and of heaven and
hell in the Teutonic religion, serve as illustrations
of this.
This fact has also, in the external phases of re
ligion and religious history, a significant illustra
tion, which may be noticed simply as an illustra
tion of the subject. The forms and festivals of
ancient religions reluctantly yield their ground.
The student of history may trace the adoption
from certain ages, ages of ignorance and deca
dence of faith, of forms and usages from different
religions. These forms and festivals still impress
their character upon events, and remain by trans
position, as some saturnalia passes into a carnival
at Rome. There are still sacred and secular days,
and holy and profane things. There are shrines

78 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
and pilgrimages, and the strange beauty with
which the religious imagination invests the char
acter of the shrine and the pilgrim moulds the
thought, as some unfulfilled symbol in the life of
man. There may be traced in certain Christian centu
ries the adoption, from the east, apparently through
some remote association, of patterns, forms, cere
monies, modes of dress and service ; these are
correspondent with those of Buddhism. There
was, it may be in the fourth and again in the
sixth centuries, an introduction from oriental re
ligions, from India or Persia, of systems of pen
ance and monasticism, and even the designs for
shrines, and the colors and embroideries for robes
and dresses. This, in an intellectual form, has
also reappeared in some schools with the study of
the literature of Buddhism and the philosophic
culture of pessimism.
The graver issue of the substitution of concep
tions derived from pagan religions, — as those of
sacrifice and inspiration and judgment and the fur
ther worlds, for the revelation which God has made
of himself in the Christ, — is that at last concep
tions derived from these religions come to be at
tached to the conception of very God. He be
comes himself a Baal, a Moloch, or a Siva ; he is
pacified by the suffering and death of his chil
dren ; his presence is in a temple ; his appearing
is through the doors of a shrine ; his revelation is

ANCIENT RELIGIONS. 79
the sacred "books ; his coming again is an event of
historical circumstance in the formal process of
history. When these conceptions of pagan re
ligions are attached to him, his character and rela
tion to humanity are brought into correspondence
with them ; or, again, he is identified with nature,
— with the nature of things, as in the religions
of nature. Thus, as his investure is with the traits
ascribed to a Moloch, or with those drawn from
the physical process of the world, this conception
is substituted for the revelation of the name of
the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
But again, the substitute for this revelation is
simply the expression of religious sentiments. In
stead of the revelation of God to man we have
the sentiments and feelings of man about God.
This is a school of poetry and music in its shorter
and weaker forms ; it furnishes the productions of
a religious sentimentalism ; it sets aside the divine
commandments which are the ground of social
order ; it identifies the character of God with the
physical process of the world. This becomes in
another form the worship of nature ; it regards
the prodigality of nature, and makes this its prin
ciple, as another school has made the severity of
nature its principle, and prodigality and severity,
profusion and destruction, are alike found of each
in nature. It does not hold a principle of right
eousness ; it annuls the divine commandments ; it
regards the divine judgment as a remote event;

80 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
it is not, in its own phrase, congenial with a sub
stantial morality.
There come many ages and intervening crises
in the slow and long advance of humanity before
the words are realized and received : Not here
nor at Jerusalem; they that worship the Father
shall worship him in spirit and in truth.
There is in the revelation of the Christ the
goal of religion and philosophy. They become
one in their realization in the life of the spirit, —
one in the realization in the life of humanity of
truth and freedom.
The Christ becomes to man righteousness and
wisdom.

CHAPTER IV.
THE REVELATION OF GOD.
This revelation is the revelation of God ; it is
from God, but primarily it is of God.
It is the divine self-revelation. In it God re
veals himself. It is the revelation of his own be
ing and will.
It is not a being which is abstract, and a will
which is void of self-determination ; it is a being
which is real, and a will which is real and is real
izing itself in the world.
All that God is he imparts, he reveals. He is
no more a distant being, that man cannot approach
him; he is not an inaccessible being, that man
cannot find him ; he is not an unknown being,
but what he is he has made known.
This is not the revelation of an abstract uni-
versum, which then is apprehended only as the
collocation of the transient forms of the finite
world ; it is not an indeterminate something in us
not ourselves ; it is not an unknown, to which the
continuous and ultimate relation of man, or of a
being like man, must be one of nescience ; but
what God is he has made known to man.
The revelation of God in his personality, in

82 THE REVELATION OF GOD.
his spiritual being and -spiritual relations, is not of
and in the physical process of the world. The
physical process is the other than the spiritual,
and in its relation with God is only known
through the mediation of the spirit, and its char
acteristic is that it is constantly passing and is to
pass away. It is the transient, the finite, that
seems always, in its unrest and advance, to be
striving to reach the infinite. There is in this
revelation the recognition of the finite limitations
of nature, and of the conflict in nature, as it bears
in itself the reconciliation of the spirit.
There are, in the process of the physical world,
the signs and the correspondences with the reve
lation of God, but they have the characteristic of
the finite in its transience. There are signs as
of beauty in the flower and of light in the sun,
but it is with unceasingly passing forms, as with
the flower that fades and the sun that sets.
There are signs of deeper significance, as in the
relations of a father and son and brother, and
these are existent in the physical process of the
world, but are taken up and transmuted through
the mediation of the spirit, and have an ethical
actualization in the moral order of the world.
Thence, in the development which brings to time
increasingly its fullness, there is the revelation of
God and his righteousness in the moral order of
the world. But this order in the family and the
nation is other and higher than the physical pro
cess of the world.

THE LAW OF FREEDOM. 83
This is the revelation of one who was before all
worlds; who says, before the foundations of the
world were' laid, — I am ; but it is not the rev
elation of one who is in identity with the phys
ical process of the world.1 It is the revelation of
God in his separateness from the world, before the
reconciliation of the world unto himself ; it is the
revelation of God in his distinctness from hu
manity before the manifestation of his oneness
with humanity. In the physical process there is
sequence, but there is not progress ; there is ne
cessity, but there is not freedom. In the histor
ical process there is progress and there is free
dom, however slow may be the development, —
but that is in the life of the spirit. Thus ne
cessity is transmuted into freedom, and sequence
becomes progress. The process of the physical
1 " We have a revelation in our own nature. On this revelation
the church of the future must establish its claims to acceptance."
(Gould, Origin and Development of Religious Belief, vol. ii. p. 10.)
This is not strictly true. It is not strictly in our nature; it is of
God, in the Christ, the Son of God who has become the Son of man,
and in the relation of the Christ with humanity, and through the
mediation of the Spirit ; and on this the Church is built.
This is not the revelation of one who is in identity with nature,
but this is the revelation of God, who is one in the final realization
of the ideal with nature, — not one with the process where all forms
are transient through their subjection to conditions of time, but one
with nature in the realization of the perfect reconciliation.
For this conflict is not the evidence of a dualism, though of itself
it would be, and in nature through the physical process there is no
evidence of reconciliation. But this reconciliation is revealed, and
working in and through all things ; it is the revelation of God recon
ciling the world unto himself.

84 THE REVELATION OF GOD.
world is that of necessity ; this does not preclude
the will; the antithesis is not between necessity
and freedom. While the act of sheer necessity is
in itself unfree, there is an element of necessity in
the freedom of the will. This element is taken
up and transmuted, to use again the illustration
drawn from society, as the will of man in the be
ginnings of its freedom and in every advance to
ward freedom recognizes its oneness with law :
the state has its advancement in the oneness of
law with liberty, and in the institution and recog
nition of law liberty may be attained. This phys
ical and historical process does not, therefore, in
the least preclude the will of God, in whom is
perfect freedom, by whom all things subsist, and
from whom all things proceed, and to whom all
things come, — whose will in its self-determina
tion has its perfect realization, from manifesting
itself in the coming of the kingdom of the spirit,
in which the normal course is disclosed in its end,
in the coming of life out of death, and in the real
ization of the perfect freedom of man.
The struggle which goes on in nature is car
ried up into the spiritual. Thus the ascent of
man and his advance is through conflict, in the
realization of an ideal end in freedom ; and that
which is animal in its impulse and is reckless of
any relation beyond its own advancement is over
come, and this struggle through its transmutation
into the conflict and endeavor of man toward the

REVELATION IS LIGHT. 85
perfect self-realization is ennobled. Thus in lit
erature, as the representation of human experi
ence, in the adventure of the Odyssey of Homer
and in the progress of the Pilgrim of Bunyan,
there is something more and other than the mere
struggle for existence.
This revelation is its own witness.1 It bears in
itself its evidence, and the elements from which
it is to be apprehended. It is not dependent upon
that which is other than itself for its authenti
cation. It is light itself, and not a refraction of
something apart, that from thence it should be
come known. It has no need of certain criteria
for its verification, which are to be adduced to en
able its recognition. Revelation, as Rothe says,
" springs immediately from itself."
Revelation is light. It does not need that
which is apart from itself to throw an illumina
tion upon it. It has the self-evidencing nature
of light. In the physical condition vision implies
only light and an organ adapted to the light.
This revelation is for another. In it is in
volved the relation of being for another. It has
its inception in love, and is the expression of
1 " In the Christian revelation it is revealed what God is ; he is no
more on the other side, — an unknown, — for he has made known
to man what he is, and not merely in an external history, but in the
consciousness." (Hegel, Philosophic der Religion, vol. ii. p. 191.)

86 THE REVELATION OF GOD.
the love of God and the fulfillment of the will of
God toward man. It is the revelation of God to
man.1 This revelation of God to man may be modi
fied and limited by that in and through which it
is given. The revelation which could be con
ceived in the physical process would be dim and
transient, it would be ephemeral in comparison
with the revelation in and through the life of the
1 This is the truth which in one form is implied in and underlies
the profound distinction of philosophy, — the distinction of being
with self, and being for another, and being for self. But these ad
verbial terms are merely the technical phrases of philosophy. By
being with self is meant being shutting itself up with itself, pursuing
only its own self-aggrandizement, recognizing only a law of selfish
ness; being for another is not simply to subserve the uses and ends
of another, — it goes forth toward another, its life is in and with an
other ; and this is involved in being for self, which is the perfect
self-realization. In this and in the subjection of the lower self, the
being with self, and in the manifestation of being for another, is the
perfect self-realization. It is the being with self which is the source
of evil, of isolation and pride, and at last comes to know its own
nakedness and poverty. It is this which is the mere assertion of a
law of selfishness. This distinction is summed up in the words, He
that seeketh his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life shall find it.
It has its justification in the ethical development of the family and
the nation, where in being for another there is being for self, the
realization of self.
This underlies all the contradictions which have been advanced in
the recent notions of egoism and altruism, and the crude assertions
of enlightened self-interest as a law of human activity.
Thus, also, in the higher development of the family and the nation
man is brought nearer to God, and into a fuller knowledge of the
being and love of God. It is thus, also, that, apart from the family
and the nation, the hope is very faint, for the individual, of moral
improvement and moral reformation.

THE ABSTRACT SYSTEM. 87
spirit. The manifestation within the conditions
and relations of the finite must be limited by
these conditions and relations. The manifesta
tion in external history must be also subject to
the precedent forms of history. The revelation
to man in the consciousness, the revelation in the
life of the spirit, is above the limitations of the
finite, and has elements that are not determined
in its conditions.
This revelation is of and to a person. It is con
tinuous ; it is of and through the fullness of time.
The name in the common forms of thought is the
sign of the reality : this name is the name of the
one of might, the Almighty, the I am, the Eter
nal ; it is the strong one, the holy one ; it is, as it
is borne through history, the name of the Lord of
Hosts. It is the name of God as one in common
with men.
This revelation is not an appeal simply and im
mediately to an intuition, and it does not act
through that alone as its organ. It is a revela
tion through reflection; through the pure forms
of thought ; through faith ; through experience ;
through the life of the spirit.
This revelation is not of an abstract system, nor
of certain propositions which convey certain ab
stract truths. It is not the presentation of certain

88 THE REVELATION OF GOD.
abstract notions about God. It is not the revela
tion of a scheme of divinity that man is to re
ceive in the place of God. It is the revelation of
God himself ; it is the revelation of God himself
to man. It is not the communication of a state
ment. It is not the exposition of that which is
only provisional and is relative to man.1
This revelation is not spectacular. It is not a
pageant unfolded as in the shifting changes of
some scenic movement ; it is not a series of pict
ures. It is not the unveiling before man of that
which is always external to him, although it is a
revelation from God, in his distinctness from man,
to man, and in the manifestation of his oneness
with man. It is not a series of events, as an ad-
1 Hegel uses constantly the term religion, but he is involved in
confusion in defining its relation to philosophy; he could not, while
assuming the identity of religion with the revelation of the Christ,
avoid subjecting himself to the charge of placing philosophy above
religion. But his whole conception of Christianity is merged in that
of revelation. The outline which he presents has a very high value,
and as always in this threefold distinction one clause is not to be de
tached from another, but each is interpenetrated by the other. This
revelation, which is positive and givea to man, becomes in its reali
zation in the life of the spirit, the life of truth and freedom.
Hegel says : —
" The absolute religion is —
" (a.) The revealed religion.
" (6.) The positive religion, as revealed to man, or a reve
lation to man from without.
" (c.) The religion of truth and freedom."
(Hegel, Philosophie der Religion, vol. ii. p. 60.)

THROUGH SONSHIP. 89
vent and judgment, which pass before man, as if
man had no concern with them. It is not sim
ply the bringing relatively nearer to him of that
which was relatively remoter from him. It enters
into and becomes the centre and the foundation
of the real life of man ; or, more strictly, it is the
discovery of the only centre and foundation of
the real life of man. This revelation is of the
divine relations of the life with man. It is given,
not as the selective attainment of intellectual pur
suits, nor the fruit of an exclusive culture. I
thank thee, 0 Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
because thou hast hid these things from the wise
and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.
It is not the reserved inheritance of the wise and
prudent, to be held as their private interest and
for their private ends. It is the revelation of
the divine fullness ; it has no limitations ; it is
from God, and, — as of the father in the parable,
— Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have
is thine.This revelation is through relations. It is of
the Father and the Son ; it is the revelation of
that knowledge which the Son has of the Father ;
its centre is in the relation of the Father to the
Son ; all things are delivered unto me of my Father,
and no man knoweth the Son but the Father,
neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son,
and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.

90 THE REVELATION OF GOD.
This revelation is of a spirit and to a spirit.
There must be that in man which is to receive this
revelation. There can be no revelation to stones
and trees and stars, nor of the spiritual to the
physical. God is a person, and the revelation of
God is of a person to and with a person. It thus
presumes a ground of communion. It is a reve
lation to the reason and the conscience and the
faith of men ; but it is to and through them in
their unity and correlation in man as a spiritual
being, invested with power to know the things of
the Spirit. It is not simply the complement of
reason ; it does not come to take up the lines
of thought where the attainment of reason has
left them ; it is the correspondent, in their en
ergy, of reason and conscience and faith. It is
not simply brought to the critical tests of the
reason and the conscience and the faith of men,
as if it were something external to them, al
though it is and is to be verified of them, but
it is their very element so that conscience has
its right in it, and reason its ideal, and faith its
rest, that they abide in it as their home. In its
verification to the reason it becomes the strength
of the will : ye shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free.
It is not a revelation to faith alone, and the
representation of it in this way rests on the appre
hension of the mind itself after a molecular and
mechanical formula as a component of certain dis-

THE KNOWLEDGE OF MYSTERIES. 91
tinct and detached faculties and powers. It does
not obliterate, it does not lull to sleep, the cogni
tive faculties, the reason or the conscience, but it
elevates them in the realization of truth and free
dom.1 It is not the revelation of certain mysteries
which are always to remain and be preserved as
mysteries. The Christ says of the kingdom of
God, it is a mystery which is given to his disciples
to know ; S. Paul speaks of the gospel as a mys
tery which is now made manifest. The presump
tion is of a growth in knowledge and in life, with
the individual and the race, and in this which is
now made manifest no limits to knowledge are
1 " When I ask what reason or right I have to believe that a man
who lived in Palestine eighteen hundred years ago was the Son of
God, I must discern in the history itself a truth and light which
meet the demands of my reason and conscience.
" It would be desolate if man was separated from God by an im
passable barrier; if he belonged to an order of beings that was sim
ply other than God. The only deliverance for man lies in the living
union of God with humanity, and not as an historical matter, but
an eternal spiritual order.
" Christianity, if true, must explain the true spiritual and moral
consciousness. Conscience is this fact. It is not merely part and
parcel of myself. It is the presence of the light, life, love of God,
met by a spiritual capacity in us of apprehending it. It is here, not
as a taskmaster or a spy, but as a guide, comforter, helper. This
presence dwells in each of us, connecting us with each other and all
with God.
" The Christ has passed through human life and human death,
bearing all our burdens, connected with every individual of the race,
not only by a bond of love, but a bond of relation, of brotherhood,
— a bond which can never be broken. " (Erskine, Memoirs, p. 327.)

92 THE REVELATION OF GOD.
imposed. It places no barriers nor confines before
thought. It invites the approach to no Eleusinia.
It is concealed in no shrine, it is hid in no re
cesses ; it is veiled in no obscurities; it is in
vested in no gloom, whose twilight the imagina
tion strives vainly to penetrate, only to be left
to grope among shadows. It is clothed with no
darkness to call forth some undefined dread,
where awe sinks into fear. The Christ says,
Fear them not; there is nothing hidden which shall
not be known.
r This revelation is not a deposit, placed at the
disposal and within the disposition of a certain
corporation of men. It is not thus to be subjected
to the mutations of history. It is not liable to be
borne away, as in the fortunes of ancient war, to
some alien camps, and lodged in their cities. It
is not to be transferred, from one to another, as
the sacred fire that was guarded in pagan tem
ples. It is not an esoteric faith, to be regarded
as the private stock or held as the exclusive pos
session of any man or body of men. Its revela
tion is through the light which lighteih every man
that cometh into the world.
It is a revelation of the truth, and the truth is
set forth as one with the life of God, and as ele
mental in the life of man. Its requisition is of
truth in the inward parts. This revelation, in its

THE VIRTUE OF KNOWLEDGE. 93
oneness with truth, invokes alike conscience and
thought, and faith and love, and calls them forth
to their field in the world.1 It consists with the
furthest reach of thought in its unimpeded ad
vance, as it bears in itself the reconciliation of all
things. It does not fall short; it passes on before
the speculation of philosophy and the aspiration
of religion. This revelation gives to philosophy
its enduring strength and its immortal interest.
There are no impassable barriers for thought, and
no forces to bring to thought the intimation of
their presence, only to baffle and elude the thought
of man. And the emotion of religion is pervaded
with an awe which is not obscured with dread,
and has its exaltation with knowledge. It is the
unfolding of that germ where from faith grows
virtue, and from virtue knowledge. It penetrates
with a life and power that has more than finite
values, " all knowledge
That the sons of men
Shall gather in the cycled times."
This revelation, through all its gradual discoveries,
must consist with the inquiry for truth in every
1 " The dispensation of principles and of statutes is the same dis
tinction that appears in the dispensation of Christ and of the an
gels. (Hebrews, i. 2.) The dispensation of Christ embraces in it
a oneness with the mind of God ; not merely a readiness to do his
will when we know it, but a participation in his mind, so that by a
participation in the divine nature we enter into the reason of his
will, and do not merely obey the authority of his will.
" A phrase which corresponds to this distinction is that this is a

94 THE REVELATION OF GOD. •
fact, that is brought to the knowledge of man, of
the course and condition of the world. It brings
to the finite its true measures of value, in the pres
ence of the infinite. It comes with light for all
the depths and heights of human nature. The
traces and tendencies of evil, of the forces work
ing toward corruption and death, the struggle and
the conflict of nature, and the contradictions of
the world, in the limitations of the finite, — these
consist with the redemption and the reconcilia
tion, and have alone their solution in the mani
festation of the infinite.1 It must agree, in like

doctrine of centres, and not of circumferences. If I were residing
with an oracular person, I should be in the condition of the Jews
with regard to Moses. I should be living under a messenger certified
by God. I should have my circumference determined for me. If
the Son shall make you free ye shall be free indeed." (Erskine, Me
moirs, p. 145.)
1 " When there comes to the conscience the revelation of a recon
ciled and reconciling God, of one who has manifested his only begot
ten Son, bearing the burden which we could not bear, taking away
the sin of the world, all is changed. That which was sought in noth
ingness is found in a Father. The death of self is the beginning of a
new life, of affections, energies, memories, hopes. These have their
fruition in God. These realize their glory when he is revealed.
Therefore it is true, as of old, that the desire of nations is for a
Christ, a Son of man ; but for a Christ, a Son of man, in whom we
may see the Father. Therefore it is true, as of old, that the preach
ers of a gospel to the Gentiles must go forth telling them that the
Word who is their light took flesh and dwelt on earth, and suffered
the death of the cross, and that they may be signed with the sign of
his cross ; but it is because the wisdom and power of God were revealed
at Calvary ; it is because the assurance was given there that sinful
and dying men shall hereafter behold the face of God, and that his
name shall be on their foreheads." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. iii.
p. 128.)

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 95
manner, with that which is brought to the knowl
edge of man of the course and condition of the
historical world. If there were no strife within
and without of forces called good and evil, no
dominations and no slaveries ; if there were no
assurance of a victory over the world, no sug
gestion of a glory that might invest humanity,
there might be no consistence with a redemption,
nor justification of a restoration and an eternal
life. This does not imply a mere analogy of the con
stitution and course of nature. Analogy is only
an illustrative form of argument, and is formed
in materia] moulds and subject to material con
ditions. But the facts of this constitution and
course of nature, as they are brought within the
knowledge of the conscience and the conscious
ness of men, have in this revelation their recog
nition and reconciliation.
Revelation to man could not avail, unless man
could recognize its adaptation to his nature, to
complete it. It is to become the fulfillment of
his nature. Thus the relation of nature with God
may be manifested, not in the deflection of its
types, but in the persistence and attainment to
ward perfection of its types, as man through nature
is brought with the more perfect realization of the
ideal, nearer to God, in whom the ideal and the
real are one.
This revelation, in its gradual discoveries of facts

96 THE REVELATION OF GOD.
which are deeper than those that are the result of
observation, brings its aid to science, which is the
knowledge resultant from the observation of the
phenomena of the physical world.1 There is, then,
no controversy between this revelation and sci
ence. This revelation brings to man, in the high
est ranges of thought, the very postulates on which
science rests, and the conditions of its advance
ment. This revelation bears in itself the one cat
egory of the truth. It recognizes the conditions
of progress in the knowledge of the truth. It
contends with ignorance and with superstition, in
their extremest forms, because it recognizes not
1 It is said that when theology says revelation science says law,
and thence a conflict is assumed. This is a mere preliminary, it is
superficial, as if when revelation says freedom science says law; for
science, as the resultant of the observation of the physical world,
does not allow freedom, and cannot get on with it, for the condition
of the physical is that of necessity, and, in its limitation, it does not
consist with freedom.
In this revelation is the realization of the life and freedom of the
spirit. The necessary physical process is not annulled ; this reve
lation brings a divine light to the cpurse and conflict of the physical
world, but it can be only to him that receives it.
And there is no demonstration of the being of the physical world.
If one denies its being, no proof can meet the denial. It is true that
man by the senses — by the physical organs — has a direct per
ception of the physical world, the eye sees, and it is a waste of
thought to carry the subject through metaphysical speculation. But
this does not demonstrate the certainty of the physical world to one
who denies it. Then it is alone the spirit in man that discerns the
things of the spirit. It may be said that one lives and acts on the
assumption of the existence of the physical ; but in a higher degree
it is true that man lives and acts on the assumption of the reality of
the spiritual.

REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 97
only their intellectual degradation, but their moral
debasement and defilement.
It acknowledges the unity and universality that
are elements of the truth ; but these, while they
form the conditions of science, are not the result
of the observation of phenomena, nor the fruit of
research. It also asserts this unity and universal
ity beyond the apprehension of the understand
ing in its cognition of physical phenomena, not as
embraced in the propositions of an abstract knowl
edge, but as attaining their realization through
the reconciliation of all things in the spirit.
This revelation recognizes the facts in the spir
itual life of man. It does not here and now assume
in any moment the final determination of them, but
it does not evade nor ignore them. In the course
of the historical life of the world, the sin and the
righteousness and the judgment of the world are
facts. The world will not lose the conviction of
them. It may make the study of its universities
exclusively the physical process, until at last its
study of the political life of man, of which once
Aristotle and Hegel were masters, becomes the
study of the physics of politics. Then the names
in its memorial halls become only the record of
molecular combinations, which in a disturbance of
forces indicated, in the necessary and resultant
process, certain ethical phenomena, but which are
to disappear, leaving no wrack behind, when the
earth is cold at its centre, and motion ceases with
7

98 THE REVELATION OF GOD.
the equalization of temperature.1 This revelation
avoids and rejects no facts in the spiritual con
dition of the world. It recognizes the slavery
and the emergence from slavery through the re
demption of man. It bears the burden of a sor
row which is illumined by no light of earth, but
is sustained by a joy in the midst of sorrow which
no gloom of earth can quench.
In science as the knowledge of the process of
the physical world, there is a discovery, — in that
form a revelation of that which is actual, and
science in its furthest advance becomes the
stronger ally of this revelation of God. The
contest of each is with vice and crime, with the
manias and fevers that shatter men, with the
slavery of the world, and the forces which tend
to the division and degradation of humanity.
1 It is the recent school of physical science that undermines
the postulates of science, when, consistently with its position, it
draws men within the immediate observation and induction which
it alone allows. Mr. Clifford, who brought to the physical school
a clear intelligence and a sincerity that did not evade its conclu
sions, says, "If we were to travel forward as we have traveled
backward in time, and consider things as falling together, we
should come to a central mass, all in one piece, which would send
out waves of heat through a perfectly empty ether, and gradually
cool down. As this mass got cool, it would be deprived of all life
and motion. But that conclusion, like the one that we discussed
about the beginning of the world, is one which we have no right
whatever to rest upon. It depends upon the same assumption: that
the laws of geometry and mechanics are exactly and absolutely
true, and that they will continue exactly and absolutely true for
ever and ever. Such an assumption we have no right whatever
to make." (Clifford, Lectures and Essays, vol. i. p. 224.)

REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 99
This revelation comes to man with the assump
tion that he can know the truth, and that his
destination is freedom. It apprehends him not
simply as an individual, but in the attainment of
the knowledge and realization of the universal.
It passes beyond that conception which in the
postulates of the physical world restricts his whole
being to physical conditions, determining in its
optimism and pessimism the theoretical equivalent
of this whole.
In the progress of humanity there is the ampler
revelation, the clearer recognition, of the eternal,
and the realization of it in truth and freedom. As
there may be an increase in the knowledge of the
elements and conditions of a physical process, so
there may be an advancing knowledge of spirit
ual life and relations. There has been no nation,
but in the beginnings of its history there was the
consciousness of a relation to a world which it
did not conquer with its swords, and whose fruits
it did not gather in its barns nor exchange in
its markets. There has been none which, in the
greater periods of its history, did not recognize
ends whose worth had no estimate in material
values, and in the crises of its history did not call
for an effort for which its economists could find
no rate of compensation in the wages of labor.
In this revelation there is the manifestation
and realization of the divine reconciliation. In

100 THE REVELATION OF GOD.
this revelation God passes judgment upon things
finite, and in their relation with things infinite.
The ultimate criteria of judgment are brought to
the knowledge of man.
This revelation does not thus come to man in
the assertion of a dominion over him. It is light
that brings life, and the germination of freedom
and its energies. S. Paul writes : It is not that
we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers
of your joy, for by faith ye stand. It has been
said that submission to authority is a counterfeit
of faith, and the witness to this revelation is
not external to it, but is borne within it.
This revelation alone can satisfy humanity. It
is vain to say, when one reads the pages of the lit
erature of the world through the courses of its
history, and in its higher forms, the pages of
Aristotle and Kant or of iEschylus and Shake
speare, that man does not care for God, nor that
he will loose himself from all thought of him or
of a relation to him, or that he will hold his life
wholly within the limitations of the finite. The
life of man has not its perfect satisfaction in the
finite. It will not rest in a detachment from
relations to the infinite, nor in the assumption that
God is an unknown.
This revelation gives its character to the work

REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 101
of those who come with a message to men. They
are to bring that which has been given them to
bring. They are not to impose on it the limits
of their own notions, but to take heed lest their
own notions may mingle with it. It is not sim
ply their own private stock in which they deal.
It is not to be held in their own dole, but as they
receive freely, they are to give freely. They are
not the constabulary of the truth, but the heralds
of it. They are not the ministers of religion, but
the messengers of God.
In the revelation of God, his manifestation is
limited, though it be a self-limitation, by the
forms through which the revelation is made ; as
it may be said of light that shines in the dark
that the darkness comprehends it not. In the
physical process, as there can be no manifestation
of the will in its freedom, there can be no reve
lation of beauty which is not in transient forms ;
there can be no revelation of that which is eth
ical, except in types that derive their significance
from the interpretation that man may give to
them, or the uses that he may derive from them.
Thus art can only take these types and forms of
nature, and employ them in the expression of its
own ideal. It works in them with the creative
imagination, and this gives its dignity to art,
though man, in the work of the creative imagi
nation, while recognizing the profusion of these

102 THE REVELATION OF GOD.
types in nature, is conscious of the limitation of
the material through which he himself works.
The revelation of the spirit and to the spirit
is not within the limitation of finite forms. It
is not limited to the things that are visible.
This revelation is not, then, simply relative, as
if determined in external conditions. The truth
consists with the consciousness of truth in man,
the reason with the reason, the righteousness with
the righteousness, in man.
All that God is he imparts, he reveals : he
does not disguise himself that man may not know
the absolute beauty ; he does not withdraw him
self that man may not know the absolute good
ness ; he does not conceal himself that man may
not know the absolute truth.
This revelation is not simply an incident in
the life of man, as a moment in the limitations
of time ; it is of the knowledge of the eternal ;
it is continuous ; it is a revelation through ex
perience and through history ; it is in us ; it is
from God, it is of the Christ, it is the life of the
Spirit.

CHAPTER V.
THE REVELATION OF GOD IN THE CHRIST.
The revelation of God is in the person of the
Christ. It is as a person that God is revealed to the
world. There is the manifestation of God in the Christ.
This revelation is not in any intellectual or his
torical form ; nor in any form or order external to
man. It is not in a system or a series of propositions,
in which an abstract truth is presented to man
for the assent of his judgment, and on which his
faith is to rest ; nor is it in a process of thought
through which man is to advance, as in the se
quence of logic ; nor in an isolated event in some
detached epoch of history, which is thus made
other than the common process of history ; nor in
an abstract law, as a code, that with a body of
statutes is promulgated for the government of
man; nor in the formulas of a system of ethics
which is to shape the conduct of man.
This revelation is not in a life that is external
to God, or external to man : it is in a life that
is in relation with God and in relation with man ;

104 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST.
it is in a life that is one with God and one with
man. It is a revelation of a life that is continuously
one with God and one with man, in the heavenlies,
to use the terms which are simplest and deepest,
and are brought by an apostle into the common
life of men. It is not one with God and one with
man, as an incident in the circumstance of a finite
condition. It is not thus determined by the limit
ations and subject to the measures of time and
space. There is in the revelation in the Christ the
manifestation of the consciousness of perfect unity
with God. This consciousness is the witness to
the reality. This unity with God is not simply
the product of consciousness, but is the reality,
and has its evidence in the consciousness. The
Christ manifests the consciousness of that unity
with God, in which he was one with God before
the world was, and that unity was maintained
without being broken in and through the world.
There is the consciousness also of perfect unity
with man. This had its process and realization in
the human consciousness : this is the product of
the human consciousness. It is a unity that is re
vealed as in the will of God before the world was;
it is a unity that was manifested and maintained
without being broken in and through the world.
But this human consciousness of perfect unity

ABRAHAM AND THE CHRIST. 105
with humanity was realized through a historical
and in an ethical process in the world, while the
very ground of that ethical process was the con
sciousness of perfect unity with God.
There is the perfect revelation of God in the
Christ. It is in this Jesus of Nazareth, one who
could say, before Abraham was, I am; it is in
one who could say, in the manifestation of an eter
nal life to men, and now, O Father, glorify thou
me with thine own self, with the glory which I had
with thee before the world was ; and again, Father,
I will that they also whom thou hast given me be
with me where I am ; that they may behold my
glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovedst
me before the foundation of the world.
Thenceforth in his own life in the world, and
through the human consciousness, there was the
perfect realization of unity with humanity.
The Son of God became the Son of man. This
denotes the perfect relation to God, — the perfect
oneness with the Father and perfect oneness with
humanity. It is the perfect and perfected rela
tion of humanity with God which is the ground
and condition" of the fulfillment of the life of hu
manity. This name — the Son of man — does
not indicate the mere incident of a life in cer
tain human relations, in a certain place and time,
as in the circumstance of the life of the indi-

106 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST.
vidual. It is not thus measured, nor is it thus
detached and circumscribed. It indicates a life in
relations that are realized and fulfilled through
the perfected human life of the Christ on earth
in his oneness with humanity. It indicates a life
that is continuous and organic. It is a life that is
not simply finite, and does not end in death, which
in itself is the finite in continuing, although
changed, finite relations. There is through death
the recognition of the infinite. The power given
to the Christ has its continuous working toward its
realization in the life of humanity. Thenceforth
one has passed into the heavens who has a con
tinuing relation with man, who is the brother of
man, who sits at the right hand of the Father.
This term — the Son of man — is not thus the
merely repeated phrase of an oriental form of
thought, to appear with monotonous and unmean
ing recurrence as the mere transcript of an earlier
writer ; it has here other and larger uses.
It denotes his own personal life, his life on
the earth ; and it denotes also his life in his one
ness with humanity. It denotes a relation with
humanity which is personal and universal. It is
the real and continuous union and relation — the
spiritual relation of the Christ with humanity.
Thus, for instance, this expression in the af
firmation of a universal principle, and again of a
divine life, is given in the words, the Son of
man is Lord of the sabbath.

HUMAN LIFE. 107
The term is used of him in his own life, in
words that reflect the strange contrast of the
life of man on this earth with every other form
of life in the world of nature ; the foxes have
holes, and the birds of the air have nests ; but the
Son of man hath not where to lay his head.
It is used again of his own suffering with men,
and with the suffering of men, and in the vision
of things to come, and in contrast with an indi
vidual advancement that looks for a separate ex
altation ; the Son of man must suffer many things,
and be rejected of the priests and the elders and
the scribes, and be slain ; and again, let these
sayings sink deep into your ears : for the Son of
man shall be delivered into the hands of men.
But they understood not this saying : then there
arose a reasoning among them, which of them
should be greatest, and Jesus, perceiving the thought
of their heart, took a child, and set him by him,
and said unto them, Whosoever shall receive this
child in my name receiveth me, and whosoever
shall receive me receiveth him that sent me.1
1 " With more confidence and earnestness I would hold fast those
creeds and that catechism which the men of progress tell us that we
must sacrifice to the interests of a general humanity. For the sake of
that general humanity, — because I believe it is in danger of being
utterly trampled upon, or of becoming a trumpery name which has
no reality answering to it, — I would keep those treasures which
have been intrusted to us. I can believe in a general, in a univer
sal humanity, while I believe in Jesus Christ our Lord, who was
born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was cruci
fied, dead, and buried, descended into hell, rose again the third day,

108 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST.
The Christ entered into the common life of
men, and again made this the assertion of a uni
versal principle ; the Son of man is come eating
and drinking ; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous
man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and
sinners! but wisdom is justified of all her chil
dren. The term — the coming of the Son of man —
is used of his relations with humanity, that did not
terminate with his existence on earth, but had a
more perfect fulfillment. It describes the advent
of the days of humanity ; the night is far spent,
and the dominations that crush the spirits of men
are being overcome and overthrown, and judgment
is manifested. It is a day of judgment, and the
might is manifest of truth and righteousness and
freedom. This is the divine life that is given to
men, — the coming of the Son of man.
The Christ charged the disciples, as they went
from the mount of Transfiguration, tell the vision
to no man, until the Son of man be risen again
from the dead ; and again, when they persecute
sitteth at the right hand of God, and shall come again to judge the
quick and the dead. I can assert that humanity in the very terms o£
the creed, against those who would separate believers from the rest
of human beings, — who would exalt the sect of Christians against
the race which the Church of Christ, which Christ himself, represents.
But if I am deprived of this faith, the word humanity expresses
either an ideal which has never been realized, or else a sentiment
confined to a few fine people, or else the aggregate of all the sin and
suffering which is scattered over the world." (Maurice, Sermons,
vol. ii. p. 48.)

THE ADVENT. 109
you in this city, flee into another ; for verily I say
unto you, ye shall not have gone over the cities
of Israel till the Son of man be come. It was
an event that was to take place in their day.
The Christ says again, if any man shall say unto
you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not;
if they shall say unto you, behold he is in the
desert, go not forth; behold he is in the secret
chambers, believe it not: for as the lightning
cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the
west, so shall also the coming of the Son of
man be.
The days and years shall come and go, but this
coming is not the mere sequence of time. It is
not the evolution of forces determined in a
merely finite process. It shall be as the tide of
life sweeps on with its mingled change. It shall
blend with the varying circumstance of life. The
illustration of it may be drawn from the mythical
or the actual incident of history, and it may in
dicate only that traditional knowledge of histor
ical events of a formal character which belonged
to the contemporary conditions of human life ; but
it becomes the illustration of a universal principle
that is to have its perfect realization. The words
are verified in the most recent ages, in the ex
perience of men and nations, that they become no
more the figure of a remote imagery in history :
as the days of Noe, so shall also the coming of
the Son of man be ; for as in the days that were

110 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST.
before the flood, they were eating and drinking^
marrying and giving in marriage, and knew not
until the flood came and took them all away ; so
shall also the coming of the Son of man be. It
does not need the verification of a remote age ; it
is verified. It is to come as the world fares on
with its toil and traffic, through its secular days :
likewise also as it was in the days of Lot ; they did
eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted,
they builded ; but the same day that Lot went out
of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone : even thus
shall it be in the day when the Son of man is re
vealed. The same term is used of the future, as it shall
come to his disciples ; and he said unto his dis
ciples, the time shall come when ye shall desire to
see one of the days of the Son of man, and shall
not see it.
The Christ, as the close of his existence on
earth approaches, and his suffering and death are
near, in answer to his accusers, asserts that exal
tation of humanity that was to the elders and the
chief priests and the scribes the deepest offense ;
the elders and the chief priests and the scribes
came together, and led him into their council, say
ing, Art thou the Christ ? Tell us. And he said,
If I tell you, ye will not believe. Hereafter shall
the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power
of God. This is the exaltation which the Christ,

THE ADVENT. HI
through the suffering and death of man on this
earth, has wrought for humanity. This is the
power that is given to humanity. The Son of
God became the Son of man, that man might be
raised to the life of the Son of God.
The advent of the Christ, the coming of the
Son of man, is not thus a short and isolated event
in history, to be followed by ages and crises in hu
man experience in which he is detached from it,
and then to bring history to its close with the re
currence of the same event at a more remote
time. The Christ is revealed.1 The Christ the Son
of man has come ; he may be always coming ; he
is to come. The coming may be in the passing
away of that which is old ; in the doom of some
inhuman system, as that of slavery, which has
bound up with destruction the life of the family
and the nation, and through some holy war, and
in the ordination of society in the family and the
nation upon enduring foundations ; but — it will
come to men as they follow their fortunes, as they
buy and sell, and build and plant, though it may
1 " We may admit that when our Lord says, In such an hour as ye
think not the Son of man comelh, he gives us all and more than all
the warning respecting the hour of death which preachers have ever
drawn out of his words. We may conceive ourselves to be under a
law of selfishness, and may act as though we had no ties and rela
tionships to those around us: to each death, as any event, may be a
coming of the Son of man, to pass into a region where we cannot
escape that divine law of love which binds man and man, which
binds earth and heaven together." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. i. p.
12.)

112 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST.
come with the confounding of their schemes, and
with the disturbance of their theories, and with
disaster to the plans they have framed. Know
this, that if the good man of the house had known
in what watch the thief would come, he woidd have
watched, and would not have suffered his house
to be broken up ; therefore, be ye also ready, for
in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man
cometh. But the courses and crises in the experience
of men and nations, as they pass, bring but an
imperfect apprehension of the coming of the Son
of man. It may with time become deeper, as
there comes breaking through the years the rev
elation of the life of humanity with the Christ,
— the glorified life of humanity, the appearing of
the Son of man, who sits at the right hand of
God. The coming of the Son of man is thus always at
hand ; it is a constant motive to duty. It diverts
the thought of men from the apathy and dread of
a fatalism in which the world fares on, and from
following here and there after the signs and sig
nals of the crises that may be. It does not ad
journ the thoughts of men to some remote date,
some distant season, in which one shall come in
the guise of a king, in certain external relations,
to judge and rule the earth. It is represented
to those in that age, and in every age, as an event
for which they are to be ready, which may come

THE ADVENT. 113
suddenly. It does not allow delay. The world
may be concerned with that which is visible ; and
systems which divide and degrade men may pre
vail ; and the force of fashion or of money, the
idols of the avenue and the market, may be the
object of worship in the streets of the city, so that
men seek to win their prizes and to be counted in
their companies; and tyrannies may chain down
the spirits of men, and sects ride over them, and
parties may count them as their own, to buy and
sell ; and lies seem stronger than the truth ; and
darkness may cover the land, so as to lead many
of the very elect to fall away and not vainly may
the words be spoken, when the Son of man com-
eth, shall he find faith on the earth ? and yet —
that darkness is not to quench hope, nor shut the
thoughts of men within the clouds that sweep the
closing horizon of earth ; in such an hour as ye
think not, the Son of man cometh.
The coming of the Son of man is in judgment
on the powers which enslave and degrade man,
and in the manifestation of righteousness, in the
crises in the life of humanity, from which there
comes forth a renewed life, in the revelation of
the divine and eternal foundations of life.1 It is
1 " One of these great acts of retribution stood out before the
apostles as the coming of the Son of man in their day. It gathered
up into itself all the history of the previous world; it inaugurated
the history of the new world.
" The destruction of the temple was to be the sign of the Son
of man." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. i. p. 10.)
8

114 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST.
the triumph of righteousness in the manifestation
of truth and freedom, which is not the product of
the soil and climate of this earth, and is not re
solved in its analysis into chemical combinations,
and has not its glory in the grass that withereth
and flower that fadeth, nor in the colors that em
purple the skies, nor in the winds that sweep the
fields of ocean. It has a divine strength through
the Son of God, who brings to it that glory which
he had with the Father, before the world was, —
the glory of the Son of man, who sitteth at the
right hand of God}
Through the death of the Christ the limit of
the finite is passed in the realization of an infinite
life, and the isolation and separation of death, for
humanity, is overcome. In the vision that passed
before him when the hour of the powers of dark
ness was approaching, and he was accused and re
jected of the elders and scribes and chief priests,
and was to be slain as a malefactor on this earth,
he said ; hereafter shall ye see the Son of man
sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in
the clouds of heaven. In this way, S. John the
Divine says of that life in that timeless aeon, no
1 " The Christ says, Verily, 1 say unto you, there be some stand
ing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man
coming in his kingdom. The downfall of the exclusive nation was
therefore an authentic testimony that a kingdom was established,
which, however little the rulers of the earth might confess it,
could have no meaner title than t\as,the kingdom of the Son of man."
(Maurice, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 141.)

THE ADVENT. 115
man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that
came down from heaven, the Son of man, which
is in heaven.
The Christ thenceforth in the real and spiritual
life of men is always present ; it is the voice of
one who saith, / am he that liveth and was dead,
and behold I am alive forevermore.
The Son of God becomes the Son of man, that
man may be brought into the Sonship of God.
The revelation of God in the Christ, his mani
festation in the world, is as a person. In the
Christ there was the perfect realization of person
ality, the self-determined One, in the Will that
was one with the Infinite, with the righteous
Father. There is in personality an element that is indi
vidual, but this subsists with finite conditions and
relations ; it goes on with the inception and cir
cumstance of a physical process on the earth.
There is in personality an element of unity and
of universality ; the realization of personality in
men in its advance is thus towards the universal.
There is in personality an element that is rela
tive. This relation for a person with a person is
not and cannot be simply formal. It is a relation
that is not thus between persons, but in persons.
It is not, therefore, the immediate relation which
exists between simple externals, nor can its media
tion be simply external.

116 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST.
There was in the Christ the highest and fullest
assertion of personality. It comes out, not alone
in the words with others, call no man master ;
and again, i" call you not servants, but friends ;
it is in the words, there standeth one among you
who is greater than the temple. But beyond these
come the words, / am the light of the world ; and
again, I know whence I come and whither I go ;
and again, I am the way, the truth, and the life;
and again, I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men unto me}
But this expression of personality is never apart
from its relations. If he treads these heights of
personality with perfect repose, he is not alone on
them, nor lifted beyond the world. His words
are, / am in the Father, and the Father in me ;
and again, I and the Father are one. And this
realization of personality is not a relation for
himself alone, but for humanity ; it is being for
1 " Through this strait gate of absolute trust in the Eternal God
as a Father, when the evidence of events, the denials of men, the
anguish of his spirit, contradicted the faith that he was a Son at
all, — through this strait gate of absolute denial of his right to have
anything and be anything apart from his Father he passed.
" Through this strait gate he was moving on to that life which he
had with the Father before the worlds were. But in another sense
he was moving to a new life, the life of manhood, which he had
redeemed and reconciled. If the love of God could have been con
tent with anything less than this redemption and reconciliation,
with anything less than the imparting to men the full rights and
condition of Sons of God, the Word would not have been made
flesh; the life on earth which the evangelists set forth to us would
not have been lived." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 292.)

THE ADVENT. 117
another, in the fulfillment of being for self. That
which he affirms of himself he affirms of those
with him : as thou, Father, art in me, and I in
Thee, that they may be one in us.1 The perfect
revelation of God must be in personality, for in
self-determination, in truth to self, there is being
for another, and in this relation, being for self,
the perfect self-realization, which is the realization
of the ethical life.
The relation of the Christ to God, of the Son
to the Father, is perfect. This relation to God
becomes then, in humanity, the foundation and
condition of the realization of the human person
ality, which has its strength in its relation to God.
It is not subject to accident, nor determined by
the limitations of the finite, but recognizes its ex
istence in the economy of an infinite wisdom and
love. It is in man the life of the spirit, the life
of freedom, which subsists in relations with God.
Thus, from the communion in human relations
with the higher personality, there is strength
1 " He is one who, because he claims to be the Son of God, abjures
all separate authority. He is one with the Father; therefore he
can do nothing of himself. He will not make the stones bread ;
that would be a denial of his Sonship. His countenance becomes
changed, for the Father's brightness shines through it. The agony
of the cross is the sense of separation from the Father. Into the
Father's hands he commends his spirit. The Magdalene is to tell
his disciples that he is about to ascend to his Father and their
Father, to his God and their God." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii.
p. 290.)

118 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST.
and freedom. Thus, for a family and for a na
tion, the very names of those who are greatest,
as Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, as Washington
and Jackson and Lincoln, even in their human
associations, become a source of strength and free
dom. Their character becomes a power in the
life of a people. But we are conscious how im
perfect the attainment was and is here and now ;
and how often, in relation with men of the highest
attainment, this freedom is imperfectly realized;
and how with the highest it may be impaired ;
but it is not so with the relation of men with the
Christ and in God.
This must be the very type of personality, as
the one and the universal, that is perfect in the
consciousness of its own self-determination and
freedom, and perfect in the consciousness of its
relation to God. The beginnings of life are in
these relations ; S. Paul says, your life is hid with
Christ in God.
The life of Jesus in its individual characteris
tics, and in its situation on this earth, was a life
subject to finite conditions and relations. In these
limitations, it was a life in the secular process of
the history of the world. It is the subject of
biography. This name, this domestic and tribal lineage, the
scene and sphere of circumstance, the time and
place, are of a transient character, and have the

THE ADVENT. 119
interest only of that which is transient. The
occupation and the age are the accident of life.
The date of his birth, the site of the town in
which he was born, of the tavern in which he was
a guest, of the chamber in which he partook of
the supper with his disciples, of the sepulchre in
which he was laid, may be no more known. It is
still only some human association that turns to
them, and is not to be satisfied.
The fact which is apparent through them is
that he became man, that he was born into the
life of men. S. John says, the Word was made
flesh, and dwelt among us. That he was born in
destitute circumstance, that he died in the form
of death provided by an imperial power for the
offense of a slave, that his birth was in a house
which he or his fathers did not own, that he
was laid in a sepulchre which he or his fathers
did not own, are the incidents which have been
recorded in his life. This life was the com
mon life of all men. His relations were with a
common humanity. There was the realization
of the historic life of man on this earth. S. Paul
says, He took upon him the form of a servant, and
was made in the likeness of men: and being found
in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and be
came obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross. There is no incident to isolate him from the
common life of men, and no circumstance which

120 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST.
has the character of an external distinction.
There is no event to which there can attach any
tradition of external power or pomp. It is in no
formal relation and circumstance that he appears
in the human offices of a Prophet and Priest and
King. There is for him no graduation, no ordi
nation, no coronation, of this earth. It is the
manifestation of the power of a King, but not one
who would establish a dominion over men ; of a
Prophet, but not one who would impose upon
human thought the systems of a school; of a
Priest, but the sacrifice he offers is no fruit of time,
and he stands before no altar that is built by men.
He calls no man to a temple that shall be de
stroyed. The Christ says, destroy this temple, and
in three days I will raise it up ; but he spake of
the temple of his body. His own person was the
temple in which God would meet man, and man
might meet God.
There is thus no trace in the character of Jesus
that is special and exclusive in its individual and
tribal qualities. The distinction based on a line of
physical descent, as a child of the family of Abra
ham, or of the tribe of Judah, is always set aside.
There was not in his life, or in the fulfillment of
his work on the earth, that which brought him
into identity in its separate character with a cer
tain race or country. The life which he lived
was the universal life.

PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING. 121
This Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of history.
This Jesus is the Christ of the Church, the
Christ of man, who, being before the world was,
and coming into the world, came unto his own.
There has often been a contrast drawn between
Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of history. The
one, for instance, has been regarded as an actual
person, and the other as an abstract and unreal
ized ideal. The one has been represented as a
life of definite circumstance, and the other as in
definite and the construction of the imagination.
But the Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of his
tory. There is not only a perfect identity, but
the character, the life of Jesus, has, in the Christ,
its perfect realization. The one is involved in the
other. This actual life, this human life under hu
man conditions, is presumed in the Christ of his
tory ; and so also this fulfilled life, which is yet
always in its fulfillment, this eternal life which is
given unto men, is predicated in the actual life of
Jesus of Nazareth.
This Jesus the Christ does not continue in the
external relation with men, which denotes an indi
vidual life, subject to the conditions of time and
space and their limitations. The close of that
earthly life, through death, was the coming of the
Spirit ; and he who is one with the Spirit and one
with humanity, enters through the Spirit into the
life of humanity.
The Christ of history is the coming and mani-

122 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST.
festation of the Son of man. There is the reali
zation of his oneness with humanity and in his
power, the power of the Son of man, who is seated
at the right hand of God. The Christ of history
in the historic life, the real life of humanity, is
therefore invested with power, and is glorified.
This Jesus the Christ is one with the Father in
that relation which he had with the Father before
the world was, and one with the Spirit, who pro
ceeds from the Father and the Son.
This Jesus the Christ is one in whom the heav
ens are opened and the vision is fulfilled ; hereafter
shall ye see heaven open, and the angels of God
ascending and descending upon the Son of man.
In him is the eternal life. It is a continuous life,
and in it death is overcome. The earthly life
cannot be separated from the heavenly, nor the
humiliation from the glorification ; the conflict is
one with us and the victory, the passion and the
peace of God.
There are some recent phases of thought which
ask an apologetic notice.
It is said that this Jesus of Nazareth came,
through the influence of the tendencies of his
times, and through reflection, to apprehend the
idea of the Christ which was prevalent as some
abstraction in the age, and then assumed the char
acter to himself, and then, by the force of circum
stances, was compelled to sustain the position

THE INCARNATION. 123
which he had assumed. It is said that to this was
added the impulse of religion and the devotion
of a religious nature.
But there was not thus the apprehension of
some abstract idea, and the effort to conform to it ;
nor was personality so empty and freedom so im
paired as such subjection to external circumstance
would involve ; nor is the relation which he man
ifested to the will of God, and his fulfillment of it,
to be construed as a subjection to the transient
circumstance of an earthly condition. There was
prevalent the hope and faith often confused, but
never wholly lost, which was expressed by the
woman of Samaria and in the confession of S.
Peter, that the Christ was to come ; but that di
vine apprehension and realization which was in
his life was rejected utterly in his own generation,
and has been but slowly and imperfectly appre
hended through the succeeding centuries. It was
not only rejected in his generation, but alone, and
yet not alone, he passed through death.
It is not, again, that he in an imperfect way as
sumed the character, and that his friends together
worked it out in an imaginative reconstruction.
The mythical element, if it be allowed in the liter
ature of the subject, consists only with the traces
of certain circumstances, and does not in the main
concern the actual, and still less the ethical, devel
opment. And there is no note of imaginative
power, and no representation of an abstract ideal,

124 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST.
such as occupies the representative imagination.
It is not, again, that in that age, or in the succeed
ing ages, the historical character is clothed with
certain qualities by the representative imagina
tion, and thus, apart from the real, is idealized and
lifted to its exaltation through the abstract imagi
nation.1 It is not the expression of an individual ideal, but
it is the manifestation of a life and in relations,
and it has not its end as an individual ideal in be
ing by self. The Christ says, i" came to do the will
of him that sent me ; and again, 1" can do nothing
alone ; and again, / have finished the work that
thou gavest me to do. It does not borrow its ex
altation from an abstract ideal, but its exaltation
is in its own perfect realization. It is beyond the
power of the representative imagination, and that
does not contribute an element to it. It is not the
incorporation of an individual ideal, and that
would avoid the element which is constant in it
in its relation to God and to humanity. And this
abstraction of the imagination which this theory
projects is not the life of the Spirit.
It is said that this is a life which did not
1 " If the Christ of the church is an ideal being, it was Jesus who
made the ideal. The ideal in him is simply the result of that disen
gagement from the earthly vestiture which death and distance work
in all who live in history. A perfect portrait presents the charac
teristic mode, not the temporary accidents, the fallings-off, the van-
ishings, of the person portrayed." (Hedge, Ways of the Spirit,
p. 338.)

THE INCARNATION. 125
recognize a system of economy, and this is as
sumed to be the formal system of a recent school ;
and again that it did not contribute to the critical
culture of art. But, slightly to notice this, this
was not its aim or end. It was to set forth that
which is at the foundation of every human life.
And in the life of the spirit there is no element of
grace or truth that art can mould or thought
inform, and no substantial attainment of human
ity in individual or social economy, in which the
power of this life may not be manifest.
There has been a recent controversy as to the
ethical motive of the Christ ; for instance, was it
faithfulness to an ideal ;, or conformity to a princi
ple of righteousness ; or enthusiasm for humanity ?
There was the realization of the truth ; and the
recognition of righteousness; and love for man;
but there was not a separate motive thus alone or
primarily, and an ethical motive was not thus ex
ternal to him. There was the manifestation of a
relation to humanity that was deeper than any
external motive, as an enthusiasm for humanity.
The motive was in the will and love that was be
fore the world was. He came to manifest himself
to the world. He came to fulfill himself in the
world. The coming of the Son of God, the incarnation,
was not simply physical, a manifestation of exter-

126 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST.
nal power, as that which has been so often assumed
in history.1 S. John says, the Word was made
flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.
It was ethical and organic ; and it was not ethical
in a formal way, but in the realization of person
ality ; and it was not simply in an individual way,
but in the life that was given for man, and became
the life of humanity.2
There is a tendency to recognize the coming of
the Christ simply in its external manifestation, in
history, and to look to his coming again in a for
mal external manifestation. This is unspiritual.
It occupies the mind with an incident of history,
and in a detached way. It tends to dwell upon
the incident and circumstance of the life of Jesus.
1 " The Christ says, run not hither and thither ; the kingdom of
God is within you. Many others were honored as divine messen
gers or as divinities. For instance, statues were erected among
the Greeks to Demetrius Poliorcites as to a god, and the Roman
emperors were honored as gods. So there have been incarnations
conceived, as Buddha, Hercules. But the history of Christ is his
tory for the community, and has the witness of the spirit in the
life of faith. Thus it is maintained in a spiritual way, and not
by external power." (Hegel, Philosophie der Religion, vol. ii.
p. 321.)
2 " This notion that the divine is only the apotheosis of the hu
man, not its ground, — that a man is to become a god by thinking
himself one, — this philosophical reproduction of all that has been
most corrupt, most superstitious, in the world's history, is at once
the natural reaction against a theology which takes account only of
man's depravity, and the natural deduction from a theology which
begins from man instead of from God." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. i.
p. 345.)

THE INCARNATION. 127
It is regressive, and does not apprehend his real
presence, nor his life and coming in the world.
S. Paul says, though I have known Christ after the
flesh, henceforth know I him no more.
The Christ in his humanity and in his relation
to humanity is manifested as the head of the
human race, in its real and eternal life.1 We are
members one of another, but we are related in
him ; and this is the ground, and thence is the man
ifestation of the ethical life and relations of hu
manity. The relation of humanity is not simply
a physical relation, and through lines of physical
descent.2 There is a physical relation, and there
1 This is the truth that underlies one of the most profound and
affecting doctrines of philosophy, the doctrine of reminiscence in
Plato. It is the consciousness, however dimly apprehended, that
the soul has of its origin and relations. This has been made the
subject of one of the most impressive works of this age, the Ode
on the Intimations of Immortality of Wordsworth.
" Christ was the new head of the human nature. Christ is the
second Adam, the real unfigurate bead of the human body. He
suffered death as a partaker of that life which was under the law
of death, and rose again with a new life. In the person of Christ
risen, then, we see God in fellowship with our nature, — even with
us." (Erskine, Memoirs, p. 115.)
2 ' ' Men found continually that the further they went down into
themselves the more there was of corruption and darkness and
evil, till at last they supposed the very root of their being was
nothing else. S. Paul had gone down into these depths; he had
found this rottenness; in himself he says he found only that. But
he discovered that there was a root below himself, a true divin6
root, for himself and every man. He found that each man, when
he tries to contemplate himself apart from Christ, is that evil crea
ture in which no good dwells. But no man, so he teaches, has a

128 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST.
is also a spiritual relation. Through the physical
condition there is the evidence that there is no
ground for the monistic representation of man.
The ethical relation of man is that which gives to
social law and the development of history an
element that is universal. The Christ is revealed
as the true and eternal head of the human race.
It is the life of the Spirit ; for that which is made is
physical and determined through forms and with
component elements, but that which is spiritual is
given to men ; it is, in the profound words, begot
ten, not made. S. Paul says, the first man is of
the earth, earthy : the second man is the Lord from
heaven : and as we have borne the image of the
earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heav
enly. The Christ is not the prefigurate, but the
real, head of humanity. Thus, in history, the law
which he has given becomes increasingly the law
of the life of humanity, and the expression of its re
lations. S. Paul says, / would have you know that
the head of every man is Christ. This is the life
which is brought to light ; in him was life ; and the
life was the light of men.
The Trinity denotes, as a term, the revelation of
God in himself, and in his relation to humanity.
There is thus in the Trinity the assertion of the
right to contemplate himself apart from Christ; God does not so
contemplate him. He was formed at first in the Divine Word ;
in him he lives and has his being still." (Maurice, Sermons,
vol. i. p. 108.)

THE TRINITY. 129
unity of God ; but it is not an abstract unity, a
unity in which there is no foundation for rela
tions. It is not an isolation.
The term has necessarily the suggestion of
formulas and systems, and with the profoundest
significance it is apart from and alien to the form
of expression of the Scriptures and the worship of
the Church, and has no intimation of the fullness
that is in the words, the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit.1
It contains no suggestion of the words of the
Christ; of those of whom he said, as thou hast sent
me into the world, even so have I also sent them
into the world. Holy Father, keep through thine
own name those whom thou hast given me, that
1 This term, the Trinity, must submit to the defect which attaches
to nearly all terms which from common uses are brought to the uses
of a strict metempiricism. Its defect is that it brings out the mere
quandary of the practical understanding, the numeration as in an
arithmetical note of three and one. But this is not to be regarded
when the term comes to be considered strictly as a symbol. These
terms, in their derivative uses, are of more value in the Greek than
in the Latin schools. The reason for this is both literal and histori
cal. Mr. Maine has some important notes on the use of these terms
in the Latin schools. {Ancient Law, p. 80.) " The term Trinity is
a hieroglyph." (Fisher, Faith and Rationalism, p. 55.) Dr. Fisher
has references to Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Newman, in illustration of
this subject. See S. Augustine, De Trinitate, ii. 12.
" The Council of Nicaea, which declared the union of God
with man, is one of the most important assemblies that was ever
convened on this earth; it dates a new era in the history of human
thought. God in actual contact with man — God in man and man
in God — is the underlying idea of the Athanasian dogma, which
asserts that the Son is consubstantial with the Father." (Hedge,
Ways of the Spirit, p. 352.)
9

130 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST.
they may be one as we are. I in them and thou in
me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that
the world may know that thou hast sent me, and
hast loved them as thou hast loved me.
In the Christ, the Son of God who becomes the
Son of man, there is the revelation of him who is
one with the Father, who, being one with the
Father, became one with man, and through him
humanity is brought into relation with God ; and
there is the manifestation of the Father with the
Son, and there is the coming of the Spirit, that
the life of humanity becomes henceforth the life
of the Spirit.
The Christ Jesus of Nazareth says, with words
that could have no justification in a merely physical
process of history ; it is better for you that I go
away, and the Spirit of truth shall come ; he will
guide you into all truth, and he shall not speak
of himself but whatsoever he shall hear that shall
he speak ; he shall glorify me, for he shall receive
of mine and show it unto you.
That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, be
comes the fact of history. It is his departure that
is the coming of the Spirit and the life of the
Spirit : the life which has not its precedent nor its
tradition in a physical development ; the life which
is not merely an object of the acquisition of the
intellect ; the life which is not variable nor tran
sient, with subjection to the limitations of time

THE TRINITY. 131
and space, which does not return to mingle with
the dust, nor yield to corruption; the life which is
eternal. The relation of the Christ with humanity has an
organic character, which does not exist alone in
the relations of an external history, and passes
beyond the limitations of the finite, in the life of
the spirit. There was a repose and a knowledge
of things to come that was not of this earth in
the words ; it is better for you that I go away.
The voice that again broke the silence was not of
this earth ; Lo, I am with you alway, even unto
the end of the world.
This going away was his coming again in the
realization of infinite and eternal relations, in the
life of the spirit. If the Christ had remained con
tinuously on the earth, it would have been neces
sarily in an external relation, a relation limited by
time and space. It is the fact of his going away,
and thenceforth the coming of the Spirit, in the
real life, the immortal life, of men, that becomes
the evidence of the divine presence and the divine
character, and thence transfers the evidence to
history. It is here that the skepticism of men is
to meet it. It will not be found by running to and
fro, and vainly they may listen to voices that say
lo here and lo there. It will not verify itself by
external pageants. It will verify itself through
the life of the Spirit in the history of the world;
and as the skepticism of men must meet it there,

132 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST.
so the faith of men shall there have its strength,
and thence shall come the sources of an undying
life. He says, if any man confess me before men,
him will I also confess before the face of my
Father in heaven}
That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, has
henceforth the evidence of the Spirit.
There is henceforth the life of the spirit. This
is the life that now is and is to come. This is the
life of truth and freedom ; in this man overcomes
the world ; the fruition of it is righteousness and
peace and joy.
There is henceforth the conviction of the world.
There is henceforth the realization of the king
dom of heaven on the earth.
There is henceforth the redemptive life of hu
manity. There is the life in which death is overcome, —
the life of the spirit.
1 The question which the contemporaries of the Christ asked has
been repeated in other ages, and by many in this age, " What sign
showest thou unto us ? " The most significant fact in that age for
those who asked this question, then, was the destruction of the
temple, and the coming with the new testament of that spirit
which dwelt in men. S. John says, the Jews said unto him, What
sign showest thou unto us ? Jesus said unto them, Destroy this temple,
and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and
six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou raise it up in three
days f But he spake of the temple of his body.

CHAPTER VI.
THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
There is through the world the conviction of
sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. The course
of the sin of the world is in its alienation and
separation from God, and consequent variance and
strife. This condition, which appears in the man
ifold forms of rebelhon, of envy, of division, of
violence, is a constant fact in the history of the
world. In this separation from God is the want of
unity and reconciliation and peace. In this, is
the source of those false theories of dualism which
always involve fatalism, and against which the
spirit of man, in its aim toward unity, contends
with unconquerable energies. In this, man's life
becomes one with nature in its continuous course,
but does not rise above it. It is simply an animal
existence. It is one with nature as the other of
God. In this, there is no freedom. There is no
recognition of the ground of unity and reconcilia
tion, as it is found through the mediation of the
spirit. Sin is the alienation of man from God and from
humanity, through the assertion of the law of self
ishness as the final law of human action. S. Paul

134 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
says, sin is the transgression of the law. It is a
transgression by man of the law which is the law
of his own being, — the law of God and of hu
manity. It involves a variance from the relations
of men in their true and normal development, and
from the moral constitution of the world, and con
sequent injury and consciousness of guilt. Sin
consists in following ways that are wrong, as in
a wrong world, and in rejecting or refusing the
recognition of a law or life of righteousness.
Through it the will is unfree,1 and is brought into
subjection to that which is external, and injury
may be done to others in their relations in life.
In sin there is the defect and the defeat of per
sonality. It is a malady by which hurt is done
1 " From the internal point of view there are rudiments and sur
vivals in the mind which are to be excluded from that me, whose
free action tends to progress; that baneful strife which lurketh inborn
in us is the foe of freedom : this let not a man stir up, but avoid and
flee." (Clifford, Lectures and Essays, vol. ii. p. 250.) This is pre
sented not only as the result of experience, but as the resultant of
the knowledge of human nature derived from observation. There
can be in one way no more clear and incisive description of human
sin. The phrase, which will hold its place on historical grounds, as
descriptive of those forces which hinder from action that me, is the
bondage of sin. Whatever may be our theories, the science of the
ology asks no more than to be supplied with these postulates ; and it
may hold that something deeper, yes, diviner in that me, may be
traced beneath rudiments and survivals; and still sin is alien to man,
as it is an alienation from God, and that baneful strife which is a foe
to freedom, which man is to avoid and flee, is another conflict than
the struggle for existence on this earth, and out of it is that freedom
wrought, which is fulfilled in a life that does not have its consumma
tion in death:

OF SIN. 135
to man, and is the disruption of the normal re
lations of society. The true development of man
is thwarted. Sin is involved with ignorance in a world of
finite conditions. Sin is incident to this imperfect
condition and development, in which man may
rise above the mere courses of an animal exist
ence, through the mediation of the spirit, and evil
may be overcome through conflict ; and this pres
ent evil world is brought into reconciliation with
God through the spirit ; and this divided world is
stayed in the centre of its unity in God; and
peace is attained in the recognition and the fulfill
ment of the will of God.
In sin there is the isolation of the individual ;
self is an object of action, not in truth for self, —
for in truth for self, there is the realization and
recognition of a relation to God and to humanity,
— but in being with self, the mere living of a
man unto himself, the assertion of a law of sel
fishness. Thus the words are verified, —
" This above all, to thine own self be true;
And it must follow as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
There is in the sequence of the physical process
the isolation that is death. In death there is iso
lation, and an extinction of being in the relations
of life, and an effacement of structural forms in
which these relations had their continuance in
the process of the physical world. S. Paul says,
the sting of death is sin.

136 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
It is this separation in death against which the
spirit in man protests, and this isolation of death
from which the heart of man shrinks, with forebod
ings of dread and gloom. There is in death also
the apparent limitation of man to the physical
process of the world, and entire subjection to that
process.1 It is through disease and death in the
physical process that there is the prostration of
man. The science of man recognizes these facts,
which appear in forms of disease and death, and
as involving not merely deflection from the type,
but in the individual the extinction of the type ;
it is not simply a replacement in the evolution
of forms, but it is displacement. The inference
from the physical process in its limitations is that
disease, with its pain and anguish, is to be appre
hended as normal. Man can ascertain, in the
widest range of observation, no period in which
disease, with pain and anguish, has not existed
through identical forms of life, and, inferentially,
none in which it will not exist. He can indicate
no period in which disease, with pain and anguish
and death, will disappear, and no type of physical
organization with which it will disappear. And
, 1 It is true, in the profound words of Spinoza, that the free man
thinks of nothing less than of death, — homo liber de nulla re minus
quam de morte cogitat ; but this is true because freedom has an in
finite quality, and is not measured in the limitations of the finite;
and in freedom man is raised above the mere limitations of the
finite. But the school of physical science does not know this, and
cannot admit this, without the rejection of its own assumptions.
The facts concerning death are within the range of its observation.

OF SIN. 137
this evolution may have shortly or remotely a
devolution, — this gradation may become a degra
dation. There is in sin the subjection of man, as there is
subjection in the physical process to death. The
spirit of man recognizes the fact that sin is priva
tive and positive, but it is not positive in the
sense of affirmation of being ; it is external and
spiritual, but it is not spiritual in the sense of the
recognition or realization of life. Sin is the bond
age, the slavery of men. The freedom of man
fails of its reaHzation, and man becomes the slave
of sin.
Sin is common, and is not restricted to a certain
individual or a tribe ; it attaches to the race ; it
refers to each individual, to each family and na
tion, and through it their strength and freedom
are impaired. Through sin the life of each is de
flected from its real end, and perverted from that
consistence which is in truth to self ; and its action,
when its self-determination, that is, its freedom, is
gone, becomes wayward and weak, as of one that
is lost. The fact of human sin is recognized by the con
science and the consciousness of men and nations.
It has its evidence in their history. There has
been no greatness in men or in nations, in Greece
or in Rome, that achieved a complete exemption
from this consciousness. It is attested in the lit
erature of the world, and most clearly in its high-

138 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
est forms, as in the Odyssey of Homer, the JEneid.
of Vergil, in iEschylus and Shakespeare.1
And when once the conscience and the con
sciousness of men has awakened to the sense of
sin, with discord and death, there comes for it no
obliteration. There is found in the changes of
place and time no river of oblivion. When once
it has been aroused, —
" Nor poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday."
And as there is here no power that can bring to
the conscience the effacement of sin? so there is in
the physical process no power to overcome and
destroy death. Nature says, It is not in me ; she
brings forth, in the same indifference, life and
death; she weaves of the same texture the wed
ding garment and the shroud. And natural soci
ety says, It is not in me ; she has obtained the
occupancy of no land where, through avarice and
j^ 1 " Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
Fool'd by those rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay ?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend ?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?
Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store ;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross j
Within be fed, without be rich no more :
So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,
And death once dead, there 's no more dying then."
(Shakespeare, Sonnets, cxlvi.)

OF SIN. 139
violence, she has not consumed the lives of her
children ; she has the records of no age that is ex
empt from the follies and crimes and wars of men.
The fact of sin is recognized, by the struggle for
survival in the conditions of life ; by the variance
from the ideal in the secular succession of things
in men and nations ; by the civil procedure and
institutions of society ; by the language of men,
which may be held as representative, not of its
lower, but of its common condition. That in lan
guage there is retrospectively a discovery of man
to himself, and that this civil procedure is in the
institution of a moral order is simply the evidence
of tendencies and forces that are brought to act
in conflict with evil.
Sin is the transgression of the law, the law of
being, in which one wrongeth his own life. It
is followed by evil. This is indicated in the civil
order of society, which has not alone a positive,
but a substantial ethical ground. Crime is pun
ished. This punishment is the manifestation of
the crime. This illustrates the conviction which
increasingly follows sin.
Sin is the contradiction of life. In sin man is,
himself, in contradiction with all that really is.
It is not only the subversion of energy, but it be
comes the identification with the unreal. It is the
movement of an empty masquerade. The actor
says in that awful tragedy, —
" I 'gin to be aweary o' the sun."

140 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
This, in human experience, is the unreality of sin,
that, in the gathering night yet discerns through
the baleful shadows, its own discord. This be
comes its intolerable burden and its ceaseless tor
ment ; in the fable, it was the whip of scorpions.
Sin is unreal ; — it is the contradiction of life ;
but in the consciousness of its contradiction there
is the evidence of a deeper unity, in which it may
be overcome, and of the ground of its obliteration.
There may be a root of righteousness of life that
is deeper than the root of evil. Though it be not
our discovery, it may be discovered to us. The
conviction of sin may come with the conviction of
righteousness and with the discrimination of evil,
in the judgment, that is, the coming of the light.
The Christ says of the coming of the Spirit,
And when he is come he will convince the world of
sin, of righteousness, and of judgment : of sin, be
cause they believe not on me ; of righteousness, be
cause I go to my Father, and ye see me no more ;
of judgment, because the prince of this world is
judged. There is the manifestation of God in the ethical
order of the world. There is the manifestation of
the will in the assertion of law, in the fulfillment
of righteousness, and in the realization of free
dom.
j The ethical process of the world is in the de
velopment of the family and the nation. In this

OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 141
there is the maintenance of relations, and the in
stitution of rights and the acknowledgment of du
ties in which freedom is realized. Through the
conscious life of men and of nations there is the
recognition and the realization of righteousness and
freedom. The ethical process of the world is the fulfill
ment of the life of humanity. The degradation
of man is overcome, and men are lifted above a
brutal condition, with its ignorance and servility.
It raises man above the existence which is merely
animal, the situation which has its satisfaction
through the acquisition of enough for its animal
desires. This revelation is of a God of righteousness,
who will establish righteousness on the earth.
The law of righteousness is to have its vindication
in the relations of men. This has in history its
constant assertion. It is borne on in one contin
uous strain, with voices of joy that proclaim the
assurance of deliverance, as in the exultant an
them of a mighty nation, and voices that are
tremulous with the burden of woe : Righteousness
exalteth a nation ; and again, in the way of right
eousness is life ; as the whirlwind passeth, so is the
wicked no more, but the righteous is an everlast
ing foundation. The same ethical expression is
in the opening services of the Church: when the
wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that
he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful

142 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
and right, he shall save his soul alive. The very
word righteousness is a constant term of the Old
Testament, 0 ye that love the eternal, see that ye
hate the thing that is evil ! to him that ordereth his
conduct right shall be shown the salvation of God.1
It is repeated with no limit in its universal signifi
cance, all flesh shall know that I am thy Saviour
and thy Redeemer. It is blended with the vision
of its transcendent hopes ; this is the name where
by he shall be called, the Lord our righteousness.
The highest reward is for him that loveth right
eousness and hateth iniquity.
The assertion and recognition of righteousness
is in and through the conscience. The conscience
is not alone the expression of an external and for
mal law, although the affirmation of the con
science may be in an external and formal law;
it is in a law which is involved in the being and
freedom of personality — I, I ought.2
1 " The word righteousness is the master word of the Old Testa
ment. Keep judgment and do righteousness ! Cease to do evil, learn to
do well A sentence which sums up the New Testament, and as
signs the ground on which the Christian church stands, is this : Let
every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." (Ar
nold, Literature and Dogma, ch. i. 2.)
2 "He who, wearied or stricken in the fight with the powers of
darkness, asks himself in a solitary place, ' Is it all for nothing ? Shall
we, indeed, be overthrown ? ' he does find something which may jus
tify that thought. In such a moment of utter sincerity, when a man
has bared his own soul before the immensities and eternities, a pres
ence in which his own poor personality is shriveled into nothing
ness, arises within him, and says as plainly as words can say, ' I am
with thee, and I am greater than thou." (Clifford, Lectures and

OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 143
The revelation of God is in the fulfillment of
righteousness and the realization of freedom. In
righteousness and freedom is the assertion and
realization of personality.
The conscience of man presumes the being of
God ; it presumes a righteous being. There can
be no adequate apprehension of conscience, nor
explanation of the facts of conscience, — to con
sist with the facts given in the human conscious
ness, — that does not imply the being of God, and
his relation to man.
The conclusions of conscience are not simply
the result of certain physical processes and condi
tions, and determined by the application through
them of some law or standard of convenience or
use. The principle of right or of righteousness has
not its origin in a physical process, which in trans
mitted lines of descent allows no real freedom,
and is determined only by immediate considera
tions of advantage or disadvantage.
It has not its origin in customs, as a usage which
might be wholly different in different conditions,
nor requires from men only a conformity to prev-
Essays, vol. ii. p. 242.) It may not concern one what name, of many
names, is given to this presence, if it be not a mere word for which
there is no reality, and if it be not merely identified with the ephem
eral life of humanity; if it be a presence in and with personality;
and if the personality of man be not brought to nothingness, but
lifted up, from among the things which pass into nothingness, into
strength and freedom.

144 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
alent customs as those, for instance, of a tribal or
racial character.
It has not its origin in a simple intuition, for it
presumes that which is the object of intuition;
and while there may be a certain intuitive appre
hension of righteousness, yet it is more often
brought to the knowledge of men through reflect
ive lines of thought.
It has not its origin in considerations of utility,
as the relative advantage or disadvantage of cer
tain courses of action as tending to promote an in
dividual or tribal welfare.
And yet there is a truth involved in each of
these notions, for a principle of righteousness is
recognized in that custom, which men with the
advance of a civil polity respect, as a ground of
customary right and of common law ; and it may
be apprehended by the intuition of thought ; and
it may be ascertained through experience and trial
with the sequent issues of good and evil in the
process of society.1
1 " Marriage was an institution far older than the law. It was
not the creation of the law.
" The morality of the Pharisees proceeded upon the forgetf ulness
of this principle. They looked upon penal laws not as presuming
obligations, but as the foundation of them." (Maurice, Sermons, vol.
ii. p. 350.)
Mi Clifford has a theory of morality: " This theory is the theory
of the tribal self, or the partly inherited partly acquired sense of
what the good of your clan requires, which must often be at war with
what your own individual pleasure seems to require, — the conflict
representing the emergence of conscience." See Lectures and Es
says, vol. ii. p. 113. This is a fact in human nature, which any theory

OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 145
The principle of righteousness is absolute ; it is
immutable ; it is universal.
This principle is involved in the realization of
the life of the family and the nation. It is not
within their option to determine whether it shall
or shall not be. It had not its origin in the asser
tion of any individual or collection of individual
men, and it cannot be annulled by them. It is
the source of stability, —
" The most ancient heavens
Through thee, are fresh and strong."
That there is a course and constitution of human
nature, that there is an ethical process involved in
the relations of men, that righteousness has for
its consequence life and freedom, that unright
eousness has its consequence in the detriment of
life and subversion of freedom, — this is the evi
dence of the presence of a righteous being in the
ethical process of the world.
of the evolution or education of the world does not affect. But is
this conflict of the whole and the individual, or of the tribal self and
the separate self, always to go on; and if in the sacrifice of the in
dividual self there be an element of virtue, may there not be, in the
old words, a divine or eternal law or ground of sacrifice, deeper than
the mere contingent conflict of one man and a group of men ; and in
this process of virtue, with the " emergence of conscience," does a
man become a mere underling or is there a higher realization of the
individual self, — the me, — as through this process it rises to the
universal, and is there thus the way to a perfect reconciliation? This
fact, of the deepest import, has its perfect vindication and justifica
tion in the Christian ethics, and involves elements other than a mere
impulse, toward " an end in which we are all to be swept away in
the final ruin of the earth." 10

146 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
There is a revelation in righteousness of the
being of God to the world. This revelation is to
and through the conscience and the consciousness
of men.
This is not an abstract righteousness, nor a for
mal freedom. There is in personality the highest
energy ; the assertion of that energy is in freedom.
, The energy which works in freedom is, through
conflict, in the realization of personality. But this
is not, as in the struggle for existence in the phys
ical process, the struggle of one against another,
with the resultant survival of one by another, but
the struggle where each, in their relations, is for
another, and each in the realization of righteous
ness and freedom is for all.
This righteousness in its assertion and realiza
tion is more and other than a retributive or dis
tributive justice, which is the postulate of the
schemes of a formal theology : its revelation be
comes in the unity of the ethical process and life
the consistence of truth and goodness and beauty,
and the ground of faith and hope and love in hu
manity. It does not allow that ethical incongruity
which has for its postulate a conflict of justice and
love, that requires a formal and external recon
ciliation. The perfect manifestation of righteousness is in
the person of the Christ. The law of righteous
ness is not abstract; — it is manifested in the real
ization of personality, and in the life and relations

OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 147
of men in the world. It is in a life in which there
is the consciousness of perfect unity with God
and perfect unity with man, and which becomes
in itself the perfect realization of the truth.
The life of Jesus the Christ was not simply a
sinless life, with the negative quality, that it was
without sin. It was that, but it was of a positive
ethical quality. It was not alone the representa
tion, the mere bodying forth of a perfect ethical
character, a phenomena of excellence, a simular
of virtue, but it was the manifestation of a life in
the realization of a perfect righteousness in per
fect unity with man. It was a life that was
wrought through the trial of earth, in the real
ization of righteousness. It was a real conflict and
a real victory.
In the life of the Christ there was the fulfill
ment of the law. The Christ says, / came not to
destroy, but to fulfill the law. The apostle says,
it became him to fulfill all righteousness}
1 " The gospel perfects, fulfills, completes the law. The lawgiver
who deals with acts says: Thou shalt not kill. The king who speaks
to the heart says, Thou shalt not be angry with thy brother without cause.
The lawgiver who deals with acts says : Thou shalt not commit adul
tery. The king over the spirit who speaks to the heart says, Thou
shalt not look upon a woman to lust after her.
" The gospel is therefore, from the foundation, necessary as the
law itself to the perfect development of humanity.
" Jesus could raise the standard of human morality in opposition
to the inhuman standard which the Pharisee set up, because he was
himself the Son of man ; because he came to declare, and in his own
person to manifest, the truth that God and man are not divided, but

148 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
It does not take away one jot from the law.
It does not abrogate the commandment; it is to
exceed the righteousness of the scribe and Phar
isee. It does not annul the principle of an eye
for an eye, — it retains it, but it transmutes it ;
it retains the law, — it does not render it void,
it transmutes it. It is raised to the conception
of a spiritual ethic. It becomes not simply the
observance, but the fulfillment, of the law. It is
no longer external and formal as the discipline of
a school master, as of those of old time. It is not
simply the precedent of the scribe nor the maxim
of the Pharisee.1 It is spiritual, and is to become
the law of the life and freedom of the spirit. It
is no longer simply a command, thou shalt and
thou shalt not, although this persists, but it adds
and further, thou shalt love ; and it comes to the
individual as existing in divine relations, and in
an ethical life in which the goodness of man is one
in its quality with the goodness of God, be ye per
fect, even as your Father which is in heaven is
perfect; as the divine forgiveness is a rescript of
our forgiveness, forgive us our trespasses as we
eternally united; because, therefore, that which is truly human must
answer to that which is truly divine." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii.
p. 350.)
1 " We do not know our duties apart from our relations, and the
knowledge of our relations helps us to the performance as well as the
knowledge of our duties." (Erskine, Memoirs, p. 344.) " I Know
no ground for the relationships among men but their common rela
tion to God." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. i. p. 15.)

OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 149
forgive those that trespass against us. It is not a
local nor an exclusive morality, but it is a univer
sal morality ; — that ye may be the children of your
Father which is in heaven ; for he maketh his sun
to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth
rain on the just and on the unjust}
The ethical principle has in every form a con
stant affirmation. It is the law of judgment and
of life. The Christ says, if thou wilt enter into
life, keep the commandments ; and again, if ye love
me ye will keep my commandments. S. Paul says,
be not deceived ; God is not mocked ; for whatso
ever a man soweth that shall he also reap ; for he
1 " The morality of the gospel, because it proposes to man only
the highest standard, lays less burden upon him than any other. The
Christ teaches us that the burden is not in the straitness of the law,
but in ourselves ; that a law, every law, human or divine, must be
weak through the flesh; that so long as we are merely trying to obey
a rule we shall find that rule a burden; that when we claim our
rights as new men, as created in Him to good works, as children of
a Father in heaven, we become united with Him from whom laws
proceed. Obedience to them is recognized as part of our constitu
tion; disobedience is the unnatural, miserable state.
" If this morality of the Christ is not casuistical morality, still less
is it rhetorical morality. The rhetorician exalts virtues, as if they
were characteristic of certain favored persons whom it is his calling
to praise; denounces vices, as if none could have fallen into them
but those whom it is his calling to vituperate. Our Lord speaks of
the highest virtues which any man has ever practiced as being re
semblances to the Father in heaven, who has made all men in his
image; who has redeemed all in Christ, that they may be renewed
in his image. Our Lord treats all vices which the law condemns
as lying close to every man, as being the consequences of inclina
tions to which no man is a stranger." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii.
p. 343.)

150 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap cor
ruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of
the Spirit reap life everlasting. The law is univer
sal ; whatever be the schemes or theories of men,
it is continuous and invariable. It is not annulled
through faith, but through faith there may come
a deeper knowledge of its reality, — of that cor
ruption which shall say unto the grave, Thou art
my mother ! and of that life which is unto the
spirit, and of the spirit shall reap life everlasting.
But the law is invariable, as a man soweth so
shall his reaping be.
The revelation of God and of his righteousness
is in the judgment of the world. It is the judg
ment of men and of nations.
This judgment is the revelation of light. It is
a day of judgment ; it is the day of the Lord as
the prophet saw it; it is the day of the coming
of the Son of man.
It is a judgment of righteousness. It is not an
event ; it is a crisis. It is not retired to a remote
past ; it is not adjourned to a more remote future..
It is a judgment whose hour is not thus known to
those to whom it comes, in the crises of human
existence. It is not merely an event in the se
quence of affairs, — it is a judgment with the
discrimination of good and evil and the issue of
righteousness. It is not of one day or one age
alone ; it is here and now. The Christ says, now

OF JUDGMENT. 151
is the judgment of this world; and in that tran
scendent vision, I beheld Satan as lightning fall
from heaven.
This judgment is an object of desire. The pa
tience with which the forces of wrong and fraud,
the evil of the world, is endured is with the con
viction that a day of doom shall come. The
prayer thus has always been, Arise, 0 Lord, and
judge the earth. Through the ages it has been
repeated, Let the earth rejoice, for he cometh in
righteousness to judge the world, and the people
with his truth.1
The man of affairs, the statesman whose ethical
conception does not consist with the material sys
tems and commercial theories of recent schools,
has said that what he dreaded for his land was
not the day of judgment, but the day of no judg
ment. This judgment is itself grounded on the princi
ple which it makes known ; that human life has
not its origin nor its completeness in the limita
tions of a physical process ; that we live in infinite
relations. This day, — this day of the coming of
the Son of man, has another dawn than that which
1 " We may be wont to divide the advent for mercy from the ad
vent for judgment, by an intervening tract of ages. In the prophets
they are brought together. The apostle refers to Jesus the words
of the prophet whom the Church has called the Prophet of the Ad
vent, a bruised reed shall he not break, till he send forth judgment unto
victory, and in his name shall the Gentiles trust." (Maurice, Sermons,
vol. iii. p. 2.)

152 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
breaks in the eastern sky, and another close than
that which belongs to the hours marked by the
swing of the pendulum. For men and nations
there are courses which have no measure in the
finite : they have an infinite import and reality.
There are paths of spiritual death and life, the
righteous enter into eternal life, and the wicked
into eternal punishment.
This judgment is not formed simply in the dis
tribution and transmission of things that are seen.
It does not find the issues of the actions of men
only within the limits of a physical process, and as
affecting a life concluded in that process, but it is
a judgment which regards human action as hav
ing a spiritual character, and therefore an eternal
significance. This judgment is not, therefore, subject to finite
limitations. It is not the exclusive incident of a
certain time and a certain locality. The Christ
says they that are in their graves shall come forth,
— they that have done good to the resurrection of
life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection
of judgment ; — and this is the evidence of the
character and continuation of ethical conditions.
This judgment is in the hour that cometh and
now is, but it is not limited to the present, and it
does not detach the future from the present.
There is in evil always a foreboding of judgment
to come ; there is a doom which sin bears within
itself ; there is a looking for of judgment. This

OF JUDGMENT. 153
judgment, in the distinction and manifestation of
righteousness and wickedness, is real and ethical
and eternal.
This judgment has its precedent in and is
involved with the revelation of God to the world.
The Christ says, this is the judgment, that light
is come into the world, and men loved darkness
rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
This judgment of the world is constant ; it is
continuous. It may come as in other days, as the
world fares on, as men are eating and drinking
and planting and building, claiming dominion over
this earth. It may come with the close of one
age and the beginning of another age. It may be
with the end of an old world and the beginning of
a new world. The disciples ask the Christ when
the end shall be, when shall come the end of that
age, and the appearing of the Son of man. The
Christ, in the description of this judgment, with
words that are awful in their imagery and in the
burden that they bear, says to them, this genera
tion shall not pass away, till all these things be
fulfilled. The words are not indeterminate, but,
— as if they were difficult to apprehend, and their
sense was to be perverted in some duplicity of
thought, and the notions of men which prevailed
were to be maintained as the substitute for them,
»— they are preceded by the most simple illustra
tion drawn from nature, and they are followed by
the most awful affirmation : learn now a parable

154 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
of the fig tree : when his branch is yet tender, and
putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh ;
so, likewise, when ye shall see all these things, know
that it is near, even at the doors. Verily, I say
unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all
these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall
pass away, but my words shall not pass away. It
was to come in a day and an hour that no man
knew. It was not merely an incident of time, but
its issues were eternal. It was to concern, not
only the exclusive nation, but all nations. It was
to come to that age and that generation, but it
might come in every age and to every generation.
It was a judgment by a person ; it was not a
judgment subject to a formal law, with the adjudi
cation of a tribunal of formal process. It was the
judgment of One who on this earth, and in the
changes of its history, had lived in the conflict
and the overcoming of evil and in the manifesta
tion of the truth.
This judgment has a strict ethical import ; it
has no other import. It is not on formal lines
which are the prescriptions of men, and from
which the condition of men and nations is deter
mined. It allows no phrases current with religious
conventions ; it is not a distinction of the religious
and the irreligious, with the various conceptions at
tached to these terms. It is a judgment in right
eousness; the righteous shall inherit eternal life, the
wicked shall go into eternal punishment.

OF JUDGMENT. 155
The law of the judgment of the world is that
which is manifest in the coming of the Son of
man. The law is in the coming of the Son of
man, as it is for every generation in the trial and
conflict of humanity. The Christ says, I was an
hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty,
and ye gave me drink ; I was a stranger, and
ye took me in ; I was sick, and ye visited me ;
I was in prison, and ye came unto me. If the
words call out surprise, and it may be suffer
rejection as the law of the divine judgment, with
the inquiry, when saw we thee an hungered, and
when saw we thee in prison ? the answer is, inas
much as ye have done it unto one of the least of
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
This judgment is universal. It is for every
generation ; there is no exemption. It is not the
application of a law for which some substitute
may be allowed. For those who have done good
and faithful service, who have striven for right
eousness, for the life of humanity, there is an en
trance into the joy which was His in the sorrow
and contradiction of earth, — the joy that trans
figured the suffering and death of this earth, Well
done, good and faithful servant : enter thou into the
joy of thy Lord.
This judgment is universal, for it is in the
coming of the Son of man. Its symbolism indi
cates the glory with which humanity is invested, in
the coming of the Son of man.

156 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
This judgment, in its ethical import, in its law
of the oneness of the Christ with humanity, and
in its realization in the life of humanity, is beyond
the conceptions of the religious imagination. That
has portrayed a judgment which is a remote and
isolated scene. It is to be a high court where all
are convened at its tribunal. There are scenic
descriptions of this judgment, as in the writings of
Josephus and through the wide ranges of oriental
religious literature. It is remanded to a remote
future. It is transposed beyond the confines of
earth and the vulgar scenes which mark this
bank and shoal of time. It is the precedent to
an abode of happiness and an abode of misery,
which are adjusted in contiguity to it. Then this
life is defined as the emptiness, and the life be
yond as the fullness of desire. Its law is only
that of reversals and reprisals. It becomes, then,
through the imagination, apprehended only as an
event of strangeness, and is resolved into pictures
and images. It is in its distant outline an object
of vague and undefined dread. It is an event for
which time may bring evasions. The removal of
this judgment to a remote future, beyond them
and their generation, heightens its appeal to the
imagination, while it brings indifference to the
conscience. It becomes a ground of apathy in the
ethical life of men. But when this judgment is
apprehended in its real and spiritual import, as
near and at the very door, as the judgment of

OF JUDGMENT. 157
truth, then the conscience cannot be set at rest by
any theories or dreams, nor by the undefined an
ticipations of evasion or delay.
The issues of this judgment have an eternal sig
nificance. The word seonian may denote an indef
inite term of finite duration. But it does not as
sume that the judgment of this world is simply in
finite terms, or that man is thus regarded simply
as existing in finite relations. It has another
quality ; it has an infinite significance ; it is not
measured in material proportions. The conse
quence of righteousness and of every righteous
action is in eternal life ; and the consequence of
wickedness and of every wicked action is in eter
nal death. Thus there is never in the conflict of
an ethical life exemption from the consequences of
evil. That these issues are not detached from the
actual condition of man, and that they are not
transferred to some remote date, has its evidence
in the conscience and the consciousness of men.
In the ancient symbol it is written of the se
quences of sin, In the day that thou eatest thereof,
thou shalt surely die. S. Paul says, the law of
death has passed upon all men; and again, the
wages of sin is death. The Christ says, he that
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me
shall never die.
There is thus a deeper significance than is meas
ured in the abstract definitions of a formal logic,

158 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
in the words : the things which are seen are tem
poral; but the things which are not seen are eter
nal. S. Paul nowhere says the things which are
present are temporal, and the things which are
future are eternal. This notion does not consist
with his words, nor with the necessary conclusions
of thought. Its postulate is in the assumption of
the antithesis of the human and the divine ; that
the human is lower and the divine upper; that
the temporal is present and the eternal is future ;
that the finite is here and the infinite is there. It
does correspond with the prevalent notions of re
ligious schemes. It becomes the ground of their
detraction of the life of humanity. It accords also
with that exclusive temper to which the religious
mind tenaciously clings in its apprehension of the
future, and which, as a religious sect, it holds
strongly in the measure of its sectarianism. It
consists further with indifference to the ethical
life, the life of righteousness, and it brings a rid
dance to the conscience of men and nations of the
sequences of their unrighteousness, and of their
breaking of the commandments of God, whose ful
fillment is the life of humanity, by the transposi
tion of these consequences to a remote future. It
brings an illusive security, when the punishment
of wickedness and the recompense of righteousness
should have a stronger assertion. That the words
themselves at last become emptied of all meaning
by the religious schools and by the physical schools

OF JUDGMENT. 159
furnishes only another illustration of that law of
the spiritual and divine ethic : from him that hath
not, shall be taken away even that which he hath.
The Christ answers his disciples : The disciples
came and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto
them in parables ? He answered and said unto
them, Because it is given unto you to know the mys
teries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is
not given. For whosoever hath to him shall be
given, and he shall have more abundantly ; but
whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away
even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in
parables ; because they seeing see not ; and hearing
they hear not, neither do they understand. And
in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias which
saith, By hearing ye shall hear and shall not under
stand ; and seeing ye shall see and shall not per
ceive : for this people's heart is waxed gross, and
their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they
have closed ; lest at any time they should see with
their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should
understand with their hearts, and should be con
verted, and I should heal them; but blessed are
your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.
For verily I say unto you, that many prophets and
righteous men have desired to see those things
which ye see, and have not seen them, and to hear
those things which ye hear, and have not heard
them. The eternal is the name of God ; its meaning is

160 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
more than with no beginning and no ending. The
name of God is not thus summed up in negations ;
these do not constitute his eternity. S. John
says, this is eternal life, to know thee, the only
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
It is a spiritual life, a life not dependent on nor
determined by things visible, but in relation with
the Father and the Son, in fellowship with the
Holy Spirit.
The separation from the light and the knowl
edge of God, the rejection of all relation to him
and to humanity in him, involves eternal death.
But in this separation man is not left in abandon
ment ; the wrath of God follows and abides on any
man who continues in sin, not on man as in a con
dition of necessity, where a dualistic development
is realized and no unity can be attained, and
where his doom is irrevocable, that no redemptive
power or grace can abate it, but the wrath of God
continues and abides on man because he is re
lated to God. It were woe for man, if, left with
sin, no judgment followed him.
The consequence of wickedness is eternal pun
ishment, and this is the assertion of an immutable
principle. The punishment is eternal. But to
identify this with an irrevocable doom is to set a
finite limit to the divine redemption and to its per
fect realization. It brings a section of the human
race into an ultimate condition of fate, and not of
freedom. The spiritual law is eternal, but not the

OF JUDGMENT. 161
necessary continuance in sin of one child of earth
and time.
The words in which the Christ says to his dis
ciples that this judgment shall be pronounced, in
the coming of the Son of man, — Come, ye blessed
of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world, — are divested of
their meaning when they are separated from the
words which complete them, which assert the law
of this judgment in the oneness of the Christ with
humanity. And the words, Depart from me, ye
cursed, into eternal fire, prepared for the devil and
his angels, when they are severed from this law,
and are pronounced as the realization of a final
dualism and an utter fatalism, with their trans
position into the far hereafter, are dismissed, as
there is no response in the life of humanity. The
words, then, which should express the awful con
demnation of sin and of every sin became weak
and broken, and the whole subject is set aside as
inconsistent with the relations of humanity, in
stead of bringing out the very ground of these re
lations. It is said that if this eternal death, which is the
sequence of sin, has a terminus, then eternal life
may have. But while this holds these terms in
finite measures, and thus empties them of their
real meaning, it may be said that eternal death,
the death of sin, the law which has passed upon
all, has a terminus in the kingdom of the Re-
n

162 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
deemer. And eternal life would have an end if it
did not rest, if life and peace did not rest, in the
will of God and the communion of the Spirit.
This eternal punishment is the manifestation of
sin, for sin has in it the severance of all those rela
tions to God and to man which are eternal in their
foundation. If man did not live in infinite rela
tions there would be no condition of sin.
The sin is here, and the death of sin ; the eternal
punishment is here, and continues with the con
tinuing of sin, and is the actual manifestation of
the nature of sin.
There is in and from God infinite love for
man, and infinite hatred for sin, and this infinite
hatred for sin is the reflex of perfect love. Sin is
in itself destructive of love ; as love is involved in
the relations of men, and love has in itself an ethi
cal quality that involves the hatred of sin. Sin is
in itself destructive of life ; there is in it no ele
ment of unity ; it is subversive of personality. S.
John says, He that believeth hath eternal life ; this
is eternal life, to believe in God. The apostle says,
the life that I live is by faith in the Son of God.
It is not a life determined and concluded by physi
cal limitations and conditions ; it is above the limi
tations of the finite.
In its nature, sin, and every act of sin, has its
sequence in eternal death; and every act unto
righteousness, in the relation of humanity to the
Christ and through him unto God, has its fulfill-

OF JUDGMENT. 163
ment in eternal life. This is invariable; it is a
principle not restricted to other ages and aeons,
to be made manifest only in other worlds. It is
fulfilled now in the Christ, in his kingdom, in the
coming of the kingdom of heaven on earth.
S. John says, now are we passed from death
unto life. This is now. It is not away from
the here and into the hereafter; it is not de
fined by the passage of boundaries, as in spa
tial relations, and by intervals of transition, as
in temporal relations. But in a figurative way it
becomes true, to use the phrase of Erskine, that
man may be in one place in eternal life, and a
rod beyond in eternal death ; or in one hour in
eternal life, and in another hour in eternal death.
This eternal life and eternal death, these infi
nite relations, have become the conditions of the
existence of man.
This eternal life is a life which death does not
touch; for even death itself, which marks most
clearly the sorrows of this finite world, is taken
up and changed. It is a life which is eternal
with God. The Christ says, he that believeth in
me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and
whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never
die. The assertion of the issue of righteousness in
eternal life, and wickedness in eternal punishment,
is the assertion of a principle involved in the eth
ical relations of life, and it is consistent with the
sequence of the redemptive life of the Christ in

164 THE CONVICTION OF THE WORLD.
the world, because the ethical life of man has not
its limitations within the finite. The end of right
eousness is in eternal life, in the redemptive
kingdom, in the coming of the Kingdom of
Heaven.

CHAPTER VII.
THE REVELATION OF HEAVEN TO THE WORLD.
The life which is manifested in the coming of
the Son of God, and has its realization in the
eternal life of man, has also its verification in the
coming of the kingdom of heaven.
The representation of heaven was an unreality,
while still it was invested with the attractions of
that which the eye had seen and the ear had heard,
and it had entered into the heart of man to con
ceive. The words which the Christ repeats are the
kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God. The
gospel is called the gospel of the kingdom, or the
gospel of the kingdom of heaven.
This expression is drawn from the common
political life of men, and refers to historical forces
in the growth of society. It does not imply that a
special sacredness attaches to this form, and this
form has not the relative value which belongs in
the traditions of the Hebrew and Greek and Ro
man life to the republic, but it is simply the com
mon and contemporary form.
It is represented as a kingdom, and has its im
plication in the historical life of the world, but

166 REVELATION OF HEAVEN TO THE WORLD.
it is not measured by any temporal and spatial
conditions in an external order ; it cometh not with
observation. It is not the product of historical
forces, as these forces are limited and defined by
strictly physical conditions. It is not derived from
them. The Christ says, My kingdom is not of
this world. It has a reality which does not
attach to that which has its derivation and ter
mination in the transient forms of the physical
process of the world. It is real ; it is not to suc
ceed an actual, with an empty and abstract ideal,
but in it is the realization of the ideal. It is
not the vague field of visionary thought. It is
not remote, that it should become inaccessible ; it
is open, and it is separated from earth by no ex
ternal limitations, that it should be approached
over measures of distance or tracts of time.1
It is not always before us, as if located in the
hereafter, and ever on and away, and never to be
gained. These are strong words, that stir the heart
with their assurance, the kingdom of heaven suffer-
eth violence, and the violent take it by force. •
This coming of the kingdom of heaven is repre
sented in the same words that describe the coming
1 " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the
heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love
him ; but God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit. The world
of which the apostle speaks is not a future, but a present revelation.
This verse is often quoted, as if the apostle, by the things prepared,
meant the glories of a world to be visible hereafter." (Robertson
Sermons, vol. i. p. 25.)

THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 167
of the Son of man on the earth. The Christ said,
Verily, I say unto you, that there be some of them
that stand here which shall not taste of death, till
they have seen the kingdom of God come with
power. This kingdom, of which the annunciation was
the gospel of the kingdom of heaven, had its
realization in the coming of the Christ in the
life of the Spirit. It came with the power of
the Spirit, that no forces of this earth could
overcome. The Christ says to his disciples,
Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep
and lament, but the world shall rejoice : and ye
shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned
into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath
sorrow because her hour is come ; but as soon as
she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no
more the anguish, for joy that a man is born
into the world. And ye now therefore have sor
row, but I will see you again, and your heart shall
rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. The
perfected man of God was to come, as one who
opens the perfect kingdom of God.
This end, however imperfectly construed in
human society, was the aim of the endeavor of
religion and the speculation of philosophy. In the
latter form, in the construction of philosophy, it
was, however imperfectly conceived, the object of
the republic of Plato and of the city of Aristotle.
The illustrations of this kingdom are not those

168 REVELATION OF HEAVEN TO THE WORLD.
of an abstract character, nor an appeal to the
abstract imagination. It is ethical ; it has no
other description ; it is the kingdom of righteous
ness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.
This kingdom has come, and it may be always
coming ; it is in the realization of righteousness in
the life of humanity. It has come, and it is there
fore no vacant dream ; it is always coming, and it
is therefore to be striven for with the energy and
the endeavor of men.
The signs of the coming of this kingdom are not
those that are to be written upon some distant
skies that sweep around the earth they never
meet. They are not the suggestions of the relig
ious imagination. They are in the restored life of
humanity ; the blind see, and the lame walk, and
the poor have the gospel preached to them. These
are the signs of the coming of the kingdom of
heaven that the evangelists record.
It is a kingdom that asserts and recognizes the
presence of spiritual forces ; it is of and over the
spirits of men. It is in its ethical character to
invest the work and duties of men, in the courses
of time, with its own substantive strength. This
is the ground of the words of S. Paul, for your
citizenship is in heaven.
The relation of this kingdom to the common life
of humanity is set forth in words which have no
parallel : Suffer little children to come unto me, and
forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of

THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 169
heaven. These are words in which science, with
the limitations of physical conditions, can find no
significance. They consist with the assumptions of
no religion, but they are justified to the world,
and they ere words which humanity shall keep in
its heart, until the travail of time is over.
It has been noted that the pagan religious con
ceptions of heaven still prevail, and the thought
and emotion of men are moulded by them. They
determine the conception of this revelation, instead
of being determined by it. The heavens are still
far above us, above this spot which men call earth,
and are carried on and away before us ; they are still
an elysian view ; the happy fields are located in the
future, and the religious imagination invests them
with images of delight ; they are held as some
enchantment, to body forth some ecstatic dream.
The pagan religious conception sets off this world
by a separate boundary from the further confines
of heaven and hell. The infinite spiritual depths
and heights are not real for humanity. It is not
with great, nor even with true, prelusive strains,
but on vacant keys and with unanswering tones,
as the philosophy of agnosticism would taunt us,
that it utters its De Profundis and its In Excelsis.
This pagan conception avoids the words of the
Christ, Behold the kingdom of God is within you.
It says that it is not within you. It says that here
all still is nothingness, and all within is emptiness,
though the Christ has come and the Spirit has

170 REVELATION OF HEAVEN TO THE WORLD.
been given unto men ; and it describes this king
dom as inaccessible, and as always away and be
yond. It brings repose to the conscience and con
fines for the consciousness of men, while it leads
the imagination on with the representation of its
pictorial splendors.
The Christ uses the word heaven, but it is not
the repetition nor the fulfillment of the dream of
the pagan religions. It is not a transportation
nor an emigration from all the relations of human
ity. It is in the most critical passage, which is
the answer to the hope of the world, the expres
sion of the perfect ethic, that the Christ says, The
kingdom of God is within you.
The words of the Christ are the gospel of the
kingdom. The kingdoms of this world become
the kingdom of the Christ. The old is passing
away, but it is not as if lost in some abysm of time,
there shall be new heavens and a new earth, where
in dwelleth righteousness.
But the tribes of men succeed each other, and
the generations go, and the world seems to grow
very old, old beyond all the records upon its scarped
cliffs and worn shores. We trace often some glory
in the past that does not seem to return. It is
no satisfaction to know that it has, in the attrition
of chemical forces, been resolved into the elements.
There comes to us the sense of a glory that has
waned and gone. And again, the signs of prog-

THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 171
ress seem often obscured, and the very texture of
history woven and imbued with the follies and
crimes of men. There seems often the evidence
only of an aimless struggle and strife, with no other
significance than the struggle and the strife, and
that all at last is remerged into the physical ele
ments. We see not yet the glory that shall be. The
indications of the fulfillment of that which kings
and prophets sought seem very far off. We are
subject to death, and we see not yet, in the life of
humanity, the perfect conquest of death : the last
enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
But not alone, in solitary visions, as to the pro-
tomartyr, when in the hour of death surrounded by
fierce and cruel faces, the heavens are opened, to
behold the Son of man sitting at the right hand
of the power of God. The Christ, in his own
perfect and perfected life, overcame death, and has
opened the perfected kingdom of God. In his
oneness with humanity is the ground of the hope
of humanity. We see not now the glory of hu
manity through the conquest of death, but Jesus
has that glory : One in a certain place testified,
saying, What is man that thou art mindful of
him? Thou madest him a little lower than the
angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honor,
and didst set him over the works of thy hands;
thou hast put all things in subjection under his
feet : but now we see not yet all things put un-

172 REVELATION OF HEAVEN TO THE WORLD.
der him ; but we see Jesus, who was made a little
lower than the angels, for the suffering of death,
crowned with glory and honor, that he, by the
grace of God, should taste death for every man.
The kingdom of heaven has come, it is coming,
it is to come. It moves beyond the past and
through the present, and the future rises beyond
the present. The Christ said, among them that
are born of woman, there hath not risen a greater
than John the Baptist ; but he that is least in the
kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
There is a glory that is revealed, and a greater
glory that is yet to be revealed. It leads us forth
and forward, and while the life of man is in no
continuing city, and is among things which do not
abide, it may be with faith and hope and love.
Thus faith and hope and love abide, and they bear
him on, and even when they seem strange in this
physical order, they are justified.

CHAPTER VIE.
THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE WORLD.
The condition in which a child is born, in the
relation of the family and the nation, however
rude and imperfect these relations may be in their
development, in the ethical process of the world,
calls out some elements of faith.
The faith which is the gift and the evocation of
this revelation is involved with the conscience and
the consciousness of men. It has in its source and
process and end an ethical quality.
This faith has not its ground and end in an ab
straction, as a law or a system. It is not a faith
in a proposition or in a series of propositions, and
it has not the necessarily external character that
belongs to them. It is faith in a person, a right
eous person, in whom there is the foundation, and
through whom there is the realization of the life
of humanity. It is faith in one who was before
the world was, and has come into the world in the
fulfillment of righteousness, for the redemption of
the world. This faith is not an effort of man
which is to be received at a relative value, as a
substitute for another effort of man. It is not to
be apprehended as in itself without an ethical

174 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE WORLD.
quality, nor yet to be placed at a higher value
than the ethical process of life. It is not isolated,
but is related to hope and love, and each can but
imperfectly exist without the other.
These have each no merely finite ground and
end, as they rest in one who, being one with God,
became one with man, and whose life was the ful
fillment of righteousness in the life of the world.
This faith is in a righteous person, in whom is
revealed the ground of the life of humanity, and
through him and with him there is righteousness
of life. This is an actual righteousness, and
through faith righteousness is wrought and has
its realization in life.
This is the significance of the justification of
men by faith. It is not a formal act.1 It is not
simply an act of reputation. We are not re
puted to be just through a formal relation, but
we are made, just through an actual relation. It
is not forensic. In its forensic use this word de
notes an acquittal of a charge, and not a remission
of a penalty. It is not the authentication of a
1 " The passion of Christ was not to be the substitute for our per
sonal obedience, but the source of it. To justify is to make, not
simply to account, men just." (Oxenham, The Catholic Doctrine of
the Atonement, p. 86.) " This is not a fictitious righteousness, for
then it would be a fictitious blessedness, but it is a real conformity
to the will of God. In thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be
blessed. God, having raised up his son Jesus, sent him unto you first to
bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities." (Ers-
kine, Memoirs, p. 187.)

RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH. 175
justification in an external way ; it is not a cer
tification of character in an abstract way, with
ethical indifferences. It is not the apprehension of
this proposition by faith. It is, — righteousness
through faith.1
It is of free grace, and of grace unto grace, as
it is given to all, and through faith man is brought
into an immediate relation with the Christ. It
1 " The root of Luther's contention against the ancient theology
lay rather in his substitution of faith in the sense of fiducia, or the
laying hold of the merits of Christ by an act of trust, for the fides
formata, or faith working by love, to which alone the catholic doc
trine ascribes a justifying power." (Oxenham, On the Atonement,
p. 31.) But the strength of the thought of Luther was in his recog
nition of faith, as immediate, in the relation of man with God, in the
relation in Christ; so that it was not, as in external relations, that
any power on earth, or priest or book, should stand between man
and God. There was a profounder conception in the doctrine of
Luther and Calvin, which gave it its strength in working toward the
freedom of men and of nations. Its defect was, when it did not pass
beyond a mere particularism or individualism, nor apprehend its re
lation to sacrifice, and came at last to be regarded as an intellectual
apprehension, the conscious act of a mature intelligence, — the ap
prehension of a system, and the acceptance of this system became
the standard of the faith.
" To merge justification in sacrifice, is the error of the Roman
ist ; to merge sacrifice in justification, is the error of the Protestant."
(Maurice, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 19.) This may indicate, and yet only
in one way, their respective defects. The former failed to appre
hend the immediate relation of man to God, of which it was the wit
ness ; and the latter came to apprehend faith as only the conscious
act of the deliberate mind, which had not its ground in a sacrifice
that was for the sin of the world. Thus it came to be a practical
faith in a proposition or system, the act of a fiduciary, the engage
ment of a constabulary, and the work of its minister was that of one
who holds the gospel, as if it had passed under his chentage, and its
truths were to be distributed at his discretion.

176 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE WORLD.
has not its ground in the imputation of an ex
ternal righteousness, and it has not, therefore, as
its condition, faith in a system or service. It is
the actual implanting of righteousness through re
lation with him, who has taken our nature, and
in whom was the fulfillment of righteousness.
Through faith in a righteous person who, being
one with God, became one with man, in the man
ifestation of perfect righteousness, man is brought
into the righteousness of Christ. It is the way
toward communion with the Christ.
Faith in its influence is retrospective, but more
strictly, in its relation to Him who was and is and
is to come, the words retrospective and prospective
do not apply. It is faith in another ; it loses its
life in Him, to find its perfect realization of life.
It is being in another, in a righteous person, and
it has reference to the poverty of self alone with
self, and to the destitution and disgrace and guilt
of sin, that when one flees to Him, as to a refuge,
guilt cannot hold him, shame cannot appall him,
the universe cannot stay him ; he is clothed with
the righteousness and the freedom of God. There
are no words strong enough to portray this life.
The stains of guilt are all effaced. They are
cleansed in the fountain of an undying love.
The robes of earth are washed in the blood of
the Lamb that was slain for the world. The cos
tumes of selfishness and vanity are thrown away.
The reproach of the world becomes lost in the

RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH. 177
distance, to be heard no more. There are no
finite limitations for the spirit. It repeats the
rude heroic strain, —
" Freely justified, I
Shall mount to the sky,
With the sun and moon under my feet."
Faith in a righteous person, in the Christ, who is
the source of the life of the family and the na
tion, leads the individual away from himself, and
in being for another he finds his real life, and
enters into and partakes of a righteousness that is
not a mere self-righteousness ; — a righteousness
that he may resist, and the end is death, or that
he may enter into, and may find his own life. It
is this that has been wrought into the unity and
strength and freedom of nations.
And this faith does not stay by itself. It goes
out toward another, as it is faith in one who has
given himself for another. It can exclude none.
It becomes the ground of sacrifice. It blends with
love. A man does not, then, rest on the quality
or the relative excellence of his own faith, and
that, as the act of the finite mind, can soon be
determined in finite measures ; but faith itself rests
on a righteous person, — one who, being one with
God, has become one with man, in the realization
of the perfect righteousness.
Faith works with hope and love ; it is faith that
worketh by love. The controversy of faith and
works has its ground in empty and abstract theo-
12

178 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE WORLD.
ries. True faith is one with works, and good
works are one with faith, because both alike have
righteousness for their end.
Therefore faith in the Christ brings us into that
righteousness, in the fulfillment of which he came
into the world. There is no legal fiction. There is
no fictitious transference of righteousness, but there
is an actual participation in the righteousness of
life which had in the Christ its perfect fulfillment.1
Through faith there is communion with the
Christ in his eternal life. S. Paul says, he was
raised again for our justification. This right
eousness that was vindicated over death, and de
clared in his resurrection from the dead, is ours,
— the proper righteousness of man, and in him
given to men.
The perfect manifestation of God is in the
Christ. Through faith in the Christ there is for
man the knowledge of the love of God. It is a
faith in a force of life and love and light that is
1 "¦Looking unto Jesus, who is the author and the finisher of our
faith. The Epistle bids us look from our faith to a Living Person
who is the only root of it, the only end of it. Our faith is not in
itself, but in him; if we think of it, instead of him, it perishes."
(Maurice, Sermons, vol. i. p. 79.)
Faith is not the condition of the love of God, but through faith
there is the apprehension of the love of God, and doubt is removed
and fear, in the knowledge and love of God. Mr. Erskine says,
" The proclamation of forgiveness through the Christ alone will
bring peace to those under condemnation. If it be assumed that
forgiveness is not actual for any until he believes it, the attention is
turned to the quality of his faith." (Erskine, Memoirs, p. 86.)

RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH. 179
deeper than the forces of evil. S. John says, Jesus
cried and said, He that believeth on me believeth
not on me, but on him that sent me.
The love and the forgiveness of God, the will of
God toward man, is made known to man in the
Christ. This love is the ground, and not the sequence,
of faith. The Christ is the author and the finisher
of our faith.
Through faith there is the knowledge of the
love and the forgiveness of God, and through faith
there is righteousness of life. There is, then, no
condemnation to him that believeth, who walks not
after the flesh, but after the spirit.
Through faith man comes into the life of God,
the life of love and righteousness. This is the
true life of man. It apprehends in the ground- of
life the love of God, and in the fulfillment of
righteousness the will of God. This is the foun
dation of the life of the family and the nation and,
though it may not seem justified in the physical
process, without it —
" The pillared firmament is rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble."

CHAPTER IX.
THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD.
The world is redeemed. This redemption is
real, and it has in the life of humanity its reaHza
tion. The world is redeemed in the Christ, and
the process of history is in the realization of the
redemption of the Christ.
The Christ redeemed the world by becoming
himself the perfect redeemer. In his own life
there was the attainment and the fulfillment of
the perfect righteousness. It was a life in the
world of the manifestation of perfect truth to self
in the life of the Spirit.
The Christ redeemed the world by becoming
one with humanity, in the life of the world. The
Christ became man. The life of humanity is in
its realizatidn, in righteousness and freedom, one
with the life of the Christ. The redemption that
he has wrought is the redemption of humanity.
It is for us men.
The Christ redeemed the world by the man
ifestation in it of a life consistent with the knowl
edge of the source and the destination of life.
There is, therefore, no power to come forth out
from the beginning or the end, from the first to

THE ATONEMENT. 181
the last, with intimations of force or fear, that can
claim subjection from man, or assert dominion
over him, or can effect the subversion of the love
that is at the source and centre of all things, or
the disruption of the unity that is in the will of
God, that is manifesting itself in the reconciliation
of all things. The Christ says, i" know whence I
came, and whither I go ; and again, i" am the first
and the last, the beginning and the end ; I am he
that was and is and is to come.
The Christ redeemed the world by the manifes
tation and realization in the life of humanity of the
coming and life of the Spirit. It is redeemed by
the power of the Spirit. The life of man is
lifted above physical limitations, and is not deter
mined and concluded in the process of physical
forces and forms. It is not merely a projection of
an animal existence, subjected to fleshly impulses
and the satisfaction of fleshly appetites. It is not a
life determined by external relations or external
circumstances. It is the life which is not mortal.
It has the strength and freedom of the Spirit.
The Christ redeemed the world by the realiza
tion of a perfect life, in the fulfillment of perfect
righteousness, in oneness with humanity, and in
the conflict with and the conquest of all the
forces, by which humanity is alienated from God,
and men are alienated from each other. It was
the conquest of all the forces by which humanity
is enslaved and tortured and divided and de-

182 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD.
stroyed. He met the forces of the world and
their temptations. The display of their rewards
for subordination to the pursuit of selfish ends was
brought before him, but he did not yield to them.
The trial of the world was open to him, but he
was not changed nor swerved by it, that his life
should be shaped by the world. The Christ passed
through death, but he overcame death. It was
the conquest of life over death. The words of
the Christ are, I have overcome the world, and
again he says, to him that overcomeih will I grant
to sit with me in my throne, even as I also over
came, and am set down with my Father in his
throne}
1 There are two representations of the work and sacrifice of the
Christ in controversy with the position in this chapter. The one re
gards the atonement as a legend, although one of the most beautiful of
the legends of the world. The Father sends the Son; the Son offers
the sacrifice required, and returns to the Father. It has the unity
and action of a drama. The myths gather around some legendary
hero. It is beautiful as a drama, but far away from the world, to
form only a mythology for the poet and superstitions for the people.
The other regards it as a scheme of divinity. Justice demands
satisfaction. Its penalties must be executed with indifference as to
the innocent or the guilty, if only the law be maintained. Mercy
contends with justice, and wrath is averted when justice is ap
peased by this actual substitution, and this legal fiction. On this
system faith rests, and the only security from these penalties is
through its adoption.
These views are not far apart; they are abstractions; the one, in a
formal way, is mythological, the other logical, but beginning and
ending in mere formulas. They are throughout in controversy with
the position here given. There is in the redemption the manifes
tation of God, the revelation of that which is eternal in the being of
God, and through it man is raised to an eternal life with God.

THE ATONEMENT. 183
The redemption of the world in and through
the Christ was the manifestation of the will of
God. The suffering and death of the Christ did
not change the will of God. It was in the fulfill
ment of the will of God. The Christ says, Lo, I
come to do thy will ; and again, / have declared
thy name unto them and will declare it} The ex
pression of the completeness of his redemptive
work is in the words, / have glorified thee on the
1 The catechism of Trent, explaining the reasons why the Son of
God suffered, says one cause consisted, " in the crimes and vices
which men have perpetrated from the beginning of the world till
now, and shall perpetrate henceforth to the end of time; for in his
death the Son of God contemplated the atonement and obliteration
of the sins of all ages." (Cat. ad Paroch., Pars I. c. v.)
1 ' The death of the Christ was the perfect manifestation and the
consummation of his faith in the Father." (Campbell, On the
Atonement, p. 258.)
" Prophets and just men, under the old law, did aud suffered
much to bear testimony to the truth; but their obedience, like their
testimony, was imperfect. He alone could make a perfect oblation
of the human will; he alone as man could make an act of perfect
contrition, who knew as God the fullness of the eternal love, and
saw as God sees it the reality of the contradiction to that love."
(Oxenham, On the Atonement, p. 77.)
" The perfect obedience of the Son discovers the perfect loving
will of the Father. Infinite forgiveness and charity are shown to be
at the root of all things; forgiveness and charity that are only seen,
only satisfied, only made effectual by submission and sacrifice ; for
giveness and charity that are not intended only to flow forth upon
men, but to flow into them, to become a part of their character and
being." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 380.)
S. Leo says of the relation of the Father and the Son, "One is
the kindness of their mercy, as the sentence of their justice, nor is
there any division of action where there is no diversity of will."
(S. Leo, Serm. xxii. 4.)

184 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD.
earth : I have finished the work which thou gavest
me to do.
The redemption of the Christ was the manifes
tation of the love of God for the world. It is
thus that in the incarnation, the atonement has its
beginning, and the one is involved in the other.
It manifests the love of God. It was not the
ground of that love, and it was not the condition
which only in a provisional form justified that love,
but the love of God for the world was the motive
which went toward the redemption of the world :
God so loved the world, that he gave his only begot
ten Son : S. John says, herein is love, not that we
loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son
to be the propitiation for our sins. We love him
because he first loved us. There can be here no
measure of the infinite love, —
" Mine was the life that was won,
And thine was the life that was given."
The redemption of the Christ was the manifes
tation of that which is eternal in the being of God.
It was not simply a provisional work, which had
its ground in a preceding circumstance. It had
not its origin in a transient condition, and it was
not simply an adjustment to an antecedent condi
tion. It was the Lamb slain from the foundation
of the world.
The redemption of the Christ has then no finite
limitations. It has no measures of time. It is
not limited by our computations of the years on

THE ATONEMENT. 185
this earth : the Christ, a minister of the sanctuary
and of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched,
and not man, entered in once into the holy place,
having obtained eternal redemption for us.
The redemption of the Christ is wrought in
his oneness with humanity, in and through the
life of humanity.1 Through the relation of the
Christ with humanity the redemption of the world
has its continuous realization in the life of hu
manity. The law which was fulfilled in the Christ
is the law of the life of humanity. The Christ
says, whosoever will come after me, let him deny
himself and take up his cross daily, and follow
me. Thus S. Paul writes of the fellowship of his
sufferings. He speaks again of filling up that
which is behind of the afflictions of Christ. He
says, I bear in my body the marks of the Lord
Jesus. This expression takes on the intensest
form ; he says, I am crucified with Christ. He
writes of his glory in the cross, wherein the world
is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. He
writes of always bearing about in the body the
1 " One only who was God and man could bring man again into
communion with God. But it is rather his assumption of our na
ture in all its fullness, than his death alone, that the Fathers
dwelt upon. He is the representative man, the second Adam, the
head of the body, who recapitulates in himself, as they are fond
of expressing it, the whole human race, and imparts to them,
through the union of their nature with his, a new principle of life,
in whose death all die, in whose resurrection all are made alive.
This is the great argument of Athanasius." (Oxenham, On the
Atonement, p. 144.)

186 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD.
dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus
may be manifested in our body. There is the same
expression in the words of S. Peter, ye are called,
because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an
example, that we should follow his steps. The suf
fering of humanity is transfigured. The suffering
and sacrifice of the world is not henceforth merely
in the projection of a physical process, nor with
other alternatives of suffering and sacrifice in the
development of a historical process ; and thus the
sacrifice of the soldier who dies in battle for the
nation is not the mere conformance to a law of
historical necessity, but in such suffering and sac
rifice there is the redemptive life of the world.
We are called, since the Christ has given him
self a sacrifice for us. In a correspondence with
other types and forms of sacrifice, it is written,
wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the
people with his own blood, suffered without the
gate. This is made the ground of a principle of
duty, and we are bidden, let us go forth, therefore,
unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.
This is not the suffering of the Christ as an equiv
alent for the suffering of humanity, nor as a sub
stitute for humanity; it is the sacrifice of the
Christ fulfilled in humanity. It is the adoption of
the sacrifice by participation by humanity ; let us
go forth, therefore, unto him without the camp,
bearing his reproach. The Christ had said, if
any man will come after me, let him take up his

THE ATONEMENT. 187
cross and follow me ; and he said of his disciples,
in their continuing relation with him, Ye shall
drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the
baptism that I am baptized with.
There is thenceforth in the life of humanity the
manifestation of redemptive forces. There are re
demptive forces continuing in the coming of the
Christ and in the life of the Spirit, in his re
demptive kingdom on the earth. They come
forth in the life of righteousness in the family and
the nation. These are the forces which work
through the life of humanity, in conflict with the
evil of the world. The law of sacrifice becomes,
then, the law of life.1 The contradiction in the
revelation of the Christ is verified and solved in
the course of history, and the words are justi
fied : he that loseth his life shall find it. The
work of sacrifice goes on in the process of history.
1 The theories of life, in the physical school, cannot wholly ef
face the consciousness of this law of self-renunciation, though their
assertion of it may be inconsequent. " There need be no disap
pointed ambition, if a man were to set before himself a true aim in
life, and to work definitely for it; no envy, if he considered that it
mattered not whether he did a certain great thing, or some one else,
if only it were done; no grief from loss of fortune, if he estimated
at its true value that which fortune can bring him, and that which
fortune can never bring him; no wounded self-love, if he had learned
well the eternal lesson of life, — self-renunciation." (Maudsley, On
Responsibility in Mental Disease, p. 210.) This recognizes an ele
ment of self-renunciation, but it has no ground in a life determined
in physical limitations ; it has no justification in a life in finite con
ditions. It is only because it has another and higher ground that it
becomes the eternal lesson of life.

188 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD.
The Lamb that was slain from the foundation of
the world prefigures its course. The condition of
the life of the last nation becomes the same as
the first, the sacrifice of the worthier of her chil
dren. Their sacrifice is the perpetuation of the
life of the nation ; their sacrifice is the way to
her deliverance from .slavery ; their sacrifice is the
ground of her unity and peace. This was not the
sacrifice of a certain number of men for a certain
other number of men ; it was not the sacrifice of,
a certain smaller number of men that a certain
larger number might be exempt from sacrifice,
and might live in self-indulgence. It was sacri
fice for the life of the nation. It was life through
death. It was that in all there might be the spirit
and recognition of the law of sacrifice, the self-
renunciation of the individual, which is the only
way to the perfect self-realization, and the begin
ning of the life that is eternal. This law has a
moral ground, which cannot be comprehended in
the atomy of human society, nor in the severance
through society of the superior from the inferior,
nor in the apprehension of it as an accumulation
of private interests, nor in any detachment of it
from God.1
1 " The atonement is the manifestation of the hope of God for
man. The nature of that hope which was in God for man, and
which the atonement has brought within the reach of our spirits, has
indeed been necessarily determined by our primary and ultimate
relation to God as the Father of our spirits." (Campbell, On the
Atonement, p. 187.)

THE THRONE OF SACRIFICE. 189
Henceforth the law of sacrifice becomes the
law of power. In this world of forms the sym
bols of sacrifice become the symbols of power.
The Lamb that was slain from the foundation of
the world becomes, in the mystic vision of S. John
the Divine, the Lamb that sits in the midst of the
throne. This type is not lost in history. The
manifestation of power is not in a separation from
men, nor in the assertion of a dominion over men,
but in the service of men. It is not the Caesar
that becomes the enduring power with men. The
nation, which in this last age, is the exponent of
the highest historical forces, has its foundations,
its unity and order and freedom, laid in sacrifice.
But it is through sacrifice, as through the nega
tion of this finite world, that there is the coming
of the life that is eternal, the realization of the
life that is infinite.
The sacrifice of the Christ was the perfect and
finished sacrifice, — the sacrifice of one who bore
the burden of this finite world, in the fulfillment
of the perfect righteousness, the manifestation of
the perfect love, the revelation of the perfect life.
It was the will of God before the foundation of
the world ; it was the sufficient sacrifice for the
sin of the whole world, the foundation of eternal
life and unity and peace.
The redemption through the Christ was wrought

190 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD.
in the satisfaction of love and justice, in the ful
fillment of the will of God in the creation of the
world, — the foundation that was before and be
neath the foundations of this finite world. It was
the satisfaction of God, the satisfaction of Christ
and of the conscience of men. And love is inex
orable as justice, and involves duty as the sum of
the commandments of the law. It was not the
satisfaction of justice apart from love, nor as the
precedent condition of the revelation of love. For
in relation to the law there was not merely the
satisfaction, but the fulfillment of the law. It
was not a satisfaction of justice by the imposition
upon the innocent of the punishments of the
guilty, nor, by the substitution of an equivalent
of the same measure through a series of legal fic
tions, and in that there would be no measure of
gain. In a higher sense justice is satisfied when
righteousness is actualized on the earth. Justice
is vindicated when it is asserted and established.
It is not a compensation to balance injustice that
is required, nor an equivalent for sin or for the
sequences of sin, but the power to overcome evil,
and to bring men out of sin.
The suffering and the death of Christ did not
take away the wrath of God against sin, for if
any man continue in sin the wrath of God abideth
on him. There was in the Christ the strongest
assertion of the wrath of God against sin. It was
the announcement of the woe that is to follow sin

THE DELIVERANCE FROM EVTL. 19 1
in men and nations. But it were woe if the wrath
of God was averted from sin. It were woe to
men and nations if there were no judgment, in
which the consequences of evil courses were man
ifested. The Christ redeems the world from sin and
from the sequences of sin. The Christ, coming
into the world where sin was, endured in it the
effects of sin. He endured death ; he was wounded
for our transgressions, and bruised for our in
iquities. The redemption of the world is from sin and
unto righteousness. It is from the bondage of sin
into the freedom of God. It is of the world unto
God.1 This redemption of the spirit of man is from
the forces by which, as external to itself, it is
determined, and through this redemption from
these forces its life becomes a self-determined
life, in truth to self, the life of freedom. This
freedom is not the detachment of self, but it is in
the life of the spirit ; it is not the isolation of self
and its vacancy, but the energy and communion
of the life of the spirit. It is the rescue from evil,
1 " S. Paul says every sacrifice implies communion with the being
to whom it is offered. So the end of Christ's incarnation and
death was to establish a complete communion between men on earth
and their Father in heaven, which may be most real now, but the
full fruition of which can only be when all the evil which resists the
divine righteousness and love is entirely vanquished." (Maurice,
Sermons, vol. i. p. 43.)

192 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD.
as evil is alien to the spirit of man. It is the de
liverance from the dominion of sin, from the prin
cipalities and powers which would claim to them
selves the subjection of the spirit, and assume a
domination over it, for sin shall not have dominion
over you. This is the deepest expression of the
experience of life : if we be dead with Christ we
believe that we shall also live with him : knowing
that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no
more ; death hath no more dominion over him ; for
in that he died he died unto sin once, but in that he
liveth he liveth unto God.
This redemption of the world is through the
suffering and death and resurrection of the Christ.
This sacrifice of the Christ was in his coming into
the world ; it was the earthly life of service ; it
was the last sacrifice in death. It was not simply
the sacrifice of one for another ; it was the sacrifice
of him who had become one with humanity for the
life of humanity. It was the sacrifice that was the
fulfillment of love. This is not the negation of
self with the implication of the cessation of self j
an utter nihilism, but there is the perfect self-
realization, the realization of life. It is not the
dethronement, but it is the enthronement of life.
It is not for life to be conquered by death ; it is
the conquest of death. It is a sacrifice of self, and
this is its ethical significance, but in it is the at
tainment of life. The law of self-renunciation is the

THE DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL. 193
law of self-realization, and the way through death
is unto life. And as death in the physical proc
ess involves always isolation and the severance of
the relations of life, so in the life of the spirit it
is a communion and an eternal life, since the Christ
has partaken of death for every man} It is not,
therefore, the death of the Christ in itself that is
to be regarded primarily ; it is the conquest of
death in the Christ.2
There was a significance in the judgment and
condemnation of the Christ, by the world, by rit
ual and imperial tribunals. He came to the death
of a slave on this earth. For the ignorance of
the multitude that made itself the instrument of
the world's derision and the world's torture he
offered the prayer of forgiveness to the Father ;
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do. To them, to whom it seemed the profanation
of the universe, that the Christ the Son of God
was to become the Son of man he uttered the
transcendent words : The high priest asked him
again, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the
Son of the Blessed ? And Jesus said, I am, and
ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right
hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
1 " The atonement is truly apprehended only when the work of
Christ, through which we have the remission of sins that are past,
is contemplated in direct relation tothe gift of eternal life." (Camp
bell, On the Atonement, p. 133.)
2 " The death of the Christ is never to be considered apart from
the resurrection." (Rothe, Dogmatik, vol. ii. p. 220.)
13

194 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD.
The Christ met death in the last conflict. The
Christ did not evade death, nor open a way to a
continuous existence on the earth, in this domain
of time and space, that was preempted from death.
It was in order that by death he might deliver
them who through fear of death were all their life
time subject to bondage. S. Paul says, in that he
died he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth he
liveth unto God.
The Christ overcame death. It was the reali
zation of a life that was for humanity above death.
There was in the death of the Christ the real
ization of the divine transfiguration, of which the
witness had been given in the historical life of
humanity, — which had its evidence in the law
and the prophets. Then the sorrow of the world
was turned into joy. Then the isolation and death
of the world was transmuted into life, in the com
munion of God.
The redemption of the world is from sin. The
Christ comes, — the Saviour of the world. In him
is the revelation of the living truth; in him is
the perfect righteousness. He is the only Sav
iour, as there is one truth alone and absolute, in
which man may rest. There is one God, one hu
manity, one divine and perfect redeemer, though
there be many through whom this redemption is
wrought, that God may be all in all. It is said of
him, he shall save his people from their sins. S.
Paul says, Christ gave himself for us that he might

THE DAY OF SALVATION. 195
redeem us from all iniquity : he is the Lamb of
God which taketh away the sin of the world.
This salvation is not an incident of the past, nor
deferred to the future ; the apostle says, now
is the day of salvation. This is the ground of
the energy and freedom of the spirit, and its
peace.1 There is the assurance that the redemption of
the world shall have its perfect realization, in
Christ shall all be made alive. This is not the
assertion of a law of physical necessity, as the
iteration of a fate, that forces of compulsion shall
constrain the will. This redemption is to bring
man out from the subjection to forces which are
external to the will and are alien to the spirit of
man, and into freedom. It is from the bondage
and the doom of sin. It is with the salvation of
man, that there comes alone a higher energy and
ampler freedom. Through sin the slavery of man
exists, and every sin brings a deeper bondage, and
a consequent degradation, by a law of moral con
ditions ; but the forces of evil are met by redemp
tive forces, and in the fulfillment of the true and
eternal being of man. These redemptive forces
1 " Cast thy burdens upon the Lord. For he to whom past and
present and future are all one, He who is and was and is to come
invites you to claim fellowship with Him in his Son your Lord.
Seeking him you do cast away those burdens which are pressing
down your spirit, the burden which he bore, who bore the sins of the
world. You can come with all your darkness into his light." (Mau
rice, Sermons, vol. i. p. 74.)

196 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD.
shall prevail, with the fulfillment of the life of
humanity in God.
To the inquiry, Are there few that be saved ?
the answer is, strive to enter in at the strait gate.
This energy that strives is the first element of
freedom. It is the call to no apathy and vacancy
of will ; it overcomes the enervation of the spirit
ual powers of man which sin has wrought. It is
the quickening of life. It affirms that he that
loveth is born of God, and the end of the redemp
tion is the manifestation of the sons of God. It
asserts that he that believeth shall be saved, and
he that believeth not shall be condemned ; and it
sets forth this condemnation, that light has come
into the world, and men loved darkness rather
than light, because their deeds were evil; and,
therefore, there is now no condemnation to them
which are in Christ Jesus,, who walk not after the
flesh, but after the spirit.
It does not assert in any moment, for any man,
in the here or the hereafter, an irrevocable doom.
Its end is to save man from sin and from the
i doom involved in sin. It does not place any with-
[ out hope ; it makes hope a virtue, difficult as all
( virtue is in this world, but still one with faith and
i love, and if illusive, then also faith and love, for
| which the same ground and end is revealed, are
! illusive. It asserts that men and nations may
choose darkness, and refuse to recognize the re
demption and revelation of the love of God, and

THE END OF THE PHYSICAL PROCESS. 197
to believe in it, and to work for the realization of
righteousness and freedom in the life of humanity.
It asserts the judgment that shall come, and bring
the forces of evil that have their strength in dark
ness to the light. In the oneness of the Christ
with humanity, it asserts the blessing which shall
be upon those who minister in the simplest offices,
and to the lowliest, and the judgment on those
whose action shall tend to the degradation of men
and of nations.
There is in the Christ the redemption of the
world, — it is the redemption of the world. The
evidence of love and freedom has its imperfect ex
pression, in this physical world. There is, indeed,
in the forms of nature, that which may recall to
man his origin and destiny, which she bears not in
herself ; and the lilies as they grow, and the sun
that has shone, and the rain that has fallen upon
the just and the unjust, may verify the thought
of him who hath not left himself without a wit
ness, — though it be only to him that receives it ;
and the clouds that gather in the evening sky may
awaken the hope of another dawn ; and nature,
even from her embers, may bring the intimations
of immortality with the remembrance of what
seems so fugitive. But it is in this revelation
that there is manifest, through the negation, the
fulfillment of the finite world. In this revelation
the knowledge of the final cause and end of the
world is open to man. In the reflected light that

198 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD.
comes to the darkness , and trial of earth, and
reaches the depths of the variance and the sin and
the suffering of the world, the end of the physical
process is manifested, in the fulfillment of unity,
and in the realization of perfect love and perfect
freedom. It is the end of the struggle of human
existence, it is the transfiguration of the sorrow of
earth. It does not veil the pain of this physical
world ; it unveils its end, in the realization of the
freedom and relationship of humanity with God.
In words which preclude limitation, and embrace
the entire physical process, S. Paul says, the whole
creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain,
waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.
The Christ in the redemption of the world ac
complished the reconciliation of the world unto
God; God was in Christ, reconciling the world
unto himself. It is the reconciliation of an exist
ence, in which man is born into a condition in
which sin and the effects of sin are transmitted, in
its hereditaments, an estate of sin and misery, in
which there is suffering and death. It is not the
reconciliation of diametric forces which are oppo-
sites, and this would be the postulate and require
the conclusions of a dualism ; it is not the recon
ciliation of the holy and the profane, the wicked
and the righteous, the forces which are of the
world and the forces which are of God, — it is
the reconciliation of the world unto God. The

THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY. 199
finite is transmuted into the infinite, the earthly
is lifted unto the heavenly.1
The redemption of the world has its end in the
realization of the freedom of humanity in God.
The end of the world is the fulfillment of the life
of humanity in God ; God is free, and will have all
men to be free, with the freedom of the sons of
God. The apostle says, the Christ came to redeem
them that were under the law, that we might receive
the adoption of sons. He says, Christ suffered for
us, that he might bring us to God. This freedom
is real in the life of the spirit. This freedom is not
a mere indifference, as is implied in the power of
choice, although this power is incident to the de
velopment of freedom in this finite world. It is
not a negative freedom, that is void of all moral
1 The reconciliation of the world is perfect, and it is therefore
that we are bidden to live as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. It is
beyond the thought merely of the restoration, and the Church re
peats in its high service the words of S. Augustine, O felix culpa,
quae talem et tantum meruit habere Redemptorem. " It destroys evil
with good : the central principle of the atonement must be the same
as the central principle of the whole revelation ; Christ satisfies
justice by establishing righteousness, not as in a drama, nor in any
pictorial or representative way, but as a fact. What can condemn
sin, but that which destroys sin; what vindicates justice but that
which makes it a universal reality." (Munger, A Statement of
Theology, p. 20.)
" God the Son came upon earth to satisfy his own justice as much
as to satisfy his Father's, and for the accomplishment of his Father's
love to man as much as for his own." (Benson, quoted in Oxenham,
On the Atonement, p. 89.)

200 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD.
determination and energy. It is not a formal
freedom, which is realized in the maintenance of
external conditions. It is one with righteousness ;
it is not, then, a mere conformity to an external
law. The redemption could not be, through the
application of an external law. S. Paul says, by
the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified.
It could only be in the life of the spirit, in the
righteousness and freedom of the spirit. This is
not a conformance to an abstract law, and it is not
a formal freedom. It is spiritual and real.1 It is
from the condition of a servant, into the relation
of a son. It is from the bondage of sin into the
freedom of God. It is only from the being of
God, and the realization of freedom that we come
to the knowledge of the infinite. And man only
has a perfect freedom, as he rises into the life of
1 This freedom does not belong to man, as his being is deter
mined in the necessary relations of the physical process. It has not
its measure in the physical process, —
" Surelier it labors, if slowlier,
Than the meters of star or of sun."
This freedom is gained in the overcoming of evil ; it is the overcom
ing of evil with good.
" Many may rise up in judgment against those who live in other
circumstances, to whom the name of Freedom has become so much
a name of course, that they jest at it as a school-boy phrase, or ask
how much they are richer for it, or wish they could barter it for
some of the conveniences of despotism. This purposeless, heartless
temper, as it increases, tends to the fulfillment of its own desires.
Liberty cannot last when the aspiration for it has perished. Des
potism is sure to come when it is beckoned for." (Maurice, Se?'
mons, vol. iv. p. 91.)

THE ETERNAL LIFE. 201
God. There is alone no limitation there, and the
personality of man, as it has its source in God, has
its real life with God. There the self-renunciation
and the obedience of the human will is fulfilled
in the absolute will ; and the bare resistant forces
of the will are transmuted into consistent forces of
life and its energy. It is in these relations that
the human will attains its real freedom, but apart
from them, and apart by itself, within the limita
tion of self, it is not free. In the physical process
and in its conditions, man has no freedom, and it
is attained only in the relation of man with God.
It has the energy of the Spirit, as spontaneity
and originality are presumed in freedom and are
implied and realized in personality. It is not
summed up in negations : In the last day, that
great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, say
ing, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and
drink. He that believeth in me, out of his belly
shall flow rivers of living water. But this he
spake of the Spirit, which they that believe on him
should receive ; for the Spirit was not as yet, be
cause that Jesus was not yet glorified.
The realization of the redemption of the Christ
is in the eternal life. It is unto life ; it is beyond
the power of the transient ; it is not apprehended
in the ephemeral and the phenomenal ; it is not
fulfilled in relations that are simply spatial and
temporal. It is necessary that he, through whom

202 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD.
the redemption of man is accomplished, should
be the perfect man, for that is the ideal of every
man and of the spirit; and that he should be
one who was, and who shall be when the heavens
and earth are gone.
The death of the Christ has given to the
common life of humanity an infinite consequence.
It is death that is common to all men, and the
Christ has partaken of death for every man. It is
the perfect communion of God with man, through
the suffering and death of this earth.
The redemption of the Christ was not formal.
It was not a formal consistence with certain con
ditions of an abstract scheme, as in the fulfill
ment of a contract. It was not thus the conform
ance with a plan. It was not the work of one
who came as the substitute for another, and
whose righteousness was then made the subject
of transfer to another, on conditions of faith, as in
a certain stipulation.1 It was not an act for the
illustration of certain ethical requirements, and
thus designed to secure certain impressions as an
exhibition, an incident with certain spectacular
1 " The doctrine of Scripture, so far from being the doctrine of
mere substitution, is a protest against that doctrine ; it makes accu
rate provision for moral claims ; it enforces conditions on the sub
ject of sacrifice; it attributes a rational ground of influence and
mode of operation to the sacrifice." (Mozley, University Sermons
p. 174.)

THE LAW OF SACRIFICE. 203
effects. It was a spectacle to men and angels, but
of another and infinite reality.
The abstract schemes and systems of the atone- *
ment have their postulate in the notion that,
while God apportions and must apportion to
every instance and degree of transgression its
proper punishment, it is not a subject of con
cern, whether the one who pays this be one who
transgresses or another who is innocent, provided
that the payment be an equivalent, and that he
is under the necessity of cancelling the guilt,
whenever the equivalent is tendered by any hand.1
This assumes an analogy of a crime and a debt.
It is not righteous.
The atonement was not provisional, as a sub
sequent arrangement to effect certain ends, in a
situation in which certain defects had become
apparent. It was not simply the adoption of a
remedial system, in a condition in which sin and
its sequences had appeared. It was that, for it
was the coming of one who taketh away all our
infirmities, and healeth all our sicknesses, but it
was infinitely more ; it was the manifestation of
that which was in the being of God, and its end
was eternal life. It was the will of God, before
the foundation of the world.
1 " Judicial punishment can never be inflicted simply and solely as
a means to promote a good other than itself, whether that good be
the benefit of the criminal or of civil society; but it must at all
times be inflicted on him, for no other reason than because he has
acted criminally." (Kant, Werke, vol. ix. p. 180.)

204 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD.
It is not a transaction in the exchange of
equivalents, in which certain advances are made,
and certain results are secured ; and there is not,
as in a rate of exchange, the substitution of one
value for another value. It is communion and
not substitution, that is realized through death.1
It is not the taking away of the wrath of God
against sin. It is not the pacification of God,
for it is the gift to man of the peace of God.
It is the satisfaction of God in the creation of
the world, for, through the divine redemption,
the apostle writes of committing ourselves unto
God as unto a faithful Creator.
1 " Who died for all, that they who live should not live unto them
selves, but unto him. We must believe that this love will mould
society according to its law, nor suffer men to make another law
for themselves, which is one of selfishness and hatred. In the
faith that Christ's constraining love is the mightiest power in the
universe, we must be, think, act. The same love must be acting
more perfectly on those who have passed out of our world. Our
relation to them does not rest on the strength of our affection or
our memory. It is Christ's love, not ours, which binds them to
us. In him they are dead, and in him only they have life." (Mau
rice, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 236.)
"Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; thou
shalt wash me and I shall be whiter than snow, was the assurance of
a man upon whose conscience lay the burden of adultery and mur
der. For these crimes, the sword was never to depart from his
house. No petty penances, such as confessors lay upon kings, but
such as God lays upon them and their subjects equally, the loss
and rebellion of children, exile, sorrow without and within, were
appointed for him. But he himself had a free spirit; he had dared
to seek God's righteousness, to fly to him from his own evil, and
therefore it had not power to hold him a prisoner." (Maurice, Ser
mons, vol. i. p. 93.)

THE FAITHFUL CREATOR. 205
It has not its ground in the faith of any man,
and not thus by the faith of man is salvation,
but its ground is in that love which faith can but
imperfectly apprehend, and hope can but faintly
forecast. It is still greater than faith can discern,
and hope cannot discover its limit. S. Paul says,
God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. S. John
says, herein is love, not that we loved God, but that
he loved us.
In the course of the historical world, in the
lives of men and of nations, there is suffering and
sacrifice. It may be inferentially assumed that
there is some law of suffering and sacrifice. It
is not solely the impulse of nature, but as it pre
vails through the course of the physical world, it
may be taken up and transmuted in the life of
the spirit, and penetrated with an ethical aim.
It has an ethical character, and there can be no
ethical law in human life of greater significance.
It is the evidence of the greater love in the rela
tions of men, greater love hath no man than this,
that he lay down his life for his friend. The phase
of thought upon life, which describes it as the
struggle for existence, recognizes this fact of suf
fering and in some form of sacrifice. But it is
only in this divine sacrifice that these facts are
justified. It is only in the suffering and sacrifice
of the Christ that the suffering and sacrifice of

206 THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORLD.
the world has its true interpretation. It is only
in this, that they are invested with a divine signifi
cance.1

There was in the atonement for the world the
manifestation of God. It was the will of God in
its fulfillment of righteousness. To him man may
come, in the service that is perfect freedom, and
in his election is peace in the knowledge and love
of God, that the world cannot give, and cannot
take away.
1 " The moral teaching of Christ is the expression of the con
science of a people who had fought long and heroically for their
national existence. In that terrible conflict they had learned the
supreme and overwhelming importance of conduct, the weakness and
uselessness of solitary and .selfish efforts, the necessity for a man
who would be a man, to lose his poor single personality in the
being of a greater and nobler combatant — the nation." (Clifford,
Lectures and Essays, vol. ii. p. 230.) These words are the expres
sion of an imperishable truth, which the last age in the education of
the world may learn as well as the first age in its historical courses.
But because the nation has a divine and eternal foundation, it may
learn, through sacrifice, the ground of its unity and peace. And the
personality of man is not lost in it, but is lifted up and ennobled in
it ; for it has an immortal life ; it has given to it the strength of an
eternal victory. In the words of S. John the Divine, — and it is no
mystic story for this generation, — its power is typified in the throne
of the Lamb. But if the personality of man were to be lost and ob
literated in its life, — in the coming of this greater and nobler com
batant; if it were not here and in these relations, and through its own
sacrifice to have its fulfillment ; — if it were not in losing its life to
find it, then there could be no words of hope borne back to those in
volved in this evolution, and the memory of those who had offered
themselves should be their mockery, as their names were repeated
over the hollow earth they rounded with their graves.

THE FAITH OF THE REDEEMER. 207
It is the righteousness of God. The Son of
God became the Son of man, and in his life is the
fulfillment of righteousness. It is in the right
eousness of the Christ, that humanity has its vic
tory and its peace. Our love is weak and fal
tering, but in him is the eternal love. Our faith
is dim and confused, but his faith is perfect.
Our repentance is broken, and only imperfectly
discerns the depths of variance and sin ; but his
repentance is adequate, and his faith and his re
pentance are ours. We can only say as we come
to him, in the communion with him which is his
gift, Thou only art holy ; thou only art the Lord ;
thou only, 0 Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most
high in the glory of God the Father.

CHAPTER X.
THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
The life, which the Christ has manifested to the
world, becomes henceforth the life of the spirit.1
The Christ says, it is expedient for you that I
go away : for if I go not away the Comforter will
not come unto you ; but if I depart I will send him
unto you. When he, the Spirit of truth is come, he
will guide you into all truth : for he shall not speak
of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear that shall
he speak. He shall glorify me : for he shall receive
of mine and shall shew it unto you. All things
that the Father hath are mine : therefore said I
that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto
you. These words indicate a knowledge of a divine
relationship, which is not a sequence of the expe
rience of the world. They are the assertion of
that which was to have its fulfillment henceforth
in the life of humanity, the last, the greatest proph
ecy of humanity.
1 The commemoration of the services of the Church on Christmas
and Easter has come to have a common recognition, but the higher
services are those of the Ascension Day and Whitsunday, the com
memoration of the coming of the Spirit, and the conception which
may be held of the former services is very deficient when they are
separated from these which follow them.

THE COMING OF THE SPIRIT. 209
Hence the judgment and the redemption of the
world, and the life with God, are realized in and
through the life of the spirit.
Hence the relation to the Christ is not an ex
ternal relation, which is sustained in a formal his
torical circumstance, but it is a relation of and
in the life of the spirit.
Hence the redemption of the world is not sim
ply a deliverance from evil and its sequence, — a
course of negations, but it is in the coming of the
new life, which is the life of the spirit.
Hence the ethical life of man is in the life of
the spirit, and this alone is the ground of a life
which has elements that are substantial and eter
nal, in the truth and freedom which man has with
God. The life of the spirit becomes the element
of the life of righteousness and the life of free
dom.1 The righteousness is real which is a spirit
ual righteousness. It is not an external consistence
with a formal command, as a prescript in the con
duct of affairs ; it is that, and further, it is a con-
1 The demands of the masters in morals who represent its latest
phases of thought, are very great; as Kant, who says, obey the com
mand of reason within, — this you are bound to do; or Bentham,
who says, do that which shall be for the greatest good of the great
est number. They lay heavy burdens upon the unequal shoulders
of men. Mr. Clifford says, thou shalt not formulize. S. Paul says,
the law was a schoolmaster. But it is only as man recognizes the
Spirit given to each and to all men, the spirit of truth and love, it
is only in the life of the spirit that these formulas become elements
of strength; then they are not a weight to bear; they are highways
for our advancement; they are the stones of the living temple.

210 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
formance that is in the life of the spirit. It is the
fulfillment of the law, in the life and freedom of
the spirit. It is not freedom from God, which
has its assertion and realization in righteousness ;
it is the freedom of God. The words have increas
ingly their verification, where the Spirit of the Lord
is, there is liberty.
Hence the life of man is brought into imme
diate relation, in its ground and continuance, with
the life of God. It is not a relation through ex
ternal conditions, to find its source and determina
tion in them ; it is in the life of the spirit.
Hence the relation to the Christ is realized in
the life of the spirit. It is not a relation to Jesus
of Nazareth, in the circumstantial condition which
is comprised in certain contiguous relations. It
may be a source of weakness, as the imagination
occupies itself with this circumstance. The inci
dent of this individual life is transient, as every
incident of time, and subject to its conditions.
The Christ says to those whom he sends forth to
all nations : in the name of the Father, and the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, lo I am with you always, even
unto the end of the world.
The words of the Christ have not their ground
in an external authority. The signature of their
authority is not in the instrument in which they
appear, but their verification is to the spirit.
Their justification is to the conscience and the

THE COMING OF THE SPIRIT. 211
consciousness of men. It is, verily, verily I say
unto you. The Christ says, my words, they are
spirit and they are life. Thus the message that
was given to the churches was always with a
universal expression, he that hath an ear let him
hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
The real life of humanity becomes henceforth
the life of the spirit. The Christ says, it is better
for you that I go away ; the Spirit shall come, that
will guide you into all truth. There are in these
days many voices with counsel for men ; — let us
be satisfied with the limitations of a physical
process which rejects all reference to another than
a physical origin and end for the whole being
of man, and accept only its course of necessity,
and allow only the knowledge which is the result
of the observation and investigation of physical
organization and relations ; or come together and
construct a new religion that may deepen and
widen the religious life ; or acknowledge with rev
erence the unknown, with whatever predicates may
be attached to it, to form from thence a religion ;
or contemplate the universum ; or reproduce a cer
tain selection from past ages, as that of the Homeric
cycle, or the age of Pericles in Greece, or the Me
diaeval times ; — but these, while words of excel
lent counsel, and commending the selection of an
excellent copy for imitation, have no elements of
strength or freedom. They become the evidence

212 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
of our own poverty and vacancy, and the absence
of our own ideal. These pageants have an attrac
tion for the eye, and we might act our parts well
enough in them, and accumulate their theatrical
properties, and hold the world as our stage for
these mimic shows. But there would be no power
in them, and we inherit even from these ages,
more than the attractions of the eye. The fife
of the spirit is alone the condition of strength and
freedom. This alone sustains man in his self-deter
mination, toward the fulfillment of his own ideal.
This alone lifts him above the external. This
alone gives to man the real development, which
apart from it may be traced only in the continu
ance of a type, that in a succession of conditions
is subject to variations consequent upon those con
ditions, and is resolved in its termination into the
attrition of molecular forces.
The Christ came, in the fullness of time. When
S. John writes, in the beginning was the Word, the
thought of man is not carried back through a
mere numeration, or a series in numeration, and
it is not referred to a merely vacant conception of
being. In the process of logic, through finite con
ditions, the notion of being is an empty phase of
thought, and is resolved through a logical ne
cessity into mere nothingness ; but the notion of
being derived from finite conditions, is not to be
applied to the being of God. The expression of

THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT. 213
the apostle carries the thought back to One who
was in the beginning, and whose manifestation was
in the fullness of time, and on whom the thought
of man may rest. There were thence, through the
historical life of the world, the courses in the proc
ess of time which moved in and toward the ad
vent of the Christ, and the procession of the Holy
Spirit. The life of the spirit is not, then, subject to the
law of necessity; it does not begin in the. line of
physical descent, nor terminate with the cessation
of physical forms. The Christ says, that which is
born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which is born
of the Spirit is spirit. S. Paul says, flesh and
blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God ; neither
doth corruption inherit incorruption.
There is a line of evolution through physical
forms, and there is also the procession of the Spirit :
S. Paul says, that was not first which is spirit
ual, but that which is physical; and afterward
that which is spiritual. The first man is of the
earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from
heaven. The words which henceforth become- the new
testament, and are to bear the witness of the life
given for the world, are testamentary of an incor
ruptible inheritance : I will put my law in their
inward parts, and write it in their hearts ; and
will be their God, and they shall be my people ,

214 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
and they shall teach no more every man his
brother, and every man his neighbor, saying,
Know the Lord: for they shall all know me,
from the least of them unto the greatest of them,
saith the Lord ; for I will forgive their iniquity,
and I will remember their sin no more. The
words are verified, i" will pour out my spirit upon
all flesh. It is in man that the spirit has its dwell
ing. Man is the tabernacle. The body becomes
the temple of the Holy Ghost. The words which
represent the presence of the Spirit with man do
not refer to a remote life. They are not the
suggestion of some pale illusion, or some vague
emotion. They speak of walking and of dwell
ing in the spirit.
The Christ, in his own life, manifested the life of
the spirit. In his own life there was the presence
and the inspiration of the spirit ; the Spirit de
scended upon him. It is the witness to the one
ness of his life, who came from the Father, with
the life of humanity. It is the evidence of the
presence of the Spirit with the Son of man. The
Spirit which was with the Christ in the beginning
of his work on the earth was with him until the
close. The Christ, in the closing events of his life,
was led by the spirit ; he through the eternal Spirit
offered himself.
The life of the spirit is not simply the indefinite
life ; — it is the determinate life. It is not simply
the life which before was absent ; but its precedent

THE WORD OF GOD. 215
is in the life of the Christ, in the realization of
the truth, and the fulfillment of righteousness in
the life of humanity.
There is knowledge, but there is yet a wider •
knowledge open and opening unto men. There is
no limit set for thought. The Christ says, when
the Spirit is come, he will guide you into all truth.
There are many observances, customs, laws, in- >
stitu tions, but there are none that are to impose
upon the life of the spirit. They are to become
the evidence of it ; they are to be formed in
it. Their verification is to be unto the spirit.
The value and measure of all forms is as they
express and embody the life of the spirit. The
law of all forms is in the words, the sabbath was
made for man, and not man for the sabbath.
The Christ, the Word of God, manifests, in the
spirit, that which was from the beginning : in
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. The Word of
God in the life of the spirit may go forth in
human life, and in the events which become form
ative in human history. The Word of God is the
informing power of the revelation of God in the
finite world. The Word of God is not, by any
figure, to be identified with a book, or a temple,
or a minster, or a shrine ; nor with one through
whom, in books or temples, a message is brought
to men : S. John says, / fell down at his feet to

216 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
worship the angel ; and he said unto me, See thou
do it not; I am thy fellow-servant and of thy
brethren : worship God.
The life of the spirit has its witness to the
world in the Church.
The Church has an organic unity and life.
The Church is the company of all faithful
people. The Church has a form and order, in the ful
fillment of the life of the spirit, and thence in
the freedom of the spirit, in the historical courses
of the world, and in consistence, in their divine
institution, with the organic being and develop
ment of the family and the nation in the life of
humanity.1 The Church is the witness to the life of the
spirit in humanity. It is not the source of the
life of the spirit, but the witness of it. The Spirit
is not the gift of the church, but the church of
the Spirit. The words of faith which cannot be
transposed are, I believe in the Holy Ghost; in
the holy catholic Church.
The Church is the witness to the redemption
of the world. It is not in it alone that the ne
cessity of the redemption is apparent, and it is
not itself the object and end of the redemption,
1 " That was the beginning of a society which could be nothing
but universal, because it stood in the name of the Son of God and
Son of man." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. i. p. 9.)

THE CHURCH. 217
but it is the witness to the redemption of the
world; It shows forth the divine sacrifice, the
Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the
world. The Church is the witness to the inspiration of
the spirit. The life of the Church is in the pres
ence of the spirit. It is the evidence and rec
ognition, — the response in the life of humanity
to the eternal Spirit, the communion of the
spirit, in which the life of man has its eternal
foundation and its unity and its peace.1
The Church is the witness to the being and
continuance of the Christ in the world. It is
built upon the person of the Christ, and is formed
in relations with him. It is not founded upon
abstractions. It does not rest upon a proposition
or a system of propositions in the forms of
thought. S. Paul writes of its communion as built
upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone,
in whom ye also are builded together far an habit
ation of God through the Spirit.
The Church is the witness to the life and the
realization of the truth in the world. It is not
1 " The Christ chooses the Church to be the witness of his love !
to mankind. The sect chooses Christ, because it is convinced that
his doctrine is better than that of the founders of other religions;
and then goes on to choose Cephas, or Paul, or Apollos, as hav
ing the most refined or satisfactory form of that doctrine. So the
person of Christ becomes lost in certain opinions which the sects
have taken up respecting him." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 9.)

218 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
alone the encouragement of a disposition toward
the truth, nor the evidence of the recognition of
the truth; it is that, but it is the testament of
the realization of the truth in the world. It is to
make manifest its light to the world. An apostle
writes of the Church as the pillar and ground of
the truth ; and again, of its life in the Christ, S.
Paul says, it is his body, the fullness of him that
filleth all in all.
The holy catholic Church is the communion of
saints. The life of the spirit is the life of com
munion with God. It is not a communion which
is measured by finite limitations, and it is not dis
tant in place nor remote in time. But the world
is slow to receive this, and is concerned with its
own nothingness and emptiness. This commun
ion is transposed; or is held as the association
of an adjourned company. It is foisted into the
future, in that conception in which the things not
seen are still apprehended as some future tempo
rality, and the present is occupied only with in
definite notions among its pure negations. This
communion, by a sheer lift, is carried into another
world, which is then only another world, in the suc
cession to this world. The vague aspiration which
wearies of its own vacancy, and the imagination
which lingers among the things which are seen,
the things of earth and time, brings to this its
own detachments. The writer of the Epistle to
the Hebrews says, ye are come unto this com-

THE SCRIPTURES. 219
munion. It is not ye shall come to this commun
ion. That is the revision of the skepticism of
the world. The argument of the writer of the
epistle is to show that the Christ has rent asun
der the veil which separates the earth from the
heavens, and those who are in the world from
those who have left it. It is not a communion
to which men are told that they shall come, nor
can the imagination pass beyond these words ; ye
are come unto the city of the living God, and to
an innumerable company of angels, to the general
assembly and church of the first-born, which are
written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all,
and to the spirits of just men made perfect.
These words embrace the whole realization of that
historical life ; ye are come unto Mount Zion, and
unto the heavenly Jerusalem, and unto Jesus, the
Mediator of the new covenant.
The Church has preserved the writings called
the Old and the New Testament. This word has
itself a significant value as indicating their testa
mentary character. The Christ says of the writ
ings of the Old Testament, they are they which
testify of me.
The Church has not preserved the original doc- '
uments or instruments of these writings. It has
not preserved any manuscript of them, of the first
or second or third century. It has not preserved
the external evidence, in connection with them,

220 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
in verification of their contemporary transcrip
tion. It has not preserved all of them in a per
fect form, and the only copies of some of them,
now known to exist, are incomplete ; or appear as
a fragment, as the closing pages of the Gospel of
S. Mark. It has not preserved the verification of
the individual authorship of some of them, and
there may be no longer a verification of the name
of the writer ; so that it is indifferent what name,
if any, may be attached to them, — as the Epistle
to the Hebrews. It has not preserved these writ
ings from interpolations, which in some instances
may certainly, and in some conjecturally appear,
with the critical study and inquiry of scholars, in
comparison of their variations, as the narrative of
the woman taken in adultery, or the description of
the three witnesses in the Epistle of S. John ; while
yet the manuscripts in some instances, as the Gos
pel of S. Luke, although not without various read
ings, are yet of very considerable scriptory excel
lence. The Church has read, indifferently with the
original, an excellent translation : as, for instance,
the translation into the Latin of S. Jerome, or the
translation into the Gothic of Ulfilas, or the trans
lation into the English of Wicliffe, or of the com
pany of scholars of the sixteenth century. The
writings of the Old Testament, when they are re
ferred to by writers of the New Testament, are
with citations from the recent and more common

THE SCRIPTURES. 221
version, in the translation of scholars in Alexan
dria, called the Septuagint. These citations are
usually given in an illustrative way, and with in
difference to literary precision.
The Church has held the verification of these
scriptures in the life of the spirit. It is in their
verification as words that are spirit and truth, —
the canon which alone the Christ has given. It is
their verification to the conscience and the con
sciousness of men. It is through their recogni
tion, in the life of the spirit in humanity, in the
development through which the Word of God re
veals itself in righteousness and judgment unto
men, that the Christ says, heaven and earth may
pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
The Bible, which is the simplest phrase of lit
erature, the synonym of the Book, is the term
which comprehensively describes these writings.
The Bible is a book written in literal forms;
subject to the ordinary rules of construction, as
defined in the science of grammar.
The Bible is a book written in languages, as the
Hebraic, the Chaldaic, the Greek, or Grseco-
Hebraic ; subject to the ordinary rules of deriva
tion and distinction, as defined in the science of
comparative philology.
The Bible is a book written in manuscripts;
which require in their transcription and authenti
cation the critical study which belongs to the sci
ence, which, in comparing, for instance, the uncial

222 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
with other styles, is the science which deals with
scriptory forms.
The Bible is a book which has been subject to
the mutations of literature. It is written in man
uscripts of unequal value, no one of which is en
tirely perfect in itself, so as to displace all others,
and none are free from obscure or various read
ings. It has suffered simply the mutations of lit
erature, and has had no exemption from them.
It embraces the most varied forms of litera
ture ; as genealogies, laws, histories, records of
legislative and judicial procedure, methods of san
itary, civil, and military administration. There is
legend and myth ; there are various forms of
poetry ; the ode, as in the antiphone of Moses and
Miriam ; the drama, as in the Book of Job ; the
idyl, as in the Song of Solomon ; the lyric, as in
the book of tiie Psalms, and the opening pages of
the Gospel of S. Luke ; and in the writings of S.
Paul, citations from the Greek comedy, as from
Menander.
. These scriptures embraced, in substance, all the
literature that the ancient Hebrew people pos
sessed. Their productions in art and music always
remained rude and simple, and in architecture
they were the common adaptations of a primitive
mode .of life, or often the reproductions of forms
copied from Egypt, or imported from Phoenicia.
There are traces in these writings of the races,
countries, and ages in which they appeared, and of

THE SCRIPTURES. 223
climatic conditions, with respect to languages and
customs and laws. There is a popular element,
as in the stories of Samson and Ruth ; and there
is also a priestly and a kingly element, as in the
books of the Chronicles and Kings. In some books
there are the traces of reflective phases of thought,
as in the book of Ecclesiastes ; and in some there
are traces of Asiatic forms and Asiatic institutions.
These scriptures were written by various writ
ers in various ages, and bear the note and accent
of the individuality of these writers in their modes
of expression. If it needs to be said, the literary
forms of the older parts rise often to great dignity
of expression, as the later chapters of Isaiah and
the books of Hosea and Job; and they have, in
this quality, a comparative excellence in the liter
ature of the world. There is in the New Testa
ment, not an indifference to literary form, but no
distinction of literary form. These writings are
simply narrative, in a biographical arrangement,
or in the style of letters that are few and direct,
and very unequal in their expression. There is a
historical narrative of a discursive character, ap
parently embracing the work of various writers.
The Epistle to the Hebrews has a singular finish,
with an antithetic expression, and an elaborate
detail of historical portraiture that indicates the
culture of the writer in schools of rhetoric in his
age. The evangel of S. Luke is commended for
the diligence and thoroughness of its research.

224 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
The writings of S. Paul, in the epistles, which
may be distinctively called catholic, indicate more
plainly the modifications to which the Greek lan
guage was subject when it became the instrument
for the expression of Hebrew forms of thought;
and they indicate also, in their illustrative expres
sion, the . influence of a knowledge of Roman law
in an age of great Roman lawyers. But the writ
ings of S. Paul have no literary form to commend
them, — to bring them into comparison, in Greek
with the consummate beauty of phrase in iEschy-
lus, or the repose in the style of Plato, or the sus
tained strength of the masterful style of Aristotle.
There is often, from language of great elevation, a
lapse to some digressive phrase; as, for an ex
treme instance, in the thirty-third verse of the
fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corin
thians, which drops and moves on with a quota
tion from the Greek comedy. They lack the form
which belongs to the great hymns of the Vedas,
and the constructive unity and consonance with a
formal system, which belongs to the Koran. The
Koran is also better preserved, and has suffered
less in transcription, with proportionately fewer
obscure or various readings. The style has no
distinctive quality ; but they who, in common parl
ance with religious society, speak of their beauti
ful liturgy, suggest a comparison with the hymns
of the Vedas ; and they who write of the poetry
of the Bible must draw their parallel with iEschy«

THE SCRIPTURES. 225
lus and Shakespeare, and the masters of the lit
erary art to which they invite attention.
The Bible has a unity which is deeper than any
structural form, however various and complete.
This prevails with a continuous and continually
increasing manifestation through the whole. It
is not merely the unity which appears in the lit
erature of a people, as the Latin or the English lit
erature ; it is that, but it is more and other than
that. It is not merely the unity which attaches
to the continuous history, the institutions, laws,
customs, wars of a people ; it is that, but it is more
and other than that.
The Bible is the record of the revelation of God.
It is the record of a revelation of God in man
and to the world.1 It is testamentary to the rev
elation of God to and through the world. This
revelation, and not a literature nor a body of tra
ditions, is the ground of the unity which it dis
covers. It is the record of the revelation of God
1 The Church has no theory, it will have none, of the inspiration
of books. A theory may be in the way of recognizing the facts.
The words of the Church are, " I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord
and Giver of Life, who spake by the prophets. It is an inspiration of
men. The Bible speaks, as the proverb of the Talmud is, "in the
tongue of the sons of men.''
" The maxim of the whole book is that God is the educator of
that {.eople and of every people, that all circumstances are his in
struments; that all events are assertions of his presence; that
whatever happens to men is a means of showing to them his right
eousness, and of moulding them to his image." (Maurice, Sermons,
vol. i. p. 34.)

226 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
in his relation with humanity ; in the fulfillment
of his eternal purpose, which was before the found
ation of the world ; in the righteousness in which
he manifests his own being, and in the life which
he has given for the world. It is of the coming
of his kingdom, in which the kingdoms of this
world become the kingdoms of the Christ. , It is
of a revelation in an order in the world of the
family and the nation. It is of a revelation of
and in the Christ.
The sacraments of the Church are the witness
to the will of God in its realization on this earth,
and to the coming of the new life, the life of the
spirit in the world. They are the witness to the
real presence of the Christ with humanity, which
he has redeemed.
The baptism is the regeneration of humanity in
the coming of the spirit. It is the declaration of
the true and eternal life of man. The holy com
munion is the manifestation of the perfect and
finished sacrifice, in which alone there is the inter
pretation of the sacrifice and death of this earth.
The sacraments compass the birth and death of
man, in their eternal significance.
The sacraments become the evidence of the sa-
credness of the common life of humanity. They
take up the types of nature in its own life. This
water is the symbol of purity ; this bread and
wine are the symbols of the strength and joy of

THE SACRAMENTS. 227
man. They are the common elements of life.
They are the witness of the presence of Him in
the life of humanity, in whom the worship of
the visible is overcome and destroyed. They
bring their consecration to the family and the na
tion. This baptism is given to children of every
tribe and race ; as the sign of their common rela
tion with Him, who hath broken down the wall of
partition, to make in himself of twain one new
man. It is given to children in their unconscious
existence, as the evidence that the least and low
liest in this existence, is not separated from the
Christ, but becomes a partaker in his redemption.
These elements, — this bread and wine, — are the
evidence that the daily life, the common life of
this earth, may be transmuted. It is transmuted
in union with him who died for the world.
The sacrament of the holy communion is not
simply the memorial of a distant event, that is
separated from us by tracts of time; and yet it
has the strength and consolation of a sacred mem
ory, as it testifies of a past that is glorified, and of
the presence of Him in whom the past and the
future are one.
The sacrament is not the setting forth of a
sacrifice that requires to be perfected. It is the
manifestation of the full, perfect, and sufficient
sacrifice, which Christ made upon the cross for the
sin of the whole world ; but man may be made the
partaker in this life, — the life that was given for
the world.

228 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
The sacrament is the witness of that communion
in which the limits of time and space, and the
separations of death are overcome. It is with an
unseen host ; it is with angels and archangels and
all the company of heaven. The sacrifice has been
made once for all, but it is the ground of an eter
nal union. It has been made that men may be
united with Him who has passed through death,
who has entered within the veil, and who is pre
senting his finished sacrifice continually before the
Father. It becomes the testament of a perpetu
ally renewed life. This sacrifice the Church com
memorates, and whatever theories we may devise,
whatever forms and prescriptions of ritual we may
observe, we cannot invest it with a character be
yond that which it has 'in the words of S.Paul:
as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup,
ye do shew the Lord's death till he come. It is
this alone, which gives its eternal significance to
the death of every man, until he come. It bears
us on toward the time when all the revelations
and the sacraments of God shall close in the com
ing world, the new heavens and new earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousness. The Church commemo
rates, therefore, with faith and hope, the one pre
vailing sacrifice, that its fulfillment may be in
Him, beyond whose love there is no height, be
neath whose love there is no depth.
The sacrament becomes the witness of an eter
nal life. It testifies of an eternal communion.

THE SACRAMENTS. 229
There is no symbol of union, in the life of hu
manity on this earth, that does not lend to it its
significance. In the mystic figure of S. John,
it is the ring and vesture of the bride ; it is the
marriage supper of the Lamb. It is the invitation
of heaven ; Behold, I stand at the door and
knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the
door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him,
and he with me. This is the simplest language,
and blends with human associations. It denotes
the fullest intercourse with Him who was alone on
this earth and suffered its necessities, with Him
who is with the hosts of heaven.
The sacraments become the witness of the char
acter and end of the worship of the Church. They
set forth the object of worship, — the Will whose
manifestation is in the perfect love, from whom
sacrifice proceeds, and to whom it is given, and
with whom there is eternal life and communion.
It is the revelation through worship, of God the
Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, with
whom we may become one in the life that is eter
nal. It is from the Father that the sacrifice pro
ceeds, in the manifestation of the will of the Father.
The Christ said, he that hath seen me hath seen the
Father. The Church, in one of the greater ages
of its theological thought and life, distinctively
called S. John, the Divine ; and if, in the theology
of S. John, there is the justification of this distinc
tion, it is in the record of the words that por-

230 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
tray the conflict with formal notions of service,
and formal notions of God ; and the words which
set forth the unity of God, the underground
of the being and becoming of God in the world,
the movement of the self-moved one, the mani
festation of the perfect love. S. John says, Jesus
answered and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say
unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but
what he seeth the Father do ; for what things so
ever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise ;
for the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all
things that himself doeth. Therefore in this wor
ship, there is the rejection of the principality or
power, — the will in heaven or earth, whose end is
in self alone, the self-seeking will, and the recog
nition of the Will that is manifest in sacrifice, for
the redemption and the realization of the eternal
life of humanity. This becomes the foundation of
the worship of the family and the nation. This
worship sets forth the ground of the unity of all
nations in the life of humanity. We are enabled
to offer the oblation of ourselves — the reasonable,
holy, and living sacrifice, which brings us into
communion with the will, which has offered the
perfect oblation for the whole world.
The sacraments become then the witness of the
presence of Him in whom is the eternal founda
tion of the family and the nation. They give their
interpretation to those events in which the unity
and freedom of the nation is conserved. The

L-u

THE COMING OF LIGHT. 231
crises of judgment and deliverance in its history
come to have a sacramental character. S. Paul
writes to the church in Corinth of the sacramental
character of events in the history of his own na
tion: how that all our fathers were baptized in the
cloud, and in the sea, and did all eat of the
same spiritual meat, and did all drink of the same
spiritual drink. This is connected with the recital
of historic incidents from age to age, of the most
various circumstance. The sacraments are the
evidence of the presence with the nation of the
Lord of Hosts, from whom alone its deliverance
proceeds, who is the leader of its armies, and alone
the giver of victory.
The coming of the Spirit is in the assertion of
the presence and coming of a principle or power
of light in the world. This is not a vague illus
tration or an illusion of the imagination. There is
the coming of an active power and an energy in
the policies and politics of this earth, which they
who build their dominations over it may refuse
to recognize, but which they cannot always ob
struct. This light discloses the false foundations,
on which human society may aim to build, with its
theories of property and art. This penetrates the
utmost depths of sin, and the isolations of selfish
ness, and is in conflict with all the powers that
dwell in its gloom, — the superstitions and the in
quisitions and tyrannies of men. It will at last

232 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
overthrow all repressive policies, which crush the
spirits of men. The Christ says, every one that
doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the
light, lest his deeds should be reproved ; but he
that doeth truth cometh to the light. The exist
ence of this principle and this energy becomes
the ground of strength and hope. Thus S. Paul
says, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works
of darkness ; all things that are convicted as wrong
are shown to be what they actually are by light;
for whatever shows things to be what they actually
are is light. Wherefore he saith : Awake, thou
that steepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ
shall give thee light.
In the life of the spirit there is alone the
ground of unity and reconciliation and peace.
The finite is taken up and changed ; — it is trans
muted in the infinite. The struggle for existence
becomes a conflict within man reaching to the
depths of his nature, and then peace is not a mere
quiescence, nor a balance of adverse forces, but it
comes with unity and reconciliation. It has an
ethical quality. It is the peace that the world
cannot give. It is not derivative from the world ;
for in the physical process, from deep to deep ; or
in the organization of nature, from the germ to
its decay ; there is motion without cessation, and
apparently it has its subsidence with the extinc
tion of life, when the temperature has become uni
form, as action exists in unequal conditions of heat

THE GIFT OF PEACE. 233
and cold, which tend, though gradually, to their
equalization. And life cannot be conceived in the
physical process with the cessation of motion.
There is the struggle for existence, but with no
other rest, — only the rest of death. The Christ
says, my peace I give unto you ; not as the world
giveth give I unto you. It is the peace which pas-
seth understanding, for in it death is overcome ;
it is the peace of Him whose gift is eternal life ;
it is the peace of God.
There comes through the life of the spirit the
knowledge and the realization of the truth. It is
not simply the truth, apprehended as an inference
from the observation of the physical process of the
finite world, though it brings the elements of re
flection and resolution to this knowledge. It is not
truth simply as the formulas of science, but it is the
truth that has a relation with the emotions and
the will, and is the ground of their education. It
is the truth that brings strength to love and free
dom. It is the sanctification of the truth. It is
formed in the relations and through the events of
life, and not in separation from them. It is at
tained in and not apart from the family and the
nation. It has its ground in the will of God : S.
Paul says ; this is the will of God, even your sanc
tification. In the life of the spirit, the life of righteous
ness is to have its recompense. It has not that

234 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
recompense for its end, and it is formed not for
gain, — not for the hope of gaining heaven, and it
has not thus an end external to itself. But it is
the characteristic of a recent school of ethics that
it should reject this, and leave it with mere nega
tions. It may be, in an unbelieving age, when
weariness and doubt seem to ally themselves with
the corruption of the grave ; when faith and hope
become the mockery of the world ; when trust in
the love of God, as the central principle of the
world, is made the jest of the school and the sub
ject for the derision of the multitude in the popu
lar assembly ; it may be in that age that men are
bidden to live with faith, looking for a recom
pense. The endurance that meets persecution for
righteousness, has the promise of the beatific life ;
rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your re
ward in heaven. It is not the return of work and
its obligation, for it shall be given unto this last,
even as unto thee ; it is not the wages of service,
the gift of God is eternal life.
The life of the spirit is the new life. It is the
life of the regeneration. It is the life that is not
determined in finite conditions, as in the physical
process, but it is the real, the eternal life. The
Christ asserts the necessity of this regeneration,
not because of antecedent conditions of sin ; but
because, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and
that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

PERFECT MANHOOD. 235
This regenerative power is manifest in the lives
of men and nations. It goes forth to the bap
tism of all nations. The regeneration is a life that
is not the sequence nor continuance of physical
forces, nor determined by physical contingencies,
nor having its conclusion in the dissolution of
physical forms. It is not the life that is after the
traditions of men or the rudiments of the world.
It is the true life of humanity, the life that it has
in the Christ, the real head of the human race ;
the first Adam is of the earth earthy : the second
Adam is the Lord from heaven.
The process and end of the life of the spirit is
the development of a perfect humanity. The aim
is the attainment and fulfillment of a perfect man
hood. The Christ says, be ye perfect, even as your
Father in heaven is perfect. It is the law and ful
fillment of a perfect and perfected humanity. If
a man aims to be more or other than a man, then
he must become less than a man. But this is not
simply the development of a life in identity with
nature ; it is not simply the projection of this
physical being, but while there is in it the extinc
tion of none of its powers or its energies, it is a
life formed and determined through the mediation
of the spirit. In this process nature is controlled
and determined through the mediation of the
spirit, and it is this and this alone that gives its
significance to the ideal of art.

236 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
It is the realization of a perfect manhood. For
this end the Son of God became the Son of man.
S. Paul says its end is that we all come in the
unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the
Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure
of the stature of the fullness of Christ. It is a
perfect humanity. This does not yield to age,
with its increase of infirmities. Its process is not
from life unto death. It does not grow old with
the waning of the years. S. Paul says, though our
outward man perish, yet the inward man is re
newed day by day.
While the process and end of the life of the Spirit
is the development of a perfect humanity this is not
through a principle of exclusion, but there is the
negation and transmutation of a principle of exclu
sion, and its end is in the realization of a perfect hu
man society.1 In the manifestation of the Son of
man, there is the ground of the redemptive life of
humanity. It is the manifestation of the foundation
of the life of humanity in the fatherhood of God
and the brotherhood of man. It is of and in the
1 " The apostles did not dare — they did not find it possible — to
think of- human society, except as constituted in Christ. It was the
confusion, the unbelief of men, to regard themselves as capable of
fellowship and of existence without him. It was theirs to proclaim
that there could have been no families, no nations, to resist the self
ish tendencies which each of us is conscious of in himself, and com
plains of in his neighbors, if there had not been one living centre of
the whole body of humanity, one head of every man." (Maurice,
Sermons, vol. iv. p. 10.)

THE LAW OF HUMANITY. 237
Christ, who has brought to man in his own life the
law of love and sacrifice. It affirms the principle
that no man liveth and no man dieth to himself. It
sets forth the organic relations of human society.1
The law is coming to be recognized, which not
only regards society as a body, but affirms that
none can be isolated from its relations, whether one
member suffer, all the members suffer with it. It is
alone in righteousness and freedom that there
is laid the ground of the enduring order and de
velopment of human society. The law of the
Christ becomes the law of humanity: bear ye
one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of
Christ. The bond of society is in the truth,
wherefore putting away lying, speak every man
truth with his neighbor, for we are members one
1 " The name of the God of Abraham and of Isaac is not lost in
the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost ; the per
fect and universal revelation explains all the gradual discoveries that
are leading to it. And that perfect revelation will be proved at last
to be what an ecclesiastical system, what philosophical liberalism has
tried to be and failed, — the assertion of a humanity in which all
races are equally partakers. The Church which is to be, will not be
another than that which has grown up under authority of this com
mission, and has stood ever since in different lands, in different
degrees of strength and feebleness, of sincerity and corruption. She
will only have learned through hard suffering the foundation which
she has forgotten. She will be purged of whatever loveth and
maketh a lie, that she may understand she is the witness of truth to
all nations." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 48.)
" A deliverance from lies would be the great deliverance for us
all. Nor may we obtain it, nor society be brave and truthful, nor
we, the members of society, be so until we take S. Paul's words in
their full sense: Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth

238 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
of another. It is the law of Christ that becomes
the ground of the development of domestic and
national economies in human society.
The election of humanity is in the Christ, in
the fulfillment of the purpose that was the eternal
purpose of God before the foundation of the
world.1 It is not the separation of some from
the human race by a process of inclusion, and the
rejection of others by the same process, from a life
of righteousness. It is the manifestation of the
will of God, revealed in the Christ, toward all men,
in the manifestation of the perfect life. S. Paul
writes of the faith of God's elect, which God, that
cannot lie, in hope of eternal life, promised before
the world began. This election is in the will of
God, and is manifest in the continuous course of
the world. It is the election of all men. It is
not the selection of some for happiness and some
for misery. S. Paul could write of the condi
tion of his own nation when he went to the na-
with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. There is the
secret. We do not believe that we are members one of another.
We do not believe that there is one living and true head of us
all. We do not think that he knows our secrets, and wishes us to
be true in our inward parts, and is himself the truth. This — the
vice of the beggar and the opulent, of him who sells votes and him
who buys them — can only be extirpated by faith in one who as
cended on hign, and united us all to God, and to each other."
(Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi. p. 85.)
1 "Jesus is the one elect; and those who, by taking part with
him, become members of his body, become also members of the
election; and those who continue to resist him shut themselves out
from the election." (Erskine, Memoirs, p. 228.)

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 239
tions, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come
in, and so all Israel shall be saved. And the
nations which come into existence in the course of
the Christian history, while they rest in the same
will, and are led through the same redemption,
go forth in the realization of a more perfect unity
and toward a more perfect freedom.
There is in the life of the spirit the revelation
of the source and end of life in its eternal rela
tions. The words of faith are of the Holy Ghost,
the Lord and Giver of Life. The representation
of human life, which has thence its ground, is of
an eternal life, which was promised before the world
was, and subsists in infinite relations, with the
Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. This
representation is imperfectly expressed in the
words, — the education of the world. The repre
sentation, also, of life merely as a probation, — if in
that notion it is assumed that men are subjected to
a system of tests, as coins are weighed on well-
adjusted scales ; or that each, here or hereafter,
has one or several fair chances in a method of
indifference, in which the result is a subject of
divine conjecture, so far as the chances go, — this
representation does not consist with the facts of
human life, nor with the revelation of the Christ.
It does not consist with the relative duration of
existence, nor with the relative ignorance and in
capacity of tribes and races. The phrase which

240 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
allows to each, at some period, a fair chance, has
the same superficial ground and false conception
of life. If the chances of Tyre and Sidon were
fair, those of Sodom and Gomorrah were less than
fair. But this phrase does not consist with the
simplest representation of the revelation of the
Christ, with the election and grace of God, with
the love manifested in the Son of God who became
the Son of man.1 It does not consist with a true
conception of the freedom of the will, which cer
tainly involves the power of choice ; but freedom
is more and other than that. The phrase which
represents life as a discipline, and an education
into the knowledge and love and freedom of God,
is consistent more nearly with the revelation of
God. It is a life in the limitations of the finite,
1 " There are few religious phrases that have had such a power
of darkening men's minds as to their true relation to God, as the
common phrase that we are here in a state of probation, under
trial, as it were. We are not in a state of probation, we are in a
process of education, directed by that eternal purpose of love which
brought us into being. When we apprehend that we are in a pro
cess of education, that God will carry to its fulfillment, however
long it may take, we feel that the loving purpose of the Father is
over us, and that the events of life are not appointed as testing
us, whether we will choose God's will or not, but real lessons into
training us to make the right choice.
" The gospel declares that not inevitable laws, however great,
however righteous, but a being of righteousness and love, guides and
rules the universe, and that his own purpose in creating and sustain
ing man is to make him a partaker in his own blessedness by making
him a partaker in his own righteousness, and that all the events of
life constitute the education by which he would train us and lead us
to that end." (Erskine, Memoirs, p. 376.)

THE LAW OF WORSHIP. 241
that compasses them in the life that is infinite.
It is the endurance of all that life brings, and
through endurance there is victory ; it is the king
dom and patience of Jesus Christ. It follows him
who learned obedience by the things which he
suffered ; and, being perfected, became the author
of eternal salvation to all who obey him. It is on
this earth the discipline of virtue that in its neces
sary conditions, becomes the incontrovertible argu
ment and evidence of a life that is not determined
in the process of the physical world ; it verifies the
words which were the strength of our fathers, and
shall be the strength of manhood until the end of
time : he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased
from sin. This life is a growth, and, through
the redemption of the Christ, into the life of God.
It is through the finite into a life which has its
foundation in the eternal life, its freedom in the
infinite life. It is a growth in a life which is self-
determined, and is not determined by external
limitations. It is not the subjection of being to
another, for it is immoral that one should be used
as a means for an end external to his own being, or
to subserve the being of another to himself. It is
the development of being in its own whole. The
Christ says, No man taketh my life from me. I
lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it
down and I have power to take it again.
In the life of the spirit, through the courses of
16

242 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
history, the ritual of the Church is to be formed
in the law and unity and freedom of the spirit.
Its ritual is formed in the requirement, they that
worship the Father shall worship him in spirit
and in truth. Its unity is in the Spirit. It does
not assume the subjection of the spirit to the
letter, nor to the precedent of those who sit in
the seats of the elders. Its end is universal.
It does not look for the perpetuation of Jerusa
lem, nor of Athens or Rome, with their separate
sanctities.1 We have no continuing city here : we
are come to the heavenly Jerusalem. We are bidden
to journey toward no earthly town or city, how
ever great in the historical courses of the world,
and however many the attractions be that are re
counted of it : the Jerusalem which is above is
free, which is the mother of us all.
The life of the spirit is the eternal life of man.
It is not spatial nor temporal ; it is not bounded
by these coasts of time ; it is here and now, but
it is not at this place to be described by the loca
tion of this place, and it is not at this time to be
measured by the termination of this time. It is
not in the past, and it is not to be foisted away
into the future; he that believeth hath eternal life.
; 1 The only law of ritual affirmed in the First General Council of
the Church, Nicaea, A. d. 325, is Canon XX. This commends the
posture of standing in prayer, which it seems good to the holy synod
to prefer. But it does not follow that a law of ritual of this char
acter is necessarily to be held as permanent.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE HOLY GHOST. 243
There is in man the suspect that in the tran--
sient course of things there is yet an intimation
of that which is not transient. The grass that
fades has yet in the folded and falling leaves of its
flower that perishes the intimation of a beauty
that does not fade. The treasures that are frayed
by the moth and worn by the rust are not as
those in which love and faith and hope abide.
There is a will that in its purpose does not yield
to mortal wrong. There is a joy that is not of
emulation. There is a freedom that is other than
the mere struggle for existence in physical rela
tions, and is not determined in its source or end
by these finite conditions.
This is the life of the spirit. It is born of
God ; it is of the uncreated Spirit ; it is begotten,
not made ; it proceeds from the Father and the
Son ; it is in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost.
The inspiration of the Spirit, the Christ recog
nized ; the Spirit descended upon him and was
sent from him. It is the evidence of a relation
and a communion manifested in the Christ with
the life of man. The prophetic and the priestly
and the kingly line closed in the Christ ; — only as
from him there was to come the prophetic and
priestly and kingly powers of humanity.
There is in men and in nations the consciousness
of the existence of physical and of spiritual powers
and relations. It is not that the life of man is

244 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
wholly physical until a certain epoch, and there
after wholly spiritual ; although in the racial de
velopment of man, the physical precedes the spir
itual. There is thence the ethical conflict, in which
the spiritual comes to be apprehended as before and
above the physical, and striving toward its realiza
tion. This has its illustration in the widest ranges
of literature and art. This is the ground of those
words of counsel, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall
not fulfill the lust of the flesh, for the flesh lust-
eth against the spirit, and the spirit against the
flesh. The life of the spirit has its fulfillment in the
life of humanity in God. It is the fulfillment of
the will that held its purpose in love before the
world was. It is the love that is stronger than
death, and in its perfect fulfillment man is brought
into oneness with God. S. John says, God is love,
and he that loveth is born of God.
Thus the phrase, the last judgment, is not dis
tinctively characteristic of the revelation of the
Christ. The judgment is continuous, and in the
increasing realization of righteousness and truth
and love. It is not, as an ultimate event, — the
final goal of humanity, and the end of all things.
S. Paul says, then cometh the end, when God shall
be all in all.
The judgment, in the separation and discrimi
nation in the divine light, of the eternal signifi-

THE KINGDOM THAT HATH NO END. 245
cance of good and evil, and their consequence in
eternal life and eternal death, becomes the ground
of an infinite hope. It is faith and hope and love
that abide. But the greater is love. This love
that was before the world was, does not perish with
the perishing world. It will follow every child
of time, and it does not yield to death.
The assumption that the doom of each and all,
in the moment of physical death, is irrevocably
fixed, is the assumption of the extremest fatalism.
From the finite conceptions of men, it derives its
moulds and measures for the divine love, and in
the courses of human thought it is formed on
pessimism in alliance with dualism. It places a
finite limit to the divine redemption. It is an ulti
mate subjection to sin and death. That the moral
degradation of men and of nations tends toward
it, is no evidence that no other and higher powers
shall prevail toward their perfect fulfillment. The
Christ has conquered death, and in death there is
no limit to his power. The law and life which the
Christ has manifested is the universal law and life,
and there is no place that can be detached from
it, in the universe.
The relation of every man to humanity in the
Christ is the ground of the faith and "hope and
love which justify the words, that bid men to
count not the ninety and nine, but to seek with
unceasing quest for one that is lost.
We are to strive in a world where infinite good

246 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
and evil are, and we can only overcome evil with
good. That humanity is joined in the bonds of
that love which was before the foundation of the
world, and that virtue is brought into an active
conflict with evil, is the assurance of their ulti
mate triumph. It is not immediate, and vice and
crime may still go on ; he that is unjust shall be
unjust still. But the ultimate realization of the
divine redemption shall be in the overthrow of
every power that has held the spirit of man in
subjection, and wrought its degradation. But the
consequences of evil continue through an ethical
development. We may be saved from sin and
hell ; we may be lost in their vacancy and misery
and despair, and suffer their confinement. Ge
henna was not far from Jerusalem, and its fires
were still burning, when it became the type of
the consequences of sin for man. This gives in-
tenser significance to the fire that is not quenched,
in the judgment of the wicked.
The fulfillment of the redemption is the realiza
tion of righteousness, the fulfillment in humanity
of the righteousness of the Son of God, who be
came the Son of man. It is the victory of faith,
but this is not for the individual alone and within
his own spirit. It is not a victory that separates
him from humanity, nor withdraws him from the
world that has been redeemed, but it brings out
the ground of his relation to humanity. It is faith

THE ETERNAL LIFE. 247
in One, who being the Son of God has become
the Son of man.
But the thoughts of men in the revelation of
God through the Christ, and in the life of the
spirit, are not sent forth to wander in vacuity.
The family and the nation are not to be regarded
as insubstantial in their unity and foundation. The
precedent of their life is not to be found only in
the vestiges that are left, as the strata of geolog
ical deposits, to indicate the succeeding tribes and
races that have passed over a continent, one van
ishing before another, as if worn out in the strug
gle. The records of the Old Testament have no as
sertion of the immortality of the soul, as it is ap
prehended in the religions and the philosophies of
the world. But there is the assurance that the
family and the nation are immortal. The sugges
tion of a life that is immortal is in the hope that
rests in the continuous life of the family and the
nation, which have their unity and foundation in
God. This is the hope that came to the king of
Israel, that each may live since they live.
The records of the New Testament have not the
assertion of the immortality of the soul, as subse
quent to the incident of physical death, primarily
for their subject. It is the life of humanity in the
Christ that is the evidence of the incorruptible,
the immortal life. The Christ has brought to
the spirit of man the realization of life and im-

248 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
mortality ; he has brought life and immortality to
light. This is the life of the spirit, the real life, in
which alone there is the satisfaction of the spirit.
This is the life that shall not see corruption. It
does not decompose with the physical elements,
nor suffer their decay. It is not measured by the
ashes of the urn, nor by the confines of the grave.
The strength that moves with its forces is that of
an eternal life. The power that animates it is the
power that is not of the sequences of earth and
time ; it is the power of the resurrection.
The resurrection from the dead is in and through
the Christ. The Christ has overcome death ; death
hath no more dominion over him.1
The resurrection is not 'the resurrection of the
physical body. It is not the resultant of the law
of physical necessity, nor subject to physical con
ditions. It is not the recovery and reconstruction
1 "Death hath no more dominion over him; for in that he died,
he died unto sin once; in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. The
apostle presents the fact of the resurrection as a manifestation of the
divine relation in which Christ stood to the Eternal Father ; of the
divine life which dwelt in him because he was the Son of God ; of
the divine energy which was every hour sustaining that life, and
which in weakness, agony, on the cross, in the sepulchre, sustained
it still." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 4.)
" This death, — this common death, — the death of him who died
for all, is that in the likeness of which we are planted; here is the
bond of perfect human fellowship ; here is the assurance that death
cannot break the bonds which hold us to each other, because the
Love which established them had in death proved itself to be
Stronger than death." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 220.)

THE RESURRECTION. 249
of the physical body from the physical elements.
It is the resurrection of the spiritual body. The
apostle says, it is sown a physical body, it is raised
a spiritual body : there is a physical body and
there is a spiritual body.
The resurrection is not in the evolution of the
physical process of the world. That which is first
is physical, and then that which is spiritual. But
the spiritual has not its ground in nor its deriva
tion from the physical. The end of the physical
process for individuals and races is death. In this
physical process and conclusion, as it is open to
observation and its resultant knowledge, men be
come, and invariably, mere carrion that may be
reduced to ashes or concealed beneath the sod, at
last only to make other growths more rank. It
is weakness to evade the invariable result which
is thus within the observation and the resultant
knowledge of men. S. Paul recognizes it with a
clearness that is not exceeded by the writers of
the physical school in their most recent literature ;
corruption does not inherit incorruption. This
death is not averted by the strength of youth,
nor the gift of wealth, nor the charm of beauty,
nor the valor of armies. It is not overcome by
the skill of those arts in which men are trained.
But men recognize the weakness with which they
yield to disease, and the advance of age, and the
subjection to the law of death, and the dishonor of
the grave, in this process of physical necessity,

250 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
The apostle says, it is sown in corruption; it is
raised in incorruption : it is sown in dishonor ; it
is raised in glory : it is sown in weakness ; it is
raised in power. It was not necessary that the
writers of the physical school should repeat the
induction of the physical process in the observa
tion and apprehension of life within the limits of
the physical process. The apostle says, flesh and
blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. But
there is, again, the assertion of another than this
physical sequence ; this corruptible must put on
incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality.
So when this corruptible shall have put on incor
ruption, and this mortal shall have put on immor
tality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that
is written, death is swallowed up in victory.
<- The resurrection is not from a state which is
subsequent to death, nor from a state which is
separated by long intervals from death. It is not
from a state that is intermediate between certain
other states. It is the resurrection of the dead.
It has that immediacy.1
1 " After this life comes the fruition of his glory. The longing
for selfish prizes, has ceased ; the earthly weakness of desiring to ex
change faith for sense has been taken away. What remains is the
vision of that light which fills earth and heaven ; the revelation to
the inward eye of God himself, as the eye of the spiritual body will,
by degrees, become capable of taking in all the beauty and harmony
of God's works. Yes! there is in all of us a sighing for home, a
longing which nothing but the beholding of God can satisfy." (Mau
rice, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 126.)

THE RESURRECTION. 251
This opens for men the communion of saints,
which is involved in the life of the Church.
They, who have gone, have not therefore passed
into a condition of lethargy or vacancy. They
may be nearer to us, as they are nearer to the per
fect love. They may guide us toward a holier
and ampler freedom, since they suffer no more
the limitations of time. The veil is rent. There
is with us the presence of the unseen host. It is
not alone their memory that remains, their spirit
may be with us. This brings to us the chastity of
hope, he that hath this hope in him purifieth him
self. It becomes the incentive to effort, seeing
we also are compassed about with so great a cloud
of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the
sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run
with patience the race that is set before us.1
1 This communion, this presence of an unseen company, is recog
nized in the critical days, and recalled in the high services of na
tions. "It is not unnatural to feel that they who, by wisdom, by
valor, by sacrifice, have contributed to maintain and perfect the
institutions which we possess have also an interest in this day. To
a spirit alive with memories of the time, and rejoicing in its presage
of noble futures, recalling the great, the beloved, the heroic, who
have labored and joyfully died for its coming, it will not seem too
fond an enthusiasm to feel that the air is quick with shapes we can
not see, and glows with faces whose light serene we may not catch."
(Storrs, Oration, July 4, 1876.)
There arc memories in the life of a nation which find expression
in very eloquent words, that move men with their truth, as no phrases
of rhetoric could move them. At the meeting of the armies of the
Nation at Chicago, June, 1880, it was said of a great soldier, " From
the front of the ranks, and with his face to the foe, booted and
spurred, he went into the presence of the God of Battles." (Gov

252 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
It was the doctrine of the Pharisees that we
shall rise at the last day. To them the Christ
says, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac
and the God of Jacob is not a God of the dead,
but of the living, for all live unto him. To those
who said to him, in the expression of the pop
ular thought, of one that was dead, " He shall
rise again at the last day," he answered, I am
the resurrection and the life. Through the resur
rection the conception of death is itself changed.
Death is no more clothed with the signs of victory
over man.
Cullom, Oration.") But as the school of physical science concludes,
did he go to the mingling of the physical elements, to the presence of
a vaporous mist, only to add some more to that vaporous mist, or to
the combination of molecular forces tending to the cessation of mo
tion with the equivalence of temperatures? This name, the God of
Battles, is very old; we have received it from our fathers, and it had
a certain significance in a book which we have received, in the asser
tion of the presence of God, who is the leader of the armies of earth,
and the only giver of victory. We may believe that he went into the
very presence of Him whom he had followed, and that Host is with
the nation always.
It was said, again, " They fought to keep our country on the map
of the earth, and our flag in heaven." (Col. Ingersoll, Oration.)
But if we accept the counsel of S. Paul, Let your citizenship be in
heaven, we may believe that this is no vacant phrase, that it is very
real ; that the flag is stirred, as it is borne to battle and sacrifice
by diviner airs than those of earth, and is the witness of that di
vine life that is with the nation always.
Again it was said, " With a nobler ambition than the gaining of
empire, they bore their puissant arms for the kingdom of man, where
liberty reigneth forever." (Col. Vilas, Oration.) But we may be
lieve that this kingdom of the Son of man is very real and has eternal
foundations, and that the freedom of man is beyond the accident of
earth in its perfect realization.

THE RESURRECTION. 253
The term, — the immortality of the soul, —
consists more strictly with the speculations of the
schools of philosophy. It is a dry and abstract
phrase. It is not a term which corresponds with
those terms which are indicative of the revelation
of the Christ, while yet it affirms a truth which
has its fullest realization in this revelation. It is
the affirmation of the spiritual life, which is im
mortal. This does not suffer corruption, nor yield
to death. It is the life which is eternal : the first
man is of the earth earthy ; the second man is the
Lord from heaven : as we have borne the image of
the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the
heavenly. The apostle says, the Christ was declared to be
the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead.
He was, in the deepest significance of these words,
the Son of man, the child of earth and time, and
he suffered the incident of the life of earth, in
these finite limitations, and became subject unto
death ; but his life had not its consummation in
this physical process, as the resurrection was not a
power which had its derivation from the physical
process. If death seemed the negation of the
physical process, there was in the resurrection
the negation of death. But it was not the con
tinuance of the finite ; it was the perfect restora
tion and fulfillment of the finite in the coming of
the life that was infinite. It lifts the faith and
hope of man to God ; the apostle says, God

254 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
raised Christ from the dead, and gave him glory,
that our faith and hope might be in God}
The faith of the resurrection, therefore, must
always come with associations of joy. It is the
conquest of life. The final victory is not with
death. For the love that is stronger than death
leads faith to look through death. Whatever be
the confusion and variance of the world, and how
ever widely misery prevail on the earth, the
Church will strive to celebrate its service of the
resurrection, with a joy imperfectly expressed in
the opening flowers of spring, and by the exultant
anthems that rise beyond the fanfare of trumpets
and are borne from choir to choir.
The last enemy is destroyed and the conquest
of humanity is complete. The apostle says, the
last enemy shall be destroyed, which is death.
There is no limit to these words, as in Adam all
die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive, but
every man in his own order.
The power of love and sacrifice is proven to be
the mightiest power on earth. It is the power
of him who was the first and is the last, who was
in the beginning and is the end. It is the Lamb
1 " S. Paul not only speaks of our Lord being made like unto us,
but of our being made in his likeness. He does not limit this mode
of expression, telling us that we may be made holy like Christ here,
or glorious like Christ hereafter. He speaks of our death being cast
in the mould of his death; of his being the only standard by which
we can measure, the only type by which we can understand our
own." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 213.)

THE ASCENSION. 255
that was slain from the foundation of the world,
but it has become the sign of conquest as the
cross has been borne in front of the armies of
earth, borne on from the Church militant to the
Church triumphant. In the vision of S. John the
universality passes beyond our conception, and
every creature which is in heaven and on the earth
and under the earth, and such as are in the sea,
and all that are in them heard I saying, blessing
and honor and glory and power unto him that sit-
teth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever
and ever}
The subjection of all things is perfect, that God
may be all in all. There is no fear of the end ;
perfect love has cast out fear. There is no fear of
that which lies as the unknown, for the law which
determines it is known. There is no fear of that
which may be summoned forth from beyond the
1 "When we speak of death, the resurrection, and the ascension,
of the descent of the Holy Spirit, of the revelation of Christ as the
judge of the quick and the dead, we are transported into a region
to which our measures are inapplicable. He has overcome death,
he has taken away sin, he has led captivity captive." (Maurice, Ser-
mons, vol. v. p. 43.)
" We receive, then, the message of redemption by the cross, of
Christ's victory over the grave, as he and his apostles delivered it.
The cross becomes far more than ever the sign in which, and in
which alone, we hope to conquer, when we have acknowledged the
Lamb in the midst of the throne. The resurrection becomes far
more than ever the strength to the dying man, when the voice rings
through all creation, / am he that liveth and was dead ; and, behold, I
live forevermore, and have the keys of death and of hell." (Maurice,
Sermons, vol. vi. p. 89.)

256 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
confines of this earth, nor drawn from the lowest
deeps ; for the same organic law prevails through
all worlds, — the law manifested in the Christ,
in his redemptive kingdom. There is, then, no
power that is not brought into subjection to man,
— no power in life or in death, in things present
or things to come. There is no finite limitation to
the redemption of the Christ, whose kingdom shall
have no end. S. Paul says, the Christ being raised
from the dead is far above all principality and
power, and might and dominion, and every name
that is named, not only in this world but also in
that which is to come. The message of the worlds
to come, of their law and power, is that the Christ
is there, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to
day, and forever.
The fulfillment of the life of humanity in the
world is in the Christ in God. The end is not
another world. The end is the perfect and per
fected world. And the life of man is not to be
for ever on and on, to overcome and still to over
come, to mark its advance by its journey from
mile to mile, and by its transfer from field to
field. That is the contingent of finite relations.
The end is in the consummation of life, the full
ness of Him that filleth all in all. There is no
more the suffering and travail of earth. The love
that was manifested in sacrifice has its fulfillment
in the joy of the Redeemer. The apostle says,
Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more.

THE ASCENSION. 257
The death and the resurrection of the Christ are
always to be connected with the ascension. This
is the witness that no limits of time or space can
separate the Christ from the world which he has
redeemed. It is the witness of the presence of
one who says I am with you alway.1 It is the
witness that the heavens are opened, and that
their life becomes henceforth one with the life of
earth. It becomes the incentive to duty in a
life of faith and hope ; the apostle says, if ye then
be risen with Christ, seek those things which are
above. It is the evidence of a pure and redeemed
and glorified humanity. It fulfills the transfigura
tion in the eternal glory of the Son of man. It
1 ' ' The faith which rests upon the death and the resurrection of
Christ, without taking any account of his ascension, may serve as
long as our thoughts are occupied chiefly with the condition of our
own souls, and with the question how they may be saved here
or hereafter. But when we are brought to feel, by one discipline or
another, that we are bound up for good or for evil with our race,
that we are not and cannot be exempt from any of its transgressions,
then comes a demand for something more than the gift of pardon,
than the promise of a better world, if we be worthy. When we
are brought to this border land between despair and a hope that
is beyond all that we can ask or think, the ascension day breaks in
upon us, as with the light of seven suns. He has gone up on high.
He is there, where our eyes cannot follow him, with the God who
is and was and is to come, his Father and our Father. He is there,
not separated by space from those whose nature he bears ; not sep
arated from them in any sympathy ; in all things what he was when
he bore their infirmities, was made sin for them, died their death.
And that which constitutes his perfect Humanity, his truth, his jus
tice, his purity, his sympathy, — this is our inheritance." (Maurice,
Sermons, vol. vi. p. 84.)
17

258 THE LDTE OF THE SPIRIT.
verifies the words of prophecy, henceforth ye shall
see the heavens opened, and the Son of man at the
right hand of God.
There is therefore for those who remain in the
continuing life of earth no anticipation of things
to come, such as is drawn in the conceptions of
religion, as they are projected into the future, in
the imagination of the world. The revelation
that is to come is one with that that now is.
After this life there shall come the beatific vision.
The semblances of earth and time have gone.
There is the manifestation to the spiritual eye of
the fullness of the eternal glory. But there is no
thought of the life to come that is apart from
Him who on this earth was parted from those
who followed him, and carried up into heaven.
The voice that comes to those who remain is in
the words, thou canst not follow me now, but thou
shalt follow me hereafter. S. John says, now are
we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear
what we shall be ; but we know that when he shall
appear we shall be like him; for we shall see him
as he is.
The assumption that this course of human life is
strictly the probation of the individual in his ma
ture development, and that the terminus of this
probation is in the incident of the death of the
individual, and that the location of heaven and
hell is beyond the earth, and that the object of

THE FULLNESS OF LIFE. 259
salvation is transportation to the one and escape
from the other, and that human life is evil, and
that the few who have a conscious faith, which
has yet in itself no ethical ground, are alone saved
in the ultimate assize, to which all are summoned ;
— this is the staple of the various religions of the
world. The Christ has broken down the barriers of the
grave. He has overcome death. He has opened
the kingdom of heaven, that the earth and the
heavens may become thenceforth one in their life.
The superstitions which have divided and enslaved
humanity, and the systems which have held on to
a root of evil that was deeper than the love of
God, are broken and thrown away. It is the day
of deliverance. The will of God is manifested in
love. The power of God is the power of the resur
rection. In the victory of the Christ for humanity,
there is the conquest of hell and of death ; he hath
the keys of hell and of death.
This is the deliverance of man from all the
powers that have claimed dominion over him, and
separated him from God. It is the freedom, in its
perfect realization, of the redemptive power of the
Christ of man. The grave has then no victory in
its corruption. It is the perfect life, the life of
those who have loved righteousness. .It is the life
of those who have cast off the garments of their
own vanity and selfishness, and entered into the
life of Him who is the Redeemer of the world.

260 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
It is the new life, the life of the fulfillment of
the spirit ; it is the life of humanity ; and no man
can claim it in his severance, but in the life of hu
manity in the Christ.
It fulfills the hope of man ; it is beyond all that
was prefigured in the prophetic soul of the wide
world. It is the fulfillment of the Will, in the
expression of the apostle, of the God of hope. It
completes the vision of the days when the ser
vant shall be as the master, and the bond shall be
free. It is the time when the earth shall no more
conceal her blood, nor cover her slain. It is the
time, when there shall be no more crying, neither
shall there be any more pain, for former things are
passed away. It is the new heavens and new earth,
wherein dwelleth righteousness.
When the apostle to the nations would express
the life that is given in the revelation of God to
the world, he says, The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of
the Holy Ghost be with us all evermore.

i" believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker
of heaven and earth, And of all things visible and
invisible :
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten
Son of God, Begotten of his Father before all
worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of
very God, Begotten, not made, Being of one sub
stance with the Father, By whom all things were
made; Who, for us men, and for our salvation,
came down from heaven, And was incarnate by the
Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, And was made
man, And was crucified also for us under Pon
tius Pilate. He suffered, and was buried ; And the
third day he rose again, according to the Scrip
tures ; And ascended into heaven, And sitteth on
the right hand of the Father ; And he shall come
again with glory to judge both the quick and the
dead, Whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and
Giver of Life ; Who proceedeth from the Father
and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son
together is worshipped and glorified, Who spake
by the Prophets ; And I believe one Catholic and
Apostolic Church; I acknowledge one Baptism for
the remission of sins ; And I look for the Resur
rection of the dead ; And the Life of the world to
come. Amen.
A. D. 381-1881.

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